meddling with mood meds

It seems that my depression, anxiety, or whatever it is you want to call my struggle with my emotional state, is no longer responding to my meds. This is really frustrating. I started going to a specialist for my mood meds, rather than just my regular doctor, shortly after Samuel was born three years ago. I had maxed out my dose on Zoloft during the pregnancy, since I seemed to need more as my blood volume and weight increased. But after Samuel was born, even the max dose didn't seem to be working. The psychiatric ARNP put me on Effexor, and with follow up the dose was increased slightly past the manufacturer's max dose (the psychiatric community recognizes that more than the max dose can be safely used and is necessary for some people). Some time later, when it seemed that Effexor was still controlling most symptoms, but I was experiencing a sort of bleed-through on certain symptoms, she added Wellbutrin to address those specific symptoms. It seemed to work reasonably well. One can't really expect symptoms to vanish 100% with antidepressants. The medicine is supposed to help level emotions so that they can be dealt with constructively, not to prevent ever feeling any negative emotions.

So, I've been on this Effexor/Wellbutrin combo for a while (a year and a half, two years?), and I had decided it was probably the best regimen available for me for now. But lately, it doesn't seem to be working at all. If it is actually improving my emotional stability and moods, then I can't imagine how I would be acting and feeling without any drugs.

my "new" couch

So, here's what we ended up doing for a "new" couch... We found a better used one, much less used, for $75, and put our old couch cover on it. However, the old couch cover was not large enough for the new, longer couch, so I went online and found a new couch cover on clearance ($30!! Can you believe that?? I think our other one was $100 new.) I am very, very happy with the "new" couch. The cover is awesome, fits great and is soft, and the couch itself is way more comfy than our other one ever was.

Heath, Ethan, and Samuel demonstrate how long the couch is - it had to be long enough for Heath to stretch out, head to toes, or I couldn't buy it.

eww!

Thought you all might be interested in the pathologist's report on my gallbladder. :-) This is straight from the report. Warning: It still makes me shudder with revulsion to read it, even though it's referring to my gallbladder.

silly struggle

I am having this struggle lately with wanting to buy new furniture. Struggle, I say, because we can't really afford it, at least not to pay cash for it. I usually distract myself from this temptation by remembering how wonderful it is that we've had to buy hardly anything for our home -- it's almost all been given to us, either as wedding gifts or as hand-me-downs from family or friends. Such as...

lost sense of humor?

I feel like I don't have anything interesting to blog about anymore, and I don't know why that is. I look back through my old posts, when Jacob and Ethan were preschoolers, both before and during the first year after Samuel was born, and it seems like life was full of funny antecdotes. Do I not see them anymore? Have I become so accustomed to how kids act that it doesn't amuse me the same way anymore? Am I too focused on myself to notice their cuteness, the humor in sometimes exasperating situations? Has my attitude toward it all changed, darkened?

Well, I don't know whether those things are true or not, but wouldn't you know that as soon as I noticed that I wasn't noticing cute or funny things my kids do, I noticed something cute Samuel did. So, despite not having many funny stories to share lately, here is one:

wonderful things

I have decided that minimally invasive surgery is one of the most wonderful modern inventions. It's hard to believe that two days ago, a surgeon cut into my abdomen in 4 places and inserted tools by which he, essentially, dissected my internal anatomy. Granted, the incision sites are pretty sore, like one would expect, but I am still amazed that I can be sitting up and walking around so shortly after surgery! Also amazing: modern painkillers. I let the pain medicine run out a bit yesterday morning and realized just how much it was helping. I am back on schedule and determined not to stretch the time between doses again for another day or two.

surgery

Those of you who I see somewhat regularly have already heard about this, but there are some of you who might not have heard yet. I'm having my gall bladder removed this week, on Thursday. I had a couple of "attacks" last month, and upon investigation, they diagnosed me with chronic cholecystisis, which is basically inflammation of the gallbladder. No stones were visible on the sonogram, but the wall of the gallbladder was thickened (6 mm versus 2-3 mm normally), indicating chronic inflammation, which (according to what I read) can cause the gallbladder walls to thicken and become stiff.

my journey through faith and science

I'm wondering if I can even write this post with my spectrum of readers in mind... My uncle who has earned his living from science for the past 30 years or more on one end of the spectrum, and the most conservative of my Christian friends on the other end of the spectrum. Sprinkled in the middle are the rest of my friends and readers, a group which consists, as far as I know, almost entirely of devoted followers of Christ, yet with varied opinions on the issues that make one a "conservative" or "liberal" Christian. Yet I will try.

For some time now, I've been wrestling with whether or not it is really possible to fit a belief in evolution into my faith in God.

photo shoot - always an adventure

parenting our children's intelligence

Intelligence is a funny thing - not only do we desire to have it, but frequently, to know how much of it we possess in relation to others. This urge reveals our desire to possess intelligence not merely for its usefulness, but also as some sort of reassurance of our value.

