Friday 29 November 2013
Thursday 14 November 2013
Doing What Needs To Be Done
WARNING: Contains graphic medical details which may disturb.
I'm publishing this from the Blogger iPhone app, since I'm just too damn tired to turn on the computer - which is why it's not formatted with the normal fonts and colours, unless I figure out a way to do that from here. Probably I'll have to do it next time I turn the computer on. Which will hopefully be soon - I have some Goodreads books that I've read recently that need to have the data input, and I'm still trying to keep that up to date with books I've recently read, even though the boxes full of books that I was working on inputting pre-reading are on hiatus temporarily.
You may not know what I'm referring to. It's ok, *I* know what I mean.
I'm tired. With fibromyalgia I'm usually tired, but it's unusually strong and pervasive tiredness right now. I had surgery in September - nothing serious, or at least it shouldn't have been. Just women's problems. But I didn't recover well. After the surgery I bled and cramped up every time I got out of bed for nearly two months. Not little cramps and spotting, either - worse pain than during my worst periods (and I have endometriosis and PCOS; my worst periods can be very bad indeed) that made me scream and weep, even with my reasonably high pain threshold. Rivers of blood - during the worst bit, I lost half a pint of blood every day for ten days, maybe two weeks. (No, that's not a guesstimate, either. Make of that what you will.) The doctors were talking about blood transfusions and D&Cs, which I mercifully managed to avoid.
Blood tends to restore most of itself within a few days, and a person my size can probably lose two pints comfortably and twice that without any major danger. (Now, that IS an estimate, I don't know exactly how much blood my body holds.) Half a pint a day certainly wouldn't kill me, but it made me feel like I'd been hit by a truck.
Iron, though - that takes time to build up again. In the UK, women are only allowed to donate blood once every sixteen weeks (other countries vary) because the iron levels take so long to come back to normal - and at a blood drive they only take a pint, usually. So I've been horribly anemic for the last few months. I've been eating spinach and broccoli near enough every day - dear God, am I sick of broccoli! - and red meat when I can, which probably isn't often enough, but my stomach won't tolerate beef more than occasionally, and I can't eat lamb or offal meats at all. And I have iron supplements. But I still feel like shit. Since the surgery I've gone from being someone who gets by most nights on five hours of sleep (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) to being someone who needs at least ten hours, preferably twelve or thirteen, just to function for the basics.
I'm having a hard time just getting to school one night a week. The time change particularly hit me this year - it feels like the clocks went back three or four hours, not one. I look at the clock on any given evening, thinking it's tennish, and it's usually 6pm, and I find myself falling asleep an hour into class. Paul coerced me into teaching this year, much to my disgust, but now I'm grateful for it since there's no way I can go back to the helpline and pull 4 12-hour shifts in a week. I had to do one shift last week when Cindy was sick, and just staying awake and manning the phone for twelve hours felt like running a marathon.
So I'm teaching a 90-minute or 2-hour class Mondays and Fridays, and setting (and marking) essays, as well as various paperwork. I barely work twenty hours a week, which isn't good for my bank account, but is better than nothing. I'm not teaching English as much as critical thinking, although we read quite a few stories and parts of books. This last week I've been lazy, though, and set essays from films instead.
School is okay, aside from the falling asleep, but it doesn't quite have the spark that it's had for the last few years. In an effort to make more money, the uni threw two classes together, so we started out with far too many people (although several have dropped out) and yet another new teacher. She's a fine teacher, but I do miss Takana, who I thought of as a friend as well as a sensei. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed about the blended class if they hadn't already put the tuition fees up - or more accurately, split the year into three semesters instead of two. The courses for the last four years have run for 14-15 weeks; now they run 10 weeks each - but they charge the same fees as they did for the 15-week course. Meaning that for a 30-week school year, we're paying an extra 50% on tuition. That's a MASSIVE leap in fees, and I feel that the uni should have been satisfied with that rather than sticking 30 of us, at all different learning levels, together in 1 class. 30 is far too many for a practical language class, even with the dropouts. We previously had 15-16 at our highest (and that was a few too many, when you all have to take turns to have conversations) and 8-10 at our lowest (which was a good number).
