Winter, whining and work

I have depression issues. They are much better in the last five or so years, but I still have trouble in the winter. I think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The first time I went to college, I went to a really hard college. Just take my word for it. Problem was, my high school really didn’t teach me what they said they did, so I didn’t do very well in any of my 4 core classes (maybe another blog in that one.) I did okay in P.E. (required for freshman), Lit, and an elective (I was insane and decided to take something for fun.)

So winter came along. I thought I was flunking out (so did everyone, it turns out).  I got depressed but didn’t realize it at the time. I talked to my mom and she was like “okay, do whatever you think is best” which is the most advice she has ever given me since I was 12. I looked at the thousands of dollars in loans already… I went to the counselor and said I wanted to take a leave. She was like “okay, bye, come back when you feel like it” and that was the end of that.

I got a series of crappy jobs, and partied at that college for 4 years until my class graduated.

Then I moved because of a man and enrolled in another college. For the next four years, every winter, that man talked me out of dropping out of school and I still am grateful. I didn’t see it as a pattern then, but he got me through it.

Unfortunately, he was also into “open relationships” and I went along with it. In another period of depression, I left him for another man.  My depression really killed that marriage. (Well, okay, and the way I felt when my husband tried to get me to leave bars with other people and not him. Another blog?)

Over the years I’ve quit 24 jobs. I suspect many of these were not as bad as I thought, it was just winter. I’d get mad at something in January, stew over it til March, get some energy and start job hunting, have a new job by June, enjoy it for a few months… repeat.

I started this blog one winter, to complain about my job, and my lack of friends.

[I had friends, I just never called them or accepted their invitations. I was already trying to change this, then my cancer diagnosis kicked me into "say yes whenever possible" mode for a while (in the summer, of course.) So I feel like they are my friends again. They still don't know me as well as some folks reading this do. I still may whine about them so I am still not telling them about this blog. Also, my job and my friends are interrelated in crazy ways so I don't want them to read that stuff either.]

Last year, I took classes at community college. Winter came as a welcome break between fall and spring semesters. Laying around doing nothing didn’t seem so bad and I had friends at school to look forward to in a few weeks.

This year… well, here I am, basically healthy except for some dry skin where they are irradiating me… and I’m in a worse mood than I was during the summer when I was on chemo, ached all over, and had to avoid germy places like movie theatres and other fun places.

ANYway. I’m basically fine. I spent yesterday at work trying to convey the message “I have no idea what to do here” through ESP and lack of action. My boss (my “real boss”) either didn’t notice and disappeared or did notice and disappeared. The customer received no reply. She’s been begging us to take her money since October. We were supposed to bill her last fiscal year.

While doing the above I also watched the Daily Show, and filled about 5 orders. Each order involves a customer number lookup and paste to another database, at least two part number lookups and paste to another database, today’s date inserted twice, 3 copy and pastes of  text fields from email or a unix window, some nonsense in a filler field, choose “yes” from a popup. Print two copies and mail them one. Send them passwords and stuff in email.

This entire process could and should and actually has been automated. Yes, most of the other places that use our vendor have each person use their store front. We charge our customers an extra fee to consolidate their orders and slow things down. Most of our customers probably think I’m a computer program and I encourage that belief by using very sterile canned messages. Because the database I use was created by DRUNK MONKEYS and I can’t help but make mistakes and I’m ashamed for anyone to know who I am.

When I first got this job I thought we *would* automate it, and then they would give me something else to do. I’d worked in that department before and I was not worried. However, my boss said “sure” while thinking “oh we’ll beat *that* out of her.” Never before has so much ego been invested in such a worthless empire. It turns out there is so little work I can do it all in a couple of hours, so why automate it? But I must sit at my desk and act busy.

Given the current economy I’ve stopped complaining about not having enough work. Actually I had already stopped complaining. When they gave me my “foster boss”, I learned that most of the rest of the department didn’t have enough work either, and they like it like that. (And many of them hate me now.) I ended up having to take flak from their customers as my new duty, so they had even less motivation to TURN THE DAMN THING ON AND SEE IF IT WORKS after you put in the damn board. Unfortunately I figured out too late that my foster boss is just another boss and just another one of them at the same time.

