This palsy has interfered with my life far more than you might expect from something as simple as facial paralysis.  I mean, it is not like I lost an arm or a leg, but sometimes I feel like I might as well have.  I know that this is just silly-talk and that I am fortunate that nothing more serious happened to me but the selfishness within me sometimes looks at all I can’t do and screams “why me, why now?”  Yes, I am pathetic.

 

Our family experienced a new wrinkle this weekend when Carol came down with an infected tooth.  Friday evening the pain was incapacitating for her and that made it excruciating for me.  I frequently feel sympathy pains so watching her in such pain caused my brain to catalog the facial pain from my palsy as tooth pain as well.  This pain was even amplified from normal levels substantially as the evening went on.  I know it is all in my head, but that does not make the pain feel any less.  Yes, I am still pathetic.

 

It was selfishness, but I got a bit… well, angry describes it best, although I would prefer to call it frustration or concern, when I found that Carol was not treating the pain with any of the pain medication available to her.  For right or wrong, I practically insisted that she take something for the pain regardless of the side effects she would feel.  Up until that moment I had been very willing to let Carol manage her own body but I snapped when her decisions began affecting me.  Yes, more proof that I am pathetic.

 

Carol is now taking medication for the pain, and she is sleeping and resting much better than she was able to manage before.  I count this as a plus, but of course I will see it the way I want to – the way that makes my opinion the right one.  It turns out that her previous marriage was one in which she was constantly indoctrinated that any medication was a sign of weakness.  In her pain she reverted to what had been drilled into her for all those years and she felt that I would find her weak if she took medication.  I certainly don’t see that using modern medicine makes us any weaker than using any other modern convenience – we could all choose to walk instead of driving or flying too!  Is this view pathetic?

 

Later today Carol has an appointment to see Orin Scrivello, DDS.  You might remember him from  “Little Shop of Horrors”:  Steve Martin played him in the movie and did a fair job representing him.  When I first watched this movie with my children, they loved the songs and the idea, but they were concerned when Orin became plant food and I had to reassure them that Orin did not really die – it is just pretend.  Of course people don’t really die in the movies and so Orin is alive and well, and practicing his own brand of dentistry.  He was the only one available to see her on such short notice.

 

Until Carol recovers, I am doing a passable job keeping the home in order.  Carol always seems a bit on edge when allowing me to manage the household tasks but I can’t really tell if this is because she feels badly for giving me the extra work when I don’t feel well myself or if she just knows what kind of job I am going to do. 

 

I just try to remind her that there are times and seasons for everything:  Time to let me help and a season for fixing all the things I really screwed up trying to help.  It is really just pathetic.

 

*   *

The worst part of Bell’s Palsy is not making a funny face when you smile, nor is it not being able to drink from a drinking fountain.  The very worst part of Bell’s Palsy is the eye that does not close and will not make tears.  Even with the best care I can give, my eye quickly becomes fatigued, dry, and very red.  I have a patch I can wear and that helps a lot – especially when walking down long, air conditioned hallways, but the trade off is eye strain and a headache from using only one eye.  The eye strain is worst when I am working at a computer.

 

It seems, though, that the medications are having an effect:  My lips seem to have a little more feeling and everyone tells me that my mouth is not drooping quite so badly.  Of course this may have happened anyway – with or without the medication – but since there is no way to tell I will just say that the medication is working.  I wonder how far progressed I would be if I had started earlier…

 

One of the medications is a steroid and before I was given the package I had to first be lectured on the health concerns with taking steroids and warned that I might feel angry because of them.  I then had to sign a statement that I had been counseled about taking them.  I found it a little entertaining. 

 

I have since been waiting for the side effects to kick in but so far, nothing; at least nothing that they warned me about.  I definitely felt ‘out of sorts’ yesterday when I finally got home from work.  I offended Carol because when I came in Sam was screaming for no discernable reason other than perhaps because he liked to hear himself scream and I commented to Carol that his screaming was annoying.  Part of it was just that this Palsy has an effect of making me unable to determine volume intensity so screaming often sets my ear on fire, but beyond that I was just not feeling myself.  Carol took the kids to a movie to get them out of my way and I slept.

