My 24 hour cold

I am consistently astonished and amazed by homeopathy.

Last night I had a sore throat in the evening. By bedtime (1am) it was extremely sore and I was achey and stuffy~ full blown sick. I took my remedy~ Aurum Arsenicum~ in a 12c a grand total of 3 times in 24 hours and as of now I have only residual stuffiness, no achiness, not a trace of a sore throat. This is in sharp contrast to my mother, who left work early because she felt so sick, and my youngest sister, who has now missed 2 days of work both due to the same illness I had. Did I mention I love homeopathy?

Soon I expect to have my annual conversation with my mother. It will go something like this:
ME: Mom, are you feeling OK? You sound like you might be sick
MOM: I hab a bad colb. I hab a feber of 103* and I am bery hot and then bery colb
ME: Sounds like it might be the flu.
MOM: It is not the flu. I got by shot.
ME: Are you sure?
MOM: Yes. I bight have to go to the doctor because I feel like I bight die. Thank goodness I got the shot. Just ibagine how BAD it would be ib I didn't!!

My poor mother. She really does try (sometimes). It's far to easy to be brainwashed by the masses.

On the subject of the flu shot, it's gotten so that I am afraid to go in public lest someone attacks me while weilding a flu vaccine. Geesh! I can't go anywhere, look, or listen to anything without being told about how I must get the flu shot. I am at least thankful that they are kind enough to let me know when and where they are giving Flu Mist, so I can avoid that place and time at all costs. You do all know that the mist is a live vaccine and therefore is easily transmitted to others, right?

Stock up on the Oscillo!

Sick kiddos

I hate it when my kids are sick. I don't know if it's better for them to all get sick at once, or for it to hit them one at a time. The former can be hard to handle, and the latter just takes so long to get through.

I have declared the baby to have croup, which he must be almost over. His breathing was quite raspy 3 days ago, but Antimonium Tart 30 in water helped significantly. My sister (who is my doctor), offered a nebuelizer (sp?) to which I asked, sounding befuddled, I'm sure, "Why?". I know to her it's no big deal. To me it's a huge deal. One of the lessons my daughter taught me in her short life is that western medicine has it wrong. And not only do they have it wrong, but it is impossible for most people living in America to comprehend that fact. It's like questioning someone's very strongly held religious beliefs. Question medicine and you may be attacked.

The other kids have coughs, too. Two of them had high fevers followed by repiratory stuff, which we will call the flu. The others developed only a cough over a week later, so we will call that croup. I am noticing as I write this that my throat is sore and I am not liking that at all. I suffered through mastitis quite recently and I think that should exempt me from any further illness at this time. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

Friday is supposed to be my day to go out and get stuff done. I'd like to be able to do it while healthy.

Anyone out there?

I'm not doing this for anyone but myself:P I suppose when I want people to read it I'll actually tell them I'm blogging! As of now, not even dh knows. I have stated before that I do not like blogs. That must have been like my blanket statement "I will not live on the SE side of the city"~ which is exactly where I live now, and in a very nice little neighborhood, I might add.

So I'm thinking that not a soul is reading this, which today is just fine. I had a diary when I was young that had a lock on it and a teeny tiny key. I never knew what to write in there. I didn't really understand the value of writing things down. I'm hoping this turns out to be theraputic. It feels like when I force myself to call my friends when I would rather curl up and cease to exist for a while. Reaching out~ to who? Myself, I guess. Sorting out my thoughts, with nothing too weird or crazy, on the off chance that someone actually reads this!

Thanksgiving

Well, what can I say? It sucked. It was horrible.

It's not anything that anyone did or didn't do. It's just that my daughter, she's dead.

I was told that the holidays would be hard, but I honestly thought they would be easier than this. I wanted to hide all day, but I can't do that because the depression I fall into when I do that is completely unmanagable. At this moment there is nothing that could possibly make me feel better. I am on the edge of a panic attack all the time. Talk about exhausting.

Yesterday I managed to get out of the house with only the baby in order to run errands. Funny that I view that type of thing as a "break" now. I really need some time alone with my daughter. I want to talk to her, feel her spirit with me and remember her, but not in this obsessive way that I do it now. I obsess because with all that is demanded of me 24 hours a day, I am afraid I will forget something about her, and I want to remember absolutely everything. The way her hair felt and looked~ all those light brown highlights, up in a ponytail. The way she smelled~ like lavender, everything was like lavender, I'll tell that story someday here. Those silly raspberries she blew all the time and the wonderful giggle she had.

