Asking For What I Need

I finished up my move today.  We moved all the stuff that didn't get moved originally to storage yesterday and I went back to clean up a little and empty out the fridge today.  I checked the mail one last time and turned in the keys. It was the apartment I moved to when my wife told me I needed to move out.  It was the place I lived and adjusted to my new life. I healed there, both from the loss of my family and from my DVTs and   It was a place for me to grow and get my feet and become the everyday woman I had always wanted to be. It is time now, to move on with my life.

I did this move with the help of my friends and a professional moving company. And I intentionally did not ask my Second Daughter, Debra, to help. I was thinking she wouldn't really want to help [which is not true!] and she has her own life and a boyfriend she loves very much.  I told myself I didn't want to get in the way of that.  But when I was all done, I felt like ... she should have been there, been a part of the move with me.  I really missed having her around.  [I always miss having her around]  So why couldn't I ask for what I wanted?

Part of my thinking, actually crying words, lies I tell myself to hurt me, is I tell myself that I do not deserve good things, I don't deserve to have my daughter spend time with me.  And the other thing is I am very used to sacrificing my desires and needs, that my children can be more comfortable or not inconvenienced.  It was this trait that helped me get my First Daughter and my Son through college before I came out and started living my own life. 

I tell myself, if Debra wants to spend time with me, she'll let me know and we'll schedule something.  I tell myself that I'm not letting her go, not letting her grow up and have her own life if I'm asking for more of her time.  

I tell myself a lot of crying words.

I wonder sometimes if I'm the one who needs to grow up.

We have gone for weeks where the only time we get with each other is Monday's.  And we will say goodnight sometimes and I love you and, sometimes, I miss you.  Often her schedule is very busy, but as often as not, we don't see each other because I don't ask. 

There is a risk in asking for what I need, for what I want.  She might be busy or not interested and not able to get together for something specific. And the childish me gets hurt.  I have chosen not to ask on occasions because I don't want to deal with what I interpret as rejection.  The truth is Debra has always been there for me and never has she rejected me. There have been times where we have had to rework schedules or find some other time to do something together.  But she has always, Always been there when I needed her.

I need to remember, that for the first time in my life, it's ok to ask for what I want, for what I need. And Debra wants me to let her know when I want time with her.

Church Shopping

Today is Sunday, the 18th of March.  Today I have started my search for a new church near where I live now in issaquah.  Looking on the Internet, there was only one church that is reconciling or affirming or in some way upfront about welcoming some one like me, transsexual and a lesbian. I will try the United Church of Christ sometime in the future. Today I am at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church. I think it is an ELCA church, but it doesn't claim to be Recociled In Christ. I was very scared to drive up to the church. The Pastor's sermon today seems to be "All Are Welcome.". As I typed this, he, the pastor, or Poppa, through him, welcomed Gay and Lesbian believers... I have quietly been in tears and as choked up as I can be for the last few moments. I do not Know if this place is home but, maybe, maybe, it can be.  

The church celebrated Communion on this, the 4th Sunday of Lent. I passed on taking Communion.  I did not feel prepared or "right" for Communion; though where my emotional place was, it probably would have been a good thing to share the Blood and Body of the One Who Loves Me.  But my LCMS upbringing treats the Table as a very Sacred place and I did not feel right approaching the Table of my Lord.  I Believe!  This is a very serious thing to me!  My Faith and the way I relate to Poppa, and to my Brother, the One Who Loves Me, and to my Comforter, is my faith and it is woven into my life! and cannot ignore it!  Nor do I want to.  I want, I need to be a whole woman.

After the service, I thanked the pastor for his sermon and the welcome he extended in his sermon. I explained how I spent the morning looking for Reconciled in Christ or welcoming and affirming churches without any success. I took a chance on Shepherd of the Hills.  He understood and introduced me to the head usher who took me back to the Coffee Hour.  I was introduced around to several people who all were very welcoming. I ended up spending a half hour, forty minutes just chatting with people.  Mostly women of the church but that felt extremely comfortable.

I Am So Tired

My INR today was 3.7, same as Wednesday. At least I don't have to have the lab do a blood draw.  But I find myself very sad and discouraged.  I need to start at the Overlake ACC; it is so much closer.  But then I have to start with new people and there is already a lot of "Leaving" going on. My doctor has been with me for seven years and has been through all of my transition with me.  She's been with me with me through my hormones and my first blood clots and now their recurrence, getting my diabetes managed, and changed my records from Male to Female after my orchiectomy.  But... but ... I can't continue to drive to Everett; it's a nearly 3 hour drive round trip. 

I have been overwhelmed the last few weeks: looking for, finding, and moving into a new apartment, finding new blood clots, dealing with atrial fibrillation, suffering a stroke, and trying to stabilized my new blood thinning regimen, facing the cost of being uninsured and having to pay for the hospital and clinic bills, discouraged that I haven't been able to schedule my GCS and facing the very real possibility that I may not ever have the finances to pay for it. I'm not sure how I will face not ever being complete. 

