But you are "just"...

I wonder if anyone out there gets tired of hearing :but you are "just" something, or anything along those lines.

I get that quite a bit and it has started really getting to me lately.

• You are just bipolar, it's nothing serious, nothing to worry about.  plus you have a mild version of it.  Funny, my psychiatrist and family doctor would quite disagree with that statement.

          I may make it look easy, I may make it look mild, but I work VERY hard at it.  My bipolar is mainly depression with the odd mild mania here and there.  However, my depressive episodes can be quite severe and debilitating.  When I get like that I hide it, I struggle but don't let it show as much as I can.  I get suicidal, everything becomes very dark and hopeless.  The cycles come quite often.  Now many who have this issue will take antidepressants to help take the edge off.  Due to my type of bipolar, I CANNOT take antidepressants, when I do, I become extremely manic, uncontrollably manic.  I may abhor my depressions but I FEAR the manias.  No matter what I will not touch antidepressants of any kind with a 10 foot pole.  Doctors have tried giving me strong mood stabilizers to try and reduce the manias but nothing seems to work.  The only way to get rid of the manias is to stop taking the antidepressants.  Doctors have tried to give me just mood stabilizers to help control the depressions,  I have taken anti-psychotics along with mood stabilizers, and none of it helps with the depression.  I have tried various therapies to try and change the way my mind thinks while in these episodes, again, they were not very helpful.  Therapists have told me that one of the reasons they don't help is that my depression has a strong situational component.  I need to change my circumstances.  As you know circumstances can't always be changed.  So I cope as best as I can, go on with my daily life and keep thinking it's just a phase, it will eventually taper off.  Some days it's the only thing that gets me out of bed and somewhat functional.

• You just have fibromyalgia, don't see why you can't do everything everybody else does.

          While my fibromyalgia may be milder than some other peoples, it is combined with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, making my exhaustion just that much more debilitating.  This whole post exertional malaise thing is putting a serious crimp in my lifestyle.  My condition is severe enough to qualify for disability, and many choose to go that way.  I have worked hard to pull myself out of poverty and am in no hurry to head back into it.  People on disability are very poor, I have chosen to keep working as long as I possibly can, no matter how hard it is on me or how exhausted I am all the time.  I go to work every day feeling worst than what would often justify my co-workers calling in sick.  I push through the brain fog.  When I get home after a full day of work I am completely drained.  As the week progresses, I "borrow" more and more energy from the next day so that by the time the weekend comes along I am completely at 0.  I need the whole weekend to recover somewhat to get ready for a new week.  While I have a lot of "catch up" needed on the housework front to do, it's very often not possible to get around to it.

• You just work in a call centre, it's not like it's a hard job talking on the phone all day.

           True, I don't have to stand on my feet all day, balance fragile objects, lift heavy things.  I am not responsible for controlling potentially dangerous things.  I also don't face danger and perilous situations on a daily basis.  When comparing to jobs like that, one could definitely say my job is "easy".  However, my job does not only entail talking on the phone all day.  And even if it were just that, it's not always very pleasant conversations.  Some of those conversations can be quite abusive, others challenging due to a variety of factors.  You'd be surprised how many people actually can't cut it in the client service industry.  Furthermore I also have non-phone work to do that involves complex analysis at times, attention to detail, ability to write complex concepts in clear and easy language in both official Canadian languages.  Try doing complex analysis while constantly being interrupted by the phone and being hit by particularly heavy brain fog.

• You just have osteoarthritis, I have it too, just take Tylenol and carry-on (usually said by an older person)

           I developed osteoarthritis at a very young age, I have had it for well over 20 years.  It's not in a few odd joints any longer, it's generalized.  I don't think I have any joint that is not affected by it any longer.  Some joints are still are mild, but others have progressed quite a bit in the last 20 some years.  Tylenol just doesn't cut it anymore.  Also you do have to be careful with long term use of over-the-counter pain relievers.  Long term heavy use of these products can cause some organ damage.  Even prescription pain relievers can also cause some organ damage, so it's best to try and not "abuse" them. Also I have pretty bad GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) and many of the better meds are very harsh on the digestive system.  So all in all, it's best to cool it on the meds that help, but don't completely take away the pain.  Save it for the really bad days.

• You only have two kids, and they are mostly grown up, people with more kids and /or younger kids have it much harder.