 

I slept for about 4 hours.  I awoke when Carol returned with the kids (still screaming, and still for no discernable reason) and felt really good.  I spent a lazy evening with the kids but Carol and I seemed out of step – probably because of what I said.  When evening came I could not sleep at all.  My body felt as if I had been given a mega-dose of caffeine and I could not relax it.  I tried everything I could think of but I could not sleep so I got to some good reading (Currently reading “City of Thieves” by David Benioff because I could not finish the “Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie), and even had several hours to write.

 

Yes, I said write.  Any reader of this blog (or my previous one) will know that I enjoy writing immensely and that I have always aspired to be an author.  Marriage suits me well because I have a wife that does more than just say “you should write” but one who actually goes out of her way to present me with opportunities to write.  I am not naive enough to believe that I will immediately sit down and write something worthy of publication, quit my day job, and live comfortably off the sale of a book, so I am writing because I have a story unraveling in my head and I need to see where it ends.  More than that, I write because it pleases me to.

 

Something has definitely changed my body clock – I have been up since 5:00 yesterday afternoon and I don’t feel the slightest bit like going to sleep.  My eye is going to force me to get some rest in the very near future, but I can’t promise that I will sleep.  I may, however, go home and write some more – except that I write on a computer and that hurts my eye… Maybe I will try paper just to see if that is any better.  If nothing else, I will relive the story in my mind in preparation for writing later.

 

I am working every day now, at least until I become tired or eye-strained.  Those who have had Bell’s Palsy question my intelligence for working at all but right now I am the only one who can do what needs to be done.  This coming year should see someone hired to take some of my responsibilities and to be a backup for me but for now I am alone.  I really don’t want this to take any longer than it needs to and I really don’t want to do any permanent nerve damage, but I am also committed to this company and to seeing that it continues to operate at its potential.  Hopefully I can find the right mix of work and rest.

 

   *  *

I had an MRI yesterday.  I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience at all but at least I don’t suffer from claustrophobia.  I went to an off-campus site for the MRI and not having to go to the hospital definitely reduced my stress level and increased the enjoyment of the experience – wait.  There was no joy…

 

I went to another doctor today because Annie was not in her office and I wanted to get the results of the MRI, and what I learned has me angrier with Annie than I was before.  It seems that Annie is developing quite a  reputation for really doing stupid things with the patients in her care and that I was only the most recent victim.  First, although I had all the classic symptoms of Bell’s Palsy, she did not start me on any medication that might have been beneficial – especially when given at the onset of the disease.  I am now taking an anti-viral to combat the probable cause and a steroid to help with nerve regeneration – both of these should have been started Saturday.  On top of that, it seems that ordering an MRI for Bell’s Palsy was unnecessary unless I had symptoms that strayed from the normal… I don’t.

 

Annie did provide a prescription for the head/ear pain that is typical for Bells, but I believe that this was only because of the insistence of my wife that she prescribe me something less powerful than the Lortab pills that are left over from a previous prescription.  That prescription is about all Annie did for me Saturday.

 

I found it interesting that the doctor I saw today was unfamiliar enough with Bell’s that she went to a reference to see what the dosing should be.  It is comforting when someone admits that they do not know all the answers.  I wonder if Annie is new enough at her profession that she just did not want to be seen as ignorant about something – this is the first time I have met this particular Annie so I can’t imagine that she was purposely out to delay my recovery.

 

I hate this ailment.  Rest is key to recovery so I am working with my boss to make sure that I don’t delay my recovery by working too much.  I really want to be normal again.  I get to wear a swank eye-patch now, but even that is not worth the inconvenience of not being able to eat soup or drink from a cup.

