• Meet Me
    • Why If By Yes?
  • Meet Perfect Husband
  • Meet The Babbies

If By Yes

~ the musings of a left wing left hander with two left feet

If By Yes

Category Archives: I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone…

People Give Me Funny Looks, And Now I Know Why.

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by IfByYes in Autism, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Autism, introvert, obsession, weird

Do you ever get people looking at you in a certain way after you’ve said something? And their look is telling you, “you are not normal and your experience is not my experience”?

I do. All. The. Time.

I wish I had a witty name for the look that people give me, but I don’t. I just think of it as That Look.

It’s a little wide-eyed, and there’s usually a glance to the side – as if the looker is uncomfortable with aiming it directly at me. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a little smile – that’s the amused variety. It comes in several flavours, you see.

Besides That Look (amused), there’s also That Look (amazed), That Look (oh come on), and That Look (this chick is seriously messed up).

I don’t get it from friends and family… much. When it does happen, they often look at each other while they do it, which is extra special.

Mostly it’s from strangers, but only in certain settings.

I never get That Look from clients at work. So whatever it is about me that prompts That Look, it doesn’t happen when I’m in a position of knowledge, educating others about their dog’s behaviour and/or health.

No, it happens when a friend has a birthday and invites a bunch of her friends out somewhere and I find myself chatting with a bunch of perfectly nice and funny ladies. I start talking about something I find interesting and then bam – there it is. That Look.

It also happens in clinical settings. Back when I was in my Generalized Anxiety Disorder group, for example. I got it several times from the leaders of the group. In that case, it was a flavour of (amazed) followed by the words, “that is the most elaborate justification of anxiety I have ever heard.” The second time it was the rare and highly prized (impressed) variety, followed by, “what an excellent metaphor. Yes. Exactly.”

In every case, it happens when I’m either talking about something I have been thinking about, or describing my actual thought processes themselves.

I know I’m a thinker.

I even know I’m an over-thinker.

What can I say? I live in my head, and as I grow older I have become more and more uncomfortably aware that my experience is not the same as most other people’s experience.

Mostly because of That Look.

I’ve often tried to describe to others how I see the world, though I’m not sure how successful I have been at it.

Here is a couple of ways I have used in the past:

My Head As A Room

Imagine that you are in a comfortable room. There’s lots to do in there so you aren’t bored, but if someone needs to talk to you, or if you need to look outside for any reason, you need to talk through the one window in the room, which is uncomfortably over your head. You need to stand on your bed and balance on your tip-toes to look out properly, and talk to people outside or interact with the outside world. This is nice, of course, but it does get tiring after a while. What is especially annoying is when you do get tired so you start sitting down on your bed for a rest but people keep rapping on your window and making you stand up again.

My Head As Underwater

I also sometimes envision my head as being underwater. Sounds are muted, I’m comfortably floating, and I’m in my own world. When I have to interact with the outside, I have to swim up to the surface and tread water. It’s cold out there and I’m exposed to the elements so whenever I get a chance I sink back down.

I like this metaphor but I don’t think it works for other people because a lot of people associate underwater with drowning, and that would make my above metaphor sound bad. So then I try to reverse it, with having to put my head UNDER the water to interact with the world and getting increasingly desperate to come up for a breath but you can’t because everyone else is pulling you down.

That is probably a more accurate picture for most people even if it feels backwards to me.

That’s the problem with metaphors, though, isn’t it? An extrovert listening to my room analogy might think of the room as a prison and the pestering people at the window as rescuers, and that isn’t how I feel at all.

So maybe that’s why I feel like I never successfully conveyed to anyone quite how it feels to be me. But I have always had a nagging suspicion that other people don’t experience life quite the way I do.

That Look is only one of the reasons.

Certain adjectives tend to come up a lot when people talk about me.

“Obsessive” is a common one. People have called me “obsessed” and “obsessive” since childhood, and I’ve embraced it. I get obsessed with stuff. I get fascinated with something, whether it is Harry Potter or dogs or babywearing or whatever. I research the hell out of it. I spend hours learning about it, reading about it.

“You’re obsessed with animals.”

“You’re obsessed with wolves.”

“You’re obsessed with that guy.”

I heard it so often that I took it for granted. Yup, I’m obsessive. And it’s that obsessiveness which often prompts That Look, because I’ll know far more about a subject than anyone would expect or consider normal.

I’m also incompetent.

To be fair, I’m the one who applies that adjective to myself. But I can’t help it. I can’t even put my underwear on properly! I find everyday tasks that others seem to perform effortlessly to be complicated and tricky.

