With me being nauseous since September, Tyler has had to put up with a lot. I’m in bed a good deal of the time and I usually nap for awhile to sleep through my upset stomach. Sometimes I can’t take him to Tae Kwon Do so Jacques takes him and sometimes I can’t bring him to school. It’s been a long time since I haven’t been queasy and able to do something with him, since February in fact. Sometimes he lies in my bed with me, just to be close to me, even if I am sleeping.

Yesterday Tyler had his last night of religion classes. There was to be a mass and then refreshments to mark the end of the year. Even though I was in bed when Tyler came home from school I guess he thought I was coming. Close to the time when it was time to leave he told me to get out of bed and get ready but I told him I was too sick to go.

It was the first time Tyler ever went hysterical over me not being able to share something with him. “You’re always sick!”, he said. “You’re never able to do anything with me!”

Tyler was so upset, I promised him I would try harder, that we had the summer coming up soon and we would have fun at the pool and doing other stuff. That seemed to make Tyler feel better.

But to be honest, I don’t know if I will be able to keep those promises. It’s easy for someone to tell me to suck it up and get over it, but they are not living in my body.

I’m scared to death that I will disappoint Tyler. Sometimes just standing up is out of the question. What will I do?

Tyler came home early from religion class because he told the teacher his mom was sick and he wanted to be with me. He apologized profusely for crying and yelling but really, why should he apologize? “I know you didn’t ask to be sick”, he said.

I’m worried that I am scaring Tyler for life. That these will be the only memories he has when he looks back on his relationship with me.

Tonight I am determined to take him to his Tae Kwon Do class. This means sedating myself so I can sleep through the nausea and drinking coffee so I’m not too groggy from the meds. I will focus only on getting him to this class. I have to.

Are your kids at the point where they resent you and your illnesses? How did you handle it?

The post One of a Chronically Ill Parent’s Worst Fears first appeared on Mama Sick.

1. Throwback Thursday: Choose a photo from a previous May and write a poem or a blog post.

When I found this post from May of 2013 I was really glad I saw it because I need to be reminded.

It’s part of Tyler’s Mother’s Day card from when he was in kindergarten. I was suffering from depression (as I am now) and feeling guilty because I wasn’t able to play with him or take him places as much as I liked. A lot of mothers feel guilty if they can’t spend quality time with their children, but when you are a chronically ill mother, the guilt is tenfold.

The card says:“Dear Mom, Thank you for taking me to the park. You are a peacemaker. Love, Tyler”.

I was stunned. I was so upset that I thought I wasn’t taking my son to the park enough and that was the thing he remembered the best.

It made me realize, maybe I wasn’t such a failure as a mom after all. That Tyler loved me for who I am and that what I could give him was enough for him.

With summer vacation two weeks away I will try to be confident that my best is good enough for my son who loves me unconditionally, despite my disabilities.

The post Still the Best Mom in the World first appeared on Mama Sick.

In the days before Mother’s Day I wondered, “Is the way I parent my child worth celebrating?”

It doesn’t help that I am going through another depressive episode. It’s not the worse one I’ve ever been in but it is taking it’s toll on my daily activities and thought processes.

In my state I often wonder what to do with Tyler. It is difficult doing things with him so I have been taking him to the park. It gives me a chance to rest and watch Tyler play. Sometimes I talk to the other parents and grandparents there and it makes me feel even more inadequate than I already feel.

Yesterday Tyler was excited to give me his Mother’s Day gifts he made at school.

The inside of the card read:

In case you are not fluent in a kindergartener’s writing it says, “Dear Mom, Thank you for taking me to the park. You are a peacemaker. Love, Tyler”

I looked at what he had written in disbelief. One of the things that I had felt guilty about doing was one of the things he loved the most about me!

I think this can be a wake-up call for us all. Maybe our worst is not so bad. Maybe we are doing better than we think.

Maybe our children love us just the way we are.

Maybe we really do deserve Mother’s Day.

The post Monday Morning Mother’s Day Quarterback first appeared on Mama Sick.

My mother is here visiting until tomorrow and we both attended Tyler’s school for the annual Mother’s Day “Muffins With Mom”.  We were the first to arrive to Tyler’s class and one of his teachers asked if either my mother or I would read a book to the class and the moms.  My mother had always wanted to be a children’s librarian so she gamely stepped up to read the book Love You Forever. If you know this book, you are thinking “oh no!”, if you do not, as I did not, you are thinking you are going to hear a beautiful story about the love between a mother and her son…which it was, until the mother DIES!  My mother was reading it and crying.  I was hysterical since it is my mother up there reading it and I have a disease that can be fatal, and most of the other moms were crying too. The kids didn’t understand why we were crying.

