I Fell BACK In Love With My Husband

I had my surgery. It was a success! He went in there and it turns out I didn’t have endometriosis! I did have pcod and my one ovary was covered in cysts! They drilled for hours! They also did a DNC. The end result is I’m back to where I need to be. It’s been a month almost and still no period? Maybe it takes a while to restart?

I lost my second job. I was working for picture me perfect studios. They went out of business…..at least I wasn’t fired.

….I think I’m going to have to find a new job. When I came back from the surgery everyone was acting weird. They started writing me up for everything. They wrote me up for the second time for signing the date wrong. That means if I write the date wrong one more time I’m fired.

It’s really hard for me to figure out what I want to do with my life. I kind of know what I like to do and what I’m good at.

I’m good at:
1. Writing
2. Talking
3. Empathy
4. Politics
5. Philosophy
6. Making Lists
7. Partying
8. Facebooking

What can I do with my list?

…Also, I woke up and my legs wouldn’t move. It hasn’t happened since last summer when I got sick.    😦

Trent and I are getting along better than ever. That’s pretty much the best part of everything in my life right now. 

I called and made an appointment for him to see a lawyer for having his record clean from when he got drunk and high and led a liberation for all the local lawn gnomes.

The lawyer agreed and was really cool and said he would do it for 250 per charge. It’s probably going to come to a thousand dollars. We don’t have it right now, but we can at least do one at a time. And then its done and he can get a great job, and I won’t have to keep working these aweful jobs, and I can sit back and be a lazy housewife  😉

I actually enjoy his company lately. He made me an Easter Basket the other day and put it on the bed! It was really sweet!

And we have been fucking each other like rabbits!  You would think we were newlyweds!  His stamina is OFF THE CHARTS! It turns out-of-out a little (or a lot!) Of physical release does a body good! Damn it, it does my body good! I was needing some dick!

I also WANT to have sex with him now. He helps me out around the house now. The other day he mowed the lawn AND I DIDN’T HAVE TO NAG HIM ABOUT IT UNTIL I’M READY TO SLIT MY WRISTS!

I love that I have the man I fell in love with back again! The light of his love lightened my cold charcoal heart. I can’t believe I managed to fall MORE in love with my husband!

Thank you God!

If You’re Trying To Get My Attention I’m Listening

At the age of twelve I was told I had endometriosis. I didn’t understand what they meant. I just knew it was the reason why my period had lasted for a month.

I have insurance now for the first time in my life, and I decided I was going to take full advantage of it. A while back I told you all I was going to see an OBGYN in February and figure out what was going on with the miscarriages and the infertility.

Then Trent got sick. So, I was going to put off going. Even though I haden’t had a pap smear since I was 21.

I feel so fucking dumb. You don’t understand though. There were reasons for me never going to see a doctor about it. I was a kid when I found out I had endo and my mom had just died and I didn’t understand any of what was going on down there. And then I was an adult and would go to the health department and they would be REALLY mean! “You have had how many partners?’ The judgement in their voice palpable.  I figured,  I’m young, ain’t nothing gonna happen to me!

Mid February I started having pain in my lower back. It kind of was a weird pressure on my bladder that made it hard for me to pee. So, having insurance,   (good insurance, ) I scheduled a pap smear to see if there was a connection. 

I didn’t get into see the doctor until March 11th. The doctor I sought out was the same doctor I had in mind three months ago. He is great. Dr. K comes in and he’s super charming and easy to talk to. We go over my histories of miscarriages. He ask me about Trent. I tell him about endometriosis.  I tell him about the pain and I want to know if it can be fixed.

“How long had you and your husband been trying to conceive? ”

“Almost six years,” I say.

“We have a problem. But it can be fixed, ” he says with such optimism it makes me feel like I’m not alone.

He describes a liproscopic procedure where they go in through the bellybutton and take anything off of my endometrium lining that could be causing me problems.  

“Are you interested in this?” he asks.

“Absolutely, ” I say with tears in my eyes. Completely amazed that there is someone that can help me with this thing that has caused me so much pain my entire life.