Even Perfect Husband, who routinely applies adjectives like “amazing” and “wonderful” to me, has taken to blowing his top lately over my little idiocies.

He came downstairs once to find me stuffing more fish in an already-full pot of water until the water overflowed and hissed into steam on the hot stove.

“What the HELL did you think would happen?” he raged in exasperation.

For years I’ve shunted stuff like that off, blaming baby brain when I microwaved my yogurt, or stress when a hallucinated adding cornmeal to my shopping cart. But I’m not pregnant. I’m not nursing. And while I’m anxious and overworked and stressed, I don’t think I can blame that forever.

The fact is that while I barely had to study for classes like Radiology or Cytology, my friends in Vet Tech school had to spend hours – literally HOURS – helping me practice folding surgical towels and gowns because I could NOT get it right.

The fact is that I found it easy – no, enjoyable – to forgo all other forms of recreation, giving up television and even my beloved reading to write and publish a 200,000 words sequel to my book over the last year… but I still can’t find a way to make myself wash the dishes on a routine basis.

I’m a mess of extremes, unable to do anything by halves, either sucking at it or excelling at it with very little in between.

And it makes people give me That Look.

And whenever I get that look, it reminds me that I am Other. There’s something about me which is not quite normal.

Perfect Husband says I’m obsessed (there’s that word again!) with figuring out what’s “normal”. But imagine one day, casually mentioning to someone how blue the sky is, only to get That Look from someone and hear, “The sky is pink.” And you say, “what are you talking about? It’s a lovely sunny day and the sky is blue.” And the person says, “the sky is never blue. Skies aren’t blue except maybe at sunrise sometimes. Are you feeling okay?”

So then you start telling someone else about your weird friend who is convinced that the sky is pink, but everyone you talk to assures you that the sky is pink, has always been pink, and that a blue sky sounds plain weird.

Now imagine that this happens to you again and again throughout your life.

Wouldn’t you start asking around whenever someone disagrees with you?

“So and so says I’m weird because of X. But doesn’t everyone do/think/experience X?”

“Uh… no…” they say and then they give you That Look.

Reality is a tipsy turvy kind of a place, and people are constantly trying to convince you that it’s something other than what you see or experience. I think it is understandable for you to become a bit obsessed with trying to figure out what is real, and what the hell everyone else is experiencing.

What it is about you that makes people give you That Look because sometimes, you don’t even know.

And then, one day last month, I read an article that sounded in me like a gong.

It was called “I Thought I Was Lazy” and it tells the story of a girl who just couldn’t figure out how everyone else did things like keeping their room tidy and getting their errands done. Therapists and counsellors suggested apps and time management tricks and none of it worked and no one could understand why, least of all her.

I bet she got That Look a lot.

Well, long story short, it turns out she’s autistic.

I’ve been interested in autism for a long time. I’ve read Carly Fleishman’s book and I follow her online. I follow Ido Kedar and Marco Arturo, too. I loved reading The Spark. When people talk about “lighting it up blue” for Autism Speaks, I go around posting articles explaining to people that Autism Speaks is considered a hate group by actual autistic people.

Just the week before I read that Establishment article I made a donation to ASAN, an actual GOOD autism charity.

But never have I thought I could be autistic.

I’m chatty. I look people in the eyes. I mean, when I was a kid I remember being confused by the direction to “look me in the eyes”. I was never sure which eye to look at. But I’m sure we ALL went through that, right? I mean, that’s just part of growing up and learning how to interact with others right?

Right?

Anyway, I understand and use subtext in speech like sarcasm and metaphorical language, too.

Okay, so Perfect Husband has always joked that I… well, I and my mother’s whole side of the family, are amusingly literal, and he has a couple of funny anecdotes to back it up

…And okay, so we do have one case of diagnosed Asperger’s on that side of the family, not to mention a couple of people who everyone knows is probably Aspie but get along just fine so what does it matter?

But according to the article I was reading in The Establishment, our classic picture of autism – Asperger’s or otherwise – is a masculine manifestation. After all, most autistic people are male. Autistic women are rare.

Or maybe they aren’t.

It turns out that women with autism are less likely to suffer from blatant social symptoms. They “mask” better, learning how to look people in the eyes and learning social interaction by rote instead of instinctively.

They are more likely to seek out friendships and while they have the sort of obsessions that autistic people are prone to, they tend to be more gender-acceptable things – dolls or celebrities… or animals.

Like me.

And unlike most autistic men, women are more likely to suffer from executive dysfunction – rather than being pathologically neat and tidy, they may be pathologically disorganized and chaotic.

Like me.