 

   *  *

Life is full of interesting changes.  I got married, went on a honeymoon, and thought things were going great when reality intruded on my peace with a vengeance.  Have you ever heard of Bell’s palsy?  I have known people who suffered from it, but until Friday morning I was not one of them.  Let me just tell you that it is no fun.

 

Tuesday was the wedding and then Friday was the open house.  It makes sense that I would wake up Friday morning unable to blink my left eye or to move anything on the left side of my face.  This may be unrelated to stress but the consensus is that I have been under more pressure than I was willing to admit.  At this point I am willing to concede anything.  I just want it to go away.

 

I had to go visit Annie on Saturday because I needed to see someone but I did not want to wait at emergency.  Annie kept me waiting because I was late for my appointment and I guess that that is her right but it felt wrong to me.  I was just on the point of leaving when she finally came in to see me but in looking back, I should have left.  Annie was no help.

 

OK, Annie was a little help – she did prescribe some fancy pain pills, but she did nothing much else.  She could have prescribed some corticosteroids but she wanted to wait to see what an MRI says before she does that.  I can see why she would want me to get an MRI, but I don’t see why she wanted to delay my treatment.  Carol does not understand this thought pattern either and that only makes me think that she is an idiot that needs her license reviewed.  I hate putting my trust in a medical professional and then feeling that the trust was misplaced.

 

I will get better with or without help but I really, really hate this and I want it to be over as quickly as possible.  Carol has been wonderful through all of this – I think that it would be normal to feel some disappointment if you married someone only to have this thrown at you three days later, but Carol has not felt any of that.  If anything, she seems happy to have the chance to take care of me.  There was never any doubt about my making a good choice when I married her but I did not expect to find someone as wonderful as she has proven to be. 

 

I am sure I will have more to write about the wedding and the paralysis later, but for now I am happy to just get some sleep.

 

 

   *  *

Do you know anyone who has been censored?  Do you have even a casual relationship with anyone who has twice been threatened with lawsuits?  I ask because I have a court date in July because of the words that I have written here on this blog.  It is getting old -- I gave up the old blog to avoid a lawsuit but trouble seems to follow me.

 

It makes me wonder just how much I should fight for my right to express myself in words.  If it were not something that I have become passionate about, I would roll over and find something else to do with my time, but it has become part of who I am.  I don’t have money to support an attorney – especially with eight children to feed.  I hate being bullied too, and that needs to be part of the equation .  Perhaps I should post my pay-pal account and beg.

 

It seems that a reader of this blog has identified themselves with one of the characters here.  It is fitting that this person who would control what I write has picked the character who tried to censor what was written as ‘their character’.  They even accuse me of picking on their pet.  When I wrote about Annie’s poor pooch, this is the one I was thinking about.  Any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental. Their text even provided me the name I used in my story.

 

 

The Associated Press said:

 

The tiny dog has no hair, if you don’t count the yellowish-white tuft erupting from his head.  His wrinkled brown skin is covered with splotches, a line of warts marches down his snout, his blind eyes are an alien, milky white, and a fleshy flap of skin hangs from his withered neck.  And then there are the Austin Powers teeth that jut at odd angles.

 

He’s so ugly that even the judges recoiled when he was placed on the judging table…

 

And so, because I write creatively, I am going to court.  I don’t think it is fair, but what else can I do but defend myself?  I am unfortunate in that I roused the attention of someone who has money and for whom it is nothing (obviously) to hire attorneys and go to court over silly things like what I write in my blog.

 

You know what?  I choose to look on this as the price of fame:  If no one read what I write, no one would care what I wrote.  It is then only my success with blogging that has brought me this.  I bet that as I continue to write that problems like this will become more frequent.  It will be nice when I am actually making some income from writing to help offset the expenses.

 

   *  *

It is amazing to me that people can continue to take offense at what I write.  I should be thrilled, I guess, when someone sees a personal reference to a fictional event.  I love writing, and I love having what I write being read by others.  Thank you for stopping by to read what I have written today.  You make me feel special.

