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The Introverted Thinker and the Extroverted Feeler Deal with Divorce

When my children were eight and thirteen, their parents were getting divorced. It had been a very long process involving hours of counseling and had officially started when they were five and ten. We paid counselors more than lawyers, which is a good thing. My Ex had pushed me to fire my first lawyer and to switch solo counselors. The final straw was when he decided that we needed to switch couples counselors.

“I don’t agree with anything he’s said.” said my future Ex.

I was flabbergasted but really it had been obvious. “We’ve been going to him for OVER A YEAR.”

“Yeah, but he’s on your side. I don’t agree with anything he says. I don’t want to go back to him.”

I found a new counselor and found that I had a new goal while filling out the paperwork: amicable divorce. We did one session with the children. The counselor introduced herself and talked about divorce and said that children often had questions. My extroverted feeler son went first.

“Why are you going to Grandma’s for Christmas, dad?”

Dad began to say that I was being mean to him, but the counselor intervened. “It’s not appropriate for you to tell your son about your disagreements with your spouse.” Dad argued, but the counselor stood firm.

Dad said, “I want to have Christmas with people who love me.”

The extroverted feeler just looked at him. “But we love you, dad.”

Dad stared back at his children. “Yes, you do. I am sorry. Next time I will talk to you before I decide what to do.”

My introverted thinker daughter went second.

“Mom, if you get divorced and daddy moves away, and if Auntie’s cancer comes back and you go to take care of her, who will take care of us?”

I think all the adults were stunned by the complexity of that question from an eight year old. I had left the children with their dad to go to take care of my sister for the week before her mastectomy over a year before. It was the longest I had ever been away from my children.

I replied. “If Auntie’s cancer comes back then I will not leave you to take care of her. Either she will have to come here to be taken care of or I will take you with me.”

That was it. She had only one question. She was quite clearly satisfied with the answer. I thought the counselor was amazing to make them feel safe enough to ask a big question.

Previously published on some obscure place on the internet 11/2/09.

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you know you are hypoxic when

…singing. Singing on oxygen is a challenge. Why? Well, because I am TRAINED. I am trained to breathe through my mouth, slowly filling my lungs, for the next phrase. I don’t breathe through my nose because that is noisier, might make a sound during a rest.

No, really. Singers and conductors think that way. PERFECTION is not achieved but we sure have fun trying.

So if I breathe through my mouth as trained and ingrained, and the oxygen is coming by nasal cannula….

….I am goofy and hypoxic by the end of the song. WHY do I feel like I might fall over, I think? WHAT the hell is the matter with me? OH. I HAS NOT BIN BREATHING THE GOOD OXYGEN STUFF. Facepalm. Nosebreathe.

But it’s pretty ingrained. I keep forgetting.

The good news is I feel WAAAAY better. My lungs don’t feel like someone stuck a burning torch in them any more. It hurt for six weeks, every time I sat up or stood up, the muscles of heart and lung HURT. I knew it was my heart but I also was pretty damn sure it was not coronary artery disease and it wasn’t congestive heart failure. That day I went to the ER, normal labs and echocardiogram even though it hurt like shit. I do wish the ER doctor had thought to walk me. He would have put me on oxygen then and I would have gotten better faster. And then I think of 2014 and 2012 and 2005. I didn’t think of it and neither did ANY of my doctors. I did USE oxygen in 2014. I had my father’s tanks because Evil Lincare had kept delivering them even when my father had a concentrator and so there were 16 or 18 full size oxygen tanks in his small house which is a huge fungking fire hazard, those asshats.

Now Lincare is delivering to me and under much improved management. I think the man who delivered it WAS management. He said yes, they had some shady and inappropriate behaviors in the past but he has been KICKING BUTT AND TAKING NAMES and they aren’t going to do that shit any more, not with him in charge. I liked him. Thank goodness Lincare is being run ethically.

