Going to Sleep and Yet Again Underwear
When Big I was around seven months old, I had to have surgery to get my wisdom teeth taken out. I had no room in my mouth and two of them were impacted completely, the other two partially impacted. They hurt, and I had no other option other than to get them out.
I had teeth taken out when I was a kid. My orthodontist recommended I get five baby teeth extracted to make room for the adult teeth coming in. I also had to have four permanent molars taken out because (you are never going to believe this) my mouth was just too small to accommodate all those teeth. They needed to fix the overcrowding before they could straighten things out.
So prior to having my wisdom teeth removed, I had been put to sleep for surgery twice. That did absolutely nothing to ease my fears about being put to sleep for my wisdom teeth removal.
It’s different when you have a baby, someone who depends on you. At the time of my surgery, I was still nursing Big I and that was troubling for me too. What if something happened and I didn’t wake up? She would be out her mother and her food source. I was an absolute wreck.
The day of the surgery, I remember the oral surgeon and the nurses watching me above their masks and I remember telling them that it was really important that I woke up again because I had a little girl. I also started laughing and told them that the oxygen thing they were putting over my nose was never going to fit over this nose. I was starting to feel a little silly at that point.
I don’t remember much about going home after the surgery. They had given me versed, a drug that knocks you out and gives you amnesia. My sister said the surgery took only 20 minutes and that she knew it was over because she heard me crying and moaning from the waiting room. Yeah, not one of my finer moments, but I don’t remember it so there.
I do sort of remember being helped walk to my sister’s car by my sister and a nurse. I kind of remember repeatedly asking my sister, "How long did it take?" and "What time is it?" to the point that she was ready to open the passenger door and shove me out.
My Mom is a nurse and she was shocked when my sister arrived home with me because I simply could not walk on my own. The two of them helped me get up to bed and several hours later I woke up and wondered how I had gotten home.
And then I saw Big I. . . and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Getting wisdom teeth out isn’t a major surgery or anything, but there are always risks. They always make you sign those papers saying you won’t hold them responsible if they kill you. My Mom handed her to me and I just remember crying because the stress was just gone.
With two kids, my fear about having surgery is multiplied. Mothers are very good at imagining the worst possible scenario. I probably shouldn’t have watched Gray’s Anatomy the other week because one of the patients was allergic to general anesthesia and they had to keep him awake during open heart surgery.
"How do we know I’m not allergic to general anesthesia?" I asked my husband.
"You’re not," he said.
"But how do you know until they give it to you?" I said.
"You’re not," he repeated.
This mother may appear calm on the outside; but inside I am starting to freak out a bit. Maybe when I meet with the anesthesiologist on Thursday, he/she can clue me in on the underwear issue which might make me feel a little better. Funny that it’s the underwear issue bothering me more than a drill going through two of my bones, huh? I guess I’m only officially freaking out about things over which I have a tidbit of control. The other night, I checked my visitor stats and saw that someone was searching for "can I wear underwear during surgery" and guess who is now the #1 Google search for that very issue. After Monday, I’ll be able to answer this very important question for all of you. Aren’t you all relieved?
I can’t even tell you how much I just want this over with.
Yellow Toes and Cold Floors
My friend Patrick had knee surgery one summer when I was in high school. The day of the surgery, another friend and I went to visit him. The smell of the hospital greeted us and I immediately got nervous. I hated hospitals, needles, blech. It all made me feel queasy.
We got to his room and Patrick was out cold. We quietly went into his room and stood beside his bed. He had an IV going into his arm, which made me think about the needle that went into his arm, which made me start feeling sick. I had never even had blood drawn at this time in my life, so the slightest thing bothered me.
In an effort to avoid looking at the IV, my eyes moved down his sleeping body to his leg. It was bandaged and under a thin sheet. A couple of his toes were sticking out the bottom of the sheet though, and they were yellow. I knew they were just yellow from the antiseptic they put on before surgery, but that bothered me. Yellow antiseptic made me think about what they did right after they put that stuff on and that made me even more sick.
I tried to concentrate on Patrick’s peaceful looking face, but my brain decided to override it and began controlling my eyes, making them look at the IV (NEEDLES!) and then the toes (YELLOW!), the IV (NEEDLES!), the toes (YELLOW!), the IV (NEEDLES!), the toes (YELLOW!). . .
The next thing I knew, my friend was asking me if I was feeling o.k. I didn’t realize it but I had broken out in a sweat and was feeling extremely hot. She told me I was very pale. Then she got very fuzzy looking, like a TV station that has gone out due to a storm.
My hands reached for the wall behind me, and I slowly slid all the way down until I was sitting on the floor; but that wasn’t good enough. So I slid down even further and flipped myself onto my stomach and put my cheek on the cold floor. It felt so good and I started feeling less dizzy.
