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I hope this helps someone out there

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Georgia's Pampering

At the start of the week I had a very frightening incident. L had to go to work and after seeing him off, I grabbed a bite of food to nibble on to keep my meds from making my stomach upset. I could still see the reflection of the headlights through the driveway facing window as he waited at the end of the drive to pull out. That’s when things went wrong. I’m not sure if the food just turned wrong as I swallowed or if my throat pulled one of its lovely episodes of making it difficult to swallow, but I ended up choking. Thankfully, as I prepared to try to use a chair to do the Heimlich the food mushed enough and my throat relaxed enough, so I was able to swallow. It left my throat so raw and sore that today was the first day I spoke fully, although I was careful to not speak a lot. I even got to eat real food again! *happy dance* I still have the side effects of it inflaming other parts of my sinuses and my ear canals, but Hallelujah!

Anyway, while quiet, L gone or asleep most of the time, and my trying to distract myself, I went down the medical rabbit hole. I started out with learning how my throat could cause my ears to have a crinkling noise and all my other symptoms, then about six subjects in I ended up with a YouTube recommendation to watch Spaulding Decon, under the Crime Scene Cleaning website. (Hey, I admitted I went down that rabbit hole. Never know where I’ll end up with my curious mind! Lol) One of this year’s videos, where they started to record and air lengthier and informative episodes about biohazard cases that they handle, came up and I ended up watching them all, and I suddenly had a whole new POV that helps me with my suicidal ideation. They clean up from regular unattended deaths, hoarding, accidents, etc., but also suicides. There is no judgement over the person’s choice or what the client has chosen for the level of cleanup once the biohazards have been dealt with, either. The thing is, it’s unflinchingly up front and shows everything after the body has been removed. You see what the family member that discovers the body would face and how the family isn’t just coping with their grief and possibly shock, but also the physical scene that is left behind.

Police and emergency personnel don’t clean up the scene when they remove a body. They’re there for the emergency (or removal) situation and possibly an investigation. They don’t clean the blood splatter from a gunshot wound or remove decomp. There are specialized companies that do this; not only for safety, but to help the people and families in need of their cleaning services. They’re heroes who don’t wear capes, just like law enforcement and emergency personnel.

Seeing the gore that a grieving family member or friend, most likely L or my mother, would see and deal with if I committed suicide, really helped me create a step back, so to speak, for my mind to walk through if my thoughts turn dark. I basically do a mental crime scene walkthrough, to see it as they would, and see how the different choices would affect them. Somehow having the intense, graphic visuals in my mind are a great way to make my mind shift focus a bit and end up completely stopping. (Ask people with ideation – it’s super hard to quiet those thoughts and take a step back from the thoughts, no matter how much you don’t want to have them or feel that way. I certainly don’t want the sudden feelings of desolation and worthlessness!)

If you suffer from ideation or know someone that does, please consider this unconventional method or talk to your mental health professionals if you are the sufferer. As my awesome psychiatrist says, you can’t have too many tools in your belt when it comes to mental health. The visuals and the meaning behind them are honestly very haunting. They’re a hell of a lot stronger right now for me than when the dark thoughts creep in. So, I hope (yet another brutally honest and odd post) will help either open dialogue if you know someone who is struggling or if you suffer and want to try another method to see if this is the one that works better for you than the ones that have barely worked for you before.

If you know someone who has troubles with ideation, please consider trying to stomach a bit of the show enough to watch “Crime scene cleanup job questions answered”. The owner has some incredible statements about judgement that are worth a listen and to take at least a few minutes to consider. It might just give you another way to look at situations.

I truly hope that any sufferer receives the same empathy and lack of judgement that this company gives, and I hope that you are able to find that one tool that works really well for you, even if it takes going down a weird YT rabbit hole to find yours.

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The Clock

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Georgia's Pampering

I’ve avoided writing for a bit, because I haven’t been in the best mental space. I try and sometimes I manage to fake it pretty well, but I made a promise to myself when my friend suggested I start blogging. I’ll always be honest, vulnerable, and tell all about those messy moments, regardless if it’s when I’m ruining a batch of soap or writing about life. So I avoided writing and hid away within myself, and hid away from my own fear as much as I could. I don’t want to take a pill to make me stop feeling this right now and to stop myself from writing. And I don’t want to hide right now.

