Hey all. I’ve been working my new job for a few weeks, I work in social care with disabled kids. It’s great but I’ve already hit on this really big issue that I am gonna have to deal with going forward so that is kinda stressful. Thankfully I volunteer with a team within the same org, so they have given me some good advice.
Basically because I am new, when I am working with kids normally termed ‘challenging’ other members of staff keep jumping in when they think I am out of my depth. The only thing is, their approach has only escalated things to really distressing levels including two occasions where I think what they did constituted harm to the child.
The boy in question on these two occasions is tactile defensive, you know, he is oversensitive to touch and hates to be touched unless it is on his own terms, and he builds up VERY slowly and gently to being affectionate although he is a very sweet and affectionate kid once he is comfortable.
So he didn’t want to eat his lunch, we have all been there! But someone decides I am being too soft and tries to force him to sit at a table and eat on command. Physically grappling with him and wrestling him into the chair over and over as he got increasingly distressed. Then he started trying to claw her because duh, and trying to climb out and into my arms to escape. I was holding back tears with how helpless I felt. She had to leave the room and after she was gone, I followed him around giving him spoonfuls of yoghurt and once his appetite was whetted he ate some of his lunch in his own time.
The other thing was a little later, my supervisor decided she was going to do his personal care (toileting) and she got his hands and held them above his head and frogmarched him into the bathroom, bodily lifted him on to the bed and tried to restrain his hands with one hand while changing him with the other. He was crying and lashing out NOW, but he had been totally minding his own business before the sudden frogmarching. It was bizarre.
She made me hold his hands but I held them very gently, just enough to keep him from clawing at her again and incurring more of her wrath. He rubbed his head in frustration and continued to cry but made no effort to claw me. It was done in a flash but he was so upset that he was in a deep, silent funk for half an hour afterwards. I had spent all day getting to know him and we had really got this bond, and while he was playing he would periodically come up and boop my face just as a kind of tactile check-in with me. After the bathroom incident, he stopped making any contact again for quite a while. By the end of my shift all seemed back to normal with him, but it preyed on my mind all week and I can’t just let it go.
The thing is, the two worst offenders were both way senior to me. They kind of have this attitude that because they have been doing it so long, they must be right but actually their attitudes are outdated and, you know, harmful as all hell. Actively and incredibly harmful.
I’m so new and it pains me to rock the boat already but I’ve been losing sleep over this. So yeah. That’s my stuff for the mo. Hope everyone is holding up ok round here.
Rosie*sings*
8 years ago
What an awesome pic! It looks like a barrel of laughs 😉 (sorry… couldn’t help myself).
Tonight I’m reading this uplifting article before going to work. It’s about the “sense of foreshortened future” that can occur after trauma because there has been far too much Jian Gomeshi on my mind, lately 🙁 I guess the only saving grace is that the Canadian MRAs are not smart enough to try to embrace him as a leader because the idea of “culture” is above their heads, unless it’s already within their sphere.
Dee
8 years ago
Hi,
After months of being unemployed under the pretense of writing my screenplay, I’ve landed a superb job that will help me stay connected with cinema and help other aspiring writers. Plenty excited!
Also joined a course that will help me get to the finish line on my own screenplay within a short deadline.
For the first time I feel a tangible possibility that my story can actually go out and become a movie.
Fun times ahead!
Goddamn I’m just so tired lately. I’ll have nights where I sleep like a log for 12 hours, and then nights where I don’t even feel tired until 5 or 6 AM, and then I sleep until noon, and I feel guilty about it, and then I finally feel tired about 11PM so I go to bed, and then I’ll lie there for HOURS trying to just sleep, so I grab my phone and play my quick mobile games and watch a few short YouTube videos and end up just not falling asleep.
Something’s wrong with me.
LG.
8 years ago
So, I just wanna say…
BEING OUT GENDERQUEER IS THE BEST THING EVAH.
I’m wearing men’s clothes, and I’m wearing makeup again (I love makeup when it’s not part of the woman box), and I want ALL the pronouns, and my boss is a great guy who offered me a new name tag without me asking, and my husband lets me borrow his boxers, and fuck bras because VESTS, and I can be a tenor now, and I’m not policing myself for this or that, and I have never been so not-angry.
