…really just allergic to stress, but it’s literally the equivalent, right?

Motherhood has been probably one of my favorite jobs in life. As a little girl, I would dream of having tons of kids. I was privileged with one child, helped raise many others, and was blessed to remarry a man who had adopted a child. I loved motherhood, but the stress that came along with it, stress doesn’t love me, stress doesn’t play well with others. I was actually allergic to stress.

Stress would bring on more and more symptoms, it didn’t dawn on me at the time, that the more stress that piled on, the more my CNS (central nervous system) continued to take a nosedive, all the while, the hidden mold was still growing too. We hadn’t even found that yet.

There were days when Motherhood and stress got the better of me. My kids never got the better of me when I was sick, I think that hurt me the most, it downright depressed me. For about a year, I was lucky if I could even get off the couch at this point. Cooking became a thing of the past for me, and my husband would come home from a full day of work and cook, because I couldn’t move. Luckily enough our oldest graduated before my illness peaked and had already been moved from home, but the youngest was still home to experience ALL of this.

“Boyo” was probably one of the most trying children on my patience at times. Let’s face it, most days he caused a great deal of stress. The days I had to drive him to school, pick him up from school because he couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble during these times. Partially because he was used to the attention as the baby of the family, and at this point, the less attention he got, the more he acted out, classic for a parent who is terminally ill and a family trying to adjust to the loss, while they are still living, it was expected.

This wasn’t just a bad case of the flu; I had periods of losing the ability to speak (temporary aphasia? I really can’t explain it, I couldn’t even remember the words to say!). I had a day where I am just sitting on the couch with hubby, and my hand flipped a fork or spoon (I can’t remember the device) full of food at the “Boyo” across the room to the second couch on my right. (Youngest one in the home was gifted this nickname from the oldest one, it stuck.) He was stunned, I was stunned, my husband loses his shit and laughter abounded the rest of the night, as we were all clueless at why my “ghost hand” decided to just dole out a perfectly wonderful bite of food at our kid. “Ghost hand” heaved the utensil and all, while I sat delicately still holding my bowl. The looks on boyo and my face sent my husband into fits of laughter. If “oh shit”, “what the hell”, and confusion had a baby, I would imagine that was our faces in that moment.

However, for the stress he created, he also brought a HUGE amount of comedy to the table. Boyo took it upon himself to video me, tremoring while driving down the road, but he found a bit of comedy in the fact that during this particular drive I was tremoring to the music. This video in particular I have Parkinson like tremors that day, my head is bouncing, not on purpose.

Boyo was an adopted child, (my husband and his ex-had adopted, then divorced) and I was stepmom so we had him solidly in therapy weekly for many different reasons, so it could help him to work through some stuff. The coolest part of me even mentioning that, was when he was done with the therapist, I took his appointments over. THE BIGGEST BLESSING to keeping my stress levels down as much as possible, and horde every ounce of sanity I had left. This therapist watched me decline rapidly and help me and my family cope in however we needed. If I needed to bring a family member in with me to help me communicate my needs or thoughts with them, this woman was there through it all. She’s also been there through my healing, and boy, is she going to be so damn excited to see, that the blog has been started, and the book is coming!

**MY SUGGESTION: If you are chronically ill, or have systemic illness, or terminal, you get into that therapist as soon as possible, you seek every avenue to get to one now. No excuses or exceptions, if you are shelling out money hand over fist in co pays, or you have bills piling up, it doesn’t matter. FIRST AND FOREMOST, MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS!!!! If you give up your body to science fine but keep your head about you!

I’ve been encouraged by ALL of my physicians to write the book. There is a NEED to write this book. There is a NEED for this blog, because it seems that even pre-pandemic, when people would get sick, they would just submit to the will of popping a pill and relent their will to survive and thrive and just be sick forever. We need more survivors out there, after all; we survived the PANDEMIC, let’s get on with living!