He tells me he is going to get an ultrasound, look at it, and tell me when he can get me in the following week.

So I’m having my ultrasound done, she finishes, I call Trent and tell him what they plan on doing the following week. Trent is really happy and I am too. Dr. K knocks on the door and I tell Trent I will call him back.

The doctor doesn’t seem as optimistic as he was before …he looks worried.

….”….How heavy are your periods?”

“Pretty heavy.”

“We need to do some exploration down there. …Your endometrium line is…so thick and hollow.” The more I talk to him, the more pauses are between his sentences. This is not the same confidant man I talked to less than 20 minutes ago.
“It looks like we may have a polyp growth. Or a growth of some kind. We are going to cut it off and see if it is benign.”

I sit there and I nod my head and I leave his office setting up an appointment for the procedure. 

I call Trent and ….I fall down to the ground in tears. I can’t breath. Are you fucking kidding me?

I look up everything I can the next few days. Everything I’m reading is saying the same thing,  once the pain reached the colon area it is never good. That’s with endometriosis, polyps, uteran cancer.  But I won’t even know. So, for the next few days I sit here obsessing over every possible outcome.

I go to the pre op meeting and I talked to the anesthesiologist.

“Have you ever had a surgery?”

“Just one.  I had my tonsils taken when I was twelve.  I woke up during the surgery.”

She had a puzzled look on her face. “You woke up during the surgery?”

“Yeah. While they were inside my mouth. I remember them taking a few minutes to figure out I was awake…” I start to cry. “The last thing I remembered was everyone trying to hold me down. I woke up throwing up blood everywhere. After that it was always a big fear of mine, when is it going to happen again?  When am I going to need surgery?”

She explains to me that it is known as Aware Anesthesia.  She has only read about it, never seen it. What happened to me was a freak accident.  She says the anesthesiologist will be by my side the entire time. He will never leave my side. He will be watching me the entire time.

“Now, we need to discuss your anxiety problem. ” She says.

“How could you tell? ”

She points to my collar bone where I look down and realize there is a huge whelp where I had been pinching myself. Something I haven’t done in years.

“I have generalized anxiety disorder with some obsessive compulsive tendencies. I’be been diagnosed with it since I was 12. I was medicated with Xanax for my entire life until the facility I was seeing to prescribe it was no longer allowed to. ”

“What do you do for you anxiety now?” She asks.

“…Deal with it,  Pinch myself, Beta blocker, Drive everyone nuts talking in a loop.”

“We see that a lot in this town. I’m going to have something given to you first thing in the morning when you first get here.” She says.

I leave feeling a little better about the surgery. It is scheduled for March 21st at 7:45.

To the best of my knowledge he is going to go in there, blow a bubble of gas around all my organs,(dafuq?) And from there he will be poking around and feeling on all my major organs, scraping off anything that is on the lining that shouldn’t be, and removing any polyps he sees anywhere. Was told originally the recovery time is two days, but the more I’m reading, the different the answer to it is.

I’m sitting here tonight sad and angry. I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

I know I’m always talking about signs, but this is one hell of a way to get my attention.  I’m not trying to go to the worst place, but I keep thinking, if its near the colon it is never good. 

Not to mention the time I have to take off from work and the fact that THIS WASN’T APART OF THE STORY!

I feel very out of control and I really wish I could get my thoughts and my mind right before I go.

Meanwhile,  do I really take that bad of care of myself that it even fucking came to this? Oh, that’s right! Who the fuck has time to take care of your self when you are working two jobs and your husband’s sick too.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

Dear Universe,
If you’re trying to get my attention-
I’m listening.

The Tradegy That Occurred On Our Fifth Wedding Anniversary

I had picked out the perfect outfit. I had gotten my hair straightened,  and my nails done. I wanted to look perfect for him. My husband Trenton.

