TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: Seems like forever since I’ve been in here.
THERAPIST: It’s been a while.
CLIENT: It’s been one of those extrusions (ph) where I’ve been pushed into the only way to win the game is by doing things that are impossible, if that makes sense. By doing things like you’re sick but you can’t really take another day off because you’ve already took the day before off therefore you come to work. But you can’t breathe and the customer’s starting to get freaked out. So basically you need to figure out some way to make yourself able to be not healthy but not scary for long enough to make it through the day kind of things. And just dealing with a lot of pain and feeling really desperate. [00:01:25]
What I feel so pressed is between what I need to do and what, the word want isn’t even really the right word for it, what life is actually compelling me to do. It just really puts me in a bad situation. It it makes it so it’s just hard to keep going. [00:02:09]
THERAPIST: Yes, yes. I think because you got your financial realities on one side and your health on the other.
CLIENT: And then there’s the stress from life and work and things like that and guilt from that related stuff. My rheumatologists say more or less told me that no matter what I do that the obligations in my life will string me dry and so I need to stop feeling like I can be controlled by them. But at the same time it’s really hard not to because one’s my livelihood and -
THERAPIST: Wait -
CLIENT: Like basically he was talking about the fact that I had to reschedule a lot and she said the number one thing you need to figure out right now is how no matter what you do they will always find an emergency for you to have to be doing something. [00:03:03]
THERAPIST: Referring to work.
CLIENT: Work or things like that. So you just need to learn to say no or else it’s just going to [inaudible at 00:03:10] you. And she’s right, she’s absolutely right. So, this was actually also in reference to the fact that she feels as if [pause] if we’re going to do it and try for being able to have kids right now but it has to be this year maybe, if it’s possible at all. I didn’t think it was my work doing that but there’s always these things popping up and this and that and she says you’ve got to just, this is the only year you’ve got really. And I said wow that’s really f***king poignant.
Apparently something I did not know is that in my forties due to the drop in estrogen my, in general there’s a lot of other, the disease is not more severe but it does tend to have, the symptoms tend to worsen. So if I was trying to bank on going another year or two, she said every [inaudible at 00:04:36] you have is just going to hurt because you’re not going to have enough estrogen and this and that. And I said why didn’t anyone tell me this? And she said I’m telling you this now. [00:04:47]
THERAPIST: How old are you now?
CLIENT: Thirty-eight. So, and it’s something that’s been on my mind. I brought it up anyways.
THERAPIST: You mean having kids? [00:05:06]
CLIENT: Yes, if it was even advisable because 10 years ago they said no. Five years ago they said I guess you do have [inaudible at 00:05:17] will but I don’t think it’s a good idea. She thinks that if I’m going to decide whether or not I can it’s completely out of her control. She will put me with a reproductive endocrinologist but this is probably the last chance I got. So, you know. [Pause]
It is also just from the point of view of knowing you’re just having kids somewhat depressing to realize that the general malaise will probably increase in my 40s, so that’s something I didn’t realize. Not the actual this joint is going to hurt more or anything like that but the overall ability to, they often describe it the overall feeling is feeling a little bit like the flu all the time. That does increase. Basically that whole periomenopausal period of time is a strong time that it’s formed, that kind of thing. [00:06:56]
So there’s a sense of dread for that. I don’t know. I just feel like I’m constantly behind on everything. [Pause] But I guess just keep going forward I guess. [00:07:48]
THERAPIST: Are you wanting my advice a bit or ?
CLIENT: I I mean if there’s advice to be had sure, but I just don’t really even at this point, I’m just resigned that there’s isn’t any advice at this point but if there is some I’d be grateful. But now, just [00:08:19]
THERAPIST: My impression is also that the thought of trying to have kids and thought of not having kids are both overwhelming.