 

I got my water problem fixed, but I was not able to talk to either neighbor to see why it was turned off.  Further, with my random testing procedures I am not even sure that the problem was at the main valve.  It is difficult to test the system because it requires me to walk clear to the basement storage room to activate the circuits to the automatic sprinklers, so I fiddled with everything I could think of and then went to test the system – which I found working again.  It does not matter because I will still blame Annie.

 

While we are on the topic of Annie, that lady does not much like cats.  I guess dog people often have a dislike for cats but I don’t know if it is inherited from their dogs or if people who like dogs like them because they dislike cats.  At any rate, Annie loves dogs and hates cats.  She seemed intent on causing problems last night so she brought over two cats at 11:00 last night, shoved them into my surprised arms and left mumbling something under her breath.  She did not stop even when I hollered to her.  It is concerning that she then spent the next hour building something in the shed behind her house.

 

The good news for the week is that wedding plans continue to sprout and this time it looks like they have taken root.  I expect that I will be successfully married on Tuesday, and in the Temple as planned.  It is a relief to know that all the pieces are in place and only my own failures can keep this from happening – well, my failures or cold feet on the part of Carol.  I don’t expect either to be a problem.

 

If I don’t write again for a few days, you can just fill your mind with wild ideas of what I might be doing to occupy my time.

 

   *  *

I am so tired.  I am looking forward to this weekend as a chance to finally get caught up on some sleep.  What better thing could I wish for on Father’s day?  I am hopeful.

 

I can’t really explain the enervation I feel other than perhaps to chalk it up as a result of stress and emotional distress, but what ever the cause, I am feeling it.  I am fortunate that I had scheduled this week off work because now I don’t feel badly about wandering in at 9:00 – I am there after all, and that is more than I scheduled!  I hope my boss sees things the same way.

 

In the mean time, I continue to plod along trying to get the important things done, and there are plenty of important things to be done.  It is fortunate that Carol and I did not get married this week because our house looks like we are still moving in.  I don’t know when we will have an open house to celebrate our wedding for friends and family, but I do know that the house will look better when we finally do.  For my part, I would be happy to skip an open house, but I understand that such things are done as a mark of respect for those invited rather than as any benefit to those getting married… especially if you are asking for ‘No Gifts’.  Carol and I are giving serviceable and even very nice things to charity simply because we have so many duplicated items as it is – we could not fit anything else.

 

To begin another topic, I have been fuming all morning about something and I don’t even know if I have reason to fume!  When I left the house this morning (late to work and with no desire to hurry), I stopped to bring in the garbage.  As I was walking over the lawn I noticed that the cover to the irrigation water main was off again and that the lawns did not seem wet as they should have been if the sprinklers came on in the night.  I will have to check, but I believe that someone has turned off the irrigation water on me! 

 

This is not something that can be done on accident as it takes a key that is about 4 feet long to manage.  I don’t know who would have done this, but I suspect Annie – mostly because she is easy to suspect.  I saw her tapping on her window and glaring at my children when they wandered into her yard to play the other day and it reinforced the difference I see between her and Mayor Matt:  I like the Mayor but I can tell that there will be problems on the other side.  If Annie turned off the water, I will feel that she did it out of spite while if the Mayor turned it off I will trust that he was somehow being helpful.

 

Of course, I may find out that it was someone else entirely, or worse – that it was never turned off at all.

 

    *  *

Yesterday was an interesting day at the Brady house because both Carol and I were very irritable.  I guess that is understandable since it was to be our wedding day and then it was not.  It was not a fault of either of us, but our emotions were raw because of the disappointment.  I wish I could say I was totally devoted to Carol because I recognized how hard this day would be, but that is not the case.  I was aware that the day would be difficult for her, but I was so wrapped up in my own difficult day that I did not do my duty to her.

 

Today has been better.  Somehow the passing of the wedding day seemed to open new horizons to us and the pains and disappointments of yesterday were gone; it seemed the wounds had healed with the passing of June 10.  It was unfortunate that I was home from work yesterday (as a pity day because I did not get married but had the day scheduled off work so why not?), but today I had to work.  Days when I have a short temper should be spent at work while days when I am relaxed should be spent at home.

