Dreams are made of this.

Heather over at Geek by Marriage has me so beat when it comes to crazy dreams. Go see and give her masses of support and bloggy love as she tries to quit smoking because she’s doing GREAT. Just so she doesn’t feel like the only one whose head is doing flips while she’s asleep, let me share what I just woke up from:

I’m based in this big fancy hotel with different conference rooms, corridors and floors that all look the same while there I’m apparently dressed like a secretary who at the very least wants to be naughty with her boss and for some reason I have black hair.

In one conference room I’m trying to run a campaign to elect a senator who I’ve never met in a state I’ve never been too… lots of people on phones all yelling at me “I called my mum – she’s gonna vote”.  The room is filled with bunting and red white and blue balloons I have to wade through in my heels.

In another conference room I’m supposed to be attending a relationship counseling seminar where the guy taking it is really hawt and he’s trying to teach me the difference between a platonic relationship and a lustful one. At some point he got into a practical demonstration and the relationship he was showing off on stage at the front of this room was far from platonic…

I’m also trying to run a bath for myself in a hotel room that isn’t mine but has a big ass bath. The room is on a different floor to mine but the doors have keys that look exactly the same (kind of car key style not card keys) and seen as I can’t tell them apart, I have to keep running downstairs to ask the receptionist which is which.

At some point I’m walking through the lobby and I find out that the mystery senator has passed away mid campaign and I respond “how inconvenient” (really sensitive there Ali nice going) then I get in the lift to go check on my rising bath water and I’m in there with both the hawt guy I’ve just watched screw his wife and the late senator’s widow. The ride up to my floor seems to take forever. Nobody is talking. It’s all über awkward.

When I get to the “bathroom”, I find I’m too late: the bath has overflowed and caused the ceiling to cave in. I’m looking through a hole in the floor at the huge bath in the middle of the lobby and some very shocked people looking up at me.

Nuts, I know. The worst bit is I wake up and spend some time afterwards in a sleepy confused haze trying to figure out which bits are real and which are fake. I have to keep repeating to myself “it was a DREAM… you can quit stressing about it all now… it’s not real.” LOL.

And the moral of this tale is… I should not drink too much Coke just before bedtime.

Ali xX

Hot hot hot.

I am not coping well with the heat at all.  We have had a few really wonderful days that you could actually classify as summer and by God it’s killing me. It all started with the crazy amount of sunburn that turned my neck and arms the most embarrassing shade of “Brit on holiday lobster red” when we were at the beach all because someone was too busy making sure KM actually wore a hat so that he didn’t get the sun on his… aherm… less that well covered pale skinned scalp and therefore avoided sun stroke and a few days of lying on the sofa in a “man who’s sick and wanting sympathy daze”. Success in this area for the first time since I have known the guy (8 years now). He actually went out in the sunshine all day without keeling over from heat stroke or puking his guts up at the end of it. Do I hear a “woot woot”? I think so! Only in this process of nagging, bribing, cajoling, bla bla muggings here forgot her own sun cream. D’oh! Now my bra straps are reminding me of my stoopidity every time I move. It stings it burns uugh!  I feel a fool and KM has far too much “that will teach you to stop nagging” ammunition.

On a short walk into a local village today to run some errands, the air was so close and sticky. I’m really struggling to breathe. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m unfit. I know it, but this was worse than usual. I actually thought I was going to pass out a couple of times on the way back. I was hit with horrid horrid pelvic pain. So much so, that KM is pushing me into a local pub just so I can sit down. This walk usually takes me about 20 minutes and here I am dying in the local bar. It’s not period pain, I know that much.  It doesn’t feel the same but dam hurts and always suddenly takes me by surprise. Very puzzling. Let’s step back from how melodramatic this sounds for a second and tell you that it did, in fact, pass after about ten minutes. Then I was walking the rest of the way home like nothing happened. I’m totally fine today. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say I imagined it.

Sleep is hard for me at the best of times, but in this overheated exhausted frustrated mess I can tell you I am no fun to be around. Tossing and turning like a mad woman just trying to find some way to be somewhat comfortable so I can catch up on the sleep I so desperately needed. And this leads me to another pondering. You see, I am prone to dreaming and usually I remember such things, be they harmless stupid things or full out nightmarish style flashbacks, but I have noticed this trend recently that when I can’t sleep because of the heat for some reason the dreams seem to get a lot more off the wall screwed up. Yesterday is a prime example: I woke up from some nightmare involving Avenue Q, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and some weird alien that gave birth to *my* child but presented me with a half formed fetus… all very bizarre and quite horrifying… till I woke up, that is. Anyway, the actual dream is beside the point. I’m left wondering is there some reason that I seem to be more affected by the heat? It is less deep sleep. Or was I just exhausted and that made things worse…or am i just weird?

