Okay, you have to admit that's strange. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to share them. Sometimes I share my dreams with "A" and we are able to figure out what they mean although when I remember a dream, sometimes I analyze it myself and get some good insights.

I wonder if my health worries are the way my subconscious avoids thinking about some of the issues I'm dealing with, or not in some cases, in therapy? Or rather, the two are intricately intertwined with each other. The mind and body are like a dance sometimes each dancing separately, but most often partners dancing intimately together where one's move changes the other's response and vice-versa.

Feeling ambivalent this morning. I almost feel like I did before I hit the low point. I wish I could say that means I'm all better and we've solved the problem, but nothing is that simple. I can look back over the previous months and see the changes that crept up on me. Especially scary is the loss of emotion. It wasn't too extreme at first, but it accelerated after 9/11 last fall.

I hurt my thumb a few months before everything happened—I had made a chocolate cake for dessert and put it into the fridge. It wasn't set on the bottom shelf very well and when I opened the door, the plate started to fall. I didn't catch it in time and it broke in half taking the tip of my right thumb with it. I cried, but now I realize the tears were from the pain...the physical pain. Weird!

I'd like to know why I am this way right now. A part of me is really afraid—either that I'll find out something truly awful or it will be something quite trivial. I'm not sure which is better. If a person feels a compulsion to kill herself, she ought to have a da*m good reason. Thank God the feeling starts to pass. It doesn't last forever which is a good thing to know and experience.

I do feel stuck at a roadblock though. Not sure how I will get around it or how I will feel when I do: overwhelmed, relieved, free? It's like driving down the road and not knowing what's around the bend on the narrow road where you are. Even if you honk the horn, you may still run into an unexpected barricade. I'm scared!

Chest Pain

This afternoon I started getting chest pain again. Bad chest pain—my chest hurt, the pain was moving up into my shoulder, and even my jaw hurt. So per my doctor's instructions, I called the doctor's office and talked to the triage nurse. She said I should go to the emergency room. I argued with her. Couldn't I have the EKG at the office? I said, "I don't want to go," like a little kid might.

She replied, "Either you go to the emergency room or I'll call the ambulance."

Rats!!!! "Okay, I'll call my husband home from work to come and take me." I was thinking unkind things, but I didn't want the indignity of an ambulance ride.

So off I go to the emergency room where I end up sitting for a bit. They checked my blood pressure which was actually okay. I can tell when it is high because I get flashes of light in the upper margin of vision. No headaches though. They finally call me back, took long enough—mind you this is the afternoon when doctor's offices are usually open. I go back and get the EKG which was fine of course. They took blood too. I joked with the phlebotomist, called her a vampire. :-) At least my sense of humor is intact. The end result is that everything is okay and I'm supposed to keep taking the Reglan I was prescribed for stomach problems. The ER doctor says it might be GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).

Okay, I'm relieved, but I could have told them I'm okay. Dh cried tonight because he says that me caring enough to call the doctor is a great sign that I'm getting better. I'm thinking I had no choice to go really. Sometimes I feel like a broken toy that's always going back to the Toymaker's shop to be fixed—except that it's niggling little things covered by warranty, so it's fixed and the toy spends all the time in the shop rather than being played with. I'm the toy and I want to be fixed once and for all. It's not anyone's fault, but I am not an old person for heaven's sake. I'm going to be 37 years young next month. NOT OLD!!!

I'm feeling very restless and silly. How was I to know for sure the chest pain was nothing serious? My dad had a heart attack this year after all. I acted like a child, bratty yes, but I've been to the doctor so much lately. I was following sound advice even I didn't agree and I care enough about living to check it out.

The Penultimate Moment

My baby is six. Well, I guess he's not really my baby anymore, but I can recall the day he was born so clearly in my mind. I don't remember the big pain of back labor. What I do recall is that every contraction hurt in my back, but not the actual pain. I do remember how I felt—so triumphal at the moment of his birth, his lusty scream, the things I said, the things I felt (although the feelings are a bit dim at the moment). My ob/gyn has told me more than once she'll never forget that birth. I don't suppose a woman ever forgets the feelings associated with childbirth. Even now I can smile about it. Birth is the penultimate moment—each childbirth special and precious, pain and all. It's something to remember in the midst of what I'm working through now. It's something I hold on to when things seem very hopeless.

And the dance goes on.

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