It’s been a few months now, and Beautiful has taken over giving me my testosterone injections for me since it’s so much more tolerable in my butt than in my thigh. I highly recommend it for anyone who has someone around to do simple maintenance stuff like this, but I don’t recommend pissing them off right before it’s time for your dose. 😉

Our first intro to doing it was when we went to clinic and asked Sue if a nurse could show Beautiful how to find a good placement. If I had known it was this simple, we might not have bothered. Here’s how it went: “Grab his butt [grabbed as much of a handful as she could] and shoot him anywhere.” “Does it matter where in what you grab?” “Nope, butt is butt. Anywhere is good. He obviously doesn’t have a lot of depth to work with [thanks], so aim for the thickest part.”

I was cracking up having my shorts halfway down one side with a nurse with gloves feeling me up holding on to a chunk of my butt for 15 seconds while Beautiful watched as the nurse then shoved a 1.5″ needle in to the hilt. Yes, I was still smiling, because nurse shots almost never hurt and it was funny to see Beautiful’s reaction to such a violent stab.

For reals

So, the next week, it was time for her audition. She did good, but suffice it to say that she needed to work out how to hold the syringe to be able to draw back to check for blood and still squeeze it in, too. After that got figured out the next week, it has mainly been getting over the fear of hurting me. Truth is, it only hurts if 1) it hits a nerve or 2) you don’t thrust hard enough to break the skin. You can’t do anything about hitting a nerve, but not breaking through the skin is my only hesitation now.

She hasn’t failed on the stab for about a month now, so that fear is mostly gone. It does take some getting used to having a non-nurse do something with a needle that long, but maybe a nice uniform would help some people. Hey, it could be fun!

She does a REALLY great job for