CLIENT: Yes, yes. [Pause] I guess the thing is that the life that I want is not impossible but it’s going to take more than just a little hope (ph) and hard work to get there. Like a lot of coincidences, a lot of luck, I don’t think it’s going to happen. [Pause] At the same time, though, it’s [pause] it’s hard to imagine a life without that kind of hope, you know? Basically I’m [handing out] (ph) dreams what the f**k do you do with the rest of your life? What do you got motivating you? Just [00:10:46]
THERAPIST: Well it would involve tremendous grief. I guess it would probably be the biggest loss you ever had. [00:11:34]
CLIENT: Yes. [Pause] It’s just really hard because it’s just, [pause] when you spend your entire life at playing it safe and doing things the right way and then realize that you sort of don’t really have a whole lot to aspire to, it’s kind of rough. [00:12:57]
THERAPIST: Absolutely. Incredibly hard
CLIENT: And it’s just [pause] it’s hard being so tired all the time. It’s hard, really hard also on some level to constantly have to be able to be what other people expect you to be even if you fail [inaudible at 00:13:52] miserably. [00:13:53]
THERAPIST: Yes, I imagine people expect things from you like that you’re not in so much pain that you can be very focused for long periods of time or that you’re not so worn out and exhausted that you have energy to deal with lots of things in a row. [00:14:12]
CLIENT: Yes, or on some level that you just [inaudible at 00:14:17] sickness, if not able to hide it because it’s kind of a downer. [Pause] No matter how, I don’t know, just like I said, just [pause] no matter how much I think I guess I just seem like a miserable human being to other people, I guess on some level they don’t realize how much I really hide and actually pretend to be a lot more cheerful and a lot more whatever than I really am. Like yes, I had to bargain my way into getting my butt into the store this morning or I slept 15 hours to be able to get to do this. [00:15:59]
THERAPIST: They really just see, I mean it’s not really respectful but I think it works like the tip of the iceberg of what you have to deal with. [00:16:35]
CLIENT: Yes, and all the stuff that I do mostly is, the only thing I actually really do disclose or either out of awkwardness or I don’t know because I feel like I have to at some point or another. I feel compelled to lie a lot. I don’t because it’s just too complicated but I feel like I want to. [Pause] I think I just come up with some watertight story that I can just be able to explain forward like why this or that. It’s so much easier. [00:17:36] [Pause]
I’m sick of getting infections. I’m sick of being in chronic pain. [Pause] If anything the one really good thing about this whole idea of being able to start a family is just that it has really gotten me, my husband to be a lot more mindful about his addiction at the very least. I won’t say it’s easier for him to control because it’s not the same thing. I think the point is, is that I think he’s starting to realize that before things happened that he should pause and think possibly and maybe stop something. That’s not the same thing as controlling but just I think good. [00:19:29]
I know that this is just in general a really hard time of year for both of us. It really is. It’s much harder than at Christmas. People were saying oh Christmas has got to be the worst. I mean it’s a little bit sad, yes, and it’s all but really January and February is the worst for us. Why because he gets so depressed. I have memories, and this was many years ago, but he would get freaking catatonic, like stare at the wall and I could come back and he hasn’t moved at all kind of depressed. He’s not as bad as that but it’s really bad, it gets really bad. [00:20:19]
And on top of it I feel like crap anyways so I’m not exactly moving around so I need to be cared for a little bit. And to some extent it’s 30% good for him because then he snaps out of his own world to help me but then it’s also because I’m not moving around and we’re not getting things done that things get it’s just a terrible, terrible time right now for us. It always has been. And, I don’t know. [00:21:10]
THERAPIST: What are your thoughts about starting a family? Where are you at in thinking about it?
CLIENT: Well because of the fact that my doctor said that it would be almost impossible to get an appointment unless we found, this year for me, unless we got, unless I got, an appointment was cancelled. I actually have an appointment next month from somebody who cancelled.
THERAPIST: With the reproductive endocrinologist?
CLIENT: Yes. So at the very least it’s an information finding thing. I know that this is going to be planned a lot. I am terrified about what, basically I was talking about this so much today with her just the whole concept of between supposedly if I can stay pregnant how much the symptoms get better. But getting to that part after the first trimester even at all is to me just terrifying because it’s going to be painful. It’s going to be painful a lot. [00:22:36]
And I did not realize this. I thought I was going to go off everything. I’m not going off everything. I’m still staying with injections; in fact I get more injections. So it’s going to be a couple of injections a day and I’m just, I just got past the point last year where I was just I get needle-phobic every so often. I don’t really [inaudible at 00:23:02] the word phobia. It’s like, it’s almost like I can take it, I can take it, I can take, and then no, no, no I can’t deal with this any more for a while. [00:23:22]
It’s not the needles themselves; it’s everything else related to it. It’s the scheduling, it’s the managing of where the injection starts are, it’s the itchiness of the injections and reactions. It’s not like the I’m-afraid-of-something-piercing-my-skin kind of thing.
