Somebody Clone Me.

I get asked this a lot: “How are you doing?”

And my answer is usually: “I’m tired!”

But today i’m gonna tell you how i really am.

I’m overwhelmed. I’m frustrated. I’m exhausted.

I’m super sick of the “bubble guppies” theme song being stuck in my head.

I’m trying to figure out how to get everyone where they need to be by myself, and having barely enough gas in the car to make it everywhere (and no money to put anymore in).

I’m stressed.

I’m trying to “enjoy the little moments” but right now they are making me crazy – the non-stop bugging for snacks by kaylen, the nonstop whining for playdates by kaylen, the ridiculous amounts of clutter created by, you guessed it, kaylen.  (I promise, I really do love the kid, she just knows how to push every last one of my buttons!)

I’m wishing I had the energy to get up and make coffee.

I wish my hair wasn’t so frizzy right now with all the humidity/storms we’ve had. I wish it wasn’t fall yet. i want it to still be summer. Still be warm. I hate the cold.

i wish my heart didn’t hurt so much because it can’t find a good rhythm to beat in.

I wish Kendall’s PICC line wasn’t so stupid and would just infuse right so she wasn’t running TPN for 20 hours a day and antibiotics for 3 hours (it should be 16 and 1.) I know that’s a stupid thing to complain about compared to what some of my amazing momma heroes deal with – but it’s just one more thing that is driving me insane. I start kendall’s antibiotics at 9:30 at night, expecting them to be done when it’s time for me to hit the hay, but no, i have to keep myself awake for two more hours to wait for them to finish. (this might be confusing – i’ll try to explain it.)

Basically, the PICC line is in Kendall’s elbow, threads up through her arm and then down into her chest, ending near her heart. Kendall’s veins don’t like PICC’s.  PICC’s don’t like Kendall’s arms, mostly because she actually MOVES them. Something about the narrow veins, and the crooks and turns they take in her arm that is crooking and moving creates “back pressure” for lack of a better term, so even though a pump is pumping her tpn and meds into her veins, there is pressure against it, so it takes longer to actually push all of her needed fluids into the vein. Yesterday we ended up having to “TPA the line”, which means we take super clot buster medication, inject it into her line, let it sit there for a while, draw it back out, and hope that it unclotted/depressurized the line enough to get blood out for labs, and run infusions a little faster. We got labs yesterday at least, but it didn’t help the line run faster.

Speaking of Kendall – she is continuing to improve from last months craziness, but a few things are very slow to return to baseline. She picked up a fun new habit of not being able to bear weight on her right leg unless she locks her knee into place. She’s always had right sided weakness, which is usually our first sign something’s up with her – she crumples on her right side and starts using her left hand for everything. But this is something new and different. Her school PT, who is very anti-bracing, is telling me she needs AFO’s again. For some reason this news hit me harder than I thought it would last week. I mean, they are just braces, she’s had them for most of her life, it’s not a huge deal. But it was just “one more thing”, you know? one more appointment i have to schedule, one more insurance battle i have to fight, one more thing to add in to an already packed week. I also have to figure out how to get her wheelchair re-adjusted for her recent growth (which involves taking it back to milwaukee). Which i MIGHT be able to cram in between appointments and surgery on Tuesday (to have the stupid picc taken out and a broviac put back in). anyways – her gut is very much unhappy, we are having to use tons of zofran to keep her happy, her urine is starting to look cloudy again (which may or may not mean she’s getting another UTI), she’s tired more often than not, and we still don’t have a main nurse.

which brings me to the need to clone myself.

On top of all the usual rigamarole of running around as a mom, I’m full time nurse again, which means i have to schlep kendall a whole lot of places with me, which means i have to schlep all of her stuff with me, which just isn’t that easy to do when i’m trying to ALSO control the other three. I’m also trying to actually cook stuff at home instead of getting fast food for the girls on our way to/from dance, so i’m just a regular little June Cleaver around here. Minus the pearls and skirts. Trying to figure out how to get Karissa to her hearing appointment tomorrow morning at the same time the big girls should be getting on the bus, dance pictures + soccer game (US womens team! yay!) + dance sleepover on Saturday, photo sessions on Sunday, packing up everything on Monday for Tuesday prep….Then getting Kendall to milwaukee, kaylen needs some place to be on tuesday morning who can also get her to school by 12:55, and then someone who can get the girls from school/bus to dance, and be ready to get them after dance in case i dont make it back home in time from milwaukee if kendall doesn’t wake up from GA on MY schedule….

hold on i need to go chew on a xanax.

oh wait I can’t – because i’m out. Which means i need to schedule a dr appointment for myself –b ut WHENNNN???? we also need eye appointments for everyone, which i have to call and schedule.

This whole post is nothing but whining isn’t it… sorry. It’s the honest most truthful answer I can come up with to the question of “how i’m doing”.

i’m not doing super good. I will be ok, i promise. but right now everything is making me tired, stressed, crazy.

I’ll try to have a happier post up later. For now i just needed a place to get this all out. thanks for reading if you made it through this far!

 

terra.