The heart of the matter.

Tomorrow is the big, terrifying, day.  No, not the wedding, that'll be in July.  Tomorrow is the day I go in for my angiogram to get a better look and what precisely is going on with my heart.  Its a relatively minor procedure as things go.  No big gaping wounds, no 4 day hospital stay to recover, just a little tube being shoved through my veins to my heart where they'll inject some dye into my heart and take pictures.

Ordinarily I'm all for taking pictures.  I'm a photographer by hobby after all and a camera (be it phone, real camera, or video camera that takes stills) is rarely found out of arms reach.  Unfortunately, these pictures aren't going to be the fun kind that show smiling kids or a pretty sunset.  These pictures are taking a look at my heart muscles and to see if by some off chance I have some blocked arteries.  If the docs could get the pictures without invading my body with more than an IV I'd be fine with the whole procedure, but as they have to sedate me, go inside my body directly to my heart, and inject stuff into my heart, I'm pretty well scared sh*tless.

But why am I scared if its such a minor procedure?  Because with a procedure like this there are risks.  Risks of me getting sick or something going wrong.  Risks of me not waking up.  I've got too much left to do with my life, too many days left that I want to love on L and C and R.  L and me are getting married this summer and my little dude just started basketball, and I haven't seen R dance ballet yet like she so dearly wants to do (thank you Nutcracker!).

Of all the things to be messed up in my body why does it have to be my heart?  The battery keeping my body running is defective and once its done so am I.  I wasn't even looking for it but I stumbled across a few articles, thanks to google's auto-suggest feature when you're doing a search, for the life expectancy of people with CHF and I nearly lost my cookies reading first one, then another in hopes that it'd contradict the first.  It didn't.  What they both said was, on average, once a person is diagnosed with CHF 10 years is about all they've got left.  The glimmer of hope I'm holding onto with every fiber of my being right now is that the articles never specified an age of the patients that they were referring to and most CHF patients are much older than me.

With all of those worries already weighing on my chest like a small elephant, there is another that is getting to me too.  L and I aren't yet married, she isn't legally my next of kin.  If something life-threatening were to happen to me she isn't the one that the doctors would tell what was going on.  She might not even be allowed in my room.  I'm so anxious about her not being able to be with me that its just escalating all those other fears and worries I've got right now.  I'm going to marry her in 6 months and 10 days, but she may not be able to be with me when I need her most because of stupid rules.

Right now what I need to do is go take a nice hot bath with my wonderfully smelling lilac candles from my BFF, and then try and enjoy the night with L because tomorrow morning is going to come way too soon.

Life turned upside down

So, shortly after my last post we made a very unpleasant discovery about our rental house that we moved into in July.  I'd been getting nasty blistered bug bites starting a couple weeks after we moved here and we thought it was just mosquitoes or some nasty flies.  It wasn't.  What it turned out to be, we discovered after we sprayed for possible fleas, was bedbugs.  Yep.  Bedbugs.  Is your skin crawling at the idea?  Mine is too.  Even now, knowing the house has been sprayed, my skin still crawls.

If you're wondering just what about yucky bedbugs have to do with my life being turned upside down, let me explain.  Those blistered bug bites were an allergic reaction to the bugs, which considering I'm allergic to other kinds of bugs and lots of other things (plants, animals, dust, etc.), isn't really all that surprising.  Unpleasant and annoying, but not surprising.  Most people their story with bedbugs would end as soon as you get the house sprayed.  Unfortunately, its extremely expensive to spray for bedbugs when a house is inhabited because all of the furniture and personal belongings of the people need to be sprayed too.  Our landlord balked at the price, offered to try DIY bedbug remedies, but eventually agreed to the professionals doing it so that C would have a minimum of upset now that he's settling in.

The day came for the first spraying and we stayed out as long as they told us, plus a couple extra hours so by all rights everything should have been fine.  After being home for less than an hour I noticed an odd burning sensation on my face by my mouth and over the next 3 hours it continued to spread up my face to my eyes, ears and throat.  It got uncomfortable for me to swallow, and was starting to get difficult to breathe when finally L and my mother convinced me it was time to go to the ER.  Turns out I was having an allergic reaction to the spray that was used to kill the bugs I was having an allergic reaction to...

