THIS IS NOT VIEWABLE.  I WILL REDO IT SOON.

I know I was supposed to take the site down this weekend, but my friend, Keitha from high school, found an old video we created for our senior English class about the Great Gatsby.  You really should watch it.  Let it buffer out a bit before you hit the play button or it will pause on you.

You can probably tell which one is me; I am the skinny girl in the striped christmas-looking dress that is strapless, and, for some reason, in a whole lot of the movie.  I am one of the first people you will see, and I am the one that is faking drunk a lot, because of my character, and making a lot of noise and stopping the party mid-way through.  And I am skinny.  Skinny.  Jeez!   It’s amazing what we forget.

It’s pretty hilarious though.  At the end, we do credits on camera; Keitha and I.  It’s worth a watch; it’s so bad and just way too funny.

Sorry it’s so long; I am sure it was a requirement of our assignment.  Basically, we just spend a lot of time dancing, talking and screwing up our lines.  And at the end, for some reason, as we pretend to accept an award, I decide to say, “Sit Ubu, sit!”  Good dog.

I am going to be taking this site down this weekend.  I honestly don’t have much of anything to say that has value.  I have had an horrific year, and it’s starting out to be quite bleak.  I don’t want to write about that, but I am apathetic after last year, which means I really have nothing to say.

I have missed you all very much.  Unfortunately, due to ECT, my memory is gone and I haven’t had the energy to keep up with other blogs.  It’s me.  And I am sorry for that.  Please know that I still care about many of you.

Take care, and maybe I will see you in the future.

Michelle

Nack’s Memorial

On Friday, December 19th, 2008, my beloved Nack departed this earth unexpectedly.  He died of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia, an immune system disorder that cannot be detected for early prevention.  He went quicky; in a matter of hours.  He did not suffer.  Nicky is still with me.  He is very sad, but much love comes his way, and I think he is going to be okay.

There are many people to thank.  However, the most important person for me to thank is Carolann Jacobs, who drove like a bat out of hell to my house to take Nack and me to the vet.  My car battery had died, and she literally dropped everything she was doing and flew to my house to help me.  I cannot thank her enough for her generosity and support during that time.  I don’t know what I would have done had she not been with me when Nack died.  She is truly an incredible friend.

The veterinary office was incredibly supportive.  They stayed open late to help me.  They did everything in their power to help Nack.  They kept me updated literally every few minutes.  And when it was time, they came and got me, and let me run to him.  They watched me fall on the floor screaming because I could not stand up.  They rubbed my back, held me and hugged me; each and every one of them.  Every tech that was there cried.  The veterinarian was so incredibly supportive that I could not have asked for anything better or more from him.  Plantation Pet Health Care Center deserves a great deal of thanks.  If you live in the Plano, Frisco or Dallas area, I highly recommend them.

My family deserves thanks as well.  Everyone has been, and is incredibly supportive.  My aunt taught me about the “Rainbow Bridge”, which I had heard of in passing at some point in the past.  Here is a very nice flash animated version of the poem.

Two websites have been incredibly helpful.  One is petloss.com, which holds Monday night candle ceremonies, has a chat room, and does an online therapy session every Thursday.

The other is the Pet Bereavement group on Daily Strength, a site I belong to for my bipolar disorder.

Below are pictures of my beloved Nack.

Nack, I will love you until the day I die.  You are my special baby, and always will be.  Much love, from Mommy.

Pictures of Nack

Okay.  So I took a quick look at my blog, and I see that I put out an entry a week ago about my ECT.  Ask me if I remember writing it.  Just ask.  Of course I don’t.

It doesn’t even sound like me.  I can’t place that writing anywhere.

Everything is different.  My handwriting is different, and I can’t keep up with anything at the house.  And my hair is now officially curly.  Apparently, anasthetic (spelling?) causes my hair to curl.  So now I have a curly hair haircut, with curly hair highlights.