SO now he’s not speaking to me either, I don’t work with those guys anymore, and I have to be at my desk at 8am. One of the perks had been that no one paid attention to my hours, but foster boss has a busy body on his team. She used to make up reasons to look for me and then send email to people who didn’t need to know, with meaningless questions. (She sets off my Mary Hart Syndrome with her high-pitched voice that can be heard through a long maze of twisty offices and hallways.)

Also, I have a timed, coded door lock and she is the person who programs them and can download the data. Last February foster boss suddenly went from “you work 9:30 to 5:30 right?” to making me sign papers saying I worked 8-4:30. During that fight he said “don’t act like you’ve never had a job before” and instant messaged me “you sure know how to suck up a person’s time”. This from a boss I had not seen for months, and had just spent a total of less than an hour communicating with. Yes, I’ve had real jobs before, and this ain’t one of them. He was already yelling at me before I even understood what he was really asking me to do.

We had a meeting with a third party in June to discuss my chemo/telecommuting schedule. I have not had a conversation with him since. This is the man who is supposed to be my “buffer” with my “real” boss. But he told me years ago he doesn’t read any of that email anymore because he doesn’t understand it. I avoid him in the hallways now, because I don’t want him to think that he’s “supervising me” by smiling and grimacing as he passes.

Ah well I NEED THE BENEFITS. This is my mantra. Good thing I hadn’t gotten around to quitting to be a preschool sub with no insurance…….

Boring post

Hey there, still here… a lot less ouchy, got my four barely visible radiation-targeting-tattoos today… starting radiation on Monday… Five days a week for 6.5 weeks.

I need to get me some prescription underwear, but it’s a 40 minute drive from work during rush hour. I’m taking this as an excuse to run around without a bra.

Still ouchy

I got drained again today. There was less fluid than Monday, so hopefully this will end soon. I’m still ouchy and it is making me VERY CRANKY.

She told me to quit panicking, and get more sunshine. She gave me a big hug and said it would be okay.

No tattoos for you today, young lady!

I lived through the aspiration yesterday. It wasn’t bad, it didn’t hurt at the time (really only a couple of glimmers of weird feeling in the midst of weird numbness) but it was kind of sore afterward. I might have to go back, but I won’t be as freaked out. She got over 100 CCs of fluid, which is enough to fill one of those grenade drains.

I went to get my radiation tattoos (that they will use to target the radation treatments) but I’m still too swollen. If the area changes too much, they might have to do the “simulation” over again, so I won’t get my tattoos until next week (probably.)

Thanks for all your kind words. I’m at work so I can’t address them all individually at the moment but they all make me feel good.

Aspirations of aspiration

I’m trying to grow a new breast… I’m blowing up like Violet Beauregarde…

I have an appointment in a bit over an hour and hopefully it will help and not hurt too much. Thinking about it will hopefully have been the worst part. The swelling scares me, the needle aspiration of fluid scares me… it all makes me want to barf.

(Don’t worry it’s not that bad, I still managed to have pizza for breakfast.)

Down the Drain

As I whined about here in the comments, after my surgery they left a drain tube in my chest. It was very uncomfortable. When I bent forward, it felt like it was poking me from the inside, and sometimes when I moved around, the place where it came out my side felt a pinch.

I finally got it removed last Monday, having barely qualified in terms of “output” (the amount of stuff collected by the drain.)

Halfway through the “drain days” I spoke with a nurse on the phone. She mentioned she had hers for three weeks, and gave me some tips about not moving and causing more “output.” After that conversation, I walked around with my arm practically pinned to my side.

When the drain got removed, I expected it to be a huge relief, which it was, but it hurt more for a few days. Plus my muscles are tweaked from being unnaturally tense and holding my arm to my side. Plus I think the nerves are regrowing where the surgery was, so once in a while it feels like someone jabbed me with a needle.

And I keep wondering what this hard lump is; I expected it to be flat. Finally I realized at least part of it is my pectoral muscle. But the physician’s assistant said if it starts looking like I am “growing a breast” that it would mean fluid is building up and they’d have to drain it with a needle. She said it would not hurt because it would be in the scar area. I sure wish I knew what it was supposed to look like…

Next week I have my radiation tattoos, and the next day my herceptin. Then I guess about a week later I’ll be taking my lunches to “go to the tanning booth.” I think I’m going to list that as my status when I leave work for radiation.