Fruitloopsie
8 years ago
My chihuahua named Maxx had problems like diabetes and such so we had to put him to sleep a couple of weeks ago. I miss him so much.
Kat
Sorry about that I wish I could offer advice but I don’t have much experience. Hugs if you need them.
PI
Hmm, are you excercising? Or are you sleeping too much?
LG
That’s awesome!
guy
8 years ago
@Kat
I’m generally reluctant to tell doctors how to do their jobs, especially over the internet, but that definitely sounds dubious.
I would definitely advise finding a qualified child psychiatrist in your organization and discussing it with them. There may be more to the story than you realize, or there may not. Certainly there had better be a very, very good reason if they’re doing that sort of thing, but it’s possible there is. Or a not-good-but-compelling reason like not having the time to do things properly if they’re going to feed all the kids. But if they can’t give you a good reason there probably isn’t one.
guy
8 years ago
Basically, your seniors do have more experience in the field and with the specific children and it is possible they have learned this really is the best option. But it’s also possible it’s an old method based on discredited science still around out of inertia. For your peace of mind and the safety of the children, find out.
Eonid
8 years ago
@Kat
I worked for three years in foster care with high-risk youth, and there were definitely times where I felt that what was being done was not in the best interest of the child, and when I spoke up, I often wasn’t taken seriously because of my age and level of experience. I have to say, though, that “rocking the boat” isn’t an intrinsically bad thing. Sometimes it’s worth it to take on an issue so that someone less capable/able and/or more vulnerable doesn’t have to go through distress. Just make sure you surround yourself with support, make allies in your organization and do lots of self-care. The work can wear you down.
Fruitloopsie | February 20, 2016 at 6:56 pm
PI
Hmm, are you excercising? Or are you sleeping too much?
I do get a bit of exercise here and there (walking, when I have the energy and my back isn’t killing me), but I’ve really been unable to sleep at night for months now. I only recently had a night where I was able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep for a good long period of time. I even had dreams! It felt almost foreign to me, since I hadn’t had dreams in who knows how long.
kupo
8 years ago
@PI
I have problems like that sometimes (right now, in fact). Sometimes it helps if I use a happy light, especially in the winter or when I’m stuck in the office long hours. Sometimes it helps to take something to induce sleep (anything from antihistamines to prescription sleep aids, depending on how bad it gets), and sometimes I just have to grin and bear it. I hope it gets better for you soon.
@LG
That’s really awesome. Do you wear men’s vests? I cannot find them but I usually look in the women’s section.
I went without a bra in public today. I’m pretty proud of myself. I have torpedo shaped boobs so it’s pretty obvious when I’m not wearing a bra, and it makes me self conscious. But today I didn’t care. 🙂
LG.
8 years ago
I don’t think there’s much, if any, structural difference between men and women’s vests. I get them from the men’s section in thrift stores.
Victorious Parasol
8 years ago
Congratulations, LG!
peaches
8 years ago
Hey, I’ve been reading but not commenting much lately. I managed to get both pinkeye and bronchitis this week, so I’ve been staying in and taking a lot of medications (on top of the lot I usually take).
The back surgery I had a couple of months ago has work fantastically. I still can’t lift or bend much, but I’m in very little pain and can walk without a cane. I’m almost ready to find a job.
Still missing my dad a lot. My sister came up with an idea-all of us are going to the beach in a few months, to be together and have some fun. This is great ’cause my mom wanted to go to the beach a lot the past few years, but dad was too sick to travel.
Bonelady
8 years ago
Fruitloopsie, I’m so sorry to hear you lost your dog. It is so hard to make that decision when you want to hold on just one more day, yet you know that quality of life is gone. You were very brave to think of Maxx first. I hope when you are ready, you find another dog to love.
Eonid
8 years ago
I guess I’ll use this time to introduce myself: I’m 30, female-bodied, genderqueer and bisexual, but only out about my sexuality, not my gender. I go by she/her pronouns in my life currently, but I’m also fine with they/their pronouns. I live with my s.o. and our two bandmates – we have been playing music together coming up on five years.