I have pulmonary function testing today. I think that will be abnormal. However, I am enough better that I may no longer qualify for oxygen. In which case my insurance may try to refuse to pay for it. Oh, goody, a totally legitimate fight and they will be darn sorry if they try to refuse the oxygen. Mr. or Ms. State Insurance Comissioner! CEO of Insurance! Board of the Insurance Company! Poor sorry little rural family practice doctor, now disabled from her clinic for her fourth pneumonia and ya’ll refusing her oxygen when she has no income because her disability doesn’t kick in until she’s been sick for three months.

Heh. Bring it on. Got my tai kwan do, kinda rusty, my katana, a yard long rusty pipe wrench… bet I get coverage for the oxygen.

Meanwhile I either gotta stick the nasal cannula in my mouth when I am singing or bloody well breathe through my nose…..

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Mother’s Day Songs: motherless children

A friend and I are talking about Mother’s Day yesterday.

Somehow having a song about Mother’s Day came up. “Bet I can think of one.” I say.

“Humph.” says the friend. Or some skeptical comment.

I start singing.

“That’s NOT a mother’s day song.” says my friend.

“Well, it is if your mother is dead.”

“It’s not cheerful.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

So here is a recording. I haven’t learned the guitar part yet so I thought… well heck, why not sing along with Dave Van Ronk?* This is the third take. Might replace it with a later take later today.

Trigger warning: I miss my mom. This is about missing our moms. Hugs, all.

sing along with Dave Van Ronk

Happy Mother’s Day and hugs if you miss your mother.

*Is this a copyright violation? It probably is. Someone yell at me if it is. My brain is muttering something about sampling. Let’s see, from circa 1959 to 1961… does that make a difference?

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you know you are hypoxic when

You know you are hypoxic when … all you have left are dead soldiers….

I turn them upside down when they are empty.

No, I am not really out of oxygen. Send something for oxygen to the people who desperately need it now. Because we could be next and because really: we have so much.

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Liz’s Wind Mill

Wind mill. Or wind tunnel. Or something.

My friend Liz and I built this the other day. The stand was a free because someone is moving. We decided that we wanted it, though we weren’t sure for what. Then we remembered the box of stuff from synchronized swimming. With me wandering the house while trying to get well and grumpy to boot, it all came together.

Fourteenth street is a bit of a wind tunnel, up a steep hill. I am not at the crest, but maybe 4/5 of the way up. The wind can really howl up the street. I have to protect the roses and tomatoes because the wind is too cold for them sometimes. I have put up “walls of plastic”, a variation on “walls of water”.

Plastic clipped to the fence to protect roses against wind.
Walls of plastic around tomatoes.

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alternative medicine

Ok, I got this picture off Facebutt. I CONFESS. But I really want a doctor kit like this: so I can practice alternative medicine. I am disabled from Family Practice and I have to apply for disability payments (miles of paperwork) and I hear that even as a contractee I can apply for unemployment (miles more paperwork) and I see my hospital bill on line for the ER visit where I had chest pain and shortness of breath and the ER doc didn’t even give me an aspirin, so I want to know why I should pay them $900 and I am going to apply for reduced payments because last year I made 42 K, less then the nurses at Jefferson Healthcare (EVEN MORE PAPERWORK FOR THE REDUCED PAYMENTS) and really, it all sounds rather exhausting and I’d rather let the paranoia rise and hide under the bed. Where the OCD and ADHD will make me arrange the dust bunnies and dust elephants by size.

So this looks like a great doctor kit. If the patient sees me and doesn’t do a darn thing that I say, I shoot them with the gun in the forehead. If they do a little but not really very much, I set up the bowling pins and shoot them with the gun while I talk about how irritating it is to have patients use MY TAX DOLLARS though MEDICARE MEDICAID ACTIVE MILITARY DUTY AND THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION NOT TO MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY to get advice and not follow it.

