quiet

I haven't had much time for blogging lately.  There have been posts, even fully written posts, but none that I felt like sharing.  Politics, depression, urology, UK politics, turning 39... nothing fun.  I need to post some new pictures of the kids.  They're fun.

A part of me hasn't wanted to share.  I want people to know what is going on in our life but because I can never fully express how our life feels, it doesn't seem like a good use of my spare moments.

But I do want to talk.  When I went in for surgery, I think some people were scandalised at how much personal information Jesse posted for the world to read.  At times, I felt compelled to act as if I too thought he had been overly specific, but that wasn't at all how I reacted in private.  It was a relief to have my hidden illness brought into the glaring light of Jesse's FB feed.  Women need to talk about our urological and gynecological problems.  It's not something to be embarrassed by.  I have friends with RA; if they can talk about their illness, why can't I?  Just because my problem is near my vagina?  If we talk about these things, maybe our daughters won't have to wait so long for help.  Maybe all the women who have pain when they urinate will no longer be told to "just relax" but be taken seriously.  Besides, what Jesse wrote was practically clinical in its presentation and gave no true expression of how it actually feels to be living with this problem.

Have you ever had to catheterize yourself in a public restroom with menstrual blood obscuring your urethra and getting under your fingernails?  It's a moment of panic because you know that if you can't get the catheter in you will have to endure the pain in silence and without passing out.  It's a moment of hoping no one will be at the sinks when you scrub the blood off your hands.  Living with this is painful and it is secluding and at times it feels like more than I can possibly continue to live with.  But it's absurd, too.  How silly that I am supposed to be embarrassed by this - this isn't some flaw in my character, if anything it's proof that I can put up with more shit than the average bear.  And situations I find myself having to deal with are so ridiculous that I can laugh and joke about them.  There is humour in flooding blood whist trying to hold up a skirt, balancing on heels, not touching the toilet, positioning a catheter, and keeping the preschooler from crawling into the next stall.

So, no, I don't have a problem with people knowing my health problems, if anything, I wish I could tell them more.