          What can I say, it's true that I only have two kids and they are no longer toddlers requiring babysitting all the time.  However you kinda have to look at my particular context.  First  I am a single mom.  By that I mean there is no dad in the picture whatsoever.  Like at all.  Never has been.  No financial support, no weekends, nothing.  I don't have any sisters and for most of their life my family lived as close as 5 hours away by car. (mom 5 hours away, brother 8 hours away, dad 13 hours away). so not much family support with regards to stuff like babysitting (I did move close to my mom from 1999 to 2002 so I did get a break then, but it was a fair exchange, I helped her out quite a bit with the business she had then)  I only started working week day shifts in late 2003.  Up until then, my jobs consisted of low income shift work (including nights, weekends and holidays). That may no longer be the case, but we still carry the baggage of those years with us.  Then you have to consider the particular challenges I have with my children.  First my daughter was a victim of severe trauma as a child.  While she is a survivor, she did wind up with mental health issues that she has to this day. It's something I always have to be on the lookout for and take into consideration with any major life decisions.  I also have to weight how most things will affect her.  But it can't show.  It's important not to treat them as victims and to empower them every chance you get.  I slip at times.  Then my son, my miracle baby, the one I was not supposed to ever be able to have is special needs.  He is currently a teen, with teenage angst, but combined with a pervasive developmental delay, severe anxiety, and intense behavioral and emotional issues at times violent.  So he is 4 inches taller than me, at least 20 pounds heavier, muscled with little to no self regulation. He also has no empathy.  It's best to not leave him alone for more than 10 hours at a time.  With my daughter present I can leave him for up to 36 hours but 48 is really pushing it.  I can't send him to family or friends for a bit of time off because it requires quite a bit knowledge into his psychopathy and some training in order to be best able know what to do when his emotions become overwhelming.  Respite care is very expensive, not covered by insurance and only for a few days, barely time to recover. (Not that I can afford it anyway).  Needless to say this family dynamic is very difficult on my daughter and not helping her in any way.

For more information, you can read this post, this post from 2011 when he wasn't quite a teenager yet, and if you are interested in even more information, go ahead and read this post.

• Now something I don't get a whole lot of comments about (because very few people know about it) is my cardiomyopathy, if they knew, they would probably say it's "just" a mild heart condition.

          Since this particular condition of mine does not elicit comments as of yet, why am I including it in this post?  The reason I am is that when considering my life, one should not "just" take one element into consideration and decide what level of quality of life I may or not have solely based on one alone.  While it's true that my cardiomyopathy is not really very serious at this time, I have to be careful to keep it that way.  So I have to keep my blood pressure normal, my doctor has prescribed some meds to try and keep it stable, but I also have to make some changes to my diet and lifestyle.  One of the things I need to avoid is stress as stress elevates blood pressure and damages the heart muscle.  I also have to make sure my heart rate stays as stable as possible. Avoiding stress is a lot easier said than done, taking all the above into consideration, so I am doing the next best thing and trying to learn ways of better coping with stress as it is pretty much unavoidable.

I think that all in all I am not "just", and it would be pretty inaccurate to describe my life "easy".  (Yah this one person told me I was lucky to have had an easy life compared to her, Healthy her whole life, developed osteoarthritis at 65, had a husband who made good money, where she did not have to work and she and her kids were well provided for, he wasn't abusive but did have expectations of a clean home, ready meal and polite kids, her kids were of above average intelligence, healthy, active and pretty well behaved)

Believe it or not, while a lot of stuff was mentioned here, I really do not mean to complain.  there are so many ways it could be worst, and I am thankful for the positives I do have in my life.  After all I am employed in a job that pays well and has benefits.  I do live in a country without persecution and "free" health care.  I do not have an abusive partner and can still get around.  I can see the beauty (not blind) and can fully enjoy the best sounds available (not deaf).  Both my kids are mobile, can speak, hear and see.  Neither drink or do drugs. My allergies have subsided so I can have pets and there nothing quite like the unconditional love of a pet.  I also have been truly blessed with some amazing people in my life (I'd start naming names but with the friggin brain fog I might leave some out, I think you know who you are anyway).

Thank you for taking the time to read 

As always, much appreciated

Recovering From Laxative Abuse

When I was in high school, I started packing on the pounds.  I didn't like it.

One summer while I was at my dad's, I was 17 at the time, I wanted to be thin again in order to feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit to the lake and I discovered that if I took laxatives, it helped me be thinner.

And that is when it all started.  From that point on I took laxatives to cancel out the effect of my eating.  When I returned to my mom's I had lost quite a bit of weight and got some positive reviews about it, it made me feel so good that I continued to use laxatives to control my weight.