Meanwhile, my friend was strongly encouraging me to get up off the floor, but all I could say back to her was, "Floor cold. Floor good." At that moment, a nurse walked into Patrick’s room to check on him and found me on the floor. "Oh my God!" she yelled and started yelling for some help, "We’ve got a girl down." My friend calmed the nurse down and told her that I was really o.k., that I just needed a cold floor. My friend peeled me off the floor and helped me up. I took one last fuzzy look at Patrick, IV, yellow toe, and my friend had me out the door.
When the fresh air greeted me outside, I instantly felt a lot better. I’m hoping that the two natural childbirths I’ve been through will help counteract those "fuzzy" feelings. Otherwise, I might just stay passed out until someone washes off what will probably be yellow toes.
***The drawing at The BBM Review is today! Go see if you’re a winner and check out the other reviews. We’ve added a new reviewer this week whose first post will be debuting soon!
Vacation?
I did it, 30 days of straight posting. It wasn’t easy either. You know all those down days where I was whining about my knee? Yeah, normally I would have just kept the inner thoughts of BBM off the blog. But it was either whine about my knee or discuss the consistency of pasta on some of those days. I erred on the side of you enjoying whining over noodles.
When I started posting at the beginning of November for NaBloPoMo, I was positive I was going to have surgery for my knee. I was sure you would be reading groggy posts from a post surgery me; but that didn’t happen. A month later, I’m now pretty sure that I will actually be getting the surgery anyway. December might be the groggy post month instead. My PT is pretty sure it’s going to happen and from the way I feel, I’m pretty sure as well. Despite a month of working my legs as hard as I was able to, and building up muscle and endurance, the stability is just not there the way it needs to be.
I spent this past month airing out my grievances with my knee, expressing disappointment about potentially delaying my shodan test and training, and just trying to be positive despite the fact that the not knowing aspect has been torturing me. Here I am a month later, and I still don’t know where I’ll be this time next month.
One thing I do know? I’m taking the weekend off from writing. I’m also going to have a glass of wine tonight in celebration of completing NaBloPoMo. Please tell me that I win a prize and pretty please, let it be an XJ8. . .
What?
They’re not giving away any XJ8’s??? Can someone please tell me why I agreed to do this???
***Speaking of prizes, you too can win a prize next week at The BBM Review. If you’d like to try to win a new toy for your toddler, just in time for the holidays, check back for the toy review next week. Leave a comment on the post, and you’ll be automatically entered to win! How easy is that? You don’t even have to post 30 days in a row or ANYTHING!?!
Three More Days
In the beginning, there were ideas, the prospect of blogging through a martial arts related book, the intent to make every post one worth reading like the Bullies post which is filling my inbox with all kinds of compliments (thank you). NaBloPoMo is seriously kicking my butt right about now. That’s why my little present in the mail couldn’t have come at a better time. A blog post filled with happy little images as opposed to more words. WOO HOO! Becky is sort of like my relief squadron, flying in with relief and support for tired, very in need of a break, troops, or in this case "troop" as in me.
A-hem. Sorry, got a little excited there. Without further words delay. . .
Hmm, I wonder who could have inspired this design?
She looks sort of familiar, doesn’t she? Here’s another one of my surprises. . .
And finally a little holiday spirit, which Big I has decided are hers and only hers. . .
These kicking designs and others like them can be found at the Martial Arts Pagoda store where my friend Becky designs her butt off. She also designed The BBM Review logo, and a certain "business" card for yours truly:
And this card for The BBM Review (my real name is on it and NO, you can’t see it-it’s been blocked out for display here):
Is she awesome or what? Thank you BECKY!
Bullies
When I was in junior high, I was coming through a crowded area after lunch when I felt a hard punch square in the middle of my back. It was too crowded to move as we all pushed through the door; but I didn’t have to take more than a brief glance to know exactly who had done it. "Gina" followed me down the hall with her posse of fight starters and mumbled comments under her breath at me.
I was terrified.
I was in 8th grade. She was in 7th and I was probably about 12 inches taller than her. But I was still scared. She ran with a rough gang, and she was always in the office getting in trouble, often for fighting. I, on the other hand, was the good kid. The only time I ever had to visit the principal was for student council issues. I was a fairly likeable kid, which made that hard punch on my back even more puzzling and upsetting to me.
"Gina" had her henchmen get messages to me that she was going to beat me up, at lunch, after lunch, at the next school dance, after school, before school, when I was at my locker. For two years, I made sure I was never alone. I spent two years being terrified of her, despite the fact that she never got close enough to lay another finger on me. It wasn’t just at school either. I was also afraid I’d see her at the mall on the weekend and that she’d take care of her unfinished business there.
