well, i've been stuck in bed and right now i am pretty doped up on the morphine so that i can sit in this chair and bear the pain somewhat. i don't know what has happened or what i have done, i just know i am racked with pain from my back and into my leg, the one with the nerve damage. the normal dosages of my pain medications aren't killing the pain at all i don't think, or if it is, i'm so glad it is because i don't know how i would handle the pain if it was worse than it has been. so since basically sunday or monday, i have barely been out of my bed except to go to the bathroom and smoke an occasional cigarette. even laying in my bed hurts, but some positions are less painful than others, and i can tolerate them. i thought at first that i had simply over done it getting ready for riley's party and then the party and the clean up. but each day that goes by that seems to be less likely. the pain isn't decreasing, sometimes i think it may be increasing. when taking a step can bring tears to my eyes, or straightening up to get out of the bed can bring a cry of pain to my mouth, something is wrong. i normally have a pretty good pain tolerance. i have to. every day i deal with pain. every step i take, every move i make, i have pain. but it has now gone so far beyond what is normal as to be unrecognizable. it has somewhat taken my mind off my depression for now. it is hard to wallow in depression when you are concentrating on fighting off waves of pain. so i guess in that way it has benefited me. good grief, even with as much morphine as i have in me right now, i hurt sitting here. it's not like i can just go to the hospital and they will help me. they look at the medications i am on and they figure i shouldn't be able to feel anything. what they don't understand is it doesn't even kill my daily pain, and any pain over my daily pain, it certainly isn't going to help. if i get an ear infection, i feel it. if i stub my toe, i feel it. unfortunately most medical personnel are woefully ignorant on how to deal with people with chronic pain. they label a lot of us as merely drug seekers. so, if i go to the e.r. right now, told them how much pain i was in and told them what medications i am on, they would pat me on the head and send me on home. money of mine wasted and the insurance's wasted, plus my time. it's pathetic. so i get to suffer. it's so unfair. if i get a migraine, it's the same story. they won't treat my migraine because of what i am on. my pain clinic dr. gave me some phenergan to take when i get a migraine because it is good for the nausea and it also helps with the migraine. it also makes you sleep and you usually will sleep through the migraine hopefully and when you wake up, it is gone. so right now, i am trapped in my own personal hell. i have no way to escape, no way of gaining any real relief. i hope it will end soon, and it will go back to the normal, every day pain that i always deal with and i am use to. i don't know how much i will be able to be on here until it does go back to normal. i'll do my best, but i don't know how long i can stand to sit in this chair anymore.
see ya.

well, today was my rileybug's birthday. he turned 9 yrs old today. i can't believe it. he's going into the 4th grade next year. he's almost finished with elementary school. he's growing up, right before my eyes, becoming a little man. of course, he's still enough of a kid that he had no interest in the presents that were clothes and had much more interest in the toys, movies, and video games. he also got some books he really wanted. so, it worked out well. i'm so glad that he is taking such an interest in reading and isn't just a tv and video game vegetable. and he reads these big thick books. thicker than a lot of the books that i read. well, they also probably have a little bit bigger print in them but still, they are huge. i look at him and i wonder if his dreams will come true when he grows up or if he will merely settle for something that will pay his bills. i hope he keeps right on dreaming and that he is able to follow his dreams and be what he wants to be.

my mind is dwelling on riley right now. he had a horrible fit today doing his homework because it wasn't working out the way he wanted it to, regardless of what the correct answer was. he has such a temper. his birthday is this saturday. he's gonna be 9 yrs old. i'm shocked by the fact that 9 yrs ago i was hugely pregnant, anxiously awaiting the birth of my son. and i'm not exaggerating when i say hugely. one of my friends said when she saw me coming out the door, i just kept coming and coming and coming. she thought i was never gonna stop coming out of that door. i think the goodyear blimp looked miniature next to me. riley was 2 weeks late in being born, not that that is really a good excuse for my hugeness. i'll never forget it, he was born on the same day as the mad about you baby. he beat mabel being born by like 5 1/2 hrs. i watched mabel be born from the hospital room after riley was born. i always thought that was kinda cool. of course, now most people are probably like, what the hell is she talking about? anyway. i use to love to watch mad about you, so i thought it was very cool that riley was born the same day as mabel. he was so beautiful. everyone thought i had a c-section because he didn't come out all alien headed like most babies do. but i didn't. i had him the regular way. i'm not sure how he avoided the alien head, but he did. he was just gorgeous and he had the ten perfect little bitty fingers and the ten perfect little bitty toes. which is fortunate because a couple of months later when my sister in law had her baby, the people in the room with her, their baby had some kind of defect where one foot and hand were like jumbo sized. they said maybe by the time they were about 7 or 8 they would have both hands and feet the same size. so we were lucky. can you imagine? i felt so bad for them. but i guess it could have been something much worse. the entire time i was pregnant and ever since he was born, i have been horribly afraid that something terrible would happen to riley, that he would come down with some terrible disease or he would become severely injured. i'm sure every parent has these fears about their children, but i think my fears are somewhat unreasonable. i do my best not to let my fears effect riley and get in the way of his childhood. i just sit and worry myself to death with them. when he is gone from the house until he comes back safe and sound, i am worried and kinda freaked out, especially now, when he goes to his nanna's house. that is where brandon, the stabber, lives. i'm sure he is going to try to hurt riley in some way. he has always picked at riley, and now diane has made riley kinda a threat to him. she has always told brandon how much better he is than riley, but now she has thrown up to brandon how well riley does in school and how poorly brandon does. i'm afraid he will do something to riley. i know it is probably unreasonable. but there you go. i guess this is a little bit of what you get when someone with an anxiety disorder has a child. i can't believe he is almost 9 yrs old. it doesn't seem like 9 yrs have passed. it seems like not long ago i was changing his diapers and watching teletubbies for the millionth time. where does the time go? before i know it, he will be a teenager and want nothing to do with dear old mom. i guess i need to enjoy him while i still can.

