So tired of more hurdles to tackle

[Gwenivere]

I found out this week that because I have feelings of not wanting to be here anymore without Steve and the unrelenting physical pain, state law requires my grief counselor (Jinny) to have a backup therapist (Peter) I must see.  She has a masters, he has a PhD.  Often I leave Peter not feeling much has been accomplished except filling some time.  Neither are covered by my insurance.   Jinny says she has to be overseen by someone with more experience, but I have never felt he has any more than she does.  We have control over so little I feel this adds stress which I am desperately trying to cut down on.  Having to adjust to new and restrictive policies where I volunteer, I never thought it would seep into personal choices for my mental health.   I understand Jinny is following protocol, but I feel my trust violated.  This came up because. I told her this week I wanted to stop seeing Peter for awhile.   She says I don’t have to see him weekly, but he has to be in the picture.  The crazy thing is that Peter is much more inaccessible as most therapists are.  Calling him in distress he may give me a few minutes but always says 'let’s talk about that at our next session'.  Not helpful when you are in duress at that moment. Jinny will spend time on the phone to help me as much as she can and I try not to abuse that. 

The ironic twist to all of this is I would not be in this predicament had Steve not died.  I haven’t figured out how to reframe my outlook on this news because I have no one to talk to in real life.  Oh, except my counselors.   I’d still be facing this back surgery dilemma, but I wouldn’t be alone or trying to figure out how to survive that without him.  Obvious observation, I know.  There has been so much talk here lately of the huge adjustment our loss creates and finding more ripples (I prefer white water rapids) it creates.  I truly feel if I only had to deal with the physical pain, I could handle the grief better and if it were solely the grief I would be on a healthier path of dealing with it.  But both combined is becoming intolerable.  I know I veered off the track of (dare I call it) normal grief when the pain cut me off more from things that helped me feel I could do things besides sit and watch them slip away or trudge thru them dreading even the simplest things like cleaning my house easily.  Walking into a store.  Playing with my dog. Even taking a shower.

Pity party day I have lost count of, and add in I never felt pity for myself until now and that really pisses me off.

[brat#2]

Hugs my friend

 

[Gin]

Illness coupled with grief is the pits.  No breaks.

[KarenK]

Gwen,

My heart is with you. Grief accentuates the pain and pain accentuates the grief. It is a vicious cycle. I wish so that I lived near you just to lend a shoulder to lean on. PhD certainly does not indicate expertise in Peter's case. His expertise sounds like "Show me the money", then we'll talk.

I have no great words of wisdom, just know that I'm here most nights until 4 AM if you need a caring ear.

[mik]

Wish that I could do something to take away your pain. Perhaps there is another person or group close to you that would be able to help you more.  I don't see why you must see both of them other than the reason she gave you.  Can your doctor give you anything for your pain? I was just wondering if there are any other options?  Hang in there.  Hugs

[kayc]

14 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

But both combined is becoming intolerable.

It can feel overwhelming when we have too much to deal with.  It helps so much that I talk to my sister almost every day...but she's not in good health and I know when she goes...I don't know how I'll survive.  It scares me.  You are in that place already, where you don't have someone to talk to (besides a counselor).  Sometimes I think the thing we need the most is a friend.  We all had that before they died.

[Gwenivere]

MLK, the only other option for the physical pain besides PT which hasn’t worked are pills.  With the opiate epidemic and fear from docs to give them it’s very limiting.  Plus, I don’t want to get dependent on them myself.   I feel trapped in a no win situation as surgery on my own terrifies me.  As for real life support, I have none.   I have no idea what I am going to do. 

[Margm]

23 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

Oh, except my counselors.

Well my prize psychiatrist wore a turban.  I knew he had the "smarts" hidden under that piece of cloth.  That was back in the late 1970's.  That one 15 minute visit bought me these words of wisdom.  "You have to learn to love yourself."  I don't think that swami said any other words, but I bought his book.  Pamphlet really.  But it took him only 15 minutes to tell me to "learn to love myself."  And, it did help..  I damn sure loved my pocketbook more than to go back to him.  I don't think he lasted long in Shreveport.  

Took Prozac from the time it hit the market until I coasted myself off of it years and years later.  The effect it had on me was I had no feelings.  No love, no hate, no emotion at all.  I could not cry.  I was a terribly cold fish until I started to live again.  I would like to not feel any emotion right now, but I do.  I would like to  not hurt anywhere.  I would like to not take the Miralax at night just so it will empty my colon in the morning, and if I am gone, sitting in the car for a long trip, well my temperature will go up that night.  It causes a sepsis that if let spread will be the end of worrying about emotions or other people's life.  I think eating myself to death is a form of doing myself in just as much as taking the morphine pills.  They repossessed my sister's car last night.  I just took her to get groceries.  I got a letter from MD Anderson's Cancer group today, the medical records part to see how long their cancer patients live.  You know, somehow after I was coming off the amphetamines (legal scripts) I wanted to die.  Strange, a diagnosis like cancer can have an unsettling emotion on someone wanting to die, and we all have seen too much of that.