From the age of 17 to the age of 19 I used a moderate amount of laxatives in order to maintain my weight.  I didn't have to use so much because I was quite the busy person.  When I was 18, I was going to college, had two jobs and had an active social life.  I swam two hours every day and was always on the go.  When I got pregnant with my daughter at 19, it slowed my life down and I started packing on the pounds.  After having given birth, I found that I had gained some weight and was having trouble losing weight so I started to use laxatives again.  With their help and with extra activities again I started to loose weight again, getting to an acceptable weight.  Even though I was not using as much as I would later I was using laxatives on a regular basis in order to maintain my weight.  Back them laxatives contained phenophthalein, which was later banned for having some adverse health effects.

By 1997 I became pregnant with my son.  Pregnancy didn't stop me from using laxatives this time.  I didn't want to gain too much weight during my pregnancy, I did however lay off them for a bit after my son was born as I had been put on a medication and I didn't want the laxatives to affect their effectiveness.

Lo and behold I started packing on the pounds in a big way.  I got to be over 200 pounds and this affected my self esteem greatly.

By the year 2000 I started using laxatives again to lose weight.  This time my use of them really took off.  There was this pharmacy that sold bottles of 120 pills for a few dollars.  As these pills were cheap I would take more and more of them.  It came to a point where I would take about 10 pills after every meal.  I was also on a restrictive diet at that time and walked a lot.  When I started loosing weight again, the people around me were so proud of me, I got so much positive feedback it made me feel great.  I became obsessed with loosing weight.

From 2000 to about 2006 I would take 60 to 80 laxative pills a day.  I went down to  120\125 pounds.  Now that does not seem like very thin however at 5'7" with a large bone structure and a decent amount of muscles, this was in fact too thin.  I should never have gone below 135.  Oh it's only 10\15 pounds under you say, but it didn't look like only that.

Starting in 2004\2005 I started getting comments about my weight, comments implying that I had gotten maybe too thin.  When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see it in the beginning.  I still thought I was too fat.

One day in 2006 I saw a picture of myself that I had taken a bit earlier.  And then I saw other pictures and all of a sudden I really saw myself.  Saw how thin I had really gotten.  Something suddenly clicked in my brain and I realized that I had an eating disorder and I needed to do something about it.  I started to wean myself off laxatives.

The result was that I started packing on the pounds again.  I tried dieting to try to staunch the flow of weight gain to no avail.  I relapsed a few times, going back to laxative use, but was determined to stop and eventually I was finally able to completely stop.

In very little time, I gained well over 100 pounds.  The self-esteem issues that had caused me to develop an eating disorder that was still there so of course gaining all this weight did not make me feel very good.  Depression ensued and has since been my constant companion.  I have tried loosing weight in a healthy way since but nothing seems to work.

When I was thin I was exposing myself to all kinds of issues:

• Tremors
• Dehydration
• Weakness
• Nausea
• Water retention
• Colon infection
• Blurry vision
• Severe abdominal pain
• Chronic Diarrhea
• Gas
• Bloating
• Electrolyte Disturbances
• Chronic Constipation
• Bowel tumors
• Irregular heartbeat
• Kidney damage
• Electrolyte imbalance
• Organ damage
• Colon failure
• Death

When I abused laxatives, I had very low blood pressure and was prone to fainting.  I would often "wake up" on the washroom floor after a period of loss of consciousness.  Yet society viewed me as "healthier" than I am now.  I had severe IBS and would often bleed with my bowel movements.

Now that I am obese, I hate going out of the house.  I hate meeting new people and I especially hate seeing people I used to know when I was thin.  I often have to endure comments about my "fatness"  I assure you these "helpful comments" are anything but.

Sometimes I wonder if my current health issues may not have been caused by my years of laxative abuse.  This has been one of my greatest secrets.  I know it's something I should discuss with my doctor but I have no idea how to bring it up.

Not a Good Day

I am sitting here thinking of everything I need to do.