THERAPIST: It’s like the I-can’t-deal-with-one-f****king-more-thing.
CLIENT: Yes. And knowing that I’m going to, not only that the stay on antidepressants actually apparently I did not know this but they got approval last year to start using on people who have [inaudible at 00:24:04] miscarriages the kind of stuff I take but in different dosage with different ways of doing it such to because the kind of miscarriages I’ve had and the ones that generally are really common for certain situations are due to we don’t know why your immune system just kills. Anything before eight weeks that doesn’t look like anything else that ought, anything else that physically, option is that. So they break it up into a lot smaller doses a lot more frequently. [00:24:34]
THERAPIST: How many miscarriages have you had?
CLIENT: Two. Well, two we think. This is one of those situations where because I was in my 20s, was married, and I did the whole oh hon, we’ll send this stuff up for, we’ll send we don’t really know what’s going on, it seems like that’s what’s happening, blah, blah, blah, we’re going to send this all out and don’t you worry about this. You got plenty of time kind of thing. Those are two that I it’s hard to tell. Anything right around six weeks you don’t know. [00:25:05]
THERAPIST: Yes, I understand.
CLIENT: But [pause] the human whatever hormone whatever that they use for it has always been very, very low so it’s never been really definitive but yet you bleed a lot but yet I’m this is always the great thing of being the person who has the type of hemophilia that they’re going to start giving me Heparin (ph) shots twice a day. Why, because it’s a completely different type of thing where the [inaudible] starts clotting and actually constructing the amniotic cord, which has nothing to do with my bleeding disorder but it just apparently it happens. I just don’t know. [00:26:00]
She was very, very positive about this whole thing. She seems to think that if we can get there things would be great. But it’s going to be really, really crummy until then. And by really, really crummy it may never happen. I don’t mean to seem, to make it seem like my life will be meaningless without children but I’m an only child. My parents had really limited lifespans and my spouse doesn’t have, is basically estranged from his family and so we have as much family as we can create in our own way. I need something to focus on besides myself. And I’m not meaning like on the level of oh my God I’m so obsessed with my children. It’s like lives that [00:27:03]
THERAPIST: It seems often this pretty simple thing, which is you love kids and you want to have them.
CLIENT: Yes. Yes.
THERAPIST: I mean I know this stuff about family too but I think it’s all true.
CLIENT: Yes. I feel like it would be a lot easier if I could just see something in my life that is bigger than me and my problems. [Pause] And knowing that the reality of adoption is probably not going to happen because just financially we’ll never look like on paper what we need. [00:28:01]
THERAPIST: Not even if Mike gets a pretty good job?
CLIENT: Well, and even that’s a am I going to hold out for that? Really? I think that it’s better sometimes when the opportunity to step up thing. I mean tonight he’s filling out applications for a thing over at a government agency, which would be good because we could be down in the Chicago area where our friends are, our friends with kids are. But waiting for that I mean I’ve been waiting for, I’ve been hoping and waiting and trying to plot things out for so many years now that it’s just not realistic. Due to a lot of reasons, some of them our own fault, some of them just faith, some of them just malicious bitchiness we don’t have the kind of resources that other people do. [00:29:12]
And the best U.S. (ph) adoption is very resource weighted and foreign adoption unfortunately especially in China is drying up, so along with a lot of other things. Really, I had a huge window open to me realizing that I’m not sure if I’m physically and emotionally prepared to open up that Pandora’s Box. But also the weaving of the one-child policy thing starting up is going to change a lot. Plus a lot of countries don’t like to lend the deadline to adopt to people over 40 if they don’t already have children. So it’s just, it’s a lot, it’s just lots at this point. [00:30:09]
I’ve had one doctor in my life who hugs me and tells me that let’s do this together, let’s try this. That’s actually nice. It’s been on my head, I’ve been talking to her about it but it’s not like she’s, I wouldn’t say, not influencing me but she has definitely turned her support on this.
THERAPIST: She’s somebody who’s so hopeful I think and like she’s in with you.