Listen Gwen, give it time, right now you don't want to fight for your life..  One day you might.  You don't think that right now but it is strange how emotions change, and everyone of us have been slapped in the head, stabbed in the  heart and suffered year in and year out..  I still think of my little grandma, a person telling her how long she has had to get over my grandfather and her saying at 18 years, "it seems like yesterday."  That wound does not heal with time, but sometimes if we let it, maybe Rose Kennedy is right, maybe we develop some scar tissue.  I wish you much scar tissue Gwen.  Again, my heart is with you. 

[Gwenivere]

Thanks Marg.  I am just  so tired of doctors and counselors not seeing the whole me as our partners did.  Docs are clinical Nd we are bu bodies (since I lost mine of 25 years whomdid treat the whole me) and counselors are helpful, but only there for an hour in a very long week.  I don’t even seem to get time to START developing scar tissue lately.  It’s been one thing after another of common to others life things we are too tired to keep tackling.  I hope that fight comes back because this is a trypue challenge I want to surrender to sleep, a very long one.

[Margm]

There are no more Doc Adams, Dr. Gray and Dr. Garrett from my little town back in the 40's, 50's and 60's.  They would even make home visits.  Now I place them in the same bag along with attorneys.  Shake that bag and whatever comes out can treat whatever it is that hurts.......for insurance and other funds.

[Gin]

A friend called me  and let me know that it is my fault that I feel so lonely.  It is up to me to make new friends.  I had quite a few friends before, but Al and I were kept busy with all his operations and rehab for a good many years.   It is not easy at my age (78) to find new friends and join new groups.  My medical issues are now keeping me from being too active.  She thinks I should be "over it" by now.  She was widowed maybe 25 years ago, but has a boyfriend and sees him every day.  I do not think she misses her husband like we all miss our spouses(my opinion).  I have to ignore what she says.  This journey we are all on is so very difficult.

[Margm]

Oh Gin, I am not a joiner.  I will go to the NH to see my friend that I promised to talk to before she went to the nursing home and my best friend through high school, like to have lost her too, so I do have to make plans to meet her and my other cousin and a few friends the same day.  My son is the one who pushed me into this.  I don't really want to, in fact, I don't want to get around people at all sometimes.

Billy always hated crowds.  He hated get together's and it was years before I could get him to reunions.  What is so funny about that was he was the center of attention and was so funny, as is my son.  But he never wanted to go, but was okay once we got there.  My personality was just the opposite.  One of my friends introduced me one time and said, this is not the same person I used to know, and I guess I did like to be the center of attention, but I lost that over 56 years ago and we go through such personality changes over the years.  DO NOT LET WHAT SOME IDIOT TELLS YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO DO.  You do what feels good for Gin and I will do what feels good for me.  As it is, I have made promises and even though that person may not even remember me, I have to do it, and my son said so.  And, Billy would have said so too.  

We do what we can, what feels best for us, but sometimes we do have to push ourselves to do something different.  Go to a new church.  We always had widows come to church and they were included in everything.  Sometimes they were not widows, sometimes the woman would come and the man wouldn't.  In our case, they can't.  Do whatever feels good for Gin.

Now to me, I just finished binge watching "The O.C." and it came out in 2003 to 2006, I think.  I would not have watched it then for nothing.  Now, it is finished and I miss that family.  

[Gin]

Anyone else who goes for days at a time without seeing another human? I call people, but do not see them.  I hate it.

[Margm]

Well Gin, moving into the apartments has made me meet lots of people.  I like seeing them on the sidewalks, but again, I am not a joiner, but I do know how to be friendly.  I love my daughter's apartment, they have games and all sorts of things.  The grounds are beautiful and kept up.  She has a tiny little kitchen but lots more closet place than her other place and when she needs to take garbage out, there is a chute to put the garbage in right around her corner.  The grounds are actually beautiful, and we do have a beautiful swimming pool here that I will never use, but my daughter can.  My granddaughter won't.  Anyhow, I am around people that wave and I wave at all the times.  No problem with a wave.  