Two Fibro sufferers (that I know of) stopped their fight. They couldn’t take this invisible disease robbing them of just one more thing, take the pain that nearly drives you insane sometimes, or take another medication that will hopefully make some invisible disease that is barely understood a little bit better. Or maybe they couldn’t stand the thought of being even more of a burden on someone they love – needing help to even wash their hair when there are only five spoons for the whole day, needing someone to make something for them to eat that their body might tolerate, and then needing that person to be their waiter and housekeeper. Maybe they couldn’t handle their messed up minds sending wrong signals and whispering horrible ideas, until one horrible idea isn’t so horrible. For whatever reason, they found their own version of dignity in death.

Another invisible disease sufferer, who has a laundry list of conditions like most of us do, is really struggling. He started out a lot healthier and stronger than I did when it hit, it has made life much harder for him than for me, and he’s younger than me. We exchange comments online sometimes, so we’re not close friends, but there’s a deep connection to other sufferers that is so different than a friend or acquaintance, that there is a strong empathy and sympathy.

I’m weeks away from turning forty and two connections are gone, while one struggles even harder, and all three are or were younger. It’s honestly messed with my mind and feelings a bit. I suddenly exchanged the biological clock of motherhood for the very loud clock of mortality. And trust me, I know how melodramatic that sounds, and even how morbid it seems, but I’m being honest. When my big relapse started, I truly thought that as long as I was careful while sick, I’d be mostly in remission by forty. I’d miss those milestones most people hit during their thirties and just delay them closer to my forties instead. That very loud ticking in the back of my mind has made me realize that those possibilities are pretty much beyond my reach now. And I’m trying to learn to be okay with that.

My jacked up mind gave me suicidal ideation most of my life (welcome to another symptom that they’re just starting to associate with us realizing there’s something wrong with our bodies before the doctors do). With the adoption journey, the breakdown, and all the work on my PTSD, I finally broke free of most of that and want to live as much as I can. I then realized that I’ve been living for remission while being afraid of the normal aspects of life, because they might make me sicker, and that would ruin my chances of remission by forty. And I wonder if those women who committed suicide gave up when they realized that they were afraid of getting sicker, too.

I wonder what “dignity in death” is to me.

I want to live. I want to live MY life, with my husband, family, and friends. I want to make and capture as many memories as I can before that clock consumes me. For a while now I’ve felt like I was so lucky to have such an eccentric and diverse life between the first onset as a child into my late twenties. I lived and experienced more than a lot of people do in their whole lives, and I’m so thankful for that.

I’m totally glad for those people that feel like their career completes them; happily, yet still a little jealous I admit, for those people who celebrate all of those beautiful moments their children experience as they grow up; and find it beautiful when a couple has weathered all life threw at them and now shuffle hand in hand down the sidewalk in the park, to their favorite bench, where they feed the birds every day that they feel well enough.

Probably deep down most of us want at least a taste of all of that. And we all mourn when terminally ill teenagers fall in love, knowing that they can’t even allow themselves to dream of wanting even a little bit of any of those lives. How many shed a tear for people who just can’t fight their hardships anymore? When did we start to judge them for not trying harder, when it’s really not so different than those terminally ill teenagers, in the end? Those people tried to live, but they were robbed of a lot of their lives and dreams, too. Some people never get to grow up, some never get to experience the easier lifestyle of first-world living, and some slowly lose every bit of themselves that they took pride in or used to do that brought them so much joy. And it sounds horrible to anyone that isn’t suffering or having to be a caregiver, but sufferers are sometimes jealous of dementia. Sometimes we long to forget what it was like to be independent, to truly live in the moment without worrying about how it’ll affect the next week, or to stop hearing the tick of that clock once it starts. It seems selfish and morbid, but there’s the glaring truth, making me want to hide from being someone who could seem so horrible, especially after working for a neurologist and watching family members succumb to the illness. I have a hard time facing that every day brings at least 15 pills into my body and brings me closer to the likelihood that I’ll be hooked up to tubes to administer my meds, not to mention to feed me, since it’s getting hard to eat, and that the bed we hoped would be Kiddo’s will probably be given away some day to make room for the rolling hospital bed that I may have to live in at some point. All while that damn clock ticks without any alarms to warn us of how much longer we have before the next step in the battle starts.

