Over

December 15, 2010

We are supposed to get a big ice storm tonight but so far it’s just snowing. Since nobody went to the store to stock up on anything, let’s hope it doesn’t come. Last spring we invested in a 4-wheel drive vehicle and luckily that got Pete up the hill tonight. A few trips up our driveway and we already have our money’s worth out of it.

After Christmas, we have to go back to looking at tombstones for Toby again. I know that it takes a lot of people a year to get one on, but I feel bad that we don’t already have it. I’ve been looking at designs and prices, but it’s hard to do online. I want to buy local and nobody around here really has any websites so we’ll just have to start driving around and seeing what people have.

That reminds me…there’s a grave across from Toby’s that already has a headstone and the woman isn’t dead yet. Not a bad idea, but it’s one of the funniest headstones I have ever seen. It’s really small but it is so busy that you can barely read it. On this small headstone is has the following written: her name, her date of birth, the town where she was born, she town where she is apparently living now, a quote, 2 crosses, a pair of wedding rings, THREE different flower etchings, and the words “Wolf-boy.” I will have to take a picture of it the next time I am there.

I went two days feeling almost normal. I made a gingerbread house with Sam, snow cream, vegetable soup, and watched movies with him. And then last night the pain and bleeding came back and I spent all day today in my bathrobe on the couch, alternating between throwing up and doubled over in pain. I got a call from the doctor and they have me scheduled with a surgeon January 25^th, but I’m seeing another doctor at UK next Thursday and they might be able to get me in sooner. I have never looked more forward to an operation.

I’ve connected with a few people on that support group website and that is very helpful. It’s so sad to read everyone’s stories, but I like talking to them. They’re really similar in some ways and very different in others. It strikes me as odd in that even though SIDS is the number one killer of infants, there really hasn’t been a book written about it since the early 80’s. The few that I have found have been very religious-oriented and faith-based. I think they might be self-published, not that it matters one way or another. I know it’s not a happy topic to write about or read about, but I wish that there was something out there like that for me. Maybe I will write one.

I hate it when people say things like, “Well, I don’t worry about SIDS because…” Sometimes it’s followed with things like “I follow all the precautions” or “I know the chances of it happening are slim.” Well, SIDS is not preventable. Following all the “rules” (which change, by the way, from one year to the next) does not mean that your baby won’t succumb to it. SIDS is not preventable because nobody knows what it is. You can’t prevent something that you don’t have a grasp of. Keeping bumper pads out of cribs and cradles, not using blankets or pillows, placing the baby on its back, and not co-sleeping all prevent accidental asphyxiation. SIDS is NOT accidental asphyxiation. While there is a prevalent theory that some babies don’t develop properly and the noxious gases that get trapped between the soft bedding and the baby’s airways is what essentially poisons them, this isn’t ironclad. It’s just one theory.

I had a “friend” write me yesterday. I hadn’t heard from them since the day Toby died and this e-mail I received from them contained one line: “Hope you are doing well!” That really set me off. No, thank you, I am NOT doing well. In the past four months I have lost my son, Pete lost his mother, Dad had a heart attack, Mom had a stroke, our dogs got poisoned, friends and family members who should have been supportive have acted like morons, Pete lost his job at the law office, and I got gallstones (or something). But really, thanks for contacting me. So I basically wrote back and said that. They then replied and said that they understood, that their boyfriend had been in a car accident but he was “okay.” Really? Really! That’s how you “understand?” The friend also wrote Mom and said that she would like to see us more, but that she’d had a lot of things going on in the past few months. Oh, yes. Please, please tell us all about the things that you’ve had going on. Because we really want to hear it.

I get that a lot, actually. People writing me and apologizing for not coming around because they’ve been “really busy.” For the past four months. It’s the same excuse I got when we didn’t get visitors during my pregnancy and the same excuse I got for people not making it around to meet Toby after he was born. Yet, somehow they manage to find time to go out, go on trips, and do a bunch of other things. I would rather them not write me at all.

So I feel really guilty about feeling bad. And I know that when you feel guilty you tend to read into things that you might not normally read into. But still…Mom gets on her Facebook page and talks about how she had to go see “Burlesque” by herself. Okay, so I had two different chances to see that movie and didn’t because I knew she wanted to see it. So that really hurt my feelings. I’m sorry that she “had” to see it alone but it wasn’t because nobody wanted to go with her. Other than to go to the doctor, I’ve been out once in three weeks and that was to pay on our layaway last weekend at K-Mart. And Sam and I spent most of the time in the bathroom, with me throwing up and him saying, “We don’t have time for this, Mommy.” I would really like to be, you know, getting dressed. Going out and looking at Christmas lights. Finishing my Christmas shopping. I would have liked to have attended the memorial service they had for children last week, but what was I doing? Oh yeah, I was in the bathroom for eight hours, vomiting and cramping. This Christmas was already going to be hard and now it’s worse because I don’t feel like doing shit. And I mean that physically. I would like to go to the Horse Park and see the lights, but I can’t even ride in the car to Richmond without having to stop 3 times to go to the bathroom. I’d like to drive around and look at decorations, but the bumps in the road make the pain worse. I’d like to make my son some freaking lunch other than crackers and Pop Tarts, but I can’t stand up long enough. If I take the medicine they’ve given me, it completely knocks me out and makes me useless and if I don’t then the pain is worse than the labor pain I felt with either one.

I remember when Mom had her surgery, and when she had her gallbladder taken out. The first time was at Christmas and I was pregnant with Sam. There were movies that I wanted to see and friends that I wanted to visit with since I had been in Wales for almost two years, but I stayed home with her. I made soup and jello and drove to Georgetown every day and slept on the couch in the waiting room of the hospital and in the car sometimes so that I could be close in case anything went wrong. And I never once complained because I wanted to do it.

But for some reason, when it’s me, it’s like I’m offending people or something. Like I’m just holding everyone back. We can’t go on trips anymore, people have to go the movies by themselves, we don’t get out much…I WANT TO DO THOSE THINGS TOO! Sometimes, I wish they had just saved Toby that night that he was born and let me bleed to death.