dreaming

As I try to do everything I can to avoid what is most important at the moment (writing my results chapter), I just thought of something that I can share here.

Last night, while I was taking a break from my uni work, I walked into the living area and saw J sitting facing the stereo, glass of wine in one hand, eyes shut, posture relaxed and him just enjoying a quiet moment with the music. I haven't seen him doing that for such a long time and my reaction shocked me. Do you know what I did? I burst into tears and his eyes flew open with concern - but my tears weren't about sadness or longing, they were tears of relief and joy. Now I might be still plumbing the depths of my final weeks of study, but for my glorious husband - friday was his last day of uni. All he has left is 7000 words (due this friday) and another couple of days at his placement. Then it is all over for him. 5 hard years and it comes down to this - this might sound overdramatic but I cried because I haven't dared to think about what comes next in great detail, but over the past few weeks cracks and glimmers of hope are starting to appear. We are that bit less careful with our shopping and feelings of panic and dread don't hit as I see the checkout price. We've started to think more seriously about what we will do next year, the car, the income, the freedom to think about things.. I cannot explain to you how this is feeling. Anyway back to J. I haven't seen him this relaxed this entire year - he has been working day and night - he has also been shouldering a lot of the financial pressure that I normally take on. It was just so lovely to see him like this, so the tears flowed freely and they were tears of relief.

Can you imagine what I'm going to be like when we both graduate? I think I'm going to howl like a baby when I get to walk up on stage - it is all seems so dream like that this is going to occur - and I know that some people don't value the ceremonial aspect of graduating very much, but for the past 5 years I've been visualising this moment for myself and when I watched J graduate last July with his undergraduate degree, I cried buckets for him. But it isn't just me that I'll be sooking for, because I already know there are a number of people who will be there; my mum and Mario who packed up her life and moved to Melbourne and has moved her life around to help us with our childcare in the past two years. Who moved to live in the same suburb to support us in any way they could; lending us money when times got really tough for a bit there this year, who took me out and bought me shoes last year before I started my first placement because I didn't have any and couldn't afford them, who has encouraged us and cheered us on all the way. I will never be able to repay them for the love and support they have given to us. And so they must both be there to watch. And to my special little boys who have only known parents who are stressed and who always have so much on our plates - who know how to get to Melbourne uni by car, train and could probably get to the library unaided. They also know the trains to Monash and think the computer is permanently attached to mummy's fingers. I also have many, many friends who have loved, listened and supported us the whole way through and we have tried to figure out how best to say thank you to those around us, so we are planning this big catered party in May 09 - the weekend of my graduation and though details are sketchy at this point, we think we will throw open the doors of our humble abode for family and friends to say a big thank you.

And see just like that, I waste 30 minutes dreaming about next year. SMACK, get back to work - how the hell am I going to keep myself on task?

Questions to puzzle me on a saturday?

Just curious to know why my entry entitled: gastro would be linked to a private forum?? It brings up a number of questions...

Why would anybody be interested in linking my entry about gastro in a thread? I mean it could only mean one of a couple of scenarios... either they (the members) felt sorry for me and thought 'oh poor Lex, come members look at how sick Lex and her family are, here look at this link where she decribes the family bodily output..' or they may perhaps not be a fan of me and are taking some peverse pleasure in laughing at our recent misfortune. I'll never know because I don't have access to their website. Whatever.

Now don't get me wrong, we all love our private little domains where we can chat, I'm a member of a few places myself. But I found the whole thing rather unsettling seeing in this blog history that I had been linked onto a private forum, especially out of all the pages that I have on this blog - there are plenty that are much more interesting ;) than my families gastro.

Ho hum. I'm back off to do my study thing. If anybody knows why my posts would appeal to a select few members of women here, could they enlighten me?

Things to make me smile on a friday..

ok time for positive, happy happy joy joy post! These are all the wonderful things that have happened in the last week.

As of today I have completed nine (9) weeks of a 14 week placement!