I work in a job I don’t inherently dislike but that I am really only staying at because it offers me the stability and flexibility I need in a job. I’m (still, forever, who knows? gah!) recovering from being hit by a car 3 1/2 years ago, and I have still yet to reach a resolution in the insurance claim that would perhaps allow me some retraining for a job I’d enjoy more and could physically do on a long-term basis. The accident really turned my life inside out, shattering idea of who I was in my own mind, and it led me to doing a lot of self-discovery (thus the as-of-yet closeted gender identity). Part of that looking and reading led me here, and I’ve been peeping on y’all for about a year now.
I have a hedgehog, and he is a grumpy little dude who I enjoy hanging out with (as long as he will tolerate me).
Nequam
8 years ago
Since my dad is off the ventilator, he’s able to talk (a little) if he covers the trach tube, so I actually got to hear words from him for the first time in about a month. He needs to get the hang of the air passage so he can’t speak lots, but it was very reassuring all the same.
I am also quite content with the fully-covered book; it feels solid.
Annoyingly, I wanted to take a picture of something close up and realized the iPhone doesn’t have that capability without an add-on lens. “No biggie,” I think, “I have an old Nikon here that I used to use for quick snaps before I got the phone.”
Emphasis on old. There are no Windows 10 drivers for it. 😛 And I think the relatively old USB card reader I (which I got back in the Win2K days!) can’t read the SD card it happens to use. Most annoying! Makes me wonder if I should just brace myself and look into getting a full-on hardware upgrade, though the computer still handles most stuff well (I don’t play bleeding-edge games, so its older onboard graphics ain’t no thing).
Bonelady
8 years ago
So, I had a vaginal hysterectomy three weeks ago this coming Tuesday. I’m doing okay – not much pain any more, pretty much off the pain pills, back at work. But I get so tired whenever I do anything. I have to stop and rest walking from my car to my classroom, which is only a few hundred feet. Has anyone else run into this? And if so how long does it last? I am 60, and had no problems with endurance before the surgery, but this is really frustrating.
Have you spoken to your doctor about energy/endurance decreases and what to expect? I found I was really tired and easy exhausted after my surgery (reconstructing my knee post-car attack 😉 ), but I chalked that up to stress/distress and my body using up a bunch of resources to knit itself back together. How long do you feel is too long for you to bounce back after a procedure like this? Not trying to instigate – just want to know if you expected to be back to “normal” more or less by this point.
@ WWTH
Thanks!
mildlymagnificent
8 years ago
Bonelady
But I get so tired whenever I do anything.
That’s often a consequence of just the general anaesthetic and not much more.
Back 30 years ago, I remember some people used a yardstick of one month of fatigue (or reduced activity or both) for each hour under anaesthetic. Major surgery has a major impact on your life in addition to the changes made by the surgical excision or adjustment itself.
masque d'étoiles
8 years ago
@Bonelady,
Three weeks out from a vag hysterectomy your body is still healing, and that takes a lot of energy. I had an abdominal incision hysterectomy last Feb (less invasive procedure) and it took me more than a month to get my energy back. But once I did I felt much much better than I even expected. I had a fair degree of endometriosis that was not verified until the doctor had me opened up, and apparently that had been causing me a lot of generalized body pain that was greatly mitigated in the aftermath of surgery. So yay for much less frequent use of painkillers!
@Rosie,
The Canadian MRAs don’t embrace Ghomeshi partly because of his advocacy for all things liberal, including, ironically, feminism. He’s not exactly their cup of tea politically or in any other way. The only commentary I’ve seem from an MRA type concerning him was a lot of schadenfreude to the effect that “Jian got exactly what a mangina deserves, so lulz! He’s a stupid liberal sap with no understanding of how the world works, and as a liberal he’s obviously too much of a beta to understand that the wimminz are conniving evil lying liars.” So there’s that.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I have a past acquaintance with him. It was nothing personal, and I haven’t seen him in about a dozen years, but if I ran into him now I honestly have no clue what I’d say to him or if I’d just desperately try to avoid catching his attention. But I believe Lucy, Reva, Sarah and his unnamed accusers implicitly.)