• I have to finish cleaning the kitchen - it's absolutely horrible, there are still a lot of dishes to do, the floor is a mess - it's bad I tell you
• I have to vaccuum the house - there are cat hair balls everywhere.
• Clean and pick up the living room.  A lot of stuff is in this room that does not belong, a lot of it belonging to my son but there is stuff from all of us - it's pretty bad
• Get all the cat litters cleaned up and fresh litter put in it.  I have to admit I have not done them in a bit and of course the kids are not doing them either.  Poor cats stuck with filthy litter boxes.  I am horrible.
• Go out and do grocery shopping.  The cupboards and freezer are pretty bare.  I am way overdue.
• Do laundry, both mine and my son's are needed.  My son is 16 but does not beleive in taking care of himself.  His laundry requires deep cleening at this point - again it's pretty bad

Yet I sit here after having only done some dishes and I just feel like crying.  I hurt, I am tired.  I just want to go lie down in bed and cry.  I did some therapy last year that implied that if I can make myself get up and do my chores the sense of accomplishement will help chase away the depression.  It only makes me exhausted and more depressed because I can't seem to get it all done.

I go back to work tomorrow.  I get two days off to get my sh*t done.  I also need these two days to visit people and rest to prepare for the week ahead.

During the week, trying to get my son to shower and go to work in the morning is exhausting.  Then I face the commute to work, takes me close to an hour I am already tired by the time I get to work.  I do my 8 hour day, trying not to let mi irritation overwhelme me the have to face the commute home.  Traffic at night going home is absolutely HORRIBLE! It often takes me over 75 minutes to get home.  By the time I get home I am so exhausted that running errands, preparring supper and doing housework is just beyond me.  The mess adds up very quickly, so that by the weekend, it seems insurmountable.

I envy those women who can not only get all this done but insert some time to exercise.  I want to be them so bad!

Losing Weight

Some of you may know that over the last few years I have gotten quite fat.  Sometime since 2006 I have gained well over a 100 pounds.  I did start off as too thin, so some of that weight was fine, but then between medications that make you gain weight, activity levels that have gone down because of constant exhaustion and pain, that bit of weight that may have been necessary has ballooned to way way way too much weight.

The weight did not go one super fast but neither was it an overly slow process.  I did try to stall the progress a few times without much success.

Ever since I started gaining, I have hated myself, hated what my body was becoming.  To make matters worst, the pain and exhaustion that started it all has progressively gotten worst, making it that much more difficult to do the physical activity needed to assist in weight loss.

So even though I have been thinking about loosing weight for quite some time now, I have only recently begun a "diet".  I started restricting calories on August 11, 2014.  Unfortunately I did not weight myselft before starting so I have no idea what my starting weight was.  I only weighed myself at the two week mark.

The good news is that I weight less than I thought I did.  So I have been feeling heavier than I actually am, that's a good thing, the bad news is that I had no way of knowing if the efforts I had been making for two weeks had any effect.  But now I at least have a reference point.  I will weight myself again in a little while to see if there is any difference.

I would like to lose about 80 pounds (37 Kg or 6 stones).  I figure, with my current calorie restriction, I should lose about 2 pounds a week. (Quite honestly, 5 would be so much better but until I can manage to do more excercise, that is not a realistic expectation).  At this rate, it would take about 9 months to reach my goal weight. (Just in time for next summer!)

I would really really really like to lose weight.  I really hope this works.  I am not that confident that it will due to my previous failures, but it would be so darn nice if it finally did work.

At least I am not doing the first leg of this diet by myself.  My daughter also feels she has a bit of weight to lose, so she is dieting along with me.  She cheats a bit more than I do, but she is also quite a bit more physically active than I am, so she can get away with consuming more calories anyway.

I get so many cravings though.  Chips, cake, BACON! Bread.

I am not a big chocolate or pop (soda) drinker, so not having any of those is not a big issue.

I am also more hungry than the amount of food I can intake, even the healthy kind.  It's amazing how fast calories add up.  I have researched healthy ways of reducing appretite, nothing works very well so far.

I hope that if and when I weigh less, moving my body around will become a tad easier, that my legs will be able to carry this body of mine furhter.

Well wish me luch and thank you for reading.

Trix

RIP Trix
August 1999 ~ August 2014

In the summer of 1999, we found out that the mother of my mother's cat was pregnant  with a new litter.  My mother knowing that I loved cats asked me if I would be interested in having a kitten.  Now at the time I was living on Welfare with barely enough money to feed myself and my two children that I did not think it was a good idea to have a cat, so I thought hard on the right answer to give.  Finally, I said that if there was a black kitten in the litter, I would take it.

The reason I said that was that the cat in question was a beautiful white cat, known for having beautiful white kittens.  It was highly unlikely that she would have a black kitten, so I felt pretty smug with my ingenious solution.

Towards the end of August the kittens were born...

Lo and behold there was ONE black kitten in the bunch!

