Dealing With GERD!

I do not talk often how I feel like being a parent out here. Why? Because there are moments that I just go in overdrive and that what is visible is just not suitable for publication. There are many things I like about raising A. Not that it is always peace and pie. Most hiccups you are prepared for and you even do not think are worth to write entry about. Those are the ones you even take for granted. But then there are the ones you are not prepared for and those can hit you right into the face.

If I recall correctly I have once blogged that I do not have the tendency to brag about my own kid. I can't. Not that I have tried but to me the fact that A got out of NICU almost unharmed is in my personal humble opinion worth an Olympic gold medal. The fact that I was able to take me son in one piece was for me the best present ever. Everything that followed after that I just consider/considered 'normal'.

Believe me, I have tried and I keep on trying but it is hard. Like for the moment I try to take a very close and objective look at my own son. I see a kid who loves to be alive and kicking, who likes to dance on Michael Jackson music, loves a filled up plate of pasta carbonnara, can run very fast on a track, likes to be 'gekriebeld' in the evenings like we use to do when he was lying in his incubator, builts amazing symetric constructions with lego bricks, plays with most kids he meets up with without making distinction in race,gender or culture, he is able to say please and thank you without I have to whisper it into his ears and many more things that I think A is very good at. That make him a unique human being.

So when A is having a rather hard time in trying to get the hang of certain school related things I panic. It is then I seem not to be able to grant him the extra time and space he needs to get the hang of it. I then become so frantic and start to come up with doom scenarios that are beyond words.

Why do I worry? Well, he is now in second grade and there are days that I am so scared that it will be a very painful way to get the grades in order to make it into high school. A and home work that is sometimes Mission Impossible and I am so much tempted to call in agent Ethan Hunt to get the message across why it is important to get this done. It is then I fail at being a good mum because I then lose my patience. Something I have plenty of when I am at work. I then wonder why I then just can't be a very well functioning parent/teacher and balancing both professions?

For the moment it got that bad that my stomach is trying to tell me something by the means of acid. I first was tempted to think it was the work related stress that was trying to find a way out. What meant that once Autumn break would be well on its way the dust would settle. But, oh boy, was I wrong! Because this time my stomach is making sure that I'm getting the message loud and clear.

And it hurts. Never ever have I ever had the tendency to leave work but this week I did. Every time my body was sending out a signal I was about to hit the cieling. When I drove home I felt so horrible that I wanted to park my car next to the road and cry. Why? I knew that the meds that I had been prescribed and the good advice that befriended docs had given me would need some time to kick in. But I was going ballestic and just started to become restless. You should have seen me running through the house or a supermarket? No focus what so ever! I even ran upstairs twice to find out that I just couldn't remember why I ran upstairs in the first place. Or I was standing in the aisle of a surpermarket wondering what I exactly needed.

I am in a panic and I know that I need to take five and just give it some extra time and space. Just like the space and time A got when he was born. I just am so scared that this won't be enough this time. Will he be granted that time by his teacher or society? Can he manage with the help he gets at school and this without having to get talking about meds. Will P&I use or common sense when it comes down to helping him without pushing him to far? Will he be able to catch up? Uhm, do I need to go on? I don't think so! You get the picture,don't you?

So in case that I'm refusing to drink a glass of alcohol: I am not pregnant!
So In case that I'm dragging around with liters of mineral water: I am not planning to live in a fish tank!
So in case that I seem to be skipping lunch: I am not on a crash diet!
So in case that I'm feeling not up to joining you for a drink: I don't want to be the party crasher.
So in case that I'm taking small pills for a month: I am not an adict.
So in case that I'm rather quiet: I'm not upset with you.
So in case that I'm swallowing whole the time: it is not that I did not like the meal you cooked I might just have a hard time digesting it. But please do not take it personal!

Nope! These are things I am just trying to cope with in order to deal with my stomach issue. One that perhaps is going to hang around in there for the rest of my existence and this in the form of GERD. You can google it but it is part of the package now. It comes along with me. So in case you are bringing me a visit in the near or far future you might bring rather along flowers instead of a bottle of wine because thanks to GERD I am about to become a teetotaler.

A today asked me during dinner how long this stomach issue was going to interfer with our daily lives. 'Mum, is this going to pass?' 'What?' 'That with your stomach?',and he looked quite sincerly concerned at me while he was having his dinner. 'Uhm, well...?' But then I still have P who then can make sure that any stomach issue becomes just a minor hiccup. 'Yes, because you know what? Your mum lost her favorite scarf and once she has got that one back she will be fine!' Case closed? As long as Lord Acid decides to keep low profile!

Remembrance Day

'I wonder if you are for the moment allowed on British TV when you are not wearing a poppy?', I asked P while he was watching one more episode of 'Friday Night Lights' (BTW this is P his newest addiction, but have to admit that it makes me hopeful to get him back on a plane in order to check out the 'real' Texas where H,J,S and P are living and who I miss very much for the moment) on his laptop. I also have one and I wear it on my blue winter coat. Got it while I was book-shopping at Waterstone's Brussels and with a big smile donated an amount of money for the British legion. Why? I am not even British. Why I should I even care? Well, I do because Stallie is for sure one of these souls who has got this thing going on for special days like this.