Trent said he was taking me to my favorite restaurant The Miller House. Its the most expensive restaurant in town. Its well worth the amount of money you pay to eat there. Service is top notch and you get an AMAZING Appitizer called The Southern Sampler. It has fried cheese grits, fried green tomatoes, sweet potatoe chips, and delicious bree. The scenery is amazing and they play beautiful music in the back ground as you romantically hold hands. 

We were sitting there talking about our dreams for the next five years, we had ordered our tea and the southern sampler and it was all just -perfect.

And then –
Trent’s dad called. You see, Trent’s identical twin brother had been in surgery while we were there.

We had decided to go to the hospital and visit him the day before, so we could have our anniversary all to ourselves.  And we weren’t planning on coming to the surgery because, well, it was just a regular proceedure that they had done two other times that week.

It had gone fine the rest of the week. Heck, when Trent and I visited him the day before he was spelling people’s name on a piece of paper and he was VERY responsive.

We talked about their 30th birthday and how its about to be next month and Travis motioned that he wanted us all to get drunk.

So, we are sitting there at The Miller House and Trent answers his phone thinking that his dad is going to tell him that the surgery is over and they had him closed up.

Instead Mike told Trent he wad on his way to The Miller House and he needed to talk to him. I looked at my husband from across the table and I knew something was wrong. He had lost all the color in his face.

I started to cry and everyone in the restaurant was looking.  “Trent, ” I manage to muster from my throat. “What’s wrong, your starting to scare me…”

Trent hung up the phone and told the waiter he needed to pay because we had an emergency we had to take care of. He told me to go to the car.

I went outside and Mike was standing in front of the restaurant. 

Trent followed and the color still haden’t returned to his face.
Mike started,  “Travis had a really bad infection. They are putting him back into the ICU, they may or may not have to put in a trechea, and they putting him in a paralyzed coma.”

I stood there in shock. Trent fell on the ground in long deep sobs, “I know its scary son. Its okay to be scared, I am too.” Mike says.

We drove to the hospital. We waited until it was our turn to see him.

We walked into the ICU and we saw Travis. Trent held his hand, “Bubba, I need you to get better. We love you…” Trent broke down and started to cry.

We left the hospital around midnight.

We went to sleep and the next day we went to work and visited Travis at nine when we got off. Trent had dropped me off at the door and I actually went up to his room without Trent. Travis’ leg was hanging off the bed! I screamed for the nurse to get in there.
“Nurse! His leg is almost completely off the bed!” I said.
“Yeah, ” She says nonchalantly. “He’s been doing that all day.”

I pause for a moment, “Is that normal? With him supposed to be paralyzed and all?”

“We have given him as much pain sedatives as humanly possible,  he just keeps fighting it.”

I go and sit in the chair next to him. I hold his hand, “Hey buddy.” He opens up his eyes and opens his mouth. It looks like he’s trying to say something. It looks like he’s trying to say, “Help me!” I jump up startled. I sit back down and I grab hid hand.  “You’re okay Bubba. I need you to calm down and stop fighting this.”

I see Trent walking down the hall and I decide to keep it to myself what it looked like he had said.

Trent is holding his hand and I decide to give them a moment alone.

Trent meets back up with me at ten when visitation is over. He us just as disturbed as me at how restless he was.

I get home and talk to Dana.
“I’m a little fucked up after seeing Travis.”
“I know! Me too! It was like he was fighting it!”
Later on we are talking and she says that when she worked at the Nursing Home she only had three residents that had sepsis.
” None of them survived,” she said.
We talk about how he has his age on his side but each time we think something is going right, it has turned out horribly wrong. Should we be preparing ourselves for the worst? 

I go upstairs.

“Trent, we need to talk.” I say.
“Okay.” he responds. There is an awkward moment as if we ate both thinking the same thing but neither wants to say what that is.

“Trent. I think you need to get off from work tomorrow.  I am having a hard time processing my thoughts right now about this whole situation, so, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling with him being your twin brother. I don’t think working with the public is a good idea right now. I think you need to take tomorrow off and go be with him and…I think you need to really try and process what happening. Distractions at work are good, but after a while its going to hit you what’s happening, and you aren’t going to want to be there at that store.”

