Mine

This is a rant... you can read if you want, but its mainly stuff i just needed to get off my chest, and is only the tip of an ice burg on a collision course.

I've recently moved home, and have been dealing with a whole whirlwind of issues that come along with being home, generally revolving around my mother. I love my mom, but she's a little much to handle, and there are things she just doesn't get.

For my birthday, my step dad is getting me a personal trainer. I think this is fantastic and couldn't come at a better time when i need the esteem boost and a fairly set rigorous schedule. He's been working with one since January, entered a weight loss competition, and dropped 61 lbs. So, I'm jumping on board. He gave me a bit to read about the science behind weight loss, etc... but the very first page talks about ways to stimulate t3 and t4 production, and how important thyroid hormone is to weight loss. This is possibly the worst thing to start off with when you are missing a thyroid and you take a set pill of t3 and t4, and no one has been able to explain how you raise your metabolism w/ out thyroid hormone... I'm a humanities major, not a biology major... I've tried asking my endo, but the just tell me about general exercise and cutting portions... sorry, i'm getting a bit side tracked... But I brought this fact up at dinner, mainly b/c a lot of my step dad's routine is based around boosting thyroid hormone production. He tells me that he talked with the trainer he's hooking me up with and she's worked w/ thyroid cancer patients before and they'd design a program for me. Mom on the other hand, responded by saying I couldn't blame all my weight gain on thyroid cancer because she knew someone else without a thyroid, who just learned how to eat right, and then became a nutritionist and she maintains her weight.

She has a lot to say about what I shouldn't be blaming on being sick. I've considered printing all the material on thyroid cancer, treatment, and side effects, particularly from chat rooms, blogs, and forums to have her sit and read, and let it soak in that in reality, i don't publicize (ok i publicize, obviously, hence the blog)I don't publicize with my everyday people every thing, some big, some small, that has really gone on, and what I tend to work with on my own.

Whats sparked me on this post is seemingly pretty petty, and not entirely cancer related, but it has to do with how she treats things that are mine. She has this giant stain glass work table thing, which she decided, to put under my bed... on top of my undergrad diploma... and the $300+ diploma frame that I won in a raffle, during my very first week of hypo hell. The whole thing is totally scratched and damaged now (if you know how to fix scratches in polished wood, let me know). Its probably one of the nicest things I will ever own. And she was all, "there was nothing under your bed... "etc. She didn't apologize, or say, well lets see if it can be fixed, or anything. And when I was moving, I went to pick up the U-haul, i had all the awards, pictures, and other odds and ends that i had had on my fridge in a pile, to be put in side a book, or something to keep them flat... she just took a trash bag, and threw everything in it... wine racks, rugs, shot glasses... and i'm like... wow, glad to see you even give the slightest about my things. And that's how all my stuff has been treated the past few years.

Oh, and she doesn't approve of what I do and don't keep. Now I've always been a pack rat to a certain extent. I actually think i've gotten better over the years, but there are still things I keep. Especially now... when I feel like I forget far more than I remember... I feel like having something there as a reminder helps keep memories in tact. Does anyone else out there find that after being sick, you place ridiculous sentimental value on the most random things?

I've been playing the grin and bare it game. Nothing new for me... I've never fought back or stood up for myself. Ironic for someone who's about to be a lawyer. If I tell her my opinions, or stand up for myself, she cries. She's bossy and needy, and tends to only see how things affect her. If I'm sick, its all about how she reacts and how she gets sick worrying about me being sick (this is everything from the sniffles to cancer). It really becomes about how stressful things are on her. I think i've mentioned before, that i've always been the hand holder of the family. How I tend to shy away from getting the attention from being sick. I generally don't like the hugging, and the "i'm sorries"... I think i've also mentioned that i've lost a lot my compassion for other people's problems. So to be home, and having mom push and exaggerate every ailment (she's only 47), ache, and problem in her life, to wander around the house for a day talking about how she's "mentally depressed"... for one day... Especially when a lot of the things wrong w/ her, she does to herself, or she can make better using basic common sense... I've solved her problems like 50 times recently, and both my dad and step-dad have turned to me, and said "you know you are just talking to a wall, you can't talk common-sense to her." And so it boils down to me telling her to suck it up; i can't respect someone and handle being bullied/and/or treated like a teenager by someone so utterly childish.

Again, sorry for the rant... i just needed to clear my head... mainly so i can continue keeping my cool.

Who makes your decisions?

For as much growing up as you are forced to do with cancer, have you ever found that you lose your independence? Your privacy? Your ability to make your own decisions?

This has become overwhelmingly apparent to me as I'm currently trying to choose my current life course. I'm graduating in a little over a month. I'm taking the Bar exam in Virginia, which means moving home to study and until I can find a job, hopefully in D.C. (home is Virginia Beach). This, like all decisions in my life, is the smartest most practical decision. I can't help but feel that making, "practical" decisions has consumed most of my life... but that is beside the point.

So this is going to sound completely irrational, that's probably why I'm avoiding saying it, ok, here it goes. I don't want to leave my stuff. Its mine. I didn't ask my parents to rent a truck. I never said I wouldn't do it. It was decided for me that we couldn't afford to rent a truck and that I should give away my bed and couch. I don't believe that we have enough space in all of our vehicles to get everything home. And I'm guestimating that I would end up losing about $600 worth of stuff (devalued). But its mine. Stuff that I have bought over the past few years to pull my life together. Bookcase, dresser etc. Now A desk and a set of drawers that really just need to be tossed. I have a lot of other larger things, small enough to fit in a vehicle, but would still be too much for all the cars. No one has asked me about if i was willing to rent the truck, or what I was really willing to give up. I don't think they understand that my stuff, in my place, is all i have that is mine. My own decisions. My life. I don't think they realize how bad it is that I even decided to move home, to revert back to being a kid. I've lived alone for 4 years. 8 years since high school. And when I get my next place, I don't want to have to start over completely.

Cancer came my senior year of college, sort of prolonging how long i needed to be taken care of. It was decided that I couldn't do Americorp, and instead needed to go to law school so I wouldn't loose my insurance. It was decided that since I already had the acceptance to Pitt, where I already lived, and where my doctors were, that I would stay here. It was decided, the day after I had radiation, which apartment I would live in... which was also how my school was chosen... A deposit down and contract does that. It was "smart", it was "practical".

Mom is trying to organize my insurance for me once I graduate and turn 26. Which means she needs to know everything about me. She organizes my bills and everything too. This just means that I don't have any privacy in my health any more. I realize there's hippa, and everything else to protect me. But in a practical world, i don't have any money. My parents do. As long as I'm stuck in job search/graduation/bar studying/cancer testing limbo, I can't seem make my own decisions.