Not to say that there aren’t women who present with the classical “male” symptoms – of course there are. They’re the ones most likely to get diagnosed. And there are boys out there too who may be able to mask socially but suffer in other ways, and they may slip under the radar.

So this isn’t totally a sex-based thing.

But women are more likely to present in this kind of muted-autism that people don’t notice.

So I started Googling.

Holy crap, did the descriptions sound exactly like me.

High verbal skills, crappy life skills. Likely artistic or a writer, likely interested in animals. Great long-term memory, shitty short-term memory. Prone to black-and-white thinking. Finds interacting with other people to be extremely exhausting. Easily stressed. Freaks out if too much is asked of her. Loves to talk about her “special interests” (autistic for ‘obsessions’). Would rather engage in special interest rather than interact with friends or family. History of being bullied by peers. Childlike voice.

The lists go on and on and on and it’s ALL ME.

Maybe, when I stand on tiptoe to look out at the world and interact with it… maybe that is me trying to peer out from my autism.

Maybe I’m not just an uber introvert who has to exert myself massively to do the least thing – Maybe I’m autistic.

So I took the lists to Perfect Husband. At first, he was gently cautious, but he read the lists… and he started pointing things out.

“Look at this – overreacts to the slightest criticism. Hmmm!“

“Yep,” I said.

“Likes things to be the same day after day!”

“Uh huh.”

“Ability to “hyperfocus” for long periods of time involved in the special interest.”

“Like the book I’m writing? Yep.”

He was as fascinated as I was.

“I don’t do this, though,” I would say, dismissing one.

“Uh… yes you do, love,” PH would reply.

Far from dismissing me, he became even more firmly convinced than I.

“Holy crap,” he said at one point. “You’re autistic. Suddenly the last ten years make so much more sense.”

It was as big a revelation for him as it was for me. Maybe bigger.

Because for years and years we’ve had fights about how I said something one way and he took it another way. It had been coming to a head recently, to the point where he actually accused me of sighing passive aggressively. I kept insisting that I really didn’t mean what I said the way he took it, but he didn’t believe me.

I thought he was unreasonably touchy.

He thought I was incredibly bitchy.

And the word “autism” changed all of that in a heartbeat.

“You would complain about something or other – some NOTHING of a thing – and I would think that the only reason for you to do that would be to rub it in, because it was a thing I used to do, and can’t do now because of my depression,” he said. “But now I realize – it’s because, for you, it wasn’t nothing. It was a really difficult and scary thing.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” I said.

“But now I get it,” he said.

When I mentioned it to other people, though, people who don’t see me with my mask off, people who don’t see how hard I work to peer out of my little cozy room, they dismissed me. After all, lists like that are a dime a dozen. Isn’t that what astrology is based on? Vague descriptions that could be anybody?

But when I pulled out the list and started reading it off, none of the women I was in the room with could identify with the things that were ME OH MY GOD SO TOTALLY ME.

Besides, if you know me at all by now, you’ll know that I didn’t stop there.

I found rating scales, online quizzes, even long complex tests based on years of data.

Guys, on professional rating scales I come comfortably over the line for Autism/Asperger’s (Asperger’s no longer exists as a diagnosis in North America, so I’ll be referring to it as Autism).

34 on the Baron-Cohen scale (threshold 28)

126 on the Ritvo Scale (threshold 65)

And finally, I went on Tumblr (where all the autistic people be for some reason) and submitted a description of myself to an autism blog, asking, “Is this right? Could I really be autistic?”

The blogger responded that self-diagnosis is common and well accepted in the autism community since it is so difficult to get a diagnosis in adulthood. They said that based on my description I could well be autistic and it was okay to consider myself as such if I thought it fit.

And someone else chimed in saying that “if you can relate to an experience, you’re having the experience.”

I showed it to PH.

“Yer an autist, Harry,” he said.

Yes. I think I am. I think I may have finally found the reason for That Look. I won’t stop getting it. But the next time it happens… at least I’ll know why.

 

 

In Which I Hide From Adult Responsibilities In Ridiculous Pipe Dreams

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by IfByYes in I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Me vs The Sad, TwiBashing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

books, life, Twilight, writing

I like to hide from reality.

I mean, my reality is mess right now. I never know when I get up in the morning how much work/parenting I’m going to have to do. PH’s energy levels vary from “practically functional” to “zzzzzzz”. I almost always do the morning diapers/breakfast/clothes/school routine (although PH did handle things this morning, giving me the first sleep in I have had in many moons). Evenings, though, vary wildly. Sometimes he cooks dinner and puts the baby down. Other times I cook dinner and put both kids to sleep.