I don’t remember anything.  What worries me more is that I wrote about needing to do an expense report for my trip to Atlanta, and I have no idea if I actually did the stupid expense report or not.  I would go check to see, but I don’t know what application I use where I work to do expense reports.  I don’t even remember how I put in my time.  I don’t remember much of anything about the general daily duties of what I do.  I remember what I work on, and I remember the technology, but my day to day activities are lost. 

I am out of Dr. Pepper, and I can’t drive.  I was fine last week, but if you asked me if I felt okay to drive today,  I would tell you hell no.  My brain is totally fried.  And I NEED a Dr. Pepper.

I have been sending out text messages and emails, begging my friends to call me, because I feel completely alone.  I feel like I haven’t talk to another human being in two years, because I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone in person or on the phone except my mother this morning, and my dad, who just left after spending Thanksgiving with me.  I am dead serious.  My memory is shot.  I am sure I have talked to my friends recently, but I have no memory of talking to them.  And they aren’t returning my messages. 

Rarely do I ask for help.  I like to take care of myself; I really don’t like it when others help me.  But for the first time in my life, I need help.  I have asked my friends for help, but I can’t find them.  That seems so odd to me, because my friends always want to help me but I don’t let them.  Now that I need them, I can’t find any of them to save my life.  If you are my friend, and I contact you to help me, please return my call.  My memory is so short that I might as well have not talked to a single friend in two years.  At least, that’s what it feels like.  I feel like I have been living in a hole in the ground out in the middle of nowhere for years.

So, if you are my friend, and I typically talk to you, please take a moment and call me.  I could really use the voice.

So, here we are, second ECT in.  In the hospital on Monday, out on Thursday, second ECT treatment on Friday.

All I can say is that it reminds me of the three I had in June.  I stopped in June because I didn’t have anyone to take me to my appointments.  That, and I hated the way I felt. 

Memory issues aside, the feeling I hate the most is coming home and not feeling “at home” anywhere.  I feel twice removed from my surroundings, my home, my things and my dogs.  I feel like I am “not quite here.”  I feel like something is just out of my reach.  That I am missing one little thing, or forgetting one little thing.

Here’s how the ECT goes down.

I arrive at 6:15 a.m. with a bunch of other people I now know.  They take us back in order of how far away we live.  I am not sure why.  Whatever.  My preference is to take us back by first come first serve; that way, I can get on home asap.  but because I live in Frisco, I am destined to be the last person to get my treatment of the outpatients. 

6:45 a.m.: I get the shot.  The shot has something in it that, in 30 minutes, my mouth will be completely dry.  I assume this shot is to keep me from choking on saliva or something.  I really do not know.  Because I have nothing to do, and nothing to read (I wouldn’t remember it anyway), I sit in the waiting room completely bored to tears, talking turkey with my fellow comrades.

7:30 a.m.: After sitting around in a room for an hour and a half almost, having nothing to do, I am finally called back to “the room.”  I walk back, and I lay down on one of four gurneys in the ECT area.  I see the nice lady I have known for years that works for Green Oaks, among a few others I have known back from my second marriage days. 

I lay down on the gurney, and the cute little doctor, or whatever he is, starts making fun of how hard it is to find a vein on me; even though his damned bruise is screaming out at him on my arm guiding him toward the last vein he hit.  The nice older lady puts four electrode thingies on my chest while he hunts for a vein.

After fighting for about five minutes about whether or not he should stick me on the back of my hand, we “decide” that he will use the back of my hand as a portal.   Fun stuff.  I shriek in pain, because he starts shooting something up that burns all to hell.  So he flushes with saline, and the nice old lady sticks two more electrodes to my head, and hooks me up to a monitor.  They do a push of lidocaine in my vein, and I am once more a happier camper.  I know I am about to go out, so I make my last and final stand ensuring that they have the Torredol ready to push at the end so that I don’t end up in extreme death pain like the first time.  They never listen.  Tell them to use the Torredol up front, they won’t.  Show them how much they are killing you, then you get the Torredol in subsequent treatments.  But you have to almost die first.  Go figure.