And I have been overwhelmed by the love and the care and the concern of those who know me when they heard about my stroke. Again, I was floored by the love my First Daughter and my Son shared with me when I was in the hospital. And my Second Brother, who has not said more than a dozen words to me since I came out!

Through all of this, my closest friends have been right there for me ... Always. And when I lose it, when my fears run me over, my Second Daughter has taken the brunt of it and has steadfastly stood with me and loved me. She dropped everything the weekend of my stroke and stayed with me and would not let me be alone in the hospital. And last night I read her out over some imagined slight and not for the first time. She called me late last night and patiently talked me through my fears and loved me. 

Many times my fears do run me over. I have a great fear of being abandoned by people I love. I have been brave through so much!  I am tired and I am scared. I am getting old. My health isn't as good as it was once. I don't want to be brave any more. I want to curl up in somebody's arms while they hold the dragons at bay for a while. I am so tired!

Poppa's Hand in my life...

I hope that anyone who knows me, knows that my God is important to me. My relationship with my Lord and Savior, and my Spiritual belief, my Faith life are all important to me and always have been. But it didn't flower until I came out and started being who I really am and at the same time came to see my God as my Holy, Loving Poppa.

This last weekend was terrifying to me. I don't have any idea where my faith went -- I certainly wasn't thinking about it much at all. But in looking back, Poppa's hand was Everywhere!

First, I was with friends and not on the road, driving. or by myself without anyone to lean on.

Second, the two friends I was with have extensive lay medical knowledge and knew exactly what to do. They knew what and how to test me for the stroke.

Third, the house I was visiting is TWO BLOCKS from the EMTs.

In the aid car and at the ER, I was accompanied by one of my friends who gave clear and concise answers to questions about the event.

When I was assigned a room, it was the same room as my friend who had been in for an emergency appendectomy the night before.

The hospital I was admitted to is brand new, state-of-the-art and able to run all of the tests I needed to diagnose my stroke.

My Second Daughter dropped all her plans for the day and came straight to see me.

My ex [I hate calling her that!] came to visit right away.

My First Daughter, who I have not seen in a year and a half and only rarely communicated with, came, scared for me, scared of me, but she came, and she hugged me for along time. For me that was Huge!

My brother Tim and his family came to support me.

My brother Bill and his wife came ti the hospital to see me. Bill has not talked to me at all since the day I came out. He followed up the next day with a txt asking how I was and saying I looked good.

My friends kept me company and reassured me til very late. All of us were exhausted, but no one more so than my friend who had just had an appendectomy. They all went an extra mile!

My Second Daughter stayed with me all night, she wouldn't let me be alone with my thoughts and fears!

When I was discharged, I went to my friend's home again and they convinced me to stay the night so there would be someone there if something happened to me.

The many things that happened that were coincidences were things that I take for me to be Poppa's Hand. But so much more than that was the great outpouring of support, and concern, and love. For Love is from Poppa, for Poppa IS Love.


- Shannon Tucker
"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
e. e. cummings

All of this...

I find myself really shook by all of this.  By the stroke, the blood clots, the Afib.  And then there's the finances of it all.  This isn't going to be pretty.  I am going in to the doctor's office to get m INR checked everyday for the next week at least.  And there will be lab fees until I can get my INR up high enough that I don't have to continue with the Fragmin/Lovenox shots.  Warfarin is pretty cheap so it isn't going to kill my pocket book, but the rest of my medical bills are going to be significant!

There is just so much uncertainty in my life all of a sudden and it is hard for me to stay focused and positive!  I am moving tomorrow.  A week ago I would have told you that it was a good thing, a very good thing.  I still think it is, but it is also something of an unknown.  And unknowns are not welcome at the moment.

And that my leg and hip seem to be constantly in pain and I can't take more than 1K mg of Tylenol at a pop to deal with it…  it drags on my spirit.  It is really hard to be positive.  I can't use anything with aspirin or ibuprofen or naproxen, either internally or topically.  I don't know how people with chronic pain do it!

I've been to tears and near tears several times by all of this. I am really shaken by this.  I get angry but mostly I am a scared, frightened little girl.

My Second Daughter gave me a list of good things that are going on. positive things to think about:

• I may have the surgery,
• I may go on estrogen,
• I will get some sort of funding for medical (job-related or not),
• I will date myself  (a post abut this is coming),
• I will get out there and fish, hike, and photograph,

others I came up with:

• I will get work.
• I will be well,
• I will be healthy,
• I am Loved,
• my life is rich beyond measure because of the Love of my family

But I need to focus!  I need to remember!

The visit to my Doctor

I told Dr. Shelly the whole story. Didn't leave anything out. Told her that the first thing they diagnosed was the Afib. And as the stroke was so very small, the Afib is the monster in the closet. Afib is what causes strokes. I, and whatever medical team I have, have to proceed with the idea I can have Afib anytime.

There is no physiological evidence I had a stroke. All my fingers and toes work. My legs and arms work. My tongue works. My jaw works. My tear ducts work. My tear ducts seem to work overtime. I wonder when they'll figure out there's no time and a half.