In addition, I haven't managed to really bond with anyone in the class, although I know Andrew and Nuala from last year, and a guy named Chris from my first class with Magdalena, and there's a nice girl (I think named Suzanne?) who I ride the bus with and chat to. I don't know if it's me being withdrawn because I don't feel well, or the fact that most of the class knew each other before, or if it's just the people in it, but I don't feel close to anyone. I've never had that - in my previous classes, we either had a really friendly group (as with the groups Takana ran) or I formed a deep, abiding friendship (as with K, who was in Magdalena's class. I don't remember the rest of the people from Magdalena's class very well, because K and I seemed to stick together most of the time, and that was just fine).
It's a little disorienting, because I can only remember one time in my life before that I found it difficult to make friends. That was in Sue's biology class, in 2002 - I was retaking the class after I had to drop out of Jon's bio class the previous year when I got sick and didn't finish my coursework, and on the first lesson she made it quite clear that she had tremendous contempt for me for having to retake. She told me flat-out that she didn't want me in the class, that I didn't deserve to be there - yes, a teacher actually said that to a disabled 18-year-old girl - and every time I made a mistake (which I didn't do often, I was a straight-A student in biology) she'd mock me to the class. ("Look, Miss Frost isn't perfect after all! Careful, or you might end up failing and having to repeat a year like she did!") They followed her lead, and I didn't make any friends there, although I still had friends in my other classes, including Curt and Sanjit in second-year chem, so I didn't feel the loss that much. Although I didn't stay in the class more than a few months, and made a formal complaint about her to the college when I left. Frankly I wish I'd given some sort of walking-out speech to her in front of the rest of the students rather than just not showing up one day; maybe they'd have learned something about being sheeple. Although I can't really blame them - a teacher should be someone you CAN follow the lead on.
That situation is far removed from this one - my new teacher is nice, and the students aren't hostile - they're just quiet. The lack of friendship so far may well be my doing, anyway - I haven't been at my most charming, since I'm barely awake by the time I get there. But it IS disorienting, nonetheless, to not walk into a room of strangers and make friends within a half hour. I've always made friends so easily. I have trouble *keeping* them, mind you, but I make them easily.
Throw on top of all that the fact that I no longer have my carer's free bus pass - Mom still hasn't gotten onto the council, and I can't be the one to do it, it has to be her who applies - and I'm now spending a tenner a day on getting to school and back, and you can see why the whole thing is feeling more like a chore than the pleasure it's been for the last four years.
I'm okay in myself, it's just things getting on top of me a little. I'm not depressed (although my moods have been up and down with the female problems - hormones are crazy things) but I'm just so tired. The tiredness increases the muscle pains - although that could also be related to the iron levels - and makes it hard to remember to eat and breathe, putting me at risk for chest infections. I realise the ridiculousness of that sentence - you're probably thinking, "FFS, who forgets to breathe?" but I do, when I'm this tired. I'm also on a 1200-calorie diet, created by Teeny Crazy Lady Dietician, which probably doesn't help with the tiredness, but that's another post altogether.
Mom had spinal surgery yesterday. She seems to have cone through it well - she's in good spirits, and feeling less pain, so touch wood that the relief she's getting continues. I'm glad she's doing okay, but it means that there's a whole lot more work to do and I have to do it all alone, because Tony's family are in the process of moving down to their new house in Brighton. I make a competent nursemaid, and I'll do whatever needs to be done, because she's my mother and she would do - and has done - it for me. But despite being competent, nursing is not something I enjoy, and I feel bad that whatever needs to be done for her I do with a generous but not quite cheerful heart.
Probably some of this guilt is due to my ex's girlfriend being a nurse, but that too is best left for another post. Or not. I don't especially want to rehash all those feelings.
But hey ho, it could always be worse. I could be doing all these things while (almost) dying of Scarlet Fever, the way I was during her last spinal operation a few autumns ago. It's easy to forget to be grateful for how much easier things are this time around.
And really, things aren't so bad. I have books. I have a Pokémon game (sadly not X or Y, since I don't yet have a 3DS). I have Christmas coming up, and am trying to decide whether to get into the shopping spirit, or chuck it in and spend what I would have spent on presents on a trip to Barbados. I have friends who do nice things like take me to fireworks displays and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with me and offer me sheets when the washing machine eats mine. :) People are nice.
And it's been about 10 weeks since the surgery, so as long as I remember to take my supplements (gah) and eat lots of broccoli and spinach (double gah!), in the next six weeks I should start feeling a lot better.