This morning, Heath and I attended a meeting with the school psychologist, gifted teacher, and Jacob's regular classroom teacher to go over his test results for the gifted program. Although he tested very high, he was a few points shy of qualifying for the program. He will continue to receive extra work in the classroom to challenge him and will continue to participate in the weekly "Talent Pool" program for the second graders who tested in the top 2% for math on the NEA tests.

As we drove home, I told Heath that I'm really not surprised, since I was tested in high school to be labeled as gifted and did not qualify. I hadn't thought of this in relation to Jacob's testing until this morning.

Easter Egg Hunt

Samuel talking

Samuel's language development has really grown over the last two months or so. He has said some really cute things that I wanted to record here so we didn't forget.

The first thing I remember that I wanted to share was when we were at the bank to sign our closing papers for our refinance, and the closing officer came out to meet us. She introduced herself, and then Heath said, "Hi, I'm Heath," shaking her hand. Samuel jumped up and said, loudly enough for anyone nearby to hear, "I'm me!" Of course he assumed she'd want to know who he was, too! At that time, he had recently started telling us, "I'm me." Now he says, "I'm Samuel," but not clearly enough yet for someone to understand his name if they didn't already know what it was. So, he's understanding the concept of names versus pronouns, but he still says, if we ask if he's happy/sad/excited/sweet, "No, I'm Samuel!" Right, but is Samuel happy/sad/excited/sweet? "No, I'm Samuel!"

Another thing that happened just recently was when I told Samuel in the van that he'd have to wait to pee until we arrived at the grocery store, that he'd have to "hold it." He said, "All day?!??" Then in a worried voice, "I pee Mommy's car!" I assured him that it would just be for a little bit until we got to the store. We ended up forgetting to go right away at the store, and he held it all the way until after we checked out. What a big boy.

There are so many cute things he says every day, it seems like. These are the two that are stuck in my mind right now. He is becoming more understandable to people outside the family, now, too, which is a lot of fun. He asks us each night to pray about "big cars" - i.e. that he won't be woken up and scared by loud cars driving by. This has actually happened two or three times, after which he asked us to pray for it one night, and now he brings it up every night, maybe just as a comforting (or perhaps prolonging?) part of the bedtime routine.

I looked back through blog entries from when Ethan was the age Samuel is now, and it was fun to remember the things he would say at this same age. This is when he called people "Dute-doo," and when he labeled many things as "dee-one." Samuel uses his words for "this-one" quite a bit when he wants to refer to something he doesn't know the word for, too, but Ethan used it so liberally it was entertaining. You can read my original entry about it here. This was also the age that Ethan called Jacob "Bubba" still, and yelled out to Jacob when he was performing in a program at church, "Hi Bubba! Hi Bubba!" until Jacob finally acknowledged him. Then yelled "Good job, Bubba!" when it was over. Ah, the love. :-)

Happy Birthday, Sweet Ethan!

(If you'd like to see the captions, click on the video to go to my Picasa page.)

oh my!

Have you heard of Gospel Dance Aerobics?

I'm not a big youtube person; I have only gotten on the site a few times in my life. But I decided to do a search for dance aerobics in the interest of finding some form of exercise I might actually enjoy. A bunch of videos came up for this guy: http://www.pauleugene.com/

Nothing against what he's trying to do - but it just makes me laugh. A little too... well, contrived, for me. Two of the moves are called "offering" and "thanks." If you click the link it will take you to one of his youtube videos so you can see for yourself.

interesting discussions in the van

The boys were off school yesterday for MLK Jr. Day. (At the end of the day, Jacob said, "Wait, today was MLK Jr. Day! Why didn't we do anything for it?") They spent the morning embroiled in video games, taking forced 30 minute breaks two or three times for fighting, but by lunchtime we managed to get everyone dressed and out of the house. We visited Daddy's office, since the older boys hadn't been there for quite a while, and then we went to McDonald's for a late lunch and climbing fest. They were still fairly perky after McDonald's, so I decided to risk going by the mall to pick up some jeans that were on sale. So, all in all, we spent quite a bit of time in the van - enough time that we had several interesting discussions.

First, on the way to Daddy's office, we saw an armored truck, and I commented on it. I asked the boys if they knew what an armored truck was, and when they didn't, I explained it as well as I knew how. They were fascinated that the driver might carry a gun and wanted to know why. This led to a discussion of police officers carrying guns, since I had explained the armored truck driver's gun by using the example of a traffic cop wearing a gun as a precaution and so people would be hesitant to mess with him, even though it is unlikely he would actually need to use it. This, then, led to the question of whether one can survive getting shot. I told them that it is possible, and explained some reasons why getting shot would or would not be fatal. I also said that in certain situations, someone might even intentionally shoot someone in the leg to catch them without killing them. (Heath told me this was not entirely accurate because most people wouldn't chance missing the fairly small target of a leg, but since Mama was giving the info, they get Mama's take on it.) At this, Jacob said, "Yeah, or maybe they'd just go up and hit him with their gun to knock him out." The kid has been watching Daddy play Halo 3 on the xbox 360 too much. I did tell him that it was an unlikely scenario except with the most highly trained and specialized police officers, or if someone happens to have a special armored suit like Master Chief.