Anyways, it all got sorted out last night by the most wonderfully loud thunderstorm and torrential rain that passed right over our house in under an hour… but it sure cleared the air! That and, well, I love storms and always find it easier to fall asleep listening to the heavy rain and thunder. I did get my sleep in the end. I shouldn’t complain too much. It’s not like we see a lot of summer round these parts. You know what the most confusing part of it all is?  It’s not like its even THAT hot over here. I’ve been exposed to MUCH MUCH higher temperatures across the pond and never had so much trouble. It’s all very puzzling.

Ali xX

What really scares me … part 3 of my revelation.

As I was walking towards the Red Cross store last Friday afternoon, I walked past a sight that always brings a lump to my throat, causes me to take a little pause out of respect and leaves me feeling unnaturally deep in thought the rest of the day. Outside the local Catholic Church – three pristine glistening black vehicles – signs of the memorial going on inside those wall. My heart skips a beat and it may be my imagination but the place seems unusually quiet. I drop my eyes to the black tarmac at my feet an for a split second… think of the stranger who’s moved on and the people they leave behind and I wish them all peace.

In my life so far I have been fortunate to be relatively untouched by death, unavoidable as this sad occurrence is in my future.  I’ve never actually attended a funeral service for a loved one. There have been memorial services for a handful of people who are still deeply missed… and a service for an elderly neighbor I barely knew when I was ten, but up till now this event and the grief that comes with it is a foreigner to me… touch wood. Long may it stay that way.

I have no fear of death. I fear pain and how I might die… but death is inevitable. its the only certainty in life as Shakespeare so eloquently puts it “all that lives must die, passing through nature into eternity” (Hamlet). There have been very dark moments in my life that I may have even wished for it, closed my eyes and simply wanted to stop existing… but those days are gone and I don’t wish to dwell there.

I have a few recurrent dreams where I die. Well I say dreams… they are nightmares… vivid and shocking always. I wake gasping for air or on the edge of unstoppable tears.  Apparently its rather unusual to actually see the moment you die in a dream which only proves what many already suspected – I’m a little weird. The most memorable and frequent is of my own funeral. I see my coffin, an empty church, a lonely graveside, not a single person to morn my death or celebrate my life.  no flowers, no tears.  I die leaving no mark on the world totally unnoticed and leave little evidence behind of my existence   THAT SCARES ME…

I find it rather interesting that this childhood nightmare has come back to haunt my adult life pretty much since I found out about my PCOS. As if the lack of offspring in my future makes this fear more real, more troublesome. We live on in the memories of those we leave behind… and fate has put an almighty spanner in the works..

I have this burning desire now to make a difference in other ways, to touch peoples’ lives, to help in some way, anyway I can… as if…well, almost as if I have to make up in some way for my inability to be a mother.. I have this whole part of my life now where “being a parent”, “raising my kids” has been scrubbed from the schedule. All this empty time that I need to find things to fill it… to be useful… to try and make some ripples on the waters of existence… maybe to distract myself from what my heart feels should have been… so that the nightmare ending of my dreams does not come to be… so that a handful of people might remember me and smile.

Ali xX

Emotional outburst … on TWITTER oh geeze. (Warning childbirth discribed)

A balmy warm summers day dawns, the sun beaming in through my window pane and jumping on the bed to say good morning. The lady in the bed sleeps soundly, not moving, her hand resting lightly on her swollen belly – the size of it alone lets me know that her time is nearly here. The colors in this world seen so vibrant so alive…

She’s shopping. I hear the slow steady measure “click click” of her low heels on the paving, her unrestrained giggle, the taped music inside the places she visits.  Its crowded. Busy chatter fills the air and yet her smile – so natural, so casual, as she slowly moves from one store to the next, browsing shoes, chocolate and jewelry at my local shopping mall. I know something is up. You can tell by the way she pauses, the way her grip tightens a little over that precious cargo she has been carrying for months. She closes her eyes, draws a breath and moves on with focused determination. Two friends follow behind not taking their eyes off her much. One bites his lip, the others hands constantly moving. They seem nervous, agitated. They reach out to touch her, but unnoticing she always seems to move away and escape their grasp.