Although if I don't develop super Popeye-strength, I want my money back.
I'm publishing this from the Blogger iPhone app, since I'm just too damn tired to turn on the computer - which is why it's not formatted with the normal fonts and colours, unless I figure out a way to do that from here. Probably I'll have to do it next time I turn the computer on. Which will hopefully be soon - I have some Goodreads books that I've read recently that need to have the data input, and I'm still trying to keep that up to date with books I've recently read, even though the boxes full of books that I was working on inputting pre-reading are on hiatus temporarily.
You may not know what I'm referring to. It's ok, *I* know what I mean.
I'm tired. With fibromyalgia I'm usually tired, but it's unusually strong and pervasive tiredness right now. I had surgery in September - nothing serious, or at least it shouldn't have been. Just women's problems. But I didn't recover well. After the surgery I bled and cramped up every time I got out of bed for nearly two months. Not little cramps and spotting, either - worse pain than during my worst periods (and I have endometriosis and PCOS; my worst periods can be very bad indeed) that made me scream and weep, even with my reasonably high pain threshold. Rivers of blood - during the worst bit, I lost half a pint of blood every day for ten days, maybe two weeks. (No, that's not a guesstimate, either. Make of that what you will.) The doctors were talking about blood transfusions and D&Cs, which I mercifully managed to avoid.
Blood tends to restore most of itself within a few days, and a person my size can probably lose two pints comfortably and twice that without any major danger. (Now, that IS an estimate, I don't know exactly how much blood my body holds.) Half a pint a day certainly wouldn't kill me, but it made me feel like I'd been hit by a truck.
Iron, though - that takes time to build up again. In the UK, women are only allowed to donate blood once every sixteen weeks (other countries vary) because the iron levels take so long to come back to normal - and at a blood drive they only take a pint, usually. So I've been horribly anemic for the last few months. I've been eating spinach and broccoli near enough every day - dear God, am I sick of broccoli! - and red meat when I can, which probably isn't often enough, but my stomach won't tolerate beef more than occasionally, and I can't eat lamb or offal meats at all. And I have iron supplements. But I still feel like shit. Since the surgery I've gone from being someone who gets by most nights on five hours of sleep (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) to being someone who needs at least ten hours, preferably twelve or thirteen, just to function for the basics.
I'm having a hard time just getting to school one night a week. The time change particularly hit me this year - it feels like the clocks went back three or four hours, not one. I look at the clock on any given evening, thinking it's tennish, and it's usually 6pm, and I find myself falling asleep an hour into class. Paul coerced me into teaching this year, much to my disgust, but now I'm grateful for it since there's no way I can go back to the helpline and pull 4 12-hour shifts in a week. I had to do one shift last week when Cindy was sick, and just staying awake and manning the phone for twelve hours felt like running a marathon.
So I'm teaching a 90-minute or 2-hour class Mondays and Fridays, and setting (and marking) essays, as well as various paperwork. I barely work twenty hours a week, which isn't good for my bank account, but is better than nothing. I'm not teaching English as much as critical thinking, although we read quite a few stories and parts of books. This last week I've been lazy, though, and set essays from films instead.
School is okay, aside from the falling asleep, but it doesn't quite have the spark that it's had for the last few years. In an effort to make more money, the uni threw two classes together, so we started out with far too many people (although several have dropped out) and yet another new teacher. She's a fine teacher, but I do miss Takana, who I thought of as a friend as well as a sensei. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed about the blended class if they hadn't already put the tuition fees up - or more accurately, split the year into three semesters instead of two. The courses for the last four years have run for 14-15 weeks; now they run 10 weeks each - but they charge the same fees as they did for the 15-week course. Meaning that for a 30-week school year, we're paying an extra 50% on tuition. That's a MASSIVE leap in fees, and I feel that the uni should have been satisfied with that rather than sticking 30 of us, at all different learning levels, together in 1 class. 30 is far too many for a practical language class, even with the dropouts. We previously had 15-16 at our highest (and that was a few too many, when you all have to take turns to have conversations) and 8-10 at our lowest (which was a good number).