I was so pissed!  Who’s brilliant idea was that horrific book?!  I could think of a hundred others more appropriate! Still, the kids sang and signed a song for us and we did have some nice muffins, and Tyler had made sweet cards for my mother and I, plus a gift for me, which you can see in the picture below:

Was this before or after I bawled my eyes out?

On Saturday, my mother and I took Tyler to a Mothers’/Kids’ Day at one of our local farms. When I woke up my lips were swollen, chapped and stinging.  It seems that the lip gloss I wore to the Mother’s Day program to “glam” myself up a little had caused an allergic reaction.  Thank you, Lupus!  (I am still reacting to it four days later.)

Mom, Tyler and I, before the back-breakingly rough hay ride starts.

As part of the “festivities”, there was to be a sheep-shearing demonstration.  I had heard many people say sheep-shearing is abusive, but I wanted to see for myself, and they were doing it in front of the kids, so how bad could it be?  I think my view of sheep-shearing now that I have witnessed one could be another post entirely.  Let’s just say that when I saw the 8 inch gaping wound on the sheep I said, “Okay!  Tyler, why don’t you go ride the ponies now?”

Tyler also rode a tricycle around an obstacle course made of hay.  At four-and-a-half-years of age, I am becoming concerned, because Tyler still does have a bit of trouble pedaling and steering, but again, perhaps another post.  It was even harder with him crashing into the hay. My mother and I took turns helping Tyler steer and pushing him along.

Tyler really starts cruising now!

At this point, if you know me at all, you may be thinking, “Why Emily, aren’t you overdoing it a bit?”  Except Mama wasn’t thinking about that then.

Sunday dawned.  I got up before everyone to go to the bathroom and I screamed in pain.  My right elbow felt like I had broken it and my left didn’t feel too much better.  I could not open my non-child proof cap pain medicine (which I keep locked in a safe), nor my already opened bottle water.  I had to wake Grant up and then everyone got up.  Not much of a Mother’s Day for me, nothing from Grant, as I had asked him not to buy me anything, since we cannot afford it, including cards.  But besides the gift and card Tyler had given me on Friday, Grant told me Tyler had another present for me that he was very excited about. He came up to me and said, “Mommy, I want you to have this book.”  It was his own book, Gallop, that Grant had bought Tyler a couple of years ago from a museum.  Tyler had picked it out for me and told Grant that he had wanted to give it to me.

Tyler was following our lead.  Since Grant and I are so poor, if we give our loved ones gifts, it is usually a “re-gift”, something nice that we had when things were much better for us.  I thought it was so sweet that Tyler knew that he did not have any money either, so he had picked out one of his own things to give to me.

But as I said, I did have this horrendous elbow pain that I had never felt before.  I’m thinking, “Lupus, osteoporosis…I need to have this checked out.”  I knew it was from helping Tyler on the tricycle at the farm.  I called up one of those immediate care places.  There I was on Mother’s Day with my mother at the doctor’s office.  I was taken in quickly and diagnosed pretty quickly as well.  Lateral Epicondylitis, or the more common term, Tennis Elbow in both of my elbows.  One usually gets this from repetitive motion but because of my other diseases, I didn’t need much repeating.  The doctor said I had to be careful not to bend my elbows at a 90-degree angle or more, no lifting, pulling or pushing…and no computer!  You see how I am listening to that one?

My mother and I went to the pharmacy.  It was 12:30 and my brother and his wife are coming at 1:00 for Mother’s Day and my brother’s birthday.  Grant called me and told me that Tyler was sleeping in our living room.  What?!  He never naps this early!  My mother, brother, his wife and I all got to my apartment at the same time.  Tyler of course was still in his pajamas, I had not showered.  Grant tried to move Tyler to my bedroom but he woke up and now he was a complete grouch.  He hated everyone, and told them so.

My brother, his wife and my mother went to pick up food we had ordered from an Italian restaurant.  It was a lot of stuff and some of it was in a box on a chair in the kitchen.  Tyler walked by and by accident knocked the food onto the floor.  My dinner and my sister-in-law’s dinner are laying on the floor!  My head was spinning.  My mother and I looked at each other, and started just putting the dinners back on the plate.  I will probably get some rare infection from this.

Tyler got cheerier after eating his spaghetti with meat sauce and having birthday cake! Everyone decided to go for a walk, play mini-football and go to the playground.  Everyone except Grant and I, who got into bed, and slept.

So, no pictures of the actual Mother’s Day as I never showered and got back into my pajamas.

Like I said, the good, the bad and the ugly and at some points, the very sweet.

The post Tuesdays With Tyler: Mother’s Day Weekend: Chronic Illness Style! first appeared on Mama Sick.