High Maintenance Girl

High Maintenance Girl....HMG.....a title we have always reserved for my daughter. She's an only child who demanded attention and got it all through her growing years. She has a taste for expensive purses, designer shoes, clothes from Nordstrom, European cars. She's been a privilege to raise, albeit and expensive undertaking. She is the best thing I've ever done, HMG and all.

I began to wonder on Wednesday if I was becoming a HMG myself. I have always prided myself on being independent, confident, positive, and focused. As my journey this fall into the world of chronic pain has evolved, I suddenly find myself doubtful, distracted, dependent, and dare I say it, weepy and weak. This was brought into full bloom by a reaction I had to a pain patch I was
giving a try. I put the patch on my shoulder on Tuesday, ready for the 24-hour adjustment period, ready to be pain-free, ready for no worries. Wednesday morning, by 10:00 a.m., I was
knocked to my knees by the strength of this patch, suddenly out of control, nauseous, disoriented, barely able to lift myself off the sofa, feeling like I could not breathe......scared and alone.

My one lifeline? A cell phone call to the triage nurses on Asheville Avenue. I needed reassurance, I needed advice, I needed someone to tell me it was going to be all right, that the symptoms would soon end. I called twice in one day. I was reduced to a frightened, blubbering mess while I waited for Janet to call me back to tell me what to do. And I was, in a way, ashamed that I had to bother all of them, with my inability to handle the situation. I felt like a turtle who had been flipped on its back....soft underbelly showing....vulnerability bright white for all to see.

Now that the patch is off; now that the 8 hours of hell it took to get the opiate out of my system are over; now that I am feeling very close to normal; and now that my pain issues are minor and seemed to have improved greatly since my first round of Taxotere, (is that possible?) I can
look back on Wednesday, a day lost in a drugged nightmare, and know one thing. I do not ever
want to be a HMG when it comes to my medical care. I don't like bothering the girls. I don't like clinging to a cell phone, waiting for instructions, I don't like letting Jan hear my voice crack. confessing my fear and telling Janet that I had been reduced to crying on the sofa. And I don't like showing the underside of my belly. And I want them all to know that it takes a lot....a whole lot of bad....for me to pick up that phone and call. Because I want them all to think of me as the strong one, upright in her journey, certain of her path, confident in the decisions we all make together.
I never, ever want to be their high maintenance girl.

"For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds victory in store for the upright...." Proverbs 2:6-7