I feel like I have negative stuff just building and building and there is no outlet.

Dh was supposed to talk to a vaccine injury lawyer today. I was going to ask when he called to check on me, but he never did.

The small bear that lives at my house

We got a cat for my oldest daughter's 2nd birthday 7 years ago. He was a little bitty kitten that we found at the pet store after being turned down by the animal shelter. They do credit checks! And they want letters of reference! They turned us down because we had a young child and apparently as a rule they do not adopt out pets to families with children!!?? So we looked all over the newspaper and pet stores and couldn't find a cat. It was so weird because whenever you DON'T want a cat, people are offering them all over the place.

We finally went to a pet store in the suburbs and there we found him. He was so lovey; crawling all over us and kissing us. So we took him home and I told dh I wanted him to grow into a really big fat cat.

7 years later, we have a 21 pound tiger cat. He is the biggest cat I have ever seen. He actually caught a mouse a little while ago, which I was not excited about because it meant we had mice in the house, but I have to say I was impressed. Dh and I joked about how he must have sat on it accidentally and it suffocated. It took our 21 month old 18 months to catch up to the cat's weight.

Everyone that comes to our house comments on the size of the cat. I tell them he's actually a small bear.

We are switching to Wysong geriatric formula and we thought he had been eating less as we worked on slowly mixing more of it into his Meow Mix. That was, until dh found him in the bag of Meow Mix with just his tail sticking out.

Night time adventures at my house.

In our bedroom we have dh and I and 2 babies. We sleep with the two of us in the middle, the young baby by me and the older baby by dh. That's how we go to sleep. How we wake up is a different story. One day last week I woke up with a 7 year old on my feet, a 5 year old hugging my leg, and a 3 year old on top of dh in addition to our two regulars! We also have a huge cat, who I am more than certain was somewhere on that bed!

Good grief, no wonder I'm so tired all the time.

This is how my night usually goes~ I wait up for dh to get home around midnight (this is stupid, I know, but I can't sleep before he's home). I am usually sleeping by 12:30. I spend the rest of the night rolling back and forth between the two babies. Even though the older one starts out on the other side of dh, she invariably gets between us to get nursies several times a night. She wakes me up, we nurse, the baby on the other side starts to fuss, I roll over and nurse him. We sleep for 30 minutes or so and then repeat over and over until the sun comes up.

We let all the other kids move into the same room and since then we have had fewer visits in the middle of the night. They miss their sister and it's easier for them to be all together.

So today is Saturday, and last night was especially draining, but here I am up and ready to go. I am the Coffee Monster, as my children call me. They make roaring and giggling noises. It's very cute.

I know my dh wishes there were more exciting night time adventures going on over here:P But hey, we've got 6 kids, it can't be too bad, right?

Where do I start?

I've been thinking of doing this for a while. I need an outlet for all the crap going on in my head.

My oldest daughter died. It's been 5 months. Sometimes it seems like it's been too long and sometimes not long enough. Every day there is at least one moment when I forget she is gone. I am surprised when I walk into the next room and I don't see her. Then I get hit with another insurmountable wave of grief.

If anyone were to ask me how I feel, which pretty much no one does with any intention of hearing the truth, this is what I would tell them:
I feel as though I am naked in the bottom of a giant canyon. It is so wide I can't see the edges and so deep I can't see the top. The walls of the canyon are made of ice. I am screaming my daughter's name as loud as my voice will allow and it simply dissolves into the cold and stillness that is the absence of my child.

There. I bet they would love to hear that. No one knows what to say to me. And really, I can't blame them. I wouldn't have known either. Now I do. I wish I didn't. I wish I didn't have to belong to this stupid club. I want nothing more than to hold my child for the rest of my life.

I have 5 living children. They are wonderful. I sometimes can't decide if caring for them makes it easier or harder. They tend to keep me from falling into the absolute darkest depths of my depression because just as I am starting to fall even further, someone cries, or needs to eat, or needs to show me something. I love them all so much. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have to care for them at this point. I do know that I would spend a lot of time in bed, perhaps days, maybe weeks.

Ah, I have so much to write about. Vaccine injury, natural parenting, homeopathy, cranial sacral work, knitting............
But this is where I have to start.