“What will we do about the bills? If I’m not working we can’t pay the bills.”
“Let me handle it Trent. I’ll pick up extra hours if I have to.”

Trent nods his head and says, “Travis opened his mouth when I was up there tonight like he was trying to say something …like he wad trying to say help me.”

“I know honey, he did that to me before you got in the room, I just thought it was my mind playing tricks on me!” I cried.

We both started to cry and hold each other and the release of the tears and of the uncertainty were the only thing that felt right in that moment.

My Husbands Identical Twin Brother

The relationship I have with my brother in-law Travis has always been a complicated one. See, I married his identical twin brother, Trenton.

When Trent and first started dating Travis and I had a pretty good time. I remember Trent took me on a date to a Japanese restaurant and I soon discovered that it was also a date with his twin brother. Later I would come to find out that this was the first test of many. Trenton was seeking Travis’ approval.

I loved Travis. I thought he was funny and eccentric and someone that I would LOVE to party with.

After Trent and I were married, things got a little weird…

When I started dating Trent I knew I was going to have to always share my life with another human being. But – I didn’t know that it was going to have to be TWO human beings. It was almost as if I had to always seek his approval for if I was being a good wife to his brother. MY HUSBAND.

So, I had to compromise my entire life, but he wasn’t willing to compromise that Trent was my husband, and the first year of marriage is always hard, but it’s even worse when it seems like a million people are in your lives.

And somedays I had off I didn’t want to have to share my husband, my first year of marriage.

So, the years went on, and the resentment grew deeper and deeper because I also felt like sometimes Travis thought he was was better than us. We kind of stopped talking COMPLETELY  for a year.  Trent also was suffering from depression at the time.

Trent was hospitalized and that was brought Travis back into my life. I realized I needed Travis. Travis could help me figure out and process the thoughts I was having over my husbands depression. 

Back in July of this year Travis was hospitalized with a sepsis that had developed in his body. Part of the process was having to go into surgery and put on a colostomy bag that would carry his poop in a bag on his body.

The weeks following the surgery was torture.  I saw Travis have issues with embarrassment, self esteem. He really just wanted to have the thing taken off!

About a month ago I did start distancing myself because he would say really hurtful things that was making me feel bad about other people in my husbands family.

I don’t have a family of my own. The Hagans are my family. My Dads dead, so I think of Trent’s dad as my dad. I never had any sisters, so I think of Dana as MY sister. I’ve really grown up a lot the last few years, but because of things that happened in our very FIRST year of marriage I am still on shaky grounds with a lot of people in Trent’s immediate family. I feel like where Dana LOVES me, others just tolerate me. And, to be quite honest, when everyone notices these changes and you still are on shaky ground with people it does make me think, “Well, maybe its not me?”

This is such a complicated situation that I have digressed, and I apologize.

Travis went in for his reversal on Monday. Wednesday they started feeding him clear liquids, Thursday- his incision came loose from when they reattached it. They had to send him into emergency surgery.

I haden’t been up to visit Travis at all that week. I was worried Wednesday because Trent had told me that he was slightly pneumatic. 

The emergency surgery didn’t go as planned. They have induced coma on Travis for seven days so they can clear up an infection. They also placed him on a ventilator.

My husband is a complete wreck. He is beside himself with grief. He doesn’t know what he would do without his brother.

Trent was back there and the surgeon that worked on Travis came in. He was holding Travis’ hand and he said, “I don’t know how much of this is your fault, or how much is just bad circumstances,  but he BETTER WAKE UP!”

I was sitting in the waiting room hearing everyone tell stories about when they went back there, (Dana said he smiled when someone pointed out that she was coming because you could hear her heels clompping down on the ground,).
They asked me if I wanted to come back and I made up an excuse about having a cold and not wanting to make him worse.

The truth is, I was scared. I didn’t think my mental state could handle seeing someone I love and someone that means SO much to my husband…I just couldn’t do it.