[Gwenivere]

I see people everyday, Gin, but not. friends or anyone close.  Phone calls are not fulfilling for me.  There  has not been anyone significant in this house in years.  The one woman’s house I’ve been to I feel out of place as she is always busy and wants me gone in an hour..  I miss chatter and laughter filling the house.  I noticed the board games in the cabinet that will never be used again.  Steve’s brother never comes here anymore.  Human contact is so vital, so being out among strangers at stores does not fit the bill.  I watch people walking by just talking to each other.  I envy them.  I listen to my neighbors on their porch talking and laughing and head back into this cave.   I was at the nursing home and felt so alone.  The residents all know each other as an extended family.  They eat together, care about each other and visit each other in thier rooms.  Not that I would want to live in a nursing home, but all this space I have to wander thru by myself is empty.  So, in essence, I go days without seeing people.  Make that years now.

[Margm]

13 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

 The residents all know each other as an extended family.  They eat together, care about each other and visit each other in thier rooms.  Not that I would want to live in a nursing home, but all this space I have to wander thru by myself is empty.  So, in essence, I go days without seeing people.  Make that years now.

The only way you can do that is to move into senior apartments or assisted living.  But to do that you would have to leave the house that makes you miserable, and then if you leave it is possible you might be more miserable.  So you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.  

I am sorry, I was the type of person that had to leave the sorrow of the place Billy left me caused.  It causes me sorrow to go back to Hot Springs.  He left me in one of the hospitals I retired in and I can talk to my old workmates, but I cannot look at that hospital.  I am a different animal.  I know you both cannot do that, so what works for me would not work for you.

[Gwenivere]

Marg, you are right about the damned if you do or don’t.  I hate feeling trapped and I really do.  No way I could leave our house, even if it isn’t a true home anymore.

[kayc]

12 hours ago, Gin said:

A friend called me  and let me know that it is my fault that I feel so lonely.

With friends like this, who needs enemies!  Seriously, she may be a friend, but she's clueless to what you're going through.  And Marg, and Gwen and everyone else...Marg, I'm sorry about your sister's car.  From what you've told us she doesn't seem to know how to take care of herself financially, has had a pattern of turning to someone else to bail her out, no matter how many degrees she's accumulated.  Life Skills...one of the most important things we can learn, but you can be a college graduate and miss it.  I hope you live someplace where she has plenty of public transportation.  There's none here, we need our cars and our friends when our cars break down.  We even lost the lifelong car repair we had here in town.  Thank God there's still towing!

Gin, I can go days without seeing anyone but I try to intersperse it with going to church or the senior site.  It helps.  I need time home alone, but not that much!

Gwen, I honestly wish I lived nearby so I could help you.  I hate that you're suffering and wish you could have the surgery over with so you could feel something besides pain.  (((hugs)))

[CairnLady]

Yes Gin, I also go days, weeks, months without seeing anyone I really “know”.  I work from home so even my co-workers are just voices on the phone when I have to attend a conference call. Sometimes I will say hello to a person I might see while walking my dogs. I’m not a joiner either. Unfortunately I don’t have much trust in people, they always seem to crap on you, or just want to use you. That’s been my experience anyway. I also have a medical condition called Cervical Dystonia. Had it for almost 25 years, it’s very painful and limits my ability to drive, I can only manage driving short distances. All of this plus my PTSD/anxiety combines to make it oh so hard to get out “in the world”. The fact that I can get myself to the grocery store once a week is a big accomplishment for me. When I had Michael, obviously he took my wherever I needed to go (including my treatments for the Cervical Dystonia, but since he’s gone, I haven’t had any treatments in over 2 years) and he was my rock, my shield whenever I felt unsure or self conscious about my condition. This all sucks, but like you, I really have no one who I can turn to.  

[Margm]

3 hours ago, kayc said:

From what you've told us she doesn't seem to know how to take care of herself financially,

No, Mama was always there.  I think this shakeup might do more good than bad.  There is a woman who lives in the apartments who takes her big glass of tea (I hope it is tea) and she has the shaking illness worse than I do.  Mine only really shows if things are not going right with the colon (makes my chin shake),, and the leg bone's connected to the hip bone, etc.  Who knew the chin was connected to the colon..  TMI.  Anyhow, her daughter brought her down here from some northern state, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, (some foreign country type of atmosphere), to this humid south.  I take a shower and it takes a long time to quit sweating and put my clothes on.  We are actually a tropical country compared to the north.  This woman sits by herself.  Her daughter has gone off with some man and later on I see her daughter with her carrying an oxygen tank (small), all bent over, using 4 prong cane.  I don't ask questions, either an accident or friend got out of hand.  But, the woman is back on the bench with her iced tea looking off in the distance.  I do try to make conversation but she is very clipped with her answers, so now I just wave.  We have a little bus that comes by to pick up seniors for doctor's appointments, which is good for this small town of about 12,000.  I can see the woman does not really want company.......and honestly, neither do I, but I tried.  Now we just wave at each other.  We do have a senior center in town.  One of the women I met at the mailbox was a retired school teacher and was telling me how the senior center gave out food.  She kept trying to get me to take something from her back seat.  She carries it all to her church members.  I think poverty is scattered all over the country.  She fell and her daughter now has her in her home.  I miss her (but never looked in the back seat of her car).  