Then there’s work. I’m working part time at the vet clinic because I like a steady cash stream. But they’re always badgering me to work more. In dire circumstance, I agree, and then I feel guilty for putting more burden on PH. Other times, like today, I refuse and feel guilty and worthless for not being able to do my job.

On top of the clinic job, I’m supposed to be focusing on my dog training career. But I have extremely mixed feelings about my dog training. On the one hand, I enjoy teaching classes and helping people with their dogs privately… WHILE I AM DOING IT. The process of arranging appointments, booking appointments, calling back prospective clients etc etc fills me with crippling levels of anxiety.

So I haven’t been doing it much.

Instead of focusing on actually getting work, instead I’ve been focusing on a complete pipe-dream.

My book.

chemistry-final-cover-image

Remember when I first starting complaining about Twilight, and I made my Rowling vs Meyer rants? Well, for NaNoWriMo in 2012 I wrote a book which I intended to be a sort of Twilight parody, featuring a strong female character named Stella and a gentle zombie love interest named Howard.

But as I worked on it, it stopped being a parody and became a unique book in its own right. I got attached to Stella and Howie, and I realized that in order for it to be a true opposite of Twilight it would need to have a complex plot, three dimensional characters and so on. So I spent years and years achieving that.

After years of beta readers’ feedback and re-writes and re-re-writes and obsessive editing, I’ve decided to finally publish the thing. And so, when I should be out leaving flyers for my dog training business or working more hours at the clinic, I’ve spent it getting my book published.

It’s scheduled to come out in December. I have an author website, and a Facebook page, and an instagram account. I have it available for pre-order on kindle, and it’s listed on Goodreads. I’ve arranged a giveaway on The Militant Baker‘s website on November 30th. I am setting up advertising. I have it listed on Netgalley for review (hopefully they’ll be gentle – Netgalley readers are notoriously tough). I have mailed copies to the big pre-publication review houses.

Whenever I get a free moment I spend it on promoting my stupid feminist zombie book.

Because the thing is, what I really want to do is stay home and write all day. Not call people back about their dogs (as much as I love dogs) or work at a vet clinic. I love writing. That’s what I want to do.

Or at least, I think I do. So far, I have only gotten rave reviews on my book. I’ve emailed free copies to strangers and they have replied with enthusiasm. A complete stranger, who reviews books harshly from what I can tell from his Goodreads account, said my book “far surpasses what it was inspired by” and called it a “masterpiece” and that MADE MY DAY. Another, a children’s author who has won a bunch of awards from her book, said she stayed up all night reading it. And man, that got me through another day.

But if a rave review can make my day, what will a negative review do? Because I’ll get them. It’s a book full of swear words and feminism so some people out there are going to HATE IT. I like to think that I’ll be okay with it as long as people hate it for the right reasons (feminism) and not because they think I’m a hack.

I think that when it is finally published and more reviews come in, I’m in for an emotional rollercoaster.

But in the meantime, I am living in this dream world where my book could be adored by everyone and I could become a famous author and stay home and just write in a white room with a lovely view.

That makes much more sense than just, like, dealing with reality, right?

The True Hallmark of Mother’s Day: Taking What We Can Get

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by IfByYes in I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

beach, five year old, holidays, mother's day, one year old, parenthood, reality

Every year we are flooded by media about Mother’s Day from all of the retailers hoping to sell stuff to us. Radio ads urge husbands and sons to buy diamonds. Chocolates and flowers grace the most prominent areas of the grocery store, and everyone posts old photos of their mother or pictures of their own children with glowing social media boasts about love and being blessed and that sort of crap.


But under that, there is a current of disappointment. The people whose mothers have died and hurt to be reminded, the people whose mothers were just… really terrible at being a mother, and not really worthy of being honored, the people who wish they were mothers, or were ALMOST mothers, but aren’t…

…and the mothers of young children who face a day like any other – but with the added bitterness that comes from the contrast between their lives and the Mother’s Day commercials.


I am sure that some mothers out there got the Hallmark Card Mother’s Day – they got breakfast in bed and spent the day with guilt-free leisure while their usual jobs were done by others.

But I don’t know any of those mothers.

Every mother I spoke to – mothers of small children like I am – said that they had a good Mother’s Day… really… I mean, yeah, it was mostly the same as any other day, but there was something good about it.

A friend of mine got breakfast in bed. I mean, she had to buy the bacon and hashbrowns the day before, and she had to poke her husband and tell him to go make them for her, and he didn’t actually cook the hashbrowns, but she got bacon and eggs in bed and she figured that was good enough, really.