Today I upped my caseload to eight. How cool is that? That is almost half of the patient load (20).

I have organised a drug and alcohol worker to come in and present at a PD session in a fortnight. Kudos points for me. :)

I have managed to continue to network with a variety of people with a sw at a major hospital here and she has invited me to visit her. And she is a Monash alum too (Distance education too, who would of thunk it - we DE people really do make freakin great sw's - my own supervisor is also ex Monash, in fact I started the same year as her).

Today I had a particularly long intro phone call with a family member - and didn't realise that my supervisor was hovering and as I hung up the phone she looked at me square in the face and said ' You are amazing!', she had overheard my conversation and thought I was excellent. Kinda hard to beat that compliment.

I won a Melbourne cup sweep on tuesday - giving me $36 and I've decided to take my family out for breakfast to celebrate.

Today my husband attended his last lecture of his degree.

My 5yo went under the water during his swimming lesson no less than 7 times and is so chuffed with himself.

My mum came home from her holiday and QLD and brought me the most beautiful earrings from Eumundi markets.

And next week - I'll be in week 10. And I'll have 4 weeks to go.


Only bad news that I have is my next deadline is looming. 17th November and my 1st draft of results is due. Best get onto that, eh?

Oh yeah and that I haven't been to the gym in almost 3 weeks but I'm off tomorrow for pump then cycle, wish me luck because I think I'm gonna need it.

ok, mood has cleared.

Sorry for the last grumble post. I don't do "sick" very well. The upside of all of the events of the past week are; I've lost 4kgs!! Downside is, it is most likely water loss and it will be back soon enough. My oldest son J has managed to also recover, returning to both Kinder and cc today and it looks like the man of the house has managed to escape the horror of tummy terrors! Lucky man.

I went back to work today, I felt awful - I'd missed more than 3 days there last week and I went back to one of my patients going home and 4 new ones coming in, so a very busy day! The time is just running away from me, I can't quite believe that it is week 8 of my placement! I'm now at the point where I am pretty much independent, and I loike it a lot.

So many things going on in the world at the moment, my mind is constantly distracted by what is going on around me, to the point of neglecting my own studies (naughty) - but I've been hungrily devouring anything written about the much discussed "financial crisis" that is threatening the economy - I read this for a number of reasons - obviously the selfish reasons of wondering and trying to imagine how and if it is going to impact me? Are they scare mongering? I know I've pretty much secured employment (even if it is just a locum position), will house prices really drop and will that enable us to buy? Selfishly I also think about the lucky position that my partner and I find ourselves in - we might be in a low income group right now, but we are only transitting at this point and we enter the next year - tripling our incomes but with little debt, so if we hold on tight, we might benefit. But then, what of all the people who will next year continue to live with incomes just like ours - struggling to survive, pay exhorbitant rents and feed their children good food on what feels like a thimble full of money? So, for these people I worry and so I hope that it doesn't get as bad as what the media are saying....

The other major thing (in case you've spent the last 22 months asleep) is the US election, due to be held in 2 days. And a time, where I really do hope that the wind of change that came sweeping Australia last November continues on down the line with Obama. What a time in history this is...

You can bet that in 50 years - this era will be critiqued by historians and economists alike - and so I might be like, a bit of a nerd, but it kinda feels exciting to be here witnessing these moments in time.

(and now I'll turn my wank-o-meter off)

I'm cranky.

I return to the land of the living today. I've spent the last 24-48 hours doing things which I will not go into on here, lest you are eating. But, I've lost a few kilos and I have been unable to eat for the past 2 days. Unfortunately just after my last blog post, my oldest son also came down with gastro and he and I have been taking turns in hugging the toilet bowl and laying about on the couches, him watching kids movies and me reading trashy magazines donated by my Mother.

I am unable to go to work today - where I work has a strict gastro policy, you must not attend work for THREE days after gastro, so all my worrying about work earlier in the week and then I end up with 3.5 days off out of 5 anyway. Looks like I will be working almost up until XMAS now. That makes me cranky.

