Currently This

I've been awol all of July, August and half of September and the reason I'm here now is boredom. Insomnia and boredom. Not that one is ever really bored when they have insomnia - like it or not, watching the clock takes up a lot of your attention but passes no time at all.

By all rights, I should be able to sleep. My life is insane, I don't sleep more than three or four hours at a time, my day is made of two or three hour segments, and it seems that I am always ready for the next crisis. Well, not that THE crisis has ended. My daughter is still sick. She missed half of her junior year and is only allowed to attend her senior year two classes a day. That's better than nothing, and don't get me wrong - I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth here. But I do wish she weren't going to have to struggle so to finish high school. She knows she probably won't be able to make up the credits in time to graduate with her friends and that's a major blow for her. As much as the chronic pain but with the benefit of at least knowing why that hurts.

The doctors have yet to give us a reason. Every test you can think of has come out clean. Despite finally being in the pediatric pain program of Major Snooty Teaching University, she was in the ER again the other night for pain control. This girl now has a hypnotherapist, a biofeedback therapist, a craniosacral therapist, an Iyengar yoga teacher and a psychologist as well as a neurologist, a pediatrician and a psychiatrist on her 'team', all of them cheering her on as she tries to make her pain more manageable, a burden she would not have if the FUCKING DOCTORS WOULD FIGURE OUT WHERE THE PAIN IS COMING FROM.

I remember snorting at my dad a few months back when he suggested I take her to a faith healer. It doesn't sound so funny, now. In the absence of answers from 'real' doctors, anything starts to sound good and the truth is, some of this stuff makes sense to me. More importantly, it makes sense to her and when she walks away from these people (some of whom come to our home, so don't think house calls are a thing of the past), she feels better. Even if it is nothing more than a placebo, what difference if it helps?

It doesn't last, though. So I'm sitting here, feeling guilty for not feeling worse, for not having the answers, for not knowing how to make it go away. I feel guilty for being tired of my life being defined in these terms, who is sick and who is well and which two or three doctors are we seeing today. I feel guilty for the time it takes from the other two, for the time I am not sitting in there with her right now (even though she is asleep), for the fact that I keep gaining weight. I feel shitty because I am not three or four versions of me, each of me devoted solely to the needs of each child, each of me perfect and endlessly patient, exactly enough of me to go around with no needs left unfulfilled. I feel shitty for not being one of those people who had a sick kid, put themselves through a crash course in medicine and found the cure for a hideous disease. I feel like an absolute failure as a mother, even though I know I am nearly Super Mom. I know all of these feelings are natural and I feel guilty for knowing I am being too hard on myself.

My youngest started high school. Autistic kids hate change. He's struggling with that and I'm struggling with having to push him to more independence. My oldest had a spinal tap not long ago and hey - I haven't fixed that, either.

And money and time and family and my own personal crap - no wonder I'm not sleeping. But I'm weary. It's all exhausting. Like that stupid pink bunny, I keep going and going and going. Thank heaven I can - I love them and I'll run myself and the rest of the world into the ground if I have to - but boy, it's bloody exhausting.