Another friend of mine had a nice barbecue at the house of a good friend of hers. And sure, her husband didn’t want to go at all and complained loudly about having to go – or maybe he didn’t go at all in the end, I don’t remember. Anyway, she went because she wanted to and she had a nice time, although she was annoyed about having to have a relationship fight in the process.

man-giving-gift

And as for me, well the baby slept until 9 am and PH dealt with Owl before that, so I got the best sleep in I have had in months, and then after the kids were in bed at night I sent PH to get me some pasta from my favourite restaurant, and some wine, and then I ate it at 9:30 pm while watching Mythbusters. So that was good.

During the day, I met up with another friend of mine (who had all three of her small children with her all day because her recently separated ex had decided to spend Mother’s Day cooking breakfast for other mothers at a Kinsman event and so was not available to help or do anything for the mother of his own kids) and we went to the beach.


The beach was nice, in a visiting-it-with-ungrateful-children sort of way. First they complained that they were cold. They refused to go near the water. They didn’t want to play in the sand. They wanted to go home and play video games.

But we, being experienced mothers, informed them that we didn’t give a tiny rat’s ass (not our actual words) how they felt, and we settled down on the sand anyway.


Fritter loved the beach. She ate sand and then when I carried her down to the water she happily splashed in the surf. She got covered in sand and thought it was fantastic.

The boys eventually warmed up to the beach. When they stopped whining about video games and claiming to be hungry despite having JUST eaten lunch, and when we put an end to their stick-based warfare, they finally started discovering crabs and sea shells and sand castles.


So our last hour there was quite peaceful, watching the kids dump sand into a puddle on a rock while Fritter followed them and tried to help, grabbing handfuls of sand in her tiny fists. We listened to the surf and smelled the sea air and looked at the mountains and enjoyed the sunshine and it was lovely.


At least until the boys started hitting each other with sticks again.

Of course, no Mother’s Day would be complete without a child asking the annual littany of  “why isn’t there a BOY’S day?” to which all of the present adults must answer in chorus, “EVERY DAY is BOY’S DAY.”

I’ll give this to Owl – he accepted the point of Mother’s Day very well. When I pointed out to my friend’s son that he got breakfast made for him every day, and that he got taken care of every day, he just argued that he couldn’t do those things yet. And of course I agreed but told him that that is why it is nice if, once a year, someone does those things in return for the mother who normally has to work at caring for other people and rarely for herself.

My friend’s son looked unconvinced but Owl took my side. Lord knows the poor kid hears me complain all the time about how much work I do looking after him.

In fact, he reiterated it today on the way to school. “Mother’s Day is when you get people to take care of you, instead of taking care of other people, right? But you did take care of me yesterday.”

And I told him that yes. While he is small, I don’t really get a day off. He can’t cook me breakfast, and he still needs me to make him dinner, and put him to bed. Daddy helped with some of it, so I got a break, but not the full Mother’s Day that you see in commercials. No woman with small children that I know got that. When the kids are this age, we take what we can get, because we know that Mother’s Day or not, they still need their diapers changed, and they still need to be entertained, and they still want dinner, and they don’t really give a damn how we feel about any of that.


But I do think that in a few years Owl will bring me breakfast in bed.

And in a few years, Fritter won’t need diapers changed.

And in a few years, things will be even better.

And I think that, considering the age of my kids, and life being what it is, yesterday was a darn good day.


 

In Which My Anxiety Fixates On Something That Is Completely Impossible To Prevent

02 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by IfByYes in Fritter Away, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Me vs The Sad

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

anxiety, baby blues, mental health, post partum, SIDS

In the days following Fritter’s birth, I got a lot of questions about my mood from the public health office.  They called to check on me when we got home from the hospital, a week later, and again when Fritter was six weeks old.

Through some sort of file sharing with the hospital, they know that I have a history of depression and so they kept reminding me to expect baby blues. In fact, you could tell they expected it to turn into full on post-partum depression given the whole depressed-husband-and-a-four-year-old life situation.

I expected baby blues too. I mean, that’s pretty normal. Weepiness, sobbing over Skittles commercials… that sort of thing.

But it never came.

In fact, when they took me through a depression questionnaire at the six week mark, I passed with flying colours.

IMG_2241

Look at me, all not-depressed

I don’t know why I have been spared any sort of bizarre hormonal fluctuations, or post partum depression, but I am grateful.

Maybe it was having the support of my parents and mother in law (who flew out here again once my parents returned back to Nova Scotia). I haven’t had to behave like a fully fledged adult since the nightmare that was early January.

Support. It helps.

In any case, I’m feeling pretty happy, but I DO still have my generalized anxiety gnawing at me.

When Owl was a baby, I used to fret over his head. I kept having images of accidentally crushing it like an egg or melon.

With Fritter, I am terrified of SIDS.