A deep guttural moan shatters the silence. A rushed voice, gasping for air, spits the words out as she pleads “keep talking… oh God keep talking to me.”  The scene is a spacious living room. It’s warm and clean… bright… comfortable… and filled with all the little objects that make a house a home. There are pictures on the walls, candles on the tables, books in the shelves and not a single box in sight. The two friends jerked from their previous conversation by the moaning. One jumping to his feet stood rocking a little on his heels as his mind searches for something to talk about. The other wide eyes sat on the edge of his chair wringing his hands, pale looking like he may throw up from the nerves stuttering… stammering. The moan comes again louder sweeping the room like a wave. I hear a calm, firm, female response – not an once of panic or confusion “that’s it Ali, you’re doing great.” My head snaps around. I see her. I don’t recognize her. She looks older than me and very stern – a no nonsense lady and yet her face is kind. She sits relaxing in her chair watching… waiting… bag of tricks at her feet. A midwife. She speaks again: “you can do this Ali.” Why is she talking to me? She said my name. Whhhyyy is she saying my name? I feel the world closing in. Things are changing, the colors are melting together… like I’m gonna pass out … except i don’t. I’m inside this woman that I’ve been watching. Her body is so heavy, her… my… muscles so tight… pressure inside me pushing on my stomach intestines. Damn I can hardly breathe. This mass in my belly… I NEEED TO PEE!!!!!! .. FUCK!  pain pain pain… owww ooowww oowww OWWWWIEE !!!! aaahhh… It takes over my whole body, radiating out from my pelvis and reaching every extremity. I WANT to die. I’m going to DIE. What the fuck just happened to me? Its like current electricity inside me over my skin. I can’t stop moving… rocking from side to side pacing… I need to put my mind somewhere else. I need to think… I… OWWWWWWWWWWW!! GAWD DAM IT!!! Crumpling over, gripping that belly… rock hard between my hands.  I can’t I can’t… I can’t … Gasping… Rasping… this is not right… this is not me… I can’t… I can’t have kids… something went wrong. Something’s happened. Why am I HERE HURTING!  That voice again… “Breathe ALI! Come on, you’re gonna be fine… Breathe through it let it go …” The midwife… MY midwife. Holy crap I’m having a baby… I’m gonna be a mommy… OMG… breathe .. breathe .. breathe… Pacing the floor… always moving… rocking my hips, shifting my weight… moving… can’t stop…. I want a drink… I need water… I need heat…. I need… “I’m going to take a shower”… I can’t believe I just said that.

Leaning… two hands flat against the cold cold tiles… listening to the sound of the water drumming on my back…. focusing on that liquid running off my body… still rocking forward and back.  Moaning into each contraction when, for a few minutes, the world seems to contract and all I can feel is the pain. I’m swimming in it… drowning in it… but I’m not scared. I know. I understand whets happening to me. I have no control. I can’t make it stop.. I’ve got to GET this BABY OUT OF ME!  There is no way around this. Planting my cheek against the wall as the pain rips me open. a long deep moaning cry through another contraction pushing my hands into that wall. It feels like I need to push my hands right through the bloody wall. I can do this. I can. I… CAN… Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Back in that front room it’s darker… much darker. Artificial lighting gives the room a dull glow and still this work is not over. Gripping my friend, my arms right around his body, holding him to me, feeling the heat from him… rocking and rolling… pulling him around as I moan and hum making him dance this dance with me. I’m tired my body is covered in sweat. its sticky and clammy on my face  and seems to make my breathing harder still. I feel his hands on me. Gasping… panting… asking for a cloth – something cold some relief. The second more nervous witness offers it to me. I don’t move. I can’t let go. I don’t want to het go!! He wipes the hair from my face – a brief moment of refreshment. I can feel the midwife behind me, her hands needing my back, her head close to mine I hear her voice in my ear sometimes… but its hard sooo flipping hard to keep focused on what she’s saying.  I pull back, gripping my friend’s two hands instead and staring up into his blue eyes.. I find that grip getting tighter as I squat down with the contraction.  The moan turns almost into a roar  as I feel the baby’s head… round and so hard…  a pain like NEVER before… so unmovable inside me. My eyes fixed on the face of the man in front of me but not in fear – it’s more look at me .. watch me. I’ve never felt so powerful before in my whole life… that baby is coming OUT gawd dam it !