Later, when we were loading into the van after leaving the mall, one of the boys asked about how my dad died. I can't even remember what prompted this question, but Jacob has been thinking about it more lately, I know. I explained and reassured them that it was a very rare occurence, so they didn't need to worry about it happening to others they love, and furthermore, that there are now better medicines to treat it. In the course of explaining what happened to my Dad, I said that we didn't get him to the hospital until the infection was pretty advanced, and there is a chance the antibiotics could have stopped the infection if we'd gotten there sooner; but it's also possible they wouldn't have been able to stop it no matter what, and we just can't know because we can't redo it. At this, Jacob started talking about how in the future, maybe we'll have a time machine, so we can travel back in time and warn my dad to go to the hospital early in his sickness. Then, the boys concluded, they'd get to meet him when they warned him, but they still wouldn't have him when they went back to the future because he'd be "like, 100 or something" by then. So I guess this time machine is slated to be developed in the 2040's.

Finally, on the way home, the boys were talking again about how they want to be soldiers when they grow up. I keep telling them that they can be soldiers, but that most people don't do that for their whole lives; they have other careers as well. Jacob says he can't decide between soldier and scientist. I told him he could be a scientist in the military, which caused Ethan to ask what things a person could do in the military, prompting a woefully inadequately response from me, along the lines of "all kinds of things." Jacob piped up before Ethan could question me further and said that he wants to be a soldier on the ground who is shooting and throwing grenades and fighting. (Again - too much Halo 3!) I told him that we don't always have a war going on which requires those things. Maybe this isn't entirely accurate, but I didn't want him to be picturing that as a predictable component of his future plans. They were surprised by this idea, and so I explained that the current wars our military are fighting only started after 9/11. And then I had to explain what 9/11 was.

Explaining 9/11 in their terms was hard. It brought back all the sorrow of it for me. How could a group of people carry out such an act that horrified and grieved all of America? Even those of us with no one we knew who was killed grieved with those who did. I kept my explanation grave but not overly dramatic for the boys, of course, telling them about the hijacked planes, explaining briefly what a terrorist is, and explaining what it did to the WTC towers to be rammed by jet planes. I told them how many people died and how the US responded with the war in Afghanistan because of the terrorists' bases there. I also explained the build up to the Iraq war and how it was believed Hussein had ties to the terrorists and/or had nuclear weapons, but how no nuclear weapons were ever found, so it has become a controversy now with some people thinking we never should have gone into Iraq; how now we are trying to finish the job and help both countries get stable governments before we leave. The amazing thing is, Heath asked Jacob about it when he got home from work, and Jacob was able to report the basics back to him very accurately. He even remembered that the WTC towers were in New York. I have always been amazed by Jacob's verbal comprehension and memory, from the time he was three years old. As usual, Ethan gets pulled into discussions at a younger age than we would otherwise have planned simply by having a brother who is only 19.5 months older. They think they are basically the same age, and I don't think either of them can imagine a scenario where we allow Jacob to hear or watch or discuss something with us that Ethan can't yet. I hate it that Ethan is getting exposed to some harsh things earlier than Jacob, but I guess it is the way it goes with the second born. I'm afraid we're going to have to explain more about human reproduction to Jacob soon, lest he get an inaccurate or even worse, sleazy, explanation from other boys at school, and we are going to have to find a time we can have that talk with just Jacob.

One last thing I just remembered - Jacob explained the Big Bang theory to all of us in the van as well. I was on the phone with Heath during part of it and only able to listen with half my attention. I finished the call and capped off Jacob's explanation by saying, "Yes, that is the way scientists think the universe came to be. And we know that God created everything, so if that's how things came to be the way they are, then that's just the way God chose to do it, right?" Jacob was a little upset that I said scientists "thought" this was how it happened based on the evidence they had, since obviously no one was there to witness it and know exactly, for sure. He told me indignantly that we are still feeling the aftershocks of the Big Bang, so we KNOW that's what happened. After trying to explain my position a couple more times and hearing his adamant rebuttal, I said, "Okay, I'll have to look into that." I'm not sure about the aftershock thing, honestly, so I'll have to look it up.

The kind of discussions we had yesterday are one of the reasons why I was so reluctant to send Jacob to school in the first place - why we stuck out trying to home school long after it became difficult. I still think we made the right decision sending Jacob and Ethan to school, but I am reminded of the kind of natural, interactive learning that can happen in the family when I have days like yesterday. And I love it.