In addition, I haven't managed to really bond with anyone in the class, although I know Andrew and Nuala from last year, and a guy named Chris from my first class with Magdalena, and there's a nice girl (I think named Suzanne?) who I ride the bus with and chat to. I don't know if it's me being withdrawn because I don't feel well, or the fact that most of the class knew each other before, or if it's just the people in it, but I don't feel close to anyone. I've never had that - in my previous classes, we either had a really friendly group (as with the groups Takana ran) or I formed a deep, abiding friendship (as with K, who was in Magdalena's class. I don't remember the rest of the people from Magdalena's class very well, because K and I seemed to stick together most of the time, and that was just fine).
It's a little disorienting, because I can only remember one time in my life before that I found it difficult to make friends. That was in Sue's biology class, in 2002 - I was retaking the class after I had to drop out of Jon's bio class the previous year when I got sick and didn't finish my coursework, and on the first lesson she made it quite clear that she had tremendous contempt for me for having to retake. She told me flat-out that she didn't want me in the class, that I didn't deserve to be there - yes, a teacher actually said that to a disabled 18-year-old girl - and every time I made a mistake (which I didn't do often, I was a straight-A student in biology) she'd mock me to the class. ("Look, Miss Frost isn't perfect after all! Careful, or you might end up failing and having to repeat a year like she did!") They followed her lead, and I didn't make any friends there, although I still had friends in my other classes, including Curt and Sanjit in second-year chem, so I didn't feel the loss that much. Although I didn't stay in the class more than a few months, and made a formal complaint about her to the college when I left. Frankly I wish I'd given some sort of walking-out speech to her in front of the rest of the students rather than just not showing up one day; maybe they'd have learned something about being sheeple. Although I can't really blame them - a teacher should be someone you CAN follow the lead on.
That situation is far removed from this one - my new teacher is nice, and the students aren't hostile - they're just quiet. The lack of friendship so far may well be my doing, anyway - I haven't been at my most charming, since I'm barely awake by the time I get there. But it IS disorienting, nonetheless, to not walk into a room of strangers and make friends within a half hour. I've always made friends so easily. I have trouble *keeping* them, mind you, but I make them easily.
Throw on top of all that the fact that I no longer have my carer's free bus pass - Mom still hasn't gotten onto the council, and I can't be the one to do it, it has to be her who applies - and I'm now spending a tenner a day on getting to school and back, and you can see why the whole thing is feeling more like a chore than the pleasure it's been for the last four years.
I'm okay in myself, it's just things getting on top of me a little. I'm not depressed (although my moods have been up and down with the female problems - hormones are crazy things) but I'm just so tired. The tiredness increases the muscle pains - although that could also be related to the iron levels - and makes it hard to remember to eat and breathe, putting me at risk for chest infections. I realise the ridiculousness of that sentence - you're probably thinking, "FFS, who forgets to breathe?" but I do, when I'm this tired. I'm also on a 1200-calorie diet, created by Teeny Crazy Lady Dietician, which probably doesn't help with the tiredness, but that's another post altogether.
Mom had spinal surgery yesterday. She seems to have cone through it well - she's in good spirits, and feeling less pain, so touch wood that the relief she's getting continues. I'm glad she's doing okay, but it means that there's a whole lot more work to do and I have to do it all alone, because Tony's family are in the process of moving down to their new house in Brighton. I make a competent nursemaid, and I'll do whatever needs to be done, because she's my mother and she would do - and has done - it for me. But despite being competent, nursing is not something I enjoy, and I feel bad that whatever needs to be done for her I do with a generous but not quite cheerful heart.
Probably some of this guilt is due to my ex's girlfriend being a nurse, but that too is best left for another post. Or not. I don't especially want to rehash all those feelings.
But hey ho, it could always be worse. I could be doing all these things while (almost) dying of Scarlet Fever, the way I was during her last spinal operation a few autumns ago. It's easy to forget to be grateful for how much easier things are this time around.
And really, things aren't so bad. I have books. I have a Pokémon game (sadly not X or Y, since I don't yet have a 3DS). I have Christmas coming up, and am trying to decide whether to get into the shopping spirit, or chuck it in and spend what I would have spent on presents on a trip to Barbados. I have friends who do nice things like take me to fireworks displays and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with me and offer me sheets when the washing machine eats mine. :) People are nice.
And it's been about 10 weeks since the surgery, so as long as I remember to take my supplements (gah) and eat lots of broccoli and spinach (double gah!), in the next six weeks I should start feeling a lot better.
Although if I don't develop super Popeye-strength, I want my money back.
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