Okay, Remembrance day is nice because it means in this nation an extra day of from work. Yes, it is a day that P is not doing anything work-related and that A can hang out with his toys and stuffed animal zoo without being interupted. But in my mind I do travel to a place where my parents took me as a child and more then once. A place where Armestice day can still come to live. I am then standing there in the pouring rain and see all those white crosses. The first time I saw them they gave me goose bumps. Yes, I did try to count them. Yes, I gave up because it were to many.

My parents did not talk a lot while we were out there. I think they just let the image speak for itself. Hoping that what my brain and eyes would pick up the things they wanted me to see, experience, feel and then remember for a life time. Well, I did. Because every time when I drive by a soldier's grave yard, walk by one or see a war monument I am very grateful to these men and also women who died at the time.

In my family the second world war is still alive. I still have family members who can tell me what it felt like to be a kid at the time or even being a soldier. My grandad, who I never got to know, was even a POW in Germany (mentioned this already a year ago in a previous blogpost). The war turned my beloved grandmother into a very strong woman who raised basically on her own three daugthers. Also I recall when my mum showed me his thomb stone that was one of the many amongst the war veterans. It would mean that my grandmother would not be burried next to her husband. I never asked if she did mind that.

This week P&I did watch some documentaries about the Great War. The most interesting one was the one about medicine during the Great War. It were sometimes very disturbing images to watch. P was also so nice to give me some extra info about the awful situation these 'brave' docs had to operate in. My upset stomach felt for sure the agony some of war victims must have gone through. The conclussion at the end of the documentary was that thanks to the war the medical world progressed. P then replied very dryly:'One field did!' Meaning surgery. But at what price?

What is very hard is to point out to a younger generation what the Great War and the second War did cause in these heck of the woods. How huge the impact was on the lives of many. Why? Because the many wars that are fought out here are not that touchable or visible and seem to rather taking place in a far off place. If I try to point out to my special ed audience that war is something that just can happen at any moment at any place and that you never know when and how it will end they will honestly tell me that they can't imagine it.

So yes, I still dragg them to places where there are leftovers to witness of destruction, pain and loss. As a teacher I never know what the outcome of thes field excursions are because I can't look into their harts or mind. There are the very rare moments that I hope that I might 'touch' or 'hit' something that a pupil will cary along for a life time. I have seen very 'cool' boys and very 'cheecky' teenage girls become very silent when they were suddenly confrontated with a war story. Yes, I saw the tears rolling down their cheeks. They were whiped of in a record time but I then knew that something 'changed'. It might be just for a split second but it did happen.


Also the story of Anne Frank is for most young people out there still a very accessible source to let them travel into the lives of a young person living in the word of war. But then it is still a gamble if they can transfer it to their lives that they are aware there are still soldiers, docs, mothers, kids and many other people who are at war out there in the world. People like you and me.

So yes, this twisted mind still purchases every year a poppy. And yes, I already have googled the 'last post' that is still daily played under the Menin Gate in Ypres. And yes, I already quoted some lines of some world famous poems of soldiers/poets who tried to put down in very sensible and touching words what war did to them and to the world. And yes, I will remember! AND NO I WILL NEVER FORGET!!!!

All Saints Day

Today I will cuddle my godchild E & play with my cousins who will be thrilled they see each other after a long time. It will also be a day that my emotions will be tested because every year over and over I try to get through All Saints unharmed. Not that I do not think it is not useful to have such a day. A day to remember the loved ones who have exchanged their earthly stay for something different. But I just do not like it to be a day that makes me feel so down.

For years I have not gone out there on this day because I also do not like to hang out there while the half of the nation is close by. For me going to visit a grave is something I like to do in private. That the graveyard is more colorful thanks to the many flower arangements is a nice to experience but it does not take away the sadness, the grief and the painful memories. I can't manage to concentrate when I am there with others. I need to be on my own while I am out there. And believe me it is already quite a challenge to go there.

Why? Well, because it is at that exact spot that I do come to terms with what I have lost. And that it is something that can't be restored. Yes, I have already taken A along there because I want him to know who his grandfather was. He does call him 'bompa' and he likes to put flowers on the stones. At school he has been told what this day stands for and he has told me that he still misses our house cat Baziel who died a few years ago. I guess for a child of his age the death of an animal is still more serious then the death of person he just never knew. What does make sense.

Today I will be lightning a candle for all those people who I had to say goodbye to, who brightned up my life and managed to get a message across that makes my life more worth while to live. I have just not made up my mind yet if I want to walk by the grave of my dad. What I do know is that we are taking along sparkling wine, Trivial Pursuit, my computer to show my mum some nice pics (no she still has got no computer and no internet!) and my camera to take some shots of my family who I love a great deal.

'All Souls' (by Edith Wharton, two first verses)

A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.



Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that grope--
For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

...


P.S.: Perhaps a very 'strange' choice of music to go along with this one. But then it was today the first music my iPod Nano gave me when I turned it on Shuffle. And yes, I would give everything to get one more day with many souls that are now out there where we can't touch or see them. That does hurt!