CLIENT: Yes, so she’s been very supportive. She’s made arrangements so that she’ll see me in six weeks and she can have my spouse in. I’m usually so awkward. Mike comes in with me to a lot of doctor’s appointments. I go in with a lot of [inaudible at 00:31:00] usually because one of us is, the person who’s the patient, is so distracted by the ailment the other person doesn’t remember shit coming out of it. It’s normal. [00:31:08]
She’s the only one in the world who says totally why didn’t he come in this time? Come on in next time, bring coffee, we are going to chat. There’ll be exams but let’s talk. That was really nice. Bring coffee. She’s coming in on her day off. Not day off but her she’s coming in before she does surgical rotations or something like that so that she can see me in six weeks.
THERAPIST: Very nice.
CLIENT: Yes. So, because she, we talked about this the fact that things just sort of pass and they just pass and they just pass and I wouldn’t have gotten in with this doctor down south except they were booking for consultations for 2015. 2015 and not like January 2015, like April. So she said okay so let me talk to this person’s secretary, and let me talk to this person’s secretary and she said okay so I need to get this person on the list for when somebody cancels an appointment blah, blah, blah, and this and that. And after she made a lot of phone calls I have an appointment next month, which is not normal. [00:32:24]
THERAPIST: Yes, that’s amazing.
CLIENT: Yes, and she said, she sort of told me I’ve had to lie to get to this point. She didn’t really say it that way but she said yes, we’re just going to call your previous history of miscarriages what’s happening. Not we’re not going to tell them what happened right now but we’re going to use that as the reference information to get you in right now because they’ll make you try for at least six months before you can try and book an appointment which will put you at least a year and a quarter away. So, and it’s true. She’s right, she’s absolutely right.
It would be very easy to let the system cheat me out of this situation and she said you can make the decision not to do this but don’t let scheduling and other things cheat you out of it should not be the logistics that keeps this away from you. And so, and it’s very easy like that. I mean so many of my specialist’s appointments, I make appointments with them and they say yes so I’m going to see you later this year or something like that. But by then it’s at the same problem. I don’t know. It’s just, it’s so unrelevant. It’s so frustrating. [00:33:40]
It’s weird to have a doctor that has really not so much to do with what I’m doing right now actually really doing something to help out. I mean it’s something like that because it’s the primary doctor that’s going to have to alter my medication so that I can be this way. But it’s also the primary doctor that can actually vouch for me to see that I have had eleven injections and therefore I can kind of be compliant enough because if it had just been a regular couple at this point were being handed several boxes of needles and they wouldn’t necessarily be able to say that they were in this situation to be able to be compliant. [00:34:28]
So, I don’t know. I just on some level at the back of my head I just feel like I have to do this. I feel like it is the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever done but I feel like if I don’t try then I’m going to always regret it. I mean really irresponsible. I have, we have nowhere to put a crib but I figure at that point, at the point in which we really ought to think about having a crib we’ll have at least six months to figure that part out. You know what I mean? There’s nothing, nothing but I feel like at least if I did something, get myself in a better place for this maybe I can be, say (ph) that I tried. I don’t know. [00:35:28]
For me the act of trying to do something is so important. Whenever I be a passive and just let the world happen to me life sucks and it sucks a lot. [Pause] If we go through with this I need to also make sure that we’re both, right now we’re both on the same page about making sure that Mike’s family will have no contact with our children. I need to make sure that never, ever gets breached. We have friends who have done this with other family members too successfully and have successfully been able to talk to their children about this too. And I feel like I need to make sure that this just, we don’t ever give in on this one because this is this is not like the oh our dog will never sleep in the bed but now that our dog is 12 she sleeps in the bed kind of thing. [00:36:49]
I need to make sure that they don’t ever f***k up our children’s lives because they, [pause] because everything they’ve done has been so pernicious in our lives. Everything, everything. Nothing is good; nothing is safe. And I hate to be like everything has to be all or nothing or this or that, but I think that the only way that I can get to the point of forgiving them is by forgiving them in a way that they have no relationship with me whatsoever. Mike’s therapist has just wrote a big article about this and has been [inaudible] talking to Mike about the idea of forgiveness of his parents, his mother for the crap that she did to him. [00:37:47]
Not necessarily that this has to be done now or anything like that but it has to have that open in his mind. I don’t really, I’m getting this third party, third party through somebody who’s depressed and isn’t necessarily relating things exactly right. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s coming to Christmas dinner, which is perfectly good with me. But to be honest [pause] I think that making sure that there is nothing else, I mean would be the greatest. I don’t even want her to know about the existence of children, ages of children, anything like that. Which I mean I know I can’t really prevent that. I’m not going to be hyper vigilant in making sure that our children physically are not, never know, knowing about on the Internet or something like that or something, but I need to make sure that through regular channels [00:38:57]
THERAPIST: It shouldn’t be that hard. She never pays attention anyway.