Continue reading →

General Life Update Featuring A Lot of Urine, Some Unfounded Fretting, and Wood Pulp

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

cardboard, cravings, depression, help, incontinence, liver pain, parents, pica, pregnancy, third trimester

Well, it’s been long enough since I posted about my life that I’m now in an awkward position because I can’t post about my current life because you wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about. So I need to clear up some of the backlog.

I know some of you are wondering how PH is doing.

He’s alive.

Generally, he is closer to staying alive than he was a couple of months ago.

But we aren’t out of the woods yet. No miracles.

If you asked me how I was doing, I could say “that DEPENDS”.

Depends, get it? No of course you don’t.

But you will.

Continue reading →

In Which A Mysterious Disease Eats Months Of My Life, Part 3

18 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by IfByYes in I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

disease, infection, intracranial hypertension, papilledema, toenails falling off

I saw the neurologist two weeks ago.

I was given a detailed form to fill out and then he admitted me into his office, flipping through the paper work.

“So, you think you have intracranial hypertension? What makes you think that?”

I described my symptoms, including the optic nerve swelling. He shone a light in my eyes.

“Yep, that’s papilledema all right. Okay, and how long have these symptoms been going on?” he said, glancing idly through the next few pages of my forms.

“Well… my eyes turned red on May 21st, and the headache and dizziness came a few days later.”

“Uh huh.” He asked a few more routine questions, and then I brought up the jaundice. He looked confused. “Jaundice?”

I guess he hadn’t read my referral from the internal medicine specialist very carefully.

“Yes,” I said patiently. “I had jaundice originally. And a rash. And lower back pain. And the my toenails fell off.”

The look on his face was priceless.

“Your TOENAILS FELL OFF?” He whirled around in his chair, stared at me, looked at PH for confirmation, and then whirled back to his computer and started looking through my bloodwork. “Okay, wait. Start from the beginning.”

Half an hour later he let me go, promising an MRI and a referral to an infectious disease specialist to try and figure out what the hell I had. He was the first doctor to actually take into consideration that I work with animals, and he wanted the ID to help rule out weird zoontic diseases.

I saw the infectious disease specialist today, which was less amusing. She was politely interested, and she gave me a requisition for some bloodwork to test for leptospirosis (looks like the original test that I requested was never actually done. She called the Center for Disease Control herself), lyme disease, brucella, q-fever… animal-related diseases. Considering I have had two people message me and point out that my symptoms match lyme disease, I think it was a good call. Although I haven’t had a tick on me since I was 15.

My MRI is scheduled for next week. We’ll see what it says.

Sometimes I feel like all these tests are pointless. Those are the times when I feel better. The visual disturbances are less than they were. I have no dizziness and only rare headaches. It does seem to be getting better slowly.

But then there are days like last Sunday, when my vision was so bad that I couldn’t read, couldn’t even really SEE. I could hear my pulse in my ears for the first time in over a week, and my head hurt badly enough that I took several extra strength Advil. The next couple of days I had continued bad visual disturbances and headaches. It seems to be settling out again, though.

At least people are finally starting to take me seriously. I could kiss that opthamologist.

In Which A Mysterious Disease Eats Months of My Life (Part 2)

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by IfByYes in I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

blackouts, headache, i can hear my pulse, optic nerve edema, vision disturbances

When we last left our hero (me), I was recovering from a jaundice of unknown etiology and losing my toenails as the aftermath of some kind of infection. I had been lulled into thinking that since my symptoms were resolving, that I was actually getting better.

I thought it was a little weird when the skin on my hands started to peel off, but figured my skin was just dry.

When PH mentioned that my eyes were looking bloodshot, I shrugged it off.

The next morning, I walked to the bathroom sink, scratching my hands irritably, to look for moisturizer, and glanced at my face in the mirror.

“Oh my GOD,” I said.

“What?” mumbled PH from the bed.

“My EYES!”

“I told you…”

I looked like a character from a Stephenie Meyer… well, I won’t say novel… collection of pages with words on them.

My eyes were flamingly bloodshot, angrier than the angriest pink eye. But they felt totally normal. No sand in my eyes, no itching, no pain. They felt normal, but looked distinctly scary.

“Well, that’s weird…”

I was also having a lot of weird muscle pains. It felt like I’d spent a day hiking up mountains, instead of two weeks lying around letting other people take care of my three year old. My  hands continued to peel, shedding large pieces of parchment-like white flakes all over our house.