So I put a swirling pearls design scrapbook sticker around the shaft of my cane. I got an Echo Show for myself and my nieces, so I can truly see and hear them grow up until I’m too sick to want them to see me this way, started planning happy moments that I can experience with my husband while I can, and made myself be brave enough to write this. It’s one of the few times that I’m brave enough to try to explain, to leave my thoughts and feelings of my experience for those I love, and maybe even dare to hope it helps someone else in some small way.

I don’t know when that clock will tick too loud for me or where the line in the sand is for me to find my dignity in death. And I can’t say if dying naturally with all sorts of bodily failure, with my husband as my caregiver, will be my version of dignity. Or if my dignity will be a quiet moment wrapped in towels and one of his flannels, so I can envelope myself in his scent one last time, with a bottle of pills and a last conversation with God, trying to keep from being any more of a burden. It’s the one thing my illness can’t decide for me and one thing that I don’t give a fig about being judged by others about. It’s the one thing that is 100% mine. And while I can, I’ll muffle the ticking of that clock and try to live. I owe it to the part of me that keeps fighting this illness, and I owe it to every moment I get to steal despite all that has been stolen from me, and want to honor those extra moments for those that couldn’t fight anymore.

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A Candid Discussion

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Georgia's Pampering

As you’ve probably figured I’ve been incredibly sick and then recovering from a small head injury, too, so I didn’t focus on a whole lot of anything.  Now that I’m finally starting to do better I am trying to get back into the groove of things.  I know that typically I write on here about the mishaps and amusements of what I’m working on or am dreaming of.  However, today I’m going to go serious and it’s totally not about bath or body products, so if you stop reading here, I understand.  *smile*  Recently something occurred in my neighborhood that really bothered me, though, and even if it helps raise awareness with one person, then it’s well worth it to me.

 

I live in a very small, and usually quiet, town in rural Kansas.  It’s not quite Mayberry, but the town’s violent crime rate in 2010 “…was lower than the national violent crime rate average by 100%…” and it “…was lower than the national property crime rate average by 100%” (via CityRating.com).  After spending half of my life in a very rough city in California this is a safe little haven usually, although I sure miss pizza delivery, especially now that I can’t drive.  Lol.  Anyway, things do happen behind closed doors, despite the statistics, and I’m here almost 24/7, so I usually know when things are hitting the fan on my sleepy little street. 

 

For the past year the peace was disturbed by a couple that moved into the rental next door.  Screaming, yelling, loud thumps, crying, and even things being thrown around outside.  When I heard crying and a sudden silence I called the police, because I was scared that she had been seriously injured or killed.  Sadly in rural areas the police aren’t usually in the area, so it often takes twenty or so minutes to report to a scene.  Thankfully she wasn’t seriously hurt, but didn’t press charges.  For several months they continued a horrible cycle of their form of peace and then have violent fights, sometimes leaving her with a black eye and once even an injured arm.  I called the sheriff every time and finally a few days back there was a huge fight as they were being evicted.  Police officers and sheriffs descended on the neighbors as things started to quiet down, and they were both arrested.  There’s a lot more to the story, but that last fight really scared me.  The guy had always creeped me out anyway and I don’t handle being around angry guys very well, and the police had made the mistake the first few times of making it obvious that I had been the one to call in.  I heard the shouts and looked out the curtain to see them shoving each other next to a fire in their backyard.  Then he looked up and saw me as she dashed inside.  I figured that yet again nothing would come of it, but that I had to call the sheriff and try to get her help.  I couldn’t do much for her, but I could do what no one did for me.