I'm cranky about other things that I have read specifically today. Except to say that if you're going to insult someone - try a bit harder than resorting to lame sexist insults about 'hormones'. That makes the bile rise in my throat (not that it is too difficult at the moment ;)) and although I detest the person who made the comment that I am thinking of here, without reservation, whoever uses such rubbish in point scoring, shows a certain shallowness and most likely has little knowledge about gender and sexism. But then this will probably wash over the likely offenders, as they will excuse my crankiness or ranting, as "she's just hormonal". No I'm not. I JUST DON'T LIKE YOU.

How to top the previous post?

I think I can, I know I can...

See in this house, we like to share. My son N looks incredibly like his mummy. His personality is distinctly like mine too. My N is a child who is intune with feelings and emotions, a really giving - yet sensitive child.

So.

WHY DID HE THINK that passing on gastro to his Mother was the way to go?

Stomach is currently gripped in spasms. It was a very tricky ride home on the tram and meticulous handwashing has been occurring. I think I want to cry.

In better news, N is mostly better. No sickness at all today, and he is back eating little bits of food. Beautiful little cherub that he is.

Can't say much more because I'm retiring to bed.

xx

Gastro.

Just a heads up; this post may illustrate me as an uptight perfect parent, but I hope not.

For the last 24 hours we have been nursing, rocking, cooing, washing, cleaning vomit with towels, changing sheets, washing our entire sheet collection, feeding electrolyte icypoles to and worrying about our little boten boy, N.

Every 45 minutes from around 11pm last night little boten has been vomiting. He has had a brief break for a couple of hours where he lay lethargic, spent from all of the violent vomiting that he has had to endure over the past few hours - but he has appeared to have started back up again.

All fairly normal, albeit heartbreaking to watch, childhood illnesses, right? Well yes. BUT. They had close contact with another set of children a couple of days ago and the family failed to disclose that the youngest child was struggling with diarrhea and had been previously vomiting. And what do you know..hey, presto - 48 hours later - my baby comes down with it. Now this has pissed me off somewhat. I understand that we don't know when our children are going to get sick and unfortunately only hours before N's sickness started he was sharing a pool and gallivanting around in the sunshine with 3 of his buddies. But I dutifully informed them this morning and apologised in advance if they contract this most awful strain of gastro.

Anyway (get to the point Lex, I hear you saying) - I rang the parent* from where the gastro originated from (actually for another reason initially) and the conversation went icy, then heated and resulted in her hanging up on me (defensive and an overreaction from her - I certainly wasn't raising my voice - but just exhausted etc). So anyway as I sit here I wonder, am I the odd one out in reacting like this? I work full time. My babies get such little precious time with me. I also must devote a great chunk of my weekend to my thesis. Unfortunately due to this weekend of illness, we have had barely any sleep, barely any uni work done, we've had to miss a birthday party and because our baby will still not totally be recovered by tomorrow, we have to tag team the day. J has a presentation at 11 @ uni that he cannot miss and I have to facilitate meetings with consultants and family in the afternoon - at least that doesn't clash so we can tag-team, but I get no sick leave - I have to make that time up! All minor complaints, but something I would not wish upon other people - hence why I keep my children at home, not at care and hopefully away from infecting other people - this was clearly not the case in the above situation.

god, just read this back and it sounds like I'm a whinging 'ol mother. I'm not, I try to be carefree I do, but sickness stuff I just do not budge from my reasonings - if they appear sick to me they stay home from childcare - I do have or make playdates with other children if I believe mine might be infectious.

Am I too uptight? Do I need to loosen up and share the love as well as much bacteria as my children can handle?

*parent is close friend (or was - eek).

money, money, money..

We received an unexpected windfall yesterday, with an amount of money that may be small to some, but will keep us out of serious trouble for the rest of the year.

