Fear

I am exhausted.  I worked a 15 hour day yesterday (a Saturday), and finally dropped into bed at 1am this morning.  At 7am the kids were up and super chipper.  Since it was Father's Day, I felt too guilty to go back to bed and get some much-needed sleep, so I got up, and it's been go-go-go since then.  This is pretty much the last thing that I need with all of my ongoing health issues, but now that I'm back at work, I'm having a hard time balancing home and work.  [That's the subject of a whole other post.]  I really need to get more rest, but I'm not sure where to fit it in (Hmmm. . .perhaps by going to bed at night instead of blogging?!  In my defense, I need to vent, and the mental release of this will make me sleep better. . .or at least that's my hope.)

I talked to the surgeon this past week.  Healthcare here is so unusual.  I called the surgeon personally on his cell phone to schedule the surgery!  When I met with him, he spent over an hour chatting with me.  I really liked him.  But anyway, the surgery is scheduled for the end of next week and I am FREAKING out.  I had two natural childbirths because I don't like drugs.  The idea of anesthesia just really scares me.  I had a really bad experience once and thought I was going to die.  Guess what I'm afraid of this time?  I am struggling.

This is going to sound completely weird, but now that I have two kids, I am terrified that I am going to die and leave them motherless.  I have no idea why I am struggling with this.  Perhaps because I am also fast approaching my 40th birthday, and having these "old people" health problems.  I'm starting to feel the reality of my own mortality.  Someday, I won't be able to be here for them, and there is nothing I can do about that.  I am so looking forward to raising them and watching them grow up together.  I am just so happy to be their mother.  But I'm also really afraid lately that something bad is going to happen to me (again, possibly because one day I was fine, and then I had shingles, and then I had kidney stones, completely out of the blue).  Now that I have the life I want, it's like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for someone or something to take the happiness, the joy, all that I have to look forward to, away from me.  It's like, life can't possibly let me be this happy.  Typing this, I know it sounds really fucked up.  But that is where my head is at lately.  So when we throw anesthesia in the mix, I am terrified that I won't wake up and make it back to my family.  Terrified.

I think I am having a bit of a mid-life crisis overall.  My whole life, there have been major milestones ahead of me, major life events still out there waiting for me.  I never felt "grown up," fully, because there were still these life goals ahead of me.  When I was younger, it was college, then grad school.  As I got older, it was a wedding, then a career, then kids.  But now that we've had our second child, all of those major life events may very well be behind me.  I've long since finished college and grad school.  I've been married for more than a decade.  I've had a successful career, chucked it, and am now on career number two.  And now, with SB's birth, my childbearing years may also be behind me.  We haven't fully closed the door (and who knows whether we even can if we decide we definitely want another), but we probably are done with family building.  With all of these milestones behind me, I feel. . .old.  I feel like a huge chunk of my life is gone.  I feel like I'm on the downslide, and I feel vulnerable and weak.

The funny part is that I think I look pretty good for my age.  I've dropped just about all of the baby weight.  I'm wearing my "skinny" pants.  I have been walking a ton, so I'm pretty toned, and I feel really good (random kidney stone and weird phantom shingles pain notwithstanding).  I have no reason to be afraid.  But that's what I would have said before getting my two most recent diagnosis, and I'm sure that's what people say just before they get diagnosed with all sorts of major diseases.  It's like these relatively minor health issues, coupled with my current life circumstances, have resulted in a situation that has really shaken my confidence.

Okay, I really have to go to bed.  I'm not going to want to go to work in the morning.