Eonid introduced herself above, and it occurs to me that after making several comments these past few weeks I ought to do the same. So howdy! I’m 53, female, boringly straight and married to my sweetie these past 29 years. I’m one of the invisibly disabled, so from the outside it looks like we have one of those “traditional marriages” in which he works outside the home and she’s a domestic goddess within, but we’re really much more versatile and flexible than that. In our spare time we are music facilitators – we don’t perform, but we volunteer at the local folk club, and run a camp for performers at an annual festival. The main stress in my life is being the caregiver, chauffeur, and all-around troubleshooter for my very temperamental 80-year-old mother, who lives with us and who is the embodiment of internalized misogyny and female-helplessness archetypes. I do battle with these negative messages from her many times each day. I also have 1 adult child and am simultaneously Queen, Servant, and Nurse/technician to 7 spoiled felines with an assortment of vexatious health issues. And yes, the Mr. is a Crazy Cat Man, among his other admirable traits.
Social Justice Atheist
8 years ago
I don’t normally post things this personal, but I’m really having a rough time right now. My binge eating disorder is getting worse, but I’m terrified of getting help because I’m afraid the nutritionist/therapist will put me on a diet, which I can’t handle because I get too obsessed and might delve back into my former anorexia/bulimia. It’s not helping that I have gained so much weight over the past years and feel horrible about myself. Not because being fat is ugly, bad, or shameful (it’s definitely not!) but because of my ED history it is a fear I have always had. It is making me very depressed that I cannot seem to control what I eat because I feel I don’t have much control over other things going on in my life and food/dieting was always a way that I controlled things. I have had a very rough year and it has only made my eating disorder way worse. I don’t want to say too much, but I will just say that around a year ago my dad did a very, very bad thing that really hurt my mom and nearly tore our family apart. She has never been quite the same and has tried to overdose three times in the course of this year and I am crying right now thinking about how she looked when they had to revive her in the ambulance and how we almost lost her repeatedly.
She has forgiven my dad for what he has done and we are slowly trying to pick up the pieces but it definitely hasn’t been easy. I’m so depressed, I can barely leave the house or do anything and my dad always gets on me about being on the couch all the time. He says I’m lazy and have no motivation, which really hurts me but it feels like I literally cannot make myself do anything else. It takes all the energy I have just to even take a shower, brush my teeth, or get dressed. Can’t see a therapist because we are struggling with money right now a lot and we can barely afford our basic needs.
I just feel so alone. The only person I really feel close to in my family is my brother who I love very much. We have always been close but the past couple of years have only made us closer. We have had to emotionally support each other a lot. But I’m sad, because soon he will be going off to college and I still haven’t graduated high school yet although I will be this year.
Speaking of college, I’m also so fucking terrified about college. I know we can’t afford for me to go to college and there’s no way I’ll get a scholarship because of my poor grades, (I have several learning disabilities which I am really trying to work on getting better) so I will have to get a job after I graduate. Which also scares me, because I’m afraid I will let my boss/everyone down. I would like it if I could work as an apprentice at a salon, because I want to be a hairdresser someday. I know I will have to get a job before I can go to beauty school though, because we just can’t afford it.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the people who have to listen to me rant. I just want everyone here going through hard times to also know I have as much empathy and sympathy as I can give and I am wishing everyone the best of luck with things. Hugs if anyone would like/needs one. Hugs from my kitty Ellie as well, who is on my lap right now. She’s making me feel a little better at least. :3
masque d'étoiles
8 years ago
@Social Justice Atheist, I’m sending virtual hugs if you want them, and virtual support in any case. It sounds as though you have a good understanding of several complicated issues you’re facing. I have to wonder whether any decent eating disorders therapist would recommend a diet to someone with your history, but I’ve heard enough bizarre stories about therapists who should know better but don’t to understand why you’re leery.
Is there a counseling service at your school, or a trusted teacher you could ask to point you toward help – both for your depression and binge eating, and for possible strategies in pursuing your educational goals? You not only have many stressors in your life, but it seems that you are in a position of parenting your parents instead of being able to rely on them for support.