20140620-105335-39215655.jpg

I booked a follow up with my useless GP when we arrived home and gave her all my records. She didn’t even shine a light in my eyes. She glanced over the paperwork I brought from Nova Scotia, and ordered repeat blood tests to make sure my liver enzymes continued to improve. She said the same thing all the other doctors had:

“I think this is some kind of a virus. Just rest and it will keep improving.”

“My mother thinks I have leptospirosis, because I work with animals and it can cause red eyes,” I said.

There was some tapping at the computer. I strongly suspect my doctor was googling leptospirosis.

“Well, I can add on a test for it but I think this is viral.”

I tried to go back to work.

It didn’t go well.

I shuffled aroound in my Crocs, alarming clients with my red eyes, routinely sweeping up my skin cells as they littered the floor, and then sinking to said floor to rest in between appointments.

“Go home,” my boss said.

My head was starting to hurt.

Like, really hurt.

Continue reading →

In Which A Mysterious Disease Eats Months of My Life

20 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by IfByYes in East, West, Home is Best, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

illness, jaundice, liver, mysterious disease, new brunswick, Nova Scotia, rash, reunion, toenails falling off, vacation, virus

No, I’m not dead.

I’ve been touched by the comments and tweets that I’ve gotten, asking after me. You’re right, my blog has been very silent.

You see, I contracted a mysterious disease.

…Let me backtrack a bit.

So, in April I was extremely overworked. On top of the 35 hours I pull at the vet clinic, my dog training business was going through one of its booms again and I was out training almost every night during the week, and for 3-6 hours each weekend day as well. So I was working around 50 hours a week spread over all 7 days of the week.

But I had something to look forward to – vacation!

My 10 year Mount Allison University reunion was going to be in early May and a bunch of old friends from residence were attending. PH and I had planned a full 10 days home in the Maritimes, and the highlight was going to be the reunion. PH would drive me up to Sackville, New Brunswick and have dinner with my old friends, some of whom he knew from his own days at Mount Allison. Then he would go visit with his family and leave me to stay in residence with the girls, reminiscing and eating and dancing, for two whole days.

I don’t know when I’ve been so excited. I loved my university days. I loved the town. I loved the school. I loved the people. And I was going back, and it was going to be AWESOME.

So I dragged myself through day after exhausting day, counting the sleeps until vacation.

Then, the day before we were due to leave, I collapsed at work.

Like, literally collapsed.

Continue reading →

Conversations With A Toddler Part The First

19 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love, Life's Little Moments

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

awkward conversations, parenting, toddlers

Talking to a toddler can be a strange adventure.

I’ve had some truly bizarre and awkward ones with Owl, who is now two and three quarters. I need to start documenting them, because if they seem weird to me, his doting mother, I can only imagine how bizarre they will sound to you.

Owl: Mommy…. what I doing?

Me: You’re putting your fingers on your nipples, honey.

Owl: Yeah. I am. I am putting my fingers on my nipples.

Me: Okay, step into your undies, please.

Owl: No. I busy. I busy putting my fingers on my nipples.

—

A few days later

Owl: Mommy… what I doing?

Me: You’re… you’re putting your finger in your foreskin, honey.

Owl: No.

Me: Yes, yes you are. Yup. That is your finger up your foreskin.

Owl: No I not. This my penis. Look. What I doing?

Me: Yes, that is your penis, and this PART of your penis is your foreskin, and you are putting your finger in it. Please step into your undies.

Owl: This my foreskin? I put my finger in it?

Me: PLEASE STEP INTO YOUR UNDIES BEFORE I COUNT TO THREE.

Dear Canadian Tire. I have money. I would like to exchange it for goods and services.

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., The House Saga, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

bad customer service, business, Canadian Tire, climbers, play sets, Step 2, Toys R Us

Now that our yard is almost habitable (there’s still the ant problem, but we’re working on it) PH and I are beginning to dream big – like, maybe, we could put something out there for Owl to play on.

We’ve talked a lot about what that might be, but we are constricted by two things:

1. Our yard has the dimensions of a postage stamp

and

2. Our yard is built four feet up on a retaining wall, and the fence blows in the breeze:

So we need something that will fit in our yard without giving Owl the opportunity of tumbling directly into or over our fence.

Everything we have looked at has either been not awesome enough, or FAR TOO AWESOME for our yard.

Continue reading →

← Older posts

Syndicated on BlogHer

I was syndicated on BlogHer.com

NaNoWriMo!

Contact Me

ifbyyes AT gmail DOT com

Subscribe Using That RSS Thing

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

RSS Feed RSS - Comments

“Facebook” Me (it’s a verb now, apparently)

“Facebook” Me (it’s a verb now, apparently)

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 318 other subscribers

I’m a Twit!