My oncologist’s secretary was about to transfer me to the radiation office, but she stopped and said “Oh. By the way. Radiation is a piece of cake.” She paused and then said “compared to chemo.” It was nice of her to reassure me. My oncologist’s staff are the cream of the crop and spoil me, so that when other doctors’ staff don’t measure up, I get confused.

So I had the drain out Monday, sat around and whined on Tuesday, and went to w*rk on Wednesday. It took me until halfway through Thursday to get caught up enough to get bored…. I’m sure there was some work I could have found to do but screw that. They are lucky I showed up at all

We have houseguests coming for the weekend but I am going to try to act helpless. Maybe they will clean my house. It should be interesting. They are both female. One of them lives in a fairly spotless house and the other one has been homesteading and does not quite *have* a house yet, only trailers and partial structures. She visits when she wants to have a nice long bath. They are both long time Deadhead friends of my husband so I just blame the state of the house on him. They’ve been here before so I can’t really blame my illness

I’m feeling pretty good. It’s still a bit ouchy from time to time and my muscles still feel very tight. Mostly I’m tired from staying up watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on hulu to catch up on the news, and some South Park. My husband left town on business on Wednesday and will be back tonight. I always stay up late screwing around on the internet when he’s gone.

That is all for now. Thanks, everyone, for all the support!

Surgery

I reported for surgery at 8:30 on a Monday morning. I had to fast, starting at midnight, including NO COFFEE. That was like adding insult to injury.

I sat on the couch and told my husband “I changed my mind. I don’t WANNA” but we went on over anyway.

I had two pieces of paper given to me at the same time by the same person, the previous week. One of them said to report to the third floor. It was highlighted by hand. The other said to report to the first floor. It was underlined by hand. So we left a bit early and reported to the third floor (which is street level.) They called someone, (probably made sure I already paid my copay)  and sent us to the first floor.

Some guy pushing something or other got into the elevator with us. After a while, he said “do you like movies?” We nodded, and I thought “oh great, conversation, bah.” He went on “I heard some actress stabbed her husband” and I thought “I don’t need to hear this” but we smiled politely. He said her name was “Reese… um… Reese…” I kept quiet for a minute but no one said anything and he kept saying “Reese…”

As the elevator opened on the first floor I finally said “Witherspoon?” and he looked at me, and said “No with a knife.”

I almost slugged him but I pulled back, laughing. I think he could tell though.

How random is that? I walked into the waiting area for my surgery still laughing. Which I assume is not that normal.

Some poor girl was asleep in a chair. When she woke up she said she had been there since 5am. I hoped we would not wait that long. Soon though they moved us to a booth, where I sat in a chair that looked more comfy than it was, after changing into their gowns and trick “compression socks”.

A nurse asked me a bunch of all the same questions, including what procedure was I there for. Then she marked my right breast with an “X” and threw out the pen. (My husband pulled it out later and I’m using it to note when I take my meds and empty my drain. Don’t worry, it was sitting on top of clean trash.)

We were glad she marked the breast, as we had been tempted to do it, and I thought my husband might try to follow me to surgery to make sure. She marked it high up, and the mark is still visible.

The nurse left us and we sat there until around 11. Then they took me by wheelchair  to “pre-op” where I laid on a gurney. A few people came and talked to me, including the anethesiologist, and the surgeon. The surgeon walked into the room and stood there, and I could recognize her even without my glasses. I peered at her and she said “oh that *is* you” and I said the same. She talked to me a bit and even gave me a hug.

The anesthesiologist was nice, too, and made me feel reassured.

Finally they wheeled me around a bunch of hallways (due to some construction, they had to go the long way round.) Then they used some tricky thing that blows up like a raft, and moved me over to the operating table. I feel sure the anesthesiologist had something to say at that point but I can’t remember it….

Next thing I knew I was in a recovery room. My legs kept shivering violently.

Someone else in the recovery room woke up yelling “it hurts, it hurts, oh ow ow ow it hurts.” People gathered around him and he kept yelling. After a while I asked someone “I didn’t do that when I was waking up, did I?” She assured me that I did not, and said it was uncommon.

After a while there, they wheeled me to my room. Right outside my room, I saw my husband standing there. I looked at him and said “hey buddy.” (This is our term of endearment.)

The look of relief and love on his face in that moment, I will never forget.