I’m very sorry that your father is so insensitive to your struggles, and apparently doesn’t recognize or feel any responsibility for the lasting impact of his behavior on all of you. His unkind and uncomprehending words make me seethe, especially as I have just read how very motivated and responsible you are. Don’t let his words sap your strength, and please take care of yourself and your wellness.
History Nerd
8 years ago
I had a pretty stressful week, so I’m just taking it easy right now and trying to stay positive.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Hey all. I’ve been working my new job for a few weeks, I work in social care with disabled kids. It’s great but I’ve already hit on this really big issue that I am gonna have to deal with going forward so that is kinda stressful. Thankfully I volunteer with a team within the same org, so they have given me some good advice.
Basically because I am new, when I am working with kids normally termed ‘challenging’ other members of staff keep jumping in when they think I am out of my depth. The only thing is, their approach has only escalated things to really distressing levels including two occasions where I think what they did constituted harm to the child.
The boy in question on these two occasions is tactile defensive, you know, he is oversensitive to touch and hates to be touched unless it is on his own terms, and he builds up VERY slowly and gently to being affectionate although he is a very sweet and affectionate kid once he is comfortable.
So he didn’t want to eat his lunch, we have all been there! But someone decides I am being too soft and tries to force him to sit at a table and eat on command. Physically grappling with him and wrestling him into the chair over and over as he got increasingly distressed. Then he started trying to claw her because duh, and trying to climb out and into my arms to escape. I was holding back tears with how helpless I felt. She had to leave the room and after she was gone, I followed him around giving him spoonfuls of yoghurt and once his appetite was whetted he ate some of his lunch in his own time.
The other thing was a little later, my supervisor decided she was going to do his personal care (toileting) and she got his hands and held them above his head and frogmarched him into the bathroom, bodily lifted him on to the bed and tried to restrain his hands with one hand while changing him with the other. He was crying and lashing out NOW, but he had been totally minding his own business before the sudden frogmarching. It was bizarre.
She made me hold his hands but I held them very gently, just enough to keep him from clawing at her again and incurring more of her wrath. He rubbed his head in frustration and continued to cry but made no effort to claw me. It was done in a flash but he was so upset that he was in a deep, silent funk for half an hour afterwards. I had spent all day getting to know him and we had really got this bond, and while he was playing he would periodically come up and boop my face just as a kind of tactile check-in with me. After the bathroom incident, he stopped making any contact again for quite a while. By the end of my shift all seemed back to normal with him, but it preyed on my mind all week and I can’t just let it go.
The thing is, the two worst offenders were both way senior to me. They kind of have this attitude that because they have been doing it so long, they must be right but actually their attitudes are outdated and, you know, harmful as all hell. Actively and incredibly harmful.
I’m so new and it pains me to rock the boat already but I’ve been losing sleep over this. So yeah. That’s my stuff for the mo. Hope everyone is holding up ok round here.
What an awesome pic! It looks like a barrel of laughs 😉 (sorry… couldn’t help myself).
Tonight I’m reading this uplifting article before going to work. It’s about the “sense of foreshortened future” that can occur after trauma because there has been far too much Jian Gomeshi on my mind, lately 🙁 I guess the only saving grace is that the Canadian MRAs are not smart enough to try to embrace him as a leader because the idea of “culture” is above their heads, unless it’s already within their sphere.
Hi,
After months of being unemployed under the pretense of writing my screenplay, I’ve landed a superb job that will help me stay connected with cinema and help other aspiring writers. Plenty excited!
Also joined a course that will help me get to the finish line on my own screenplay within a short deadline.
For the first time I feel a tangible possibility that my story can actually go out and become a movie.
Fun times ahead!
Goddamn I’m just so tired lately. I’ll have nights where I sleep like a log for 12 hours, and then nights where I don’t even feel tired until 5 or 6 AM, and then I sleep until noon, and I feel guilty about it, and then I finally feel tired about 11PM so I go to bed, and then I’ll lie there for HOURS trying to just sleep, so I grab my phone and play my quick mobile games and watch a few short YouTube videos and end up just not falling asleep.
Something’s wrong with me.
So, I just wanna say…
BEING OUT GENDERQUEER IS THE BEST THING EVAH.