well, we've always known that my mind was a little bit loosely attached. i have never had a very firm grip on it. but i have officially lost it today. it started out ok. my son was late getting up for school, but no big deal, we got him thrown together and out in time to catch the bus. he came home in a good mood, gave me a couple of my mother's day presents that he had made at school for me, despite my protests that he wait until mother's day. then i send him to clean his room. well, first let me explain his room. there is no way to walk through his room with out losing one's balance, stepping onto something painful, twisting your ankle and possibly finding drink cans from over a week ago( he is not suppose to have beverages in his room, or food for that matter, yet we find it). well, he has been grounded because of his refusal to take responsibility for not only his room, but for other things around the house. we have discovered that the mess that is our living room, is all riley's stuff, yet he will not pick up so much as a piece of paper to clean it up. so, he goes in there to clean his room and comes back 30 minutes later. now i may be wrong, but i'm thinking that room will take at least a good day of hard cleaning to get it into good shape, and he comes in there after half an hour and says his room is clean. i tell him that his father is the one that has to see it because he is the one that laid down the rule. this sends him into a temper tantrum that would have done a child in their terrible twos to shame, and i do mean to shame! he then stomps of declaring that he no longer wished to live in this house and heads out the front door. so me, in my condition, have to go chasing after him, barefoot no less, screaming at him to get back to this house. we have been in this neighbor hood just under a year now and i think we have now been awarded the white trash award. i had to threaten him with the police to get him to come into the house. i had to tell him that i would call them and report him as a run away and an unruly child and that they would put him into juvenile detention where they put the bad kids that do bad things to people. of course, they would not do this, and i would not have called the police for this unless he really did run away. but desperate times call for desperate measures. i had to put the fear of god, or the police, which ever works, into him. good grief the fit that child pitched. so somewhere in the midst of all of this uproar, my mind seems to have disappeared. i can't seem to find it anywhere. i gave him a lecture. he told me i wasn't his mother so i told him he wasn't my son, because my son would never behave that way in public, that my son makes me proud. anyway, he went on to imply that he was related to brandon and just maybe he would end up stabbing a kid. my heart stopped, i swear. if he starts doing the crap brandon does, i swear they will not even be allowed near each other at family gatherings. that will be the end of that one. now do you see why my mind has disappeared? too much happened in too short of an amount of time for it to process and it put it's white flag up and hauled ass out of here. i'm hoping against hope that missi puts brandon into a long care facility for the summer so that he can be treated and observed. i bet if she does they come up with a different diagnosis. maybe a real one this time.
anyway, anyone sees my brain, let me know. thanks.

well, i can say that i am feeling no worse, but i am feeling no better either. i'm beginning to fear that the only way that i will be able to come out of this is to be hospitalized and receive intensive treatment. somewhere that i can be monitored while they try to manipulate my medications to get them all to the right levels to keep me sane. i don't want to go back into the hospital, but that might be the best place for me at this stage. at least there i will not be able to give into the ever present temptation to end it all. i will not be able to do anything that will hurt me in any way. the only thing that worries me about going in there is that they are generally also drug rehabs and they may try to keep me from taking my medications for my back. that is what happened the last time i went in and i was not on anywhere near as much medication. i also wasn't dependant on those medications as i am on the ones i am on now. i only took those medications at times of great need, i generally had a one month script for 2 to 3 months. now a one month script is pretty much for one month. they can actually last longer, but not months longer. i try not to take them if i can keep from it, because they are so addictive and because i know that as i get older, i'm going to need more and more so the less i can get away with now, the better off i am in the long run. so there is that fear if i go into the hospital. without those medications to kill the pain, i can't hardly get out of the bed let alone walk around and do anything, i can't sit in this chair for any amount of time, nothing. i am completely useless without something to ease the pain somewhat, even though it doesn't kill all of the pain, it takes the worst of the edge off of it. i guess that is all that i can hope for out of it.
so the big question is, to go to the looney bin or not to go. it would be hard at this point, there has to be someone here to get riley on and off the bus every day. and once school lets out, there has to be someone here with him every day. i don't know how i would be able to do it. there is no one who could take care of riley while i am away. so i guess there isn't really a question at all is there. i will simply have to do the best i can right here and hope for the best. it would just be yet another embarrassment for my family if i were to go back in anyway. that sort of thing just really isn't done, you know. i've already shamed them before, and that is how they would look at it if it happened again. it's bad enough that i see a psychiatrist and have to take the medications. but to go back into the hospital again? the embarrassment just might kill my grandmother this time. so i guess i will stay home and i will do what i have to do.