I cannot tell you the sense of relief that I am feeling right now. Now I can order my son's school uniform for next year, pay kinder fees for my 3yo for next year and buy my children some shoes. Today we went to the fish monger and we bought 1/2 kg of prawns, calamari and some pieces of salmon to eat over the next two days. We went to our local farmers market and bought the food that we would prefer to buy but haven't been able to afford. Is this a taste of whats to come for us? HELL YES. We can now go and look for a bed for our two children (at the moment they are sharing a single bed). Now hopefully my husband can sleep a whole night through without waking up stressing about how he can provide more.

Fuck, it really feels like we are going to finish - he has only 3 weeks left, me 6. We are going to finish, the sky isn't going to fall - and we can pay our bills and keep afloat until December where we will receive the next 2k bonus. That bonus has already been flagged for January's rent.

Yippeee.

*cough* I didn't go to the gym today, but I did find out at my physio appt that I have very unstable hips flexion (I think) and a very weak core (I already knew that) - this is where my side, hip, lower back pain is coming from.

so tired..

I am so tired. Bone achingly so. I'm sitting here at 7.50pm - J is out tutoring, children have finally settled in bed - pile of dishes with my name on them to wash and all I want to do is have a hot shower and settle myself into bed with a book.

I've also been avoiding this blog a bit, because I am finding it really tough finishing the story of my father. Donna is right, it is difficult - but I want to get it done and I will try.

My work is brilliant. My case load is now hovering between 5-6 and in preparation for my midplacement review my supervisor and I had a meeting - where she said many positive things and fed back that members of the team had been very positive about me and my skills. (big smile there!!) In other shocking news, it appears we are now entering job hunting season, with no less than 9 jobs on the market - eek, does that mean I have to apply?? eek indeed. I am absolutely loving my role and I'm not sure I will be able to leave it easily in another 7 weeks, lucky there could be some type of opening for a locum position at least :) starting in February.

My research is coming ahead, I am up to data analysis stage. Here is what I have so far;

lack of acknowledgement

lack of compassion+++++

lack of information+++++ (which occurs throughout hospital experience)

invisibility of the baby (language use etc, not a baby, bleeding is like "a period")

invisibility of the mother (women not "seen" in treatment responses)

Loss of control, loss of power

Strong emotions about treatment even after grief of loss subsides

Self-blame/excuse making for ill-treatment

What women want?

Information
Power to make some decisions about their treatment (ie - natural, D&C)

Leaflets to take away

Their babies to be recognised as babies, no matter the gestation

to not have to wait in emergency

continuity of care

Directives from the researchers point of view

Information, real information - they for the most part understand that medical professionals can not answer some questions, but to be available and open to answering questions and describing what they do know as openly as possible. Being thorough about processes, even about logical events - because people in crisis may NOT think logically.

Medical staff to undergo PD (possibly from SW dept) about communication skills - active listening etc.

To reinforce that although a common consequence of pregnancy, it is not common for the woman experiencing it and for all staff to be mindful of this.

How does it sound? I think it is alright, obviously that is just base grade theming occurring there - plenty more work to do!

Gymming is going well - I was there 4 times last week, this week I've only been once but I intend to go another few times before the week is through. Eating has been pretty good, with a downfall here and there - but I do spend most of my day running between patients, up and down stairs! J had his second integration day today at his new primary school and from all accounts (ie- the husband) he appeared to do very well. Oh, I can't believe he is starting school next year *sob*

ok off to wash the dishes.