I’m wearing men’s clothes, and I’m wearing makeup again (I love makeup when it’s not part of the woman box), and I want ALL the pronouns, and my boss is a great guy who offered me a new name tag without me asking, and my husband lets me borrow his boxers, and fuck bras because VESTS, and I can be a tenor now, and I’m not policing myself for this or that, and I have never been so not-angry.
My chihuahua named Maxx had problems like diabetes and such so we had to put him to sleep a couple of weeks ago. I miss him so much.
Kat
Sorry about that I wish I could offer advice but I don’t have much experience. Hugs if you need them.
PI
Hmm, are you excercising? Or are you sleeping too much?
LG
That’s awesome!
@Kat
I’m generally reluctant to tell doctors how to do their jobs, especially over the internet, but that definitely sounds dubious.
I would definitely advise finding a qualified child psychiatrist in your organization and discussing it with them. There may be more to the story than you realize, or there may not. Certainly there had better be a very, very good reason if they’re doing that sort of thing, but it’s possible there is. Or a not-good-but-compelling reason like not having the time to do things properly if they’re going to feed all the kids. But if they can’t give you a good reason there probably isn’t one.
Basically, your seniors do have more experience in the field and with the specific children and it is possible they have learned this really is the best option. But it’s also possible it’s an old method based on discredited science still around out of inertia. For your peace of mind and the safety of the children, find out.
@Kat
I worked for three years in foster care with high-risk youth, and there were definitely times where I felt that what was being done was not in the best interest of the child, and when I spoke up, I often wasn’t taken seriously because of my age and level of experience. I have to say, though, that “rocking the boat” isn’t an intrinsically bad thing. Sometimes it’s worth it to take on an issue so that someone less capable/able and/or more vulnerable doesn’t have to go through distress. Just make sure you surround yourself with support, make allies in your organization and do lots of self-care. The work can wear you down.
I do get a bit of exercise here and there (walking, when I have the energy and my back isn’t killing me), but I’ve really been unable to sleep at night for months now. I only recently had a night where I was able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep for a good long period of time. I even had dreams! It felt almost foreign to me, since I hadn’t had dreams in who knows how long.
@PI
I have problems like that sometimes (right now, in fact). Sometimes it helps if I use a happy light, especially in the winter or when I’m stuck in the office long hours. Sometimes it helps to take something to induce sleep (anything from antihistamines to prescription sleep aids, depending on how bad it gets), and sometimes I just have to grin and bear it. I hope it gets better for you soon.
@LG
That’s really awesome. Do you wear men’s vests? I cannot find them but I usually look in the women’s section.
I went without a bra in public today. I’m pretty proud of myself. I have torpedo shaped boobs so it’s pretty obvious when I’m not wearing a bra, and it makes me self conscious. But today I didn’t care. 🙂
I don’t think there’s much, if any, structural difference between men and women’s vests. I get them from the men’s section in thrift stores.
Congratulations, LG!
Hey, I’ve been reading but not commenting much lately. I managed to get both pinkeye and bronchitis this week, so I’ve been staying in and taking a lot of medications (on top of the lot I usually take).
The back surgery I had a couple of months ago has work fantastically. I still can’t lift or bend much, but I’m in very little pain and can walk without a cane. I’m almost ready to find a job.
Still missing my dad a lot. My sister came up with an idea-all of us are going to the beach in a few months, to be together and have some fun. This is great ’cause my mom wanted to go to the beach a lot the past few years, but dad was too sick to travel.
Fruitloopsie, I’m so sorry to hear you lost your dog. It is so hard to make that decision when you want to hold on just one more day, yet you know that quality of life is gone. You were very brave to think of Maxx first. I hope when you are ready, you find another dog to love.
I guess I’ll use this time to introduce myself: I’m 30, female-bodied, genderqueer and bisexual, but only out about my sexuality, not my gender. I go by she/her pronouns in my life currently, but I’m also fine with they/their pronouns. I live with my s.o. and our two bandmates – we have been playing music together coming up on five years.
