Blog 5

I am a nerd. I love school. I love reading my assignments. I love learning. I love doing my tests. I was so excited when I first read the class syllabus and saw that we got to write a paper for our Mid-Term. I prefer writing a paper to doing just about anything.

However, I just turned in 5 pages of crap. I am so worn down and exhausted from this past month. My grandmother was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and naturally, all the work with getting her back and forth to doctor's appointments, securing a place in an Alzheimer's unit at an assisted living facility, lining up people to help sit with her and make sure she stays on track until she gets moved...all those things fall to my mom, who is dealing with health issues of her own, which means that the overflow falls to me. I work full-time and since my employers can't dig their heads out of their asses, I am working both 1st and 3rd shifts every week. I don't know when I am supposed to be sleeping, which leads to super fun migraines which take the life out of me, not that I have much left. Plus, it's mid-term week for all my classes and I am blowing them all. This all in addition to the fact that I live an hour and a half away from my mom and grandmother.

What makes this topic so frustrating to me is not that I have to help my mom help her mom, but that it is already falling to me to do so because my mother's siblings won't step up and help my mom. Her two older brothers are both of the mind that she just needs to go into a nursing home, because really they just don't want to deal with her. My mom's oldest brother asked her why she keeps taking my grandma to the doctor and getting new meds and having more tests run when "her life is already over?"  SHE'S 69!!! And he has just given up because things finally got a little tough. And my mom's other 3 siblings just listen to him because he's the oldest and he's a man! My heart grieves for my poor grandma because my uncle is easily her favorite child and she doesn't understand why he doesn't come around anymore. I am not upset at the sacrifices that I have had to make to help my mom and my grandma because they both love me and took care of me my entire life, but I am furious at the injustice of my aunts and uncles throwing away their mother because her care is finally going to cost them more than a card on her birthday and a cheaply chosen gift at Christmas.

And to be honest, the selfish part of me wonders why I have to go through this now when I know that I will have to go through it with my own mother in another 25-30 years. Isn't it enough to have to watch one person you love deteriorate in a lifetime? If Alzheimer's is indeed hereditary and my mom ends up with it...

Sorry for a rant that has nothing to do with anything. Basically, I am going for broke with my final assignment for Mid-Term week. I just don't have anything left in me.  

Blog 4

When I was 13, I asked my doctor to take all my "lady parts" out because I was never going to have babies. He laughed and said I would change my mind once I got older.

When I was 27, I asked my doctor what I had to do to get a partial hysterectomy and he laughed (same doc as when I was 13) and said that I would change my mind one day.

Finally, about a yeara nd a half ago, at 28 1/2 , I asked my new female physician what I needed to do to get a partial hysterectomy because I KNOW with 100% certainty that I never want to carry a child, and she told me that I had to meet one of the following criteria: 1. be 30 years old, 2. have given birth to 3 children already, or 3. have a medical reason to do so. 

I went in last week for my yearly check-up and asked her about it again because I will be 30 on October the 8th and this time she gave me the name and number to a gynecologist in town and told me I would have to take it up with him. I went for my consultation this past Friday and left there so mad I could have spit! He basically informed me that insurance would never pay for it because I have no medical need to do so, that even if I plead my case to them, it would take months of mental health counseling and probably a mandatory class or 2 at some well-baby facility. Then he told me to wait until I got married and then decide whether or not I still wanted to go through it. 

Are you kidding me? Why don't I get to choose whether or not I have these parts in me? Just because I am female, I must certainly want to have children, the miracle of life, blah, blah, blah...NO!! I don't want any of that. If I ever choose to have kids, they will be adopted, pure and simple. I think that pregnancy is disgusting and I would resent a child should I ever choose to carry one. I understand that this is not the typical response, but it's mine and it should be valid. I am a healthy woman, educated and of sound mind and body and I don't want to have babies! Still, someone else gets to decide whether or not I should have to keep the parts of my anatomy that would cater to one. It will never stop pissing me off that I don't have the final say in the matter. The vengeful and spiteful part of me hopes that these doctors live until I hit menopause so I can go in there, CHILDFREE, and say "SEE!!" Grrrr....