 

Of course my mood today brightened even more when I got multiple phone calls informing me that the Temple Clearance had been granted today too.  It is nice to know that our waiting was not misplaced, and nicer to recognize the disappointment we would be feeling if we had continued with a civil marriage yesterday only to find that we shorted ourselves by only one day.  We could be married this week, but we will probably wait until next Tuesday – the plans are still being made. 

 

Work is being generous to both of us with time off next week, so that is good.  Kids are another problem because we have to re-design care for them next week, but we can work that out.  Everything will work out.  Even the skies are clearing.

I am still at work.  I intended to leave an hour ago to take the boys camping tonight but the weather is overcast and chilly and I have not felt good since yesterday afternoon.  These are all good reasons not to go but I don't want to dissapoint the boys either.  It is a tough call to make.  If I go home I will have to decide, while if I stay at work I don't have to decide anything.

 

There is another decision waiting for me at home as well -- the permission did not come through this week and is still sitting on a secretary's desk waiting for next week or perhaps even the week after.  No one can say for sure how long it will take until our request is at the top of the pile.  Staying at work seems wonderful right now: I can handle the decisions at work.

 

   *  *

 

What do you do when beloved pets become problems?  How do you ask a child to give up a companion?  What can you do to make it ‘fair’?  Questions like these have kept me sleepless and despite the enervation that plagues me, they will probably continue to rob me of decent sleep.

 

The problem we have is that we live in a neighborhood and we have too many cats.  If we had remained on the stream where I lived before, it would not be such a big issue because of the forest in the back yard that tended to minimize the impact of pets, but here we are surrounded by neighbors that all have a right to not be bothered by our pets.  To compound this problem, one or more of the cats that came from Carol’s house has a problem with peeing in the house but trying to identify the culprit is truly problematic.

 

I have seen (and smelled) houses that were utterly destroyed by cat urine and I refuse to allow that to happen to this house.  I don’t want to get rid of all the cats but that may be the only option.  I have never been a cat person, but I have learned to accept them and even respect them for the love and devotion they show my children.  I only wish that they did not pee… or cough up hair.  You can teach a puppy to pee on newspaper, but you can’t teach a cat not to throw up hairballs on your pillow.

 

In the stream-side house, I occasionally had problems when the kids would come up from the basement and leave a cat downstairs, and those I could understand.  If the cat can not get to the garage to the litter box, you can expect problems.  To fix that problem in this house I installed a cat door leading to the basement as well as one for the garage.  Eventually I will install a new cat door leading outside so that if a cat goes to the garage and finds the box unusable, that cat can simply go dig in Annie’s flowers.

 

At this point I am not sure how many holes I want to make in doors because I don’t know the fate of the cats.  We can’t isolate the problem cat and of course each cat has someone who loves it and who is willing to testify under oath that their cat has never even entered the room where the spot suddenly appeared.  Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else’s cat and it would be comical if I were not trapped in the middle.  How can we get rid of the cat Marcia loves and keep the cat Jan loves?  We can’t even be sure that the problem is isolated to one cat.  All we know for sure is that it is not the dog but only because we don’t have a dog.  It may be that we end up without a single cat as well.  Am I wrong to want to live somewhere were we can feel comfortable having visitors?

 

It seems that being the dad means that you do what is needed rather than what you want.  I chose to sell my house, to take on the problems of nine other people, and to give up the lifestyle I was comfortable with: I knew what I was doing and I thought I knew what I was getting into so the decision was an educated one, but these decisions were not made because they were exciting or fun, rather they were made out of necessity because that is what other people required.  So much of life is determined by what others need but when I become fatigued, I begin to feel selfish and to feel that my life is no longer my own. 

 

In truth, it was never mine to live so perhaps it is my trying to wrestle my life from God’s hands that is the source of the problem.

 

    *   *