If they are merely disrespectful and tell me what Dr. Google says, I say “Duck.” and throw one at them. If they say, “I don’t take any farmasuiticals.” and bring a bag with the 12 supplement and vitamin pills they take daily, I give them the plastic pills to replace all their stupid supplements. “Here, take this. If it doesn’t work, I have suppositories, but they are four times this size so some people complain that they are uncomfortable.”

I am not sure WHAT the thing in the lower right corner is. A hair dryer? A fentenyl lollipop? Part of an old fashioned telephone?

Anyhow, someone find me one of these kits and send it to me. Pretty please. I am not allowed to do Family Medicine any more and really want to get started on Alternative Medicine.

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art installation naming contest

Ladies and gentleman and others, my friend Liz wants help naming the art installation that she put in my yard!

Who can tell me about the chain?

The hat is clearly from either a witch or a which, I’m not sure witch.

Have at it. Let’s see, the winner will receive a prize which Liz and I have to figure out…..

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you know you are hypoxic when….

You know you are hypoxic when you stand there sniffing, wondering why the on demand oxygen isn’t working. It’s supposed to supply oxygen when you sniff. Let’s see, it is turned on to two liters…hurry, or I will be late for covid test… what the heck is wrong?….. oh….

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broken three

I drop the fragment of rock with the seam a second time. Now I have three pieces. I stop there. When I climb back up the bank, I have an oxygen tank, a camera and rocks. It involves quite a bit of swearing and stopping to rest while I try to get enough oxygen.

Hopefully I will get better. I don’t know when or even if. My friend B says he wants to know what the pneumonia was, that triggered this round of pseudoautoimmune misery. I shrug. “We know some things it isn’t.” I say. “It isn’t covid-19, it isn’t influenza A or B, it isn’t respiratory syncytial virus, it probably is not strep A though I still haven’t had the second blood test. It isn’t pneumococcal pneumonia. It could have been mycoplasma pneumonia or pertussis or a very long list of viruses. Doctors are practical scientists, at least, I am. If the patient is getting better, don’t chase an answer that won’t add anything. I caught something, probably in the clinics where people kept taking off their masks when they were ‘alone’ in the room. They didn’t realize that they were breathing out viruses or bacteria that could take me out.” We aren’t exactly sure if the combined penicillin and clindamycin, high dose, helped or not. I think it did, but stress makes this worse too and it was a very very stressful time. Mean people, you know, and mean family. I just don’t understand what they are thinking.

I really think that post covid-19, we should wear a mask if we go out in public when we are sick. Because you don’t know which people are the vulnerable ones. I normally have lots of energy and I don’t think people would guess that I have had chronic fatigue and that I am terribly vulnerable to infection. In the clinic I owned, after I was sick in 2014, I asked any patient who was sniffling or coughing to wear a mask. “I get pneumonia easily,” I would explain. They had the right to refuse and then I would not see them. After I closed my clinic and went to work as a temp doc, I could not protect myself. I asked the nurses to ask people to PLEASE keep their masks on, but people are people. They didn’t. I had a bit of a PTSD reaction every time I walked into a patient room and they had masks off. I wanted to run out of the room screaming but I was more restrained and just said, “Please, please, PLEASE put your mask back on, other people have been in the room.” I didn’t add “And you might kill me.” because I only had 20 minutes for the visit…..

The pieces of rock are beautiful, aren’t they?

Here is a great song. Got it from this blog: https://reflectionsofanuntidymind.blog/2021/05/07/icky/

This is all for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: workshop. I like working with rocks. I have to decide what work to do next, since it’s no longer safe for me to do family medicine. It SUCKS. I really miss my peeps.

I have to get well first. If I do, what next?

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broken two

I pick the rock up and drop it on another rock. Inside there is a vein of quartz. And what looks like a heart, made of quartz. Beautiful. I hope the rock does not mind being broken. I am questioning myself. The rock would break eventually but I have speeded that up. Sometimes we do some really questionable things out of curiosity.

The rock did not break along the seam that I expected it to. There is still that seam. Should I drop it again?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: workshop.