my father - part 4

ok - so I moved to Melbourne.. and I happily lived here for awhile - I worked two jobs - partied hard etc. After a few months I began to feel... something about what occurred over there. I felt sort of sad that after all the wanting and wondering where my father was, I now knew where he was but couldn't contact him. I felt angry and pissed off with what had occurred and the cold hard light of day also made me wonder if I had somehow caused it.
So I rang him. And he was delighted to hear from me. He pretended like nothing had ever happened (like he does, move on - don't look back brigade) and so I attempted to join him. Marjorie was still in the picture but she wasn't so threatened this time because I was over the other side of the world. Brief conversations continued over the years, very brief I should add. Perhaps a phone call (from me) once every year or two.
And so I met J and fast forward a few years and we had decided to get married - I decide to tell my father - so I send an invitation to them. Silence. Obviously I didn't expect him to come, but I thought that I might hear from him - this is a major part of my life, right? I decided to try and ring him, but Marjorie gate keeped that part of his life and she answered the phone every single time I rang - and would say he wasn't there etc.
So apart from letting him know where I was living (I had his email address), I dropped the contact. This made me feel better, knowing I had done everything I could to keep the contact going - I realised that I had survived perfectly well without my father in my life for most of my life and continued on. That was 2002.
In 2003 - I had my first child and so began the emails (you all know the gushy emails that you send to all your friends/family with hundreds of photos of the most beautiful child that has ever been born?) - so he would be included on those. Nothing special - no personal messages to him, just photos out of courtesy, so I felt comfortable knowing that I was keeping him informed. But I never heard any response.
In 2004 - I had my own little mini breakdown which I may delve into further another time ;) - but as a result I was referred to a magnificent psychologist who worked solidly with me for a number of months and this is where I began to openly grieve for a number of things - and funnily enough my father featured in a lot of this (no surely not, you say?). Towards the end of this time with my Psychologist, I received a letter in the mail from a woman called A who wrote a long letter telling me she wanted to help me and my father reunite. I was like - HUH? Who is this woman and what does she want - my first thought was that somehow Marjorie had set her up to do this... Thankfully it was on a day that I had booked in to see my psychologist and I took the letter to him for advice. I was wary, nervous - who was she? What did she want? He agreed with my reaction and advised me that if I chose to respond, I should do so very carefully. As an aside he also thought I should one day write an autobiography about my kooky family history, and just imagine for a minute what the Psychologist would have seen in his time! Anyway, I thought about it for a while and then responded with a very curt reply basically saying, who are you - what do you want? Oh and what happened to Marjorie?? LOL She sent me a massive package back filled with pages of letters, heaps of photos etc. She answered every one of my numbered questions..
And so slowly I began to thaw and a penpal relationship formed with (what turned out to be) my Dad's new partner. She said he couldn't talk about me without getting upset and felt great sorrow about what occurred, but had no idea on how to express it. 2005 came and the letters - emails - etc still came and then all of a sudden I received a phone call from my father saying, look out - I'm coming over to Australia, can I come and see you? I just about fell of my chair with shock and I didn't quite believe it as he had repeatedly told me when I was over there in 1998 that he would NEVER ever enter Australia again.

But he did come in November 2005, I was heavily pregnant with my second child - and we spent some time together - he was very taken with my oldest son (then 2.5) and seemed to get along well with my partner. And on one afternoon we sat there and he and I had a big talk about what occurred over there. He was shocked by some of the things that occurred to me over there and he did apologise. That same day, his partner took me aside and told me that my father would print out every single photo that I emailed over the years and show them off to everybody. This shocked me because my father has never once replied to any of these, so I had assumed that he didn't even look at them. He brought with him a number of toys and voiced all these plans of how he would set up trusts for his grandchildren. I knew better this time, accepted the gifts but had no real expectations about anything else.

Time passed - communication started off great after he was here. He would ring me every month and talk to me - but I don't think he knew how to relate to me - and I wasn't asking much from him - I was just doing the old shallow chit chat. He rang after the birth of my son - and then on Xmas day.. but over time the calls began to drop off again.

I don't mean to drag this out - but I have one last post to make, and I am oh-so tired. I've been at work today and it's almost 11.30pm. I promise I'll be back to give you the rest - some of you will know the next installment anyway, as it includes a weekend trip to Perth for a wedding for a maternal cousin's wedding - that ended in an emotional reunion with my paternal auntie and grandmother - and writing about that is going to take more than I have right now :).