 

It’s not something that I discuss often, but that last fight that the neighbors had, and the anger on that guy’s face when he looked at me, triggered a flood of memories and fears.  Just a few months after I turned 18 I moved away to a city with some “friends” (what we think of as friends when we’re young and naïve) and shortly after that I got raped while I was passed out from drinking some stuff that this hot guy kept pressuring me to drink.  Ah, the naïve belief in humanity was strong back then.  To make a long story short I was ashamed and didn’t know what to do when I realized that I was pregnant from that almost completely blanked out night.  I was raised that bad things didn’t happen to good girls.  And it was one of the few times I had colored outside of the lines, so to speak, so obviously I was bad and had to figure it out on my own.  When I told the father he insisted that the child would know him and spun lots of stories about how well things would work out.  I give him credit for being a really amazing speaker that is incredibly believable and could probably talk you into buying a bag of dog poop from him.  Add being terrified out of my mind to that skill and I believed it would all work out. 

 

As I was getting ready for work one morning, about four-and-a-half months along, my preparations woke him and he was furious.  He didn’t even bother to fully get out of bed when he hit me square in the stomach.  Of course he wouldn’t let me go to the hospital or leave the house, because no one could know what had happened, and it was somehow my fault anyway, so I miscarried there at the apartment.  He threatened to kill my parents and their pets if I ever told or left, and since he had killed his own baby, I believed it and stayed.  Thankfully I can’t remember all of the abuse over the following six or so months and what I do doesn’t need to weigh on anyone else’s heart or mind.  I tried so many times to get away, but no one ever opened the door when I managed to run outside and was crying for help.  None of my roommates ever called either.  Every time I would be punished and reminded that my parents were going to die if I left or told.  He made sure I was isolated and worked hard at making me feel absolutely worthless, not to mention terrified for my family.  I didn’t have much to live for anymore, but they didn’t deserve to be hurt by what I had gotten into.

 

Finally in April of 1999 he attempted to strangle me to death.  I can’t tell anyone about most of the details, but when I blacked out I had this moment.  You can call it a hallucination from lack of oxygen or a clarifying moment of faith, but a sense of calm washed over me and the words that if I didn’t get away tomorrow I would die that night went through my mind, and I knew it was true.  I wouldn’t die this time, but I wouldn’t survive another.  When I came to he was crying and shaking me, with lots of apologies and reasons that it was my fault tumbling from his mouth.  I stared at the ceiling and didn’t move for hours, except when he ordered me to do things, and then I would obey.

 

He made a mistake that next day and left the car with me with promises of how he would make things up to me once he got off work.  I drove to the town where my mom and stepdad lived and called them from a payphone.  Some rules that he had ingrained into me were still hard to shake, even after what he had done, and I wasn’t allowed to go to their house.  Thankfully just by my saying where I was my parents dropped everything and came to me.  I didn’t even tell them about the abuse.  They simply asked if I wanted to leave and if I did they would move me out that day before he got off work.  And that’s what we did.  I started my life over on a Good Friday.   

 

It’s been a hard journey, but I found a “good ol’ boy” that wasn’t afraid of my emotional baggage and helped me learn to trust again.  I still look over my shoulder when we go to that city, although we usually avoid it, and I still have problems when men are angry or upset.  Time and ten years of marriage has helped with a lot of that, but seeing my neighbor with that look, the same as what I looked into as I was being strangled, shook me. 

 

So I ask that if you suspect that something is going on behind closed doors, please call for help.  The worst case is that the police check and find nothing wrong.  If someone is danger and doesn’t feel as if they can get away, they might not make it out alive if you don’t spare those few seconds and free phone call.  It’s a small thing that can truly save lives.  We all know the police, but if you happen to know someone, or are yourself, that has survived, the following information can help them on the road to recovery.  www.thehotline.org or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) can help those that are dealing with the effects of abuse, and most have such a jumbled up view of their self worth anymore that they consider suicide, so 1-800-273-TALK (8255) can be a very valuable resource when they are feeling lost.  The necklace of bruises faded long before I learned where to turn for help.  Bad things happen to everyone and we really need to raise awareness.  Domestic abuse and suicidal ideation shouldn’t be ignored and we DO need to get involved.  Help is a phone call away.  Even if you write these numbers down and leave them stuck to the refrigerator or bulletin board, or this confession spurs a discussion with someone, you might just save a life. 

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