Re: To Loretta & Others ~ For JoCee~
From: Dena (anonymous@obgyn.net)
Thu Mar 30 07:30:19 2006
JoCee,
Every once in a while someone posts something that hits so deep that it
brings this tough as nails woman to tears. You did just that with your
words. So often I can't articulate what I'm feeling, but you have done
it for me and I thank you. I wish I could bottle that, then hand it out
at a dinner party so everyone could get a taste of what I (we) go
through.
I've hardly been able to get to the computer lately because I've been
that woman, tending to everyone else like a good wife and mother has to.
;) My house has been plagued with illness for the past month. I have
been tough, helping everyone else and waiting on them, even while sick
myself. I've had so many moments lately where I've just wanted to break
down, literally, just fall apart.
I am wife, mother, housekeeper, chef, landscaper, nurse, baker, plumber,
mechanic, bookkeeper, teacher, student........... but most important
and least noticed, sufferer. I always wonder what the last straw will
be. What will finally break me and put me over the edge? I surely can't
be this tough forever.
Thank you JoCee.
At Wed, 29 Mar 2006, JoCee27 wrote:
>
>I think that we find ourselves becoming more in tune with our bodies now
>that we know something is wrong versus our ability to ignore it and go
>on if we don't know anything is wrong. We are very strong people--all
>women are--that we so often can make ourselves push onward and go the
>extra mile putting off any aches or pains that we might suffer at the
>expense of how others feel about us and their opinions.
>
>We'll stand over the stove and cook dinner for our family when we're
>running a fever of 102. We'll walk a basket of clothes out to the
>clothes line when we feel like we've been run over by a semi. We'll get
>up and glide a vacuum cleaner across the floor when we feel like we'd
>rather crawl under the covers and die. We'll call out of work and take
>a sick day just to find ourselves cleaning all the things around the
>house we normally don't have time to clean during the week because of
>our job, errands, or other responsibilities. We'll not complain, gripe,
>or pitch a fit when asked to do just one last thing or one more thing.
>Not only that, but no matter what is wrong with us, both genders will
>walk into our home and if it less than tidy, we are considered weak,
>irresponsible, neglegent, slobby, and selfish.
>
>A mother no matter how bad she feels should get up and do for her family
>and care for all of their needs; so society says. A wife should still
>have dinner on the table by 5 and wait at the front door with hubby's
>paper and slippers. Having the flu, a cold, endo, or any other disease
>seems to be socially unacceptable as a reason for a woman to be lacking
>in her duties to her family and her home.
>
>A woman also feels the pressures of society's opinion of her that we
>worry what people think when they see a sink full of dishes that we've
>not felt good enough to wash. We wonder what they think when they see a
>pile of laundry overflowing onto the floor and trickling down the
>hallway. We take offense to anyone who says, "What happened in here?
>Did a bomb blow up?" We feel like we are verbally stumbling over
>ourselves when we try to explain that we've been having an endo flare up
>and that's why our house is out of whack as if people don't believe us;
>like we just naturally live like pigs.
>
>If we ask those in our lives to give us one moment to relax, take a
>break, and take care of ourselves it's like asking for mercy from a
>merciless court. So in all of our duties, of all the things we push so
>hard to make ourselves do, we do feel the aches, pains, stresses, and
>tensions that our bodies scream at us and it's because our bodies are
>signaling that we need to stop, sit down, and take a rest. It's not
>just that we know how this disease affects us because of some textbook
>definition we read or self-diagnosis checklist we filled out, but how we
>work so hard to fight against it everyday just to live our lives that we
>notice what it does to us even in the smallest of ways. We know how it
>feels when it rears its ugly head every month. We can almost pin-point
>down to the hour that our endo symptoms will start. If that's not being
>in tune with one's body due to society's strict opinion and expectations
>of a woman, I don't know what is.
>
>JoCee
>
>--
>ENDOANGEL JOCEE
>
>Endometriosis Online Support Group
>http://com3.runboard.com/bendometriosissupportgroup
>
>Endo Sisterhood Support Group
>http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/EndoSisterhood/
>
--
Dena
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