I work in a job I don’t inherently dislike but that I am really only staying at because it offers me the stability and flexibility I need in a job. I’m (still, forever, who knows? gah!) recovering from being hit by a car 3 1/2 years ago, and I have still yet to reach a resolution in the insurance claim that would perhaps allow me some retraining for a job I’d enjoy more and could physically do on a long-term basis. The accident really turned my life inside out, shattering idea of who I was in my own mind, and it led me to doing a lot of self-discovery (thus the as-of-yet closeted gender identity). Part of that looking and reading led me here, and I’ve been peeping on y’all for about a year now.
I have a hedgehog, and he is a grumpy little dude who I enjoy hanging out with (as long as he will tolerate me).
Since my dad is off the ventilator, he’s able to talk (a little) if he covers the trach tube, so I actually got to hear words from him for the first time in about a month. He needs to get the hang of the air passage so he can’t speak lots, but it was very reassuring all the same.
I am also quite content with the fully-covered book; it feels solid.
Annoyingly, I wanted to take a picture of something close up and realized the iPhone doesn’t have that capability without an add-on lens. “No biggie,” I think, “I have an old Nikon here that I used to use for quick snaps before I got the phone.”
Emphasis on old. There are no Windows 10 drivers for it. 😛 And I think the relatively old USB card reader I (which I got back in the Win2K days!) can’t read the SD card it happens to use. Most annoying! Makes me wonder if I should just brace myself and look into getting a full-on hardware upgrade, though the computer still handles most stuff well (I don’t play bleeding-edge games, so its older onboard graphics ain’t no thing).
So, I had a vaginal hysterectomy three weeks ago this coming Tuesday. I’m doing okay – not much pain any more, pretty much off the pain pills, back at work. But I get so tired whenever I do anything. I have to stop and rest walking from my car to my classroom, which is only a few hundred feet. Has anyone else run into this? And if so how long does it last? I am 60, and had no problems with endurance before the surgery, but this is really frustrating.
Welcome Eonid!
@ Bonelady
Have you spoken to your doctor about energy/endurance decreases and what to expect? I found I was really tired and easy exhausted after my surgery (reconstructing my knee post-car attack 😉 ), but I chalked that up to stress/distress and my body using up a bunch of resources to knit itself back together. How long do you feel is too long for you to bounce back after a procedure like this? Not trying to instigate – just want to know if you expected to be back to “normal” more or less by this point.
@ WWTH
Thanks!
Bonelady
That’s often a consequence of just the general anaesthetic and not much more.
Back 30 years ago, I remember some people used a yardstick of one month of fatigue (or reduced activity or both) for each hour under anaesthetic. Major surgery has a major impact on your life in addition to the changes made by the surgical excision or adjustment itself.
@Bonelady,
Three weeks out from a vag hysterectomy your body is still healing, and that takes a lot of energy. I had an abdominal incision hysterectomy last Feb (less invasive procedure) and it took me more than a month to get my energy back. But once I did I felt much much better than I even expected. I had a fair degree of endometriosis that was not verified until the doctor had me opened up, and apparently that had been causing me a lot of generalized body pain that was greatly mitigated in the aftermath of surgery. So yay for much less frequent use of painkillers!
@Rosie,
The Canadian MRAs don’t embrace Ghomeshi partly because of his advocacy for all things liberal, including, ironically, feminism. He’s not exactly their cup of tea politically or in any other way. The only commentary I’ve seem from an MRA type concerning him was a lot of schadenfreude to the effect that “Jian got exactly what a mangina deserves, so lulz! He’s a stupid liberal sap with no understanding of how the world works, and as a liberal he’s obviously too much of a beta to understand that the wimminz are conniving evil lying liars.” So there’s that.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I have a past acquaintance with him. It was nothing personal, and I haven’t seen him in about a dozen years, but if I ran into him now I honestly have no clue what I’d say to him or if I’d just desperately try to avoid catching his attention. But I believe Lucy, Reva, Sarah and his unnamed accusers implicitly.)
