Thanks. I am grateful for the support.
So, I wrote the following last night, so adjust the "yesterday" and "today" accordingly. Update -- went to a very good gestational diabetes class today and am feeling much better about taking insulin and having diabetes in general and not so mad at my body. We were the only people there for the "class" so that made it nice and individualized. There was a nurse practitioner for the first part and a dietician for the second part, and they simplified it. And the nurse told me just what hormones are involved and what their usual purpose is and that made me feel better, for some odd reason.
Anyhow, the following: Hard to write and hard to post because I'm really not proud of the first half. I mean, REALLY. But, I figure, who knows? Maybe someday someone else will go through it and it will fell nice to not feel crazy for it. Or to feel like you're not the only crazy person. Or feel like, "at least I'm not as crazy as Kirsten was"
And, well, it's significant. So.
~~~~
From the musical
Annie:
“Yesterday was plain awful”
“You can say that again!”
“Yesterday was plain AWFUL!”
Yesterday was plain awful. Meeting with my doctor and finding out how much medicine I am going to need. Okay. So, fine. But they are SO happy I have Medicaid now, and Medicaid is really good about paying for gestational diabetes, here are your prescriptions, and try to start tonight.
So, we went to the pharmacy. I was standing there for half an hour in line, needing to pee, working on no kind of consistent sleep, and just feeling a little edgy all in all.
The pharmacy tech was new. She didn’t know how to process my medical card. And, when she finally did, it turned out I needed a prior authorization for one of my prescriptions. She did not know what a prior authorization was, if she needed to contact the doctor, or what to do in general.
But that was okay. I was dealing with it. She’s new and that’s hard.
Here’s what got me.
One of my prescriptions was paid for. But the insulin pen that I needed in order to actually USE it was going to cost a ridiculous amount and the medical card wouldn’t pay for it. So, she offered to give me the medicine with no way to give it to myself.
And that’s when I lost it. I snatched my card out of her hand, I said the words good-bye in a tone and manner that probably (correctly) suggested I was thinking, “f*** you, go to hell,” and practically ran out of the pharmacy, Donny trailing after me and calling my name. In my head, all that I was thinking was, “Get me out, get me out, I have to get out of here.”
And in the parking lot, I threw a pretty big tantrum. It had to be something to see, a seven-month pregnant woman screaming obscenities and throwing her coat into the car and responding to her husband saying, “it’s okay, it’s okay,” with, “IT’S NOT OKAY! IT IS NOT OKAY AT ALL!”
And then there were a lot of tears and sobbing and freaking out at home.
Here’s the emotional logic that I could not articulate at the time. “As bad as things have been, I thought I – my body – was at least taking care of my baby, but it turns out my body is turning against me and putting my baby in danger, so I put aside my pride and am accepting help to feed us and use medicine (medicine I am scared of and don’t really WANT) to care for my baby, but now they won’t help me give myself the medicine that my stupid defective body needs and I can’t afford it! How am I supposed to take care of my baby if I can’t even give us medicine? And how could I have lost my job? A few months ago that much money would not have mattered, it would not have mattered at all, and now it’s impossible, how could I have screwed up this badly? That I can’t take care of my baby? What are we going to do, what are we going to do, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”
So, yesterday was plain awful.
Today’s better. I’m trying to deal with the issues at hand. It has been easier to deal with in part because I slept from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM without waking up to pee. The first time I’ve gone longer than an hour and a half – three very occasionally – in I do not know how long.
I got a call from the Mid-America Diabetes association, and they have a class tomorrow, and even though the state won’t pay for it, not to worry, they have a grant program I will qualify for, and yes I am welcome to bring my husband.
Called my doctor’s nurse and told her about the syringe situation. She was surprised, glad we didn’t spend the money, and promised to take care of it. Later that afternoon, it turned out she had, everything is pre-authorized, and I’ll have to take the one medication via vial and syringe rather than with the pen, but that’s not a big deal. (Although, even later than that, it turns out the pharmacy doesn’t have the syringes and supposedly will tomorrow.)
I’m trying to find some sense of peace and certainty in thinking about the diabetes and the birth options. It reminds me of trying to cope in those early weeks with the possibility of miscarrying. I came to some sense of peace then. I am trying to find it today.
This afternoon, I took a shower, and decided to try being positive there, since that’s where I talk to my baby. I spent a lot of time telling him today how much I look forward to kissing the insides of his elbows, since his little baby fat arms are so adorable, even in grainy black and white. I sang him Christmas carols, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Joy to the World” and my favorite hymn, which was sung at my wedding and I want sung at my funeral, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
“Great is thy faithfulness,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed, thy hand hath provided,
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord God to me.”
And it feels true, in spite of everything. That all I have needed has been provided. Because we are here, still in our home, and I do have what I need, I have friends and family who have helped me. I have a husband I love, and a baby on the way who is so beyond loved and wanted.
And, medically, I have to believe what I need will be provided.
It’s so hard. The first two trimesters, I was marveling at my body. It was just one wonder after another, how intelligent and wise it is. How everything it was doing, even if it was inconvenient, was for a reason. For the greater good. And, so, the diabetes feels like a very fundamental sort of slap, rational or not, it hurts on a kind of visceral level. I know it’s common, I know it’s normally manageable, and I am trying to be grateful for the means to watch it and try to control it. But I just don’t understand any wisdom behind this. I have a hard time forgiving my body for this, because I don’t get the rationale.
All the same, I don’t know yet. I don’t know how it will turn out. For all I know, my baby will show up at 38 weeks with no induction required. Or maybe we’ll have to do a caesarian for a totally unrelated reason. Or it will continue to grow normally, despite the diabetes. I can’t understand the reason for what I’m going through now, but I have to believe it will make sense in retrospect. I can’t understand now, because I don’t know how the story ends. True for our money and job situation, true for my body. I will find a way to understand when it is through, and I have to hold on to that.
Went to the zoo today, then, because I needed to be outside and to be in a place where I feel peaceful and happy. It’s a tonic for when my mind and emotions are going through chaos.
And I’m glad I went. It was a big experiential lesson in how you don’t know why things happen at the time, but later it is amazing they unfolded as they did. A song I liked came on the radio right when I was turning towards the zoo, so I decided to drive along for a time. Then I got lost, and so I got to the zoo much later than planned. And since I got there later than planned, I got to see a lot of pronghorns running and galloping around, which I’d never seen. And from there I went to the cougar, who could see the pronghorns and was quite excited by it, so I was talking to her, thinking I was alone. But I wasn’t alone, a lady was nearby and apparently thought I seemed friendly enough to start a conversation with about the cougar. And then I ran into her again at the tiger exhibit, and again at the lions, and talked more. And it was helpful. Sometimes you run into people you feel like you know. So, I talked about my baby and eventually about losing my job and wanting to know the reason or what would happen next, and she talked about her hopes and fears for going back to school, and I think we both walked away feeling a lot better.
And I just thought I wanted to sing in the car. And that’s true. That’s all I wanted. But things just unfolded in a way that I did not foresee. And sometimes it goes the other way, that you just run into something bad that you would have otherwise missed. The point is, time and experiences intersect in ways that you can’t know, and I can’t know how things are going to turn out with my pregnancy or motherhood, and that means I need to just trust things to unfold as they will. To act as best I can for my benefit and that of my family and look for and be grateful for the ways my needs are being met along the way. And they are. They really are.