I casually mentioned something to my parents once about "Gina." My parents left me handle it and never called the school. Thinking back, I wish my dad would have taught me how to punch. He was the underdog kid when he was in school until the day he beat up the bully who picked on everyone else. It was a similar situation, but I didn’t want to fight. Knowing how to though, would have been a nice back-up and a bit more reassuring than just avoiding "Gina" in the halls.
When I moved up to 10th grade, the sense of relief I felt was remarkable. I was a new person. After feeling like I was under duress for all those years, I was finally free from "Gina" and her doom crew. I enjoyed that year like I hadn’t previously enjoyed another. For that reason, the year flew. I never once ran into "Gina" at school functions or off campus and for that I was both thankful and relieved.
On the first day of 11th grade, I was nervous. "Gina" would be coming up to the high school, and I was dreading it. I thought about it all summer long. The high school was huge and combined two junior highs, so it was possible to go quite some time without running into someone. I knew it was going to happen eventually.
It was about four weeks into the school year when it finally did. My friend and I were leaving English class and heading down the hall. There she was, coming at me and scowling. She had an awful look on her face and I knew she meant business. The thing I had going in my favor was that my friend and I had continued to grow; she hadn’t.
I don’t remember that we had some grand meeting or plan for when we saw her, but we must have had a mental agreement between the two of us. Jen and I made a conscious decision that "Gina" wasn’t going to divide us, intimidate us, or cause either of us any more stress. As she walked faster in our direction, we picked up the pace in her direction. As she got within feet of us she slowed down for a confrontation; but my friend and I weren’t having any of that.
Shoulder to shoulder, Jen and I continued to walk as fast as we could right into "Gina." We knocked her over onto the floor, and she went skidding on her butt. She wasn’t hurt, but she definitely knew that the tables had turned. We didn’t say a word to her, just kept on walking, and she never bothered either one of us again. She never even make eye contact again, and I was able to rest easy. It was finally over after almost four years of feeling terrorized.
During those horrible years, it wasn’t so much the physical threat that bothered me. I could have handled being beaten up, I’m sure. What was so awful was the mental aspect. "Gina" terrorized me and made school unpleasant when it had been just fine before. She deflated me and took the fun out of my days and extracurricular activities. I thought about her often and wondered what I ever did to make her hate me so much. I had never even talked to her. She wasn’t in my grade or involved in any of the activities I was involved in, so why did she hate me so much? That was the part that bothered me the most.
People, in general, want people to like them. It’s hurtful when someone doesn’t, especially when you know you haven’t done anything to deserve it. When I think back about that incident now, I so wish I knew then what I know now. If I hadn’t acted so afraid of her, I wouldn’t have made such a nice target for her. If I had confronted her after she hit me, it might have boiled down into a fight; but it also might have stopped right there. If I had shown her that I wasn’t afraid of her, she might have backed off. If my dad had taught me how to throw a good punch, that would have helped as well. I would have felt prepared and that would have taken away a lot of the fear.
When Big I complained about being picked on by a couple little girls last year, I took her complaints very seriously. It wasn’t anything major, just some laughing at her and excluding her; but I know that it doesn’t take much. I assured her that it was o.k. for her to speak up for herself, to tell them to knock it off, and that if push came to shove (literally) I wanted her to know that I supported her defending herself. (She did actually use a wrist escape on the bus one day.) I didn’t want her feeling intimidated the way that I had, and I don’t believe she did. She never complained about going to school and those little bullies seemed to be more of a minor annoyance than anything else. They certainly weren’t the center of her school experience the way "Gina" was to mine.
Big I and I are a lot alike. We’re both very sensitive and want people to like us. She’s so much like me that it makes me nervous sometimes. I don’t want her to be so sensitive and so worried about what everyone else thinks.
But there’s one major difference between us. I started karate when I was 29. Big I started at age three. There are plenty out there who joke about children in the martial arts not being able to defend themselves, that it’s a money making venture only. That’s not at all true of our experience and our dojo.
While the martial arts at a young age may not be able to teach a child how to take out a 6’4" attacker, karate offers an amazing self-confidence to children. If I had been in Big I’s shoes, I would have tried to stay home from school. I would have stressed about those little girls. I know, because I did the exact same thing in junior high school. Big I did none of those things. Through that experience, I saw that she has great self-esteem, and I definitely know she wouldn’t have a problem defending herself against another child.
To be able to spare her the emotional trauma that I went through myself with "Gina" is one of the best gifts I could ever give my child. I often talk about how the martial arts has impacted my life and why I love it so much; but there is nothing that thrills me more about the martial arts than what it has done for Big I.
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