So Dr. Shelly tells me what I know already, that I will have to be on warfarin (Coumadin) or some sort of blood thinner/anticoagulant for the rest of my life.

She did pointedly say this should _Not_ prevent my GCS surgery.

So we talk about my leg, the thing that started this round of Dr. visits. I explain the places where I hurt. My hip is almost chronic low pain. And my leg above the ankle is hurting to some degree most of the time. My calf and my thigh and outside thigh hurt a lot more occasionally. I tell her I've been taking Advil and Aleve. Haven't really tried Tylenol. I told her sometimes an increased dose of Advil helps some. Then she quietly tells me that because of the warfarin, I can't take the Advil or Aleve. They cause issues with bleeding in my stomach and can mess up the INR readings on my ability to clot. I can try tylenol or another drug. I decided to try Tylenol for now but I am not encouraged. She said I would probably need X-rays of my leg and hip and back eventually. Just that I should put that off for now because of the costs. Oh, fun =/

As she leaves and I walk up to the lab for my first blood test for my INR, tears start to form. All of this is getting to me. I am tired. I feel old. And I feel like I've lost... Not sure what game or sport or race I've lost, but lose it I did. Or that's the feeling. That and the feeling I've let people important to me down. I know I've let myself down.

I'll get past this. I always get past things... I survive. But I am tired of surviving. I am tired of being brave. What I want to do is find a nice quiet corner and curl up into a ball and cry.

A Trip to the Hospital

I was visiting with a friend today because she'd had to go in for an emergency appendectomy the night before. We were sitting around nice and comfortable play games on our computers when there came a point in the banter where I had something to say. Only I couldn't get it out. I couldn't make my tongue work right. It felt all fat on the left side and the left side of my face felt funny, kinda numb. I tried really hard but I couldn't talk right. My friends got concerned and we all tried to see what was wrong. I was graced by my Poppa to have these friends around me; they both have good instincts and calm heads on their shoulders. We quickly decided to call 911. None of us said anything but we all were thinking stroke. Strokes run in my family and I have had blood clot issues and physiological reasons to have a stroke. It was only a small surprise and mostly because I felt nothing happen. There was no pain of any kind -- only my tongue felt thick and unmanageable. My tongue, unmanageable -- go figure!

I've kinda been here before. 2-1/2 years ago I had blood clots in my legs that's ad broken off and gone to live in my lungs. I took a trip in an ambulance to the ER then, too.

On the way in to the hospital today, my tongue began to come back to me. It still isn't 100% now 9 hours later but it's nearly cleared up. The ER people were great! They were quick efficient and treated me very well. When they ran an electrocardiogram (ECG) it was determined i had atrial fibrillation or Afib. Afib is a condition where the top portion of the heart just quivers like jello and doesn't really pump blood. Because it isn't pimping blood, blood clots can form and cam then travel to the brain when the heart finally starts pumping again. They took me to a CT scan which showed some minor stroke in my cerebellum, the backside of my brain, but that didn't correspond to my symptoms. The current thinking is I have had at least a couple of small strokes. I have been admitted and have had an MRI of my head and an ultrasound of my legs and carotid arteries. They've found clots in both legs. Tomorrow they will do an echo cardio gram (EKG). I am feeling ok. A little unsure of myself and more than a little scared at times.

[--- The next morning ---]

Last night I was a little flip and not quite clinical when I was writing. I was [am] trying to keep from being overwhelmed by what has happened. I knew it was some kind of stroke. It scared me a lot. It scared me because I thought... was terribly afraid I would have to go through this alone. I am very aware of not having a partner to lean on. Being alone this way feels very much like shooting unknown rapids all by yourself.

Except I have been gently and lovingly wrapped in the arms of my new family. My Second Daughter, Debra, came as soon as she could and stayed the night with me. I look over by the window where she slept, where she is playing on her 'puter and she has never looked so beautiful to my eyes! Or warmed my heart more with her love. And my other friends! Lisa and Staxx took great care of me when his all started [damn lacrimal glands are malfunctioning again!]. Lisa and her husband took care of the home front and Xena. Staxx was critical with her observations and reporting to the ER team and did a great deal of the calling of my friends and family. Stax stayed with me til late last night.

And, Oh! did my family turn out! I have seen or heard very little of my brothers or their families since I came out. But both of my brothers were here and loved me. My sisters-in-law both told me they wanted to see more of me.

But the biggest thing for me with my blood family was my ex (and I hate calling her that) and my First Daughter came with their love. I have not seen my First Daughter, my Pride and Joy, since the summer of 2010. We've only recently begun to come back together. She was nervous and uncomfortable being here in the hospital. Seeing her Dad that now lives as a woman in a hospital gown. Seeing her Dad who had had a stroke. But she hugged me and she loved me. I so needed that!

So Poppa has gently led me to know that I am not ever alone. And He made me know that I am deeply and widely loved. Now, if I can only manage to remember that and rest in His Love ...


- Shannon Tucker
"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
e. e. cummings

Location:Issaquah, Washington