With the next contraction, I’m on my knees… one friend either side. I feel the midwife’s body behind my back. I know they’re there. I feel their grip. I’m aware they are talking to me, encouraging pushing me on… and yet… I’m not with them. I’m somewhere else… in a place where only I and my baby exist. As I reach my hand between my thighs and feel the weight of that precious child’s head pushing out into the world against the palm of my hand. I’m floating out of body. I know I’m turning that baby slowing working it out of me. I know I’m pushing again and yet I feel nothing but the increasing weight of this tiny body as the shoulders emerge. It feels too heavy for my one hand. I feel scared.  I’m gonna drop it… I need my other hand …… my baby is so close ….

Its sounds cheesy to end the story with and “then I woke up”. I can hear my third grade teacher chastising us   for the ending so often used… but that is how this story ends. I wake up gasping… sometimes shaking. I never see that baby only feel its weight and then come face to face with the reality of my bedroom walls. It’s so vivid… so real… and then it’s gone… like a bubble bursting… leaving me deprived of air. I want to go back. I want so badly to hold that child… to see its face… to look into its eyes. Instead I catch my breath and try to go back to sleep.

Last night marked the third time in a row. Always the same images. Always the same dream ending at the exact same point. I felt like something snapped. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even cry. Instead when I opened my mouth this kind of restrained scream comes out – a sound of pure pain and an inability to breathe. I felt like a piece of me was ripped out and left in that dream world. I felt violated in some way. I haven’t made a noise like that that I can remember since I was locked in a bathroom lying on the floor in fetal position having escaped my dad.  I wanted to tell someone. I needed to be held. I need someone to make it Ok, to stop the hurt…  nobody was around… I felt all alone and for some reason terrified of all this emotion inside me.

I screamed on Twitter:  “Ali_Thom: Dear god make this STOP …. Hurts like hell on earth”.  Melodramatic and pathetic, I know, but I just needed to be rid of all that emotion and negative blech. I feel weak and I’m sorry.

Actually I feel pretty embarrassed but I need to say a big thank you to @InDueTime who answered. Your simple “What’s wrong?” calmed me more than you know.  Thank you !

The “E” thing ..its a nightmare.

It’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but I really do need food and sleep to make me happy. I’m struggling with both right now, so I’ve been kind of a mess for the last two nights. I’ve been having the most horrifying and vivid nightmares. I wake up suddenly, usually I’m shaking and this morning I almost threw up. They bother me the rest of the day almost as if the images are haunting me – making me restless and on edge and to be truthful, frightened to go back to sleep. Sometimes these things are so real I’m just left kind of dazed and confused. Crazy, I know.

The dentist past off without too much problem. The young girl dentist looked so young. I felt old. I feel awful, but I kind of thought she was the nurse – not because she’s female she just looked YOUNG. Some people have all the luck hehehe. She was real gentle and very nice – a much more pleasant experience than I has EVER had before. Yes, I have to go back to have some work done. Its not gonna be nice. I’m a total wuss in that dentist chair. The nerves make my fingers tingle and I flinch at any movement, even if nobody is touching my mouth. Hate the dentist. HATE.  Dentist Round Two at the end of May now. I just have an eye test to book, a doctor’s appointment to arrange, to get my hair cut… the list goes on.  Taking responsibility feels great!

Kayak Man and I are now the proud owners of a Wii and Wii Fit. I’m hoping to build up a daily exercise routine right at home in my front room. Yeah, I found out my Wii fit age and my BMI today.  Nope I’m not telling…yet. I did my first 30 min workout today and really broke a sweat, but I felt so proud of myself – after all it was a little boost. Don’t they say it takes 21 days for a new activity to become a habit? Hmm I wonder if that’s true? Because I just have got to find a way to make this “e” thing more of a habit.

Ali xX

K.S: Exercise and Fun… maybe two words that DO go together after all.

Lotions, potions, pills … NEEDLES ?!

I finally got myself organized and out into the sunshine today to take my registration forms back to the new surgery, so I now OFFICIALLY have a new doctor (at least I will when the Practice Manager comes back from holiday and puts my details on system,. but I have faith.  Part of my new positive thinking drive). So, don’t let me forget I need to call and make my first actual appointment on Wednesday morning around 8am … 8am?!!  Some nights I’m just crawling INTO bed at 8am… so far I’m feeling good about the change. It looks like I might be able to get counseling and dietician appointments at the same place, both things that are on my list of actions I think I need to take to get on top of the health situation and stay there! (The list… that I actually have to write down ON PAPER before Wednesday with a list of questions /concerns too!) Yes, I may actually be doing more preparation for this appointment than some of the exams I have taken in my life.  It may seem crazy, but I’m trying this new approach as a “head fake”. You know, a way to convince my brain that I am confident,  I know what I need and I can admit what I don’t understand  NOT… NOPE… NOT at all worrying myself silly about talking to a doctor I don’t know and telling them all this stuff that I really don’t WANT to share. My brain is not convinced yet… must write list .. MUST write list!  