We slept at L's office that night and then the next morning we called the exterminator to find out just what was going on with me and what we should do.  His suggestion: get a lawyer and stay out of the house.  When we asked how long it would take for the chemicals I was having a reaction to to wear off he told us three months after each treatment.  Because of the level of infestation in our house (apparently for over a year before we moved in, unknown to the landlord because the last tenants were just awful) we were going to need three treatments with the last one being a month and a half after the first one.  If I've confused you and you're trying to do the math for just how long this means I'm supposed to stay out of the house it is going to end up being about 4.5 months from the first treatment until I'm able to move back in.

Yeah...

So for the past week I've been living in a tent in the backyard, only running into the house long enough to use the bathroom and to shower when absolutely necessary.  I can't cook for my family, can't tuck my kids into bed, can't snuggle up on the couch with my partner and watch movies (let alone share a bed).  Its been a nightmare.  My depression is setting in hard being separated from them like I am, and I'm just in the backyard.  Because of it being fall and the weather starting to change, even this situation isn't good enough because it gets absolutely frigid at night.  Our landlord offered to let us rent a little two bedroom place a few blocks over for cheaper than he'd normally rent it just because its his house that is causing my health issues.  Unfortunately even a cheap rental, when you add on utilities, is way more than our budget can stretch to cover.  Not to mention I'd be totally separated from the kids and alone except for my dog.

In steps my friend B with an offer for me to stay at her house while we wait for my house to be livable for me again.  This will save us hundreds of dollars and I won't be alone, but I'll still be without my kids and my love.  My mom has offered to take the kids to school in the mornings so I'll just do pick-ups and then come over to the house and hang out outside during the day.  Its going to be hard, but its a better solution than me living outside in bad weather, or living in a house completely alone.

I just can't wait until my life is back to normal.  I didn't move 1600 miles to be separated from my family.

First step.

Well, they say that the first step is the hardest and after the minor anxiety attack I had yesterday when the lawyer called me back I have to agree. I know I am doing the right thing but that doesn't change the fact that, by nature, I hate confrontation and to me that's all I have been dealing with since I told him that things were over. Yesterday was no exception. He asked me to send him a message when I got done talking with the lawyer and I did. I told him everything that the lawyer told me and apparently finding out that 90 days after we sign/submit our papers to the court we will no longer be a family really got to him.

It hurts me to see him so upset over everything ending and he says I don't understand what it feels like to be losing everything he is. And while no, its not quite the same, I do understand. If anybody does its me because I was the one that shared his hopes and dreams for our little family and our future. I know exactly what he's losing. Every time he hugs one of the kids I can see him falling apart a little more inside. Even when he looks at me I can see it. And it just makes my heart ache.

Being sick and dealing with all of this at the same time is so hard. I'm tired and I don't feel well, and I just don't have the resolve I normally do when well. He tried begging me yesterday to change my mind again and instead of telling him he had to leave, like I'd told him I would, I just told him to stop and leave me alone. I feel like I'm being a wimp. Why oh why am I still only at the first step? I really just need this to be finished.

Sick = weak willed.

Let me just start by saying I am the most pathetic and pitiful sick person you'll likely ever know. I won't go into details, but I'm sure you can imagine. Anyway, my point is that when I'm at my post pitiful I'm more likely to agree to things simply because I don't have the energy to argue them. When the STBE asked if he could do anything to help me feel better, like give me a backrub, I told him it was fine.

Now, you may be screaming, "You idiot!" at the computer but calm down I'm not totally off my rocker. I made it very clear to him that taking care of me while I'm sick is NOT going to change my mind about the divorce. He accepted that, or so he says, and he did great getting the kids fed, changed, down for bed, and out to go potty (the puppy). Normally this is all stuff I take care of and it was just really nice not to have to worry about it. He has been equally good with it all this morning too while I am a congested, headachey, sore throated mess.

The fact that someday, in just a few months, i'm going to have to do all of this on my own even if I feel like the walking dead is pretty intimidating. Sure I've got friends, my mom, and even the STBE to look after the kids if I just absolutely must crash for a few hours, but there will be no more staying in bed for days on end until I'm well. I will have to be up and functional because I will be the only one here to look after the two loves of my life and my crazy puppy.

Here's hoping I get over whatever crud this is quickly, so that I'm not so pitiful and easily swayed to let somebody I want nothing to do with give me a backrub... *sighs*