Half

When my children are with me, I am half full. To be connected with them, I feel very disconnected from the world of grown ups. I have little individual existence/identity. I often find myself not doing things I want/need to do (such as reading) and instead waiting for the next thing I need to do for them. And engaging with them involves a fair amount of negotiation, persuasion, cajoling... even for things they want to do. But we do connect, especially when they are with me for longer stretches. We had an interesting discussion about puberty in the car yesterday. Today we put the yard to bed for the season. But then they drop into legoland, a book, or a friend and I'm just waiting for the next thing I need to do and I feel the gulf between their world as kids and my adult status. I'm the one in charge. The one who makes money, buys food, makes plans, arranges transportation. makes the big decisions...

And when my children are gone and the world is a bit more about me, I am more like half empty. In those times, I am independent and the enormity of that is almost overwhelming. I feel like I waste large chunks of it. I should be riding my bike, writing my book, getting drunk, and kissing people. But I never seem to get that much out of it.

I'm feeling the frustration of neither situation feeling right. Both leave me so very tired. And I'm feeling at a loss as to how to fix it and find some sort of middle ground where the pieces of me fit together.

Fairness vs. Sameness

A dinner table conversation turned to this topic the other night. I can't quite recall its origins... probably something to do with food quantities or bedtimes or chores but it has been funny to see that the topic is also cycling through an on-line discussion on my campus at the moment. The issue at hand there is whether or not it is "fair" to the men of the university community that there is a Women's Resource Center on campus and not a "Gender Resource Center," "Men's Resource Center," or just plain "Resource Center."* As you might imagine, there are a couple of contributors (and I literally mean 2) who got and keep the discussion rolling with insightful comments such as "all the women I know are strong" and "to have a resource center for women tells women that they are weak."

I'm on sabbatical and trying to stay out of the fray, but I have been checking in on things. It has been fun to see my colleagues -- most of whom are women's studies faculty -- answer the critics from their various disciplinary perspectives. You put a philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and economist together -- all citing evidence -- and there are some pretty convincing arguments on the ways in which women are situationally disadvantaged by their gender (though not necessarily only their gender) and the core set of resources that might be made available to mitigate these disadvantages. Of all the comments, though, the only one that sent my brain somewhere new came from a literature professor and I thought I would share with you a link to the short story she recommended.

Maybe it is just the sponge-like brains of children, but my kids got it pretty quickly that something being fair did not mean that things had to be the same for everyone. That thinking about what is fair might better be done through looking at what people need rather than counting out the beans so that everyone has the same amount. I wonder if the critics of the WRC will be willing to try and wrap their brains around that.



*By the way, the WRC is really about more than women. In particular, much of the programming goes to support the LGBT community, those with non-conforming gender identities, community involvement, and childcare. Interestingly, that the center's scope was wider than "women" doesn't seem to have been the source of the original objection to the WRC.

Who am I without the pain?

I resisted this question when it was first asked of me, but with surgery looming, it has crept back into my thoughts. The premise is that the pain has gone on long enough, been persistent enough, that it is not just something I live with, but has become a part of who I am. Honestly, I don't know. Here are the bits I do know. The bits that I would hopefully forget if there weren't a blog to read about them in years from now...

I first recognized the pain as something more than a passing thing in June of 2003 -- 4 1/2 years ago. We were camping at Waterloo and the walk to the beach became torturous, so I sat a lot, something I would learn later only made things worse.

The pain has three parts that crop up individually and in different combinations. The first pain to appear was in the front, right at the crease between leg and groin. It felt like the tendons in this area would not "hold" when I walked -- like my hip was about to give way -- and this area is almost always tender. The weakness I feel in the hip seems to come from here. The next to appear was in the piriformas muscle -- the big one that goes over the back of my hip. It ties itself up in to a big painful knot that is hard to stretch at all. The third is a pain on the outer hip. This is the least troublesome of the trio, though it has had its moments.

Over the course of the four+ years, I have seen the flexibility and strength on my right side decrease markedly, I have become increasingly unable to walk or stand for long periods of time (esp. on concrete), I cannot sit on overly soft couches or overly hard chairs for more than a few minutes, I cannot sleep on my side (often being on the left with my right hip in the air hurts too), I cannot sleep for more than a few hours, I cannot step up more than about a foot on the right, I cannot drive for more than about two hours without suffering for days after.

I am still active -- I lift, yoga, skate, dance, and bike. These make me strong so that helps keep the hip in check in the big picture, but they also, all except for the bike, cause me pain short-term pain. The bike has, in many ways, saved my sanity of late -- it is what has allowed me to be out in world... moving, active, and without pain. I don't know why I don't hurt on the bike, but I don't. When I can't walk and I can't sit anymore, I've been able to pedal... and a 35 mile ride does a lot to counter the depressing pyschological effects of the limitations noted above.

Some periods have been worse than others. The summer of 2005 was particularly bad after travel had me sitting way too much and off my regular exercise schedule. Somewhere in 2006 I had another bad period that I finally admitted to when I realized that I could not walk to/from E's school (3 1/2 blocks) without bumping the pain level up two notches. Not being one who is always comfortable with her own limitations, I found I could meet E's desire for a mommy escort by riding my bike -- but every time I get on the bike to take her to school, I am aware that I can't walk that far on concrete any more.

I don't sleep well either. If only I could sleep... maybe I could deal. But 3am would often find me wandering the house with a cloud of doom hanging over my head, hurting. I finally learned not to use this time to talk with spouse or send e-mails...

The docs have never been very helpful. During a physical one year, when the doc asked me how my general health was and I told her about the grayness the hip had brought to my life, she told me I could make a separate appointment to talk about that! Needless to say, I have never felt well tended by my primary care physicians who could not even manage to decently medicate for the pain. Specialists did little better -- they would bend and twist me and look puzzled at the disconnect between my flexibility (high) and pain levels (also high). The surgeon was better. He was cautious -- did more x-rays and MRIs which revealed a labral cartilage tear -- ordered extra (painful!) tests to see if that was the cause of my pain and he offered a solution (surgery, not surprisingly) . But even he would not help me manage the pain between seeing me in the Spring of 2007 and now, when I am actually having the surgery.

The real kicker with the pain is not its intensity, per se, but that it is always there. I haven't been below a 2 (out of 1o) on the pain scale for years and I'm often running at a 4 or a 6, but when it goes on at those higher levels for days on end, it can really wear me down. Those who have seen me lose it over the pain are usually seeing the stress of on-going pain more than a momentary pang (though I have those too). Those who live with me can attest that the pain creeps up on me and steals my good humor once I've had a bad run of more than a day or two of elevated pain levels. By this summer, I was taking handfuls of ibuprofen (1000mg) to dull the pain just a bit -- enough to function and sleep.

My greatest fear about Friday is that the surgery won't really fix it. The surgery may go beautifully, but I may still have pain. My close people have been hugely cheery, optimistic, supportive, but I remain unconvinced (but open. Really!). I do not know who I will be without the pain, but this has gone on long enough that I am willing to find out.