I’ve been offered counseling before but it’s never really worked out for me. I find the idea that I’m expected to open up to someone I just met frankly quite laughable… (As you can see from the slightly neurotic nature of the above paragraph). Truthfully they would probably gain more insight from reading this silly thing than physically talking to me.  Previous attempts have been epic failures where either we’ve sat in awkward silence the whole time twiddling our thumbs as I proceed to read every single information poster, picture, even the titles of books on a book shelf, just to avoid eye contact while trying to use the power of my mind to make the phone RING so they can talk to someone else OR the opposite approach – I give my standard reply “I’m ok” followed by “no, really, I’m fine.” I go off yakking about something totally random… we end up laughing and… and they wind up agreeing with me “you’re fine!” we shake hands… smiles… have a nice life  and I never have to go back into that awkward uncomfortable place where someone might actually see me FAILING to deal with stuff  and call me out on it again…YAAAY !!!

*head -> desk* Have I told you that I majored in drama? ACTING…its WHAT I DO!   I’m really good at faking it… really good at plastering on a smile when I need to… putting on a mask… not revealing anything… showing you the side of me that IS OK…  and if you don’t know me well enough, like, for example, if we just met that afternoon – my experience is you won’t pick up on it, unless of course your reading this and I just told you.  If you are, let me tell you something else: there’s this whole other side of me that’s not coping, and if you bought my performance, that part of me is laughing at you and I’m not  make any progress.

Speaking of tangents… I had this really nuts dream last night. I went into space on a school trip to some settlement that looked like a cross between a dive bar in Star Wars and a motorway service station.  I was struggling to breathe and dying of heat, searching the gift shop for the “I’ve been to Saturn” fridge magnet without success. My subconscious obviously liked something about that Shuttle / Space Station discussion I was having with Gadget Guy… analyze that… on second thought -  don’t

So, yeah, decided to give counseling one final chance and this time I will actively TRY to disable my own defense mechanisms.  I don’t hold out much hope but at least I will have given it a shot.

 As for the dietician, well I need to get this diet / exercise thing going but there seems so much to consider with trying to manage PCOS, depression… and lose weight.  I think I need professional help and guidance.

Enough of that for now. On to some reading I’ve been doing lately about the benefits of acupuncture treatment for PCOS. Now given that I am deathly afraid of needles in a eeek eeek eeeek…OMG I can’t look! Hide my face in my hands and squeal like a 5 year old kind of way. I cannot believe I’m actually considering this, but I’m so desperate for improvement, I’ll try anything. Still more reading is needed because a large portion of my mind is still saying “you mean needles… SEVERAL of them… YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!”

 While I was doing this research today, I found a couple of links may prove useful:

The first is the link to the UK patient support group Verity. I still haven’t made the final decision to join yet, but they seem to have support groups set up in a few areas around the UK as well as holding a few national events open to all members. Their nest event is on 28th of March in Birmingham titled “PCOS Emotions Workshop 2009″

I even have this speck of an idea that if there’s not a support group in my area, I should go ahead and start one.  On the other hand it could be that the boy I live with and his passion for wild / crazy / hair brained schemes is rubbing of on me.

Are any of you already members, if so has it been helpful / worthwhile? 

The second link was a site I found selling supplements related to PCOS. It’s well organized; all the products are listed under the specific symptoms they are thought to help. It’s called PCOS Online. To be honest I find the amount of possible supplements a bit daunting. I’m only just starting out my research and I think I’ll consult my doctor before going on a shopping spree, lest I do some harm with a toxic combination or something, but if you’re searching for something specific it may be worth a look.

I feel like I’m only seeing the tip of a huuuge iceberg of information out there. There’s so much more to read, consider… BUT it feels so good to be doing something. I actually feel like I’m learning about myself mentally and physically.  I just have to accept that it’s not just my personality that makes me high maintenance.  My body is that way too.

Ali xX

K.S. I’m not alone .. and there’s help out there !