I moved here because I  wanted to hear life all around me.  I hear it.  My "friend" Brian, I have quit picking up his beer cans and throwing them away, now I put them in front of his door.  One day last week he threw about six in our front yard.  Now this place landscapes all the time, they try to keep it clean and each season they put in new flowers all around and it is beautiful.  Wouldn't you think a grown man could pick up his six pack of beer cans?  I did complain about this.  I am not a complainer, but I want the trouble they go to making this place beautiful, beer cans do not  add to it.  So, you live among people, you have to put up with people.  And I do not mind.  That 2000 square foot house in the beautiful surroundings, the quiet, that quiet was so loud at night, no way could I stay there.  Widows on both sides of me, could not see their houses because of the terrain, senior center and town within walking distance, but  something was missing from that town that left a hole in it big enough for me to drown in, and that was Billy.

Somehow, I feel Billy approves of what I did.  We were planning on leaving.  If you want company, if you are old enough, heck, I'll bet they would take you even if you weren't, go to the senior center in your town if you want to see and hear people.  But again, that is damned if you do and damned if you don't.  There are answers, but Billy is not there and neither are any of your husbands and wives, but if you are drowning in your own silence, in your own pain, in your own personal existence, there are answers.  Might not be any fun.  Heck, might be a total drag, but you will hear human voices.......maybe the voices in your head are enough company.  Honestly, I love hearing the life around me, but I also am comfortable in my own skin, other than my aches, pains, and physical disabilities, which I will live with  till I don't.  

[kayc]

19 hours ago, Marg M said:

Who knew the chin was connected to the colon..  TMI.

I don't know, but if my chin starts quivering, I'm getting worried!  Marg, I love the way you put things, you can make even something serious sound funny.    I don't know about the voices in our heads being enough company though.

@CairnLady  That sounds pretty tough.  Similar to Gwen's situation.  I've had to build my life into something I can live, enough getting out being around people balanced with enough solitude, time at home with my dog and cat.  But when people can't get out and don't really want to be around people, I don't know how you balance anything!  Animals help, but Gwen has dogs but that still doesn't help with the pain or need for actual help.  They help with stress, love, touch, interaction, but they sure don't do the dishes or mow the lawn!

When my mom was alive I remember senior services offering her someone to help her so many hours a week, they could pay bills, run errands, clean house, get groceries, drive her...but she wasn't someone to give that much "control" to someone else so she wouldn't go for it.

 

[Margm]

5 minutes ago, kayc said:

But when people can't get out and don't really want to be around people, I don't know how you balance anything!

We can make suggestions that seem to help us.  But, everyone has to make their own path.  If they cannot hear people, perhaps it is because they do not want to go down that path.  They remember it when they had someone to walk it with them.  It was a beautiful path.  Billy and I used to walk every dirt road probably within 100 mile radius.  Saw and heard things I had never heard or seen.  Beautiful rivers hidden in forests that people never felt the need to visit.  There were waterfalls on these little rivers and one time we climbed a hill and below us was a pool and it was filled with fish.  We could watch them.  Walking down those roads together were the happiest times of my life.  But, he no longer walks them with me.  My walking them alone brings painful memories of a time that was happy.  Time is not happy now.  Billy said if I died, which we both thought I would, I would not be laden down with worries.  Now, he took that path and he left me alone to walk the other one, and no one can do it for me, for you, for them, or anyone else.  You have to make your own path or you stand still.  But, if that is your choice, no one can walk that path for you.  It is your path.

[kayc]

2 hours ago, Marg M said:

We can make suggestions that seem to help us.  But, everyone has to make their own path.  If they cannot hear people, perhaps it is because they do not want to go down that path.

Wiser words were never spoken, Marg.

[CairnLady]

Never said I didn’t want to be around people, so don’t make assumptions. I said I didn’t have much trust in people. My experiences have taught me to be wary. And being around people just for the sake of being around people doesn’t abate the loneliness. I miss my husband, not “people”, since “people” have done nothing but judge and abandon me since he died. And yes, I am fully aware it is my own path to walk. 

[kayc]

I'm sorry I misunderstood.  I wasn't trying to draw assumptions.