CLIENT: Yes, it really, it really shouldn’t be that hard. But the point though is making sure that the few people who are vaguely related to us know that they [00:39:11]
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: that it’s very important not to mention like Mike’s Uncle Leonard, who is Mike’s grandfather’s brother. He’s the only member of the family that likes us on his side.
THERAPIST: And who’s going to the Christmas party.
CLIENT: Yes, back in Cincinnati. He knows my dad because they’re both attorneys and they’re from that, that get the age of this. Yes, so really different. Also reminds you oldest and youngest of nine children so I mean they might as well also come from different families because of that dynamic of being that far away. Just making sure that he understands that this is I mean I think he will but when he finds out that this is not something to pass onto Nadine ever because she’s evil. [00:40:00]
I don’t feel comfortable saying it that way because it sounds so ridiculously reductionist. It’s bizarre but she said some pretty horrible things. Things that I don’t want to have my children to ever have to have happen to them. And I think the only way I’m ever going to have to feel comfortable and not feel hyper vigilant, like oh my God I need to make sure that these kids never get [inaudible at 00:40:27] by them, is by making sure that they’re never around, ever. So because I just, I have so much firm beliefs about things. Especially if our kids are related like Mike and I are. We’re way to oversensitive to that kind of bulls***t. I just won’t try if you got this kind of crap out.
Mike says he has, he has no memory of childhood but he has memories of childhood of being able to figure out things that people, adults, did not realize that you knew what was going on kind of stuff. [Pause] I think if either they will or they won’t be like that but I just, I know that I was really perceptive and how my kids could very well do that. Have I told you really quickly the story about the Santa Claus thing? So at one point my dad was being really pithy with me, really pithy. Apparently I was two. For Santa Claus the story about they say it was the night before Christmas thing and Santa Claus turned with a jerk, apparently he made some sort of an extremely off the cuff comment about the turning with a jerk was my Aunt Iris and jerk, like jerk as in not the action but the person. Completely sidelined, to me at all but making a joke about something because he’s reading it at a party kind of thing. [00:42:07]
THERAPIST: Sort of a grown up aside.
CLIENT: Yes, like a grown up aside kind of thing. I remembered that. I remembered that and repeated it back because my Aunt Iris was the helper of Santa Claus. And I still mention this every Christmas. He gets really embarrassed by it but I do it to remind him of the fact that certain, like the concept of the two, the dual nature of words and children they pick up on this stuff kind of thing. That’s the kind of stuff that how early on I picked up and remembered, not strong memories, but that’s the kind of stuff, the kind of grown-up aside and making a joke a kid remembers it. I didn’t understand that that meant that my dad was really angry at my Aunt Iris who’s now passed away but it was really irresponsible and young and late teenager at the time was that kind of thing. But all I did was pick it up and I remembered it. Yes. [00:43:05]
I can’t imagine that it is impossible that others, anybody who’s genetically related to me wouldn’t necessarily I don’t think they will but there’s a good chance. I don’t want them to have any off-the-cuff comments about this kind of crap.
THERAPIST: We should stop for now.
CLIENT: That sounds good. Next week, I need to figure out timing. There is a chance that I may need to reschedule.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Let me take a look here real quick. I have to take the dog for a consult with the dentist. I know. This is another reason why I’m broke because I’m taking care of things like dog dental bills.
THERAPIST: I got you. Let’s see. I can meet on Thursday at 3:45 if that works better.
CLIENT: Let me see about that. Normally I’d say sure but now that I have a billion doctors’ appointments I need to look. That’s Thursday the 23rd?
THERAPIST: Yes. [00:44:04]
CLIENT: Actually I think that’s much better. So hold on and 3:45, 3 what did you say, 3?
THERAPIST: 3:45.
CLIENT: Okay, great. Perfect. Okay. I guess he’s not worried about making it back before the bus (ph) which actually I have no real perceptive idea how long that’s going to take. So, okay, see you next week.
THERAPIST: All right. [00:44:57]
END TRANSCRIPT