Eonid introduced herself above, and it occurs to me that after making several comments these past few weeks I ought to do the same. So howdy! I’m 53, female, boringly straight and married to my sweetie these past 29 years. I’m one of the invisibly disabled, so from the outside it looks like we have one of those “traditional marriages” in which he works outside the home and she’s a domestic goddess within, but we’re really much more versatile and flexible than that. In our spare time we are music facilitators – we don’t perform, but we volunteer at the local folk club, and run a camp for performers at an annual festival. The main stress in my life is being the caregiver, chauffeur, and all-around troubleshooter for my very temperamental 80-year-old mother, who lives with us and who is the embodiment of internalized misogyny and female-helplessness archetypes. I do battle with these negative messages from her many times each day. I also have 1 adult child and am simultaneously Queen, Servant, and Nurse/technician to 7 spoiled felines with an assortment of vexatious health issues. And yes, the Mr. is a Crazy Cat Man, among his other admirable traits.
I don’t normally post things this personal, but I’m really having a rough time right now. My binge eating disorder is getting worse, but I’m terrified of getting help because I’m afraid the nutritionist/therapist will put me on a diet, which I can’t handle because I get too obsessed and might delve back into my former anorexia/bulimia. It’s not helping that I have gained so much weight over the past years and feel horrible about myself. Not because being fat is ugly, bad, or shameful (it’s definitely not!) but because of my ED history it is a fear I have always had. It is making me very depressed that I cannot seem to control what I eat because I feel I don’t have much control over other things going on in my life and food/dieting was always a way that I controlled things. I have had a very rough year and it has only made my eating disorder way worse. I don’t want to say too much, but I will just say that around a year ago my dad did a very, very bad thing that really hurt my mom and nearly tore our family apart. She has never been quite the same and has tried to overdose three times in the course of this year and I am crying right now thinking about how she looked when they had to revive her in the ambulance and how we almost lost her repeatedly.
She has forgiven my dad for what he has done and we are slowly trying to pick up the pieces but it definitely hasn’t been easy. I’m so depressed, I can barely leave the house or do anything and my dad always gets on me about being on the couch all the time. He says I’m lazy and have no motivation, which really hurts me but it feels like I literally cannot make myself do anything else. It takes all the energy I have just to even take a shower, brush my teeth, or get dressed. Can’t see a therapist because we are struggling with money right now a lot and we can barely afford our basic needs.
I just feel so alone. The only person I really feel close to in my family is my brother who I love very much. We have always been close but the past couple of years have only made us closer. We have had to emotionally support each other a lot. But I’m sad, because soon he will be going off to college and I still haven’t graduated high school yet although I will be this year.
Speaking of college, I’m also so fucking terrified about college. I know we can’t afford for me to go to college and there’s no way I’ll get a scholarship because of my poor grades, (I have several learning disabilities which I am really trying to work on getting better) so I will have to get a job after I graduate. Which also scares me, because I’m afraid I will let my boss/everyone down. I would like it if I could work as an apprentice at a salon, because I want to be a hairdresser someday. I know I will have to get a job before I can go to beauty school though, because we just can’t afford it.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the people who have to listen to me rant. I just want everyone here going through hard times to also know I have as much empathy and sympathy as I can give and I am wishing everyone the best of luck with things. Hugs if anyone would like/needs one. Hugs from my kitty Ellie as well, who is on my lap right now. She’s making me feel a little better at least. :3
@Social Justice Atheist, I’m sending virtual hugs if you want them, and virtual support in any case. It sounds as though you have a good understanding of several complicated issues you’re facing. I have to wonder whether any decent eating disorders therapist would recommend a diet to someone with your history, but I’ve heard enough bizarre stories about therapists who should know better but don’t to understand why you’re leery.
Is there a counseling service at your school, or a trusted teacher you could ask to point you toward help – both for your depression and binge eating, and for possible strategies in pursuing your educational goals? You not only have many stressors in your life, but it seems that you are in a position of parenting your parents instead of being able to rely on them for support.
I’m very sorry that your father is so insensitive to your struggles, and apparently doesn’t recognize or feel any responsibility for the lasting impact of his behavior on all of you. His unkind and uncomprehending words make me seethe, especially as I have just read how very motivated and responsible you are. Don’t let his words sap your strength, and please take care of yourself and your wellness.
I had a pretty stressful week, so I’m just taking it easy right now and trying to stay positive.