  • I Don’t Think I Mean What You Think I Mean ifbyyes.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/i-d… 4 years ago
  • The Cliff ifbyyes.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/the… https://t.co/0Xn1FFKHrF 4 years ago
  • RT @lynchauthor: AAAAAH that's so amazing thank you! Can I cross post this to my tumblr? twitter.com/Kefka73/status… 4 years ago

This Month, On A Very Special “If By Yes”…

January 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Oct    

Most Popular

  • Poor Ron: In Which Everyone Completely Underestimates Ron Weasley, Even His Creator (Part 1)
    Poor Ron: In Which Everyone Completely Underestimates Ron Weasley, Even His Creator (Part 1)
  • Blog Tag: In Which I Answer Questions And Posit My Own
    Blog Tag: In Which I Answer Questions And Posit My Own
  • Show Your Breasts For Amanda Todd, Or, In Which I Finally Deal With Amanda Todd's Death
    Show Your Breasts For Amanda Todd, Or, In Which I Finally Deal With Amanda Todd's Death
  • Rowling vs Meyer, Round 4 -  How Can I Describe Meyer's Writing?
    Rowling vs Meyer, Round 4 - How Can I Describe Meyer's Writing?
  • The Cancer Principle: Depression is Okay, Abuse Is Not
    The Cancer Principle: Depression is Okay, Abuse Is Not
  • Be It Ever So Humble
    Be It Ever So Humble
  • Why We Don't Want Our Son To Think He's Smart.
    Why We Don't Want Our Son To Think He's Smart.
  • Poor Ron, Part 2: In Which I Explain That Ron Is Perfect For Hermione
    Poor Ron, Part 2: In Which I Explain That Ron Is Perfect For Hermione
  • In Which We Attend The Quidditch Global Games 2014 and are Blown Away by Awesomeness
    In Which We Attend The Quidditch Global Games 2014 and are Blown Away by Awesomeness
  • I Don't Think I Mean What You Think I Mean
    I Don't Think I Mean What You Think I Mean

Look Through The Vault

By Category

  • Autism (1)
  • Belly Battles (20)
  • Damn Dogs (35)
  • Early Writings By A Child Genius (9)
  • East, West, Home is Best (42)
  • I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone… (122)
  • Life and Love (635)
    • 30 Posts To 30 (24)
    • Fritter Away (11)
    • From The Owlery (89)
    • How is Babby Formed? (227)
    • Me vs The Sad (72)
    • The House Saga (27)
  • Life's Little Moments (59)
  • My Blag is on the Interwebs (91)
    • Memes (15)
  • Perfect Husband (87)
  • Pointless Posts (73)
  • Polls (6)
  • Shhh, I'm Reading (55)
    • TwiBashing (21)
  • Uncategorized (2)
  • Vids and Vlogs (22)
  • We Are Family (30)
  • Well (1)
  • Well, That's Just Stupid (83)
    • Oh The Inanity (15)

Blogroll

  • A Little Pregnant
  • Also Known As The Wife
  • Are You Sure This Is A Good Idea?
  • Bub and Pie
  • Built In Birth Control
  • Clicker Training, Mother F***er!
  • Daycare Daze
  • Don't Mind The Mess
  • Dooce
  • Emotional Umbrella
  • Fail Blog
  • Held Back By My Spanx
  • Hodgepodge and Strawberries
  • Ken and Dot's Allsorts
  • Kloppenmum
  • Light Green: Life As Activism
  • Magpie Musing
  • Mommy By Day
  • Mr Chicken and the Ninja Kitties
  • Not Always Right
  • Passive Aggressive Notes
  • Postcards From Oblivion
  • Reasoning With Vampires
  • Sweet Salty Kate
  • The Angus Diaries
  • The Domesticated Nerd Girl
  • The Problem With Young People Today Is…
  • The Salted Tomato
  • The Squeee
  • The Urban Cowgirl
  • Unable to Relate
  • Wings And Boots

You Can Has Blog Button!

If By Yes If By Yes

Member of:

For Women

BlogHer.com Logo

Follow my blog with bloglovin

If By Yes - Find me on Bloggers.com

Vote For Me!

Good Blogs - Vote me to the Front Page!

The Latest Talk

Charles on TuTu Cool For School
Mamma_Simona on I Don’t Think I Mean Wha…
Traxy on Fifty Shades of Oh, Holy F***,…
IfByYes on Fifty Shades of Oh, Holy F***,…
Laura H. on What I Would Like to Say to Je…

Pages

  • Meet Me
    • Why If By Yes?
  • Meet Perfect Husband
  • Meet The Babbies

  • Follow Following
    • If By Yes
    • Join 141 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • If By Yes
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...