I make a quick mental note that they do NOT like me wearing sweatshirts and not to wear another one.

She looks as me, and tells me to breathe deeply from the air mask thing she is about to put on my face.  I wait for the well-known burning sensation that creeps up my arm before I go into oblivion.  I breathe deeply, feel the burn, and I am out.

Everyone wakes up from anasthesia differently.  Some wake up angry.  Some actually wake up thrashing out.  Some wake up normal; some are sad.  I am a crier.  So, as expected, the next thing I know, I am looking up at the woman crying.  I know I have made it.  I am not crying at anything in particular.  There was no pain; there wasn’t anything that happened or came up; I just cry when I come out of anasthesia.  She tells me it’s over (after having learned from the first time around when I woke up crying thinking we hadn’t even started), and starts to help me get ready to get up and get on my way.

I sit up and get into the wheelchair that I am required to ride in, looking for my hired 20-year-old gun who is responsible for taking me to and from my appointments; the same 20-year-old gun who stays at my place and watches the dogs when I travel for work, which is pretty much just full time and all the time.  She’s there, and tired as hell.  I mean, I DID make her get up at 5:30 a.m., and she is only nineteen, almost twenty years old.

We get in the car, and get in behind really shitty 8:30 a.m. traffic headed north back to my house.  We joke and have a good time driving back, but all I want to do is get back to the house and lay down.  We stop at the little store for something this morning; I can’t remember what, but I know that I purchased a giant monster energy drink.  Another time, maybe.

I get home, and I feel twice removed from myself and my home.  I don’t feel better or worse; I just feel removed.  A little tinny.  I can still remember most things; or think that I do until I start to talk to others and realize how much I don’t remember.  I spend the rest of the day just trying to get to a place of comfort in my own home where I feel like I belong here.  I can’t get there.  That lends itself to depression and some desire to stop doing the ECTs.  But I have never done more than three, and I can’t for the life of me remember why I need to do these.

I created about an hour’s worth of recordings to remind myself of the same, among many other things.  I didn’t listen to them today.  I really was just trying to get my bearings straight, because I just got home from the hospital last night, and then had my second ECT this morning, and I am filled with necessary todo’s like making the outlets work in the second bathroom, and getting my clothes washed and de-institutionalized.

I spend the day trying to feel “right”.  I just don’t.  I still don’t, and it’s time for bed.  I feel guilty for not getting a ton of stuff done.  I don’ t know what the “right” amount of things to get done is when you have had ECTs.  I don’t know how far removed I am supposed to feel from everything around me.  I know I just feel horribly alone, scared, and nothing feels right.  All I know is my hired gun will be back on Sunday night after I go to bed, and we will get up on Monday and do it again, and I will feel far removed again.  I wonder how much I will be able to take, feeling like I don’t quite belong in my own home.  I wonder what it is that I am supposed to feel like when this works.  I realize how much I have forgotten after talking to my dad and Wayne this afternoon.  Where the hell WAS I last week? 

Thank god Wayne remembered I was in Atlanta, because I have an expense report to do.  Thank god he remembers WHY I was there too.  I still can’t place it; can’t remember the hotel, can’t remember why I was there, who I was with or anything.  Thank god Wayne remembers a lot of things; otherwise, I would be lost.  I wish I had a spouse or something who could care for me while I get this done.  Just having someone with whom I am connected, who is there for me would be a big deal.  But my life is filled with hired guns to do things for me. 

So, here I sit, 9 p.m. Friday night, feeling REALLY “off”, not quite sure what I should be feeling, I have a terrible headache, and am about to go get my pain meds filled even though I did get the Torredol.  The pain is just really awful.  Ugh.

Well, another journal for you on Monday.  So far, so weird.