I snuck in there today. He looked really good. His color was really great. I held his hand. “Hi. Its me Mae.” He grabbed my hand. “I’m here Travis, and you have a whole lot of people thinking about you right now. There’s a ton of people that are lighting you white candles on Facebook and …” He grabbed my hand.  I started to tear up, “I need you to be okay because my husband doesn’t work without you. And I love you too. You are my brother. ” He grabbed my hand. “No more pettiness.  Just parties when you wake up. Okay?” He grabbed my hand.

I love Travis and I just want him to wake up and I want everything to be better. If you’re reading this, will you send prayers and thoughts his way?

Dana Hagan Turns Farts Into Perfume

         Has anyone noticed how hard it is to make friends as an adult? Most of my friends I met in college, however, with most of them off at grad school and starting families I’ve been feeling kind of alone. So, I try and make new friends. Problem is- the only people you meet as adults are at church or bars. So you either have to hang out with people that don’t match your political views or total stinking drunks!
        I have lucked out though; Over the past year I have made a friend in my sister in law Dana. If you meet Dana- you can’t help but love her. She’s this really strong, funny, beautiful woman, and she’s so exciting you find yourself holding on to every word she says.
       The first time I met Dana Trent was bringing her over to the house. Trent had said Dana was his favorite sister so there was all this pressure on me to make her like me. Well, she walks in and it’s like a complete breath of fresh air. She smiles and is saying, “Hi, my name is Dana!” And I remember she had these beautiful shoes and this amazing tan and she just wasn’t afraid to be herself. I remember she kept looking at me like, why isn’t she saying anything back? The truth was- I was really nervous! I really wanted her to like me!
      Over the next few years I got to know Dana even better. She had these amazing funny friends, and these beautiful children. And she had this fascinating love life. But what I loved the most was – what you see is what you get with Dana. Dana looks out for you and she really does want the best for all of her friends.
       Dana not only treated me like a friend, but I also was given the same respect from Dana as a sister. I never had a sister and when you grow up in a house full of boys, a sister is the best thing ever! In fact I went from not even knowing how to match a t-shirts with jeans to knowing how to color coordinate a cute, stylish outfit.
      But the thing about sisters is- sometimes we fight. Sometimes I don’t even know why, but we do. But we always manage to find our way back to each other. This past time we had gone on vacation together and gotten into this huge fight and I didn’t think we were going to ever make up. We stopped talking to each other and everything just really
… sucked.
        I don’t know if I also explained that Dana and I also live very close to each other. Like I live in the apartment above Dana’s. Well a few weeks ago I had found out that I was laid off. I had also found out that Dana had some random ass hole Robert Downey Jr. her ass.
       Dana and the kids weren’t home one night and Trent and I was. Well, some guy came in through the front door and he was drunk and he passed out in Dana’s bed! The kids found him the next morning! How scary is that?
        But as scary as the story was I couldn’t help but laugh. It was something that would ONLY happen to Dana! And I had just been laid off a few hours before that, so, everything in my body was saying, YOU NEED TO TALK TO DANA! So, I did. It was weird and awkward but if felt like home.
        The next week I had went to call Dana and her friend had answered. She said they were taking Dana into emergency surgery and that there was an infection in her body. Trent and I went to the hospital and we waited patiently while the doctor came out and explained what was happening.  The doctor told us Dana was going to need all our help because the recovery from her surgery was pretty intense.
          Dana has never had to depend on anyone. In fact, most people end up depending on her.
        They wheeled Dana out of surgery and she still managed to look fabulous! Her hair was twisted to the side and she had these beautiful long orange nails. I said, “Hey,  rockstar!” We both  started to cry, and she said, “Hey. Come give me a hug.” I was afraid to though, I thought I was going to hurt her!
         Over the past week Dana was still Dana! Even though she was recovering from this intense surgery she still came up with the idea of having a scavenger hunt for one of her friends birthdays! It was awesome! 
         Dana comes home tomorrow and while this is really scary it is also really exciting too. I’m looking forward to having a diet buddy, and to having my sister back.