Since I had promised I would take a black kitten if she had one, I could not back down, so in early October, the cute little bundle of black joy was delivered to me.

I had not told my children that we were getting a kitten, just in case something happened and we wound up not getting him.  My daughter was away at school when I received the kitten, so that day I stuffed the kitten in my coat, and off I went to meet her at the bus.

She got off the bus and we started walking home when within a few steps, she hears a little meowing sound.  She stops and asks me if I've heard a kitten.  I say no and we continue walking towards home.  Again she hears the soft meowing of a kitten.  She stops again trying to figure out where the sound comes from.  She hears the sound again and this time notices that the sound is emanating from my coat.  She asks me if I have a kitten in my coat looking at me that way a child does when they know we are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.  I lower the zip and out pops a black little head.

My daughter was ecstatic!

Since he had come to us in October, so close to Halloween, and him being a black cat, we decided to name him Trix.

Over the next year, that kitten barely laid a foot on the ground as she always had him in her arms.  In fact on a few occasions I was called to her school to come and pick up our cat.  She would stuff  Trix into her backpack and bring him to school. She would often dress him up in her dolls clothes, he was so cute with a bonnet.  Such a good boy to let her do all those things.

Trix was quite a mischievous kitten, on almost a daily basis he would get into our garbage can, tipping it over and making a mess.  He would climb our kitchen cupboards and go hide up there close to the ceiling.  I admit he spent a bit of time in our basement, especially when we were away from the house.

Time passed and we moved one place an another.  Everywhere we went, we had to be able to bring Trix with us.  Eventually (in 2002) we moved back to the Ottawa area.  By that time we had also adopted a little sister, a pretty white fluffy girl from another litter.  

At some point, Trix had developed a litter box issue.  Every once in a while he would pee on furniture or clean laundry, but that did not deter our love for him and we tried to correct him of this nasty habit (which would never really work BTW)

In April 2006 his little sister passed away suddenly.

Over time Trix had become considerable overweight, so December 2006, January 2007, we decided to try and put him on a diet.  We stopped giving him people food (chicken mostly) and changed his food.  He did not take well to this and decided to simply stop eating.  It took a while for us to notice and by that time, he had developed Fatty Liver Disease, which can be very fatal for cats.

We brought him to the vet and they told us he was in very bad shape.  They could try treating him but it would be VERY expensive and there was only a 50/50 chance that he would make it.  After looking at my daughter's tear filled eyes, we decided to go for the treatment and hope for the best.

For a week he was hospitalized.  They gave him several meds and force fed him though a tube inserted directly in his stomach.  After a week or so, he was brought home where we continued to force feed him every two hours a set amount of food through a large syringe and gave his all his medication at set times.  We did this for a week or two and brought him back to the vet for a check up.

Trix at the Alta Vista Animal Hospital being treated for Fatty Liver Disease

Good news! He had pulled through.  All his levels had stabilized and he had started eating on his own again.

Around that time we started fostering for a cat rescue organization.  Trix would take in scared little orphan, often feral kittens, and mother them.  He would help raise them and become well adjusted social and friendly kittens.  Over the course of the next few years he raised many kittens and would always get a little depressed when they got adopted to their forever homes.  Eventually, after losing many babies, it's like he decided he no longer wanted to get attached to them and stopped being a "momma cat".

Trix and one of his "babies" Coco

Trix and one of his "babies" Gabriel

Trix and one of his "babies" Huckleberry Finn

Trix with one of his last "babies" Shanti on April 20, 2014

About two months ago, we noticed that Trix was no longer his usual self.  We brought him to the vet and other than having some abscesses in his groin area, which could explain his slightly elevated white blood cell count, he seemed fine.  They put him on antibiotics to help get rid of his abscesses and he healed.

Last week we noticed he seemed to have lost a lot of weight.  Over the weekend he had developed breathing difficulties.  Very worried at this point we booked another vet visit.

Today we find out he has advanced cancer and he can no longer be treated.  He doesn't have much longer to live.  His chest belly and lungs are filled with fluid making it very difficult for him to breathe.  They implied that it would be best for us to let him go, but understood that we needed to come to terms with all this.

As I write this I am preparing to say goodbye to our lovely 15 year old boy.  By this time next week Trix will have crossed over to the rainbow bridge.

We will miss our beautiful black cat.

***Update:  Trix crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge on Friday August 22nd 2014 at about 9:25 PM  He is being cremated and his ashes are to be returned to us in a lovely urn in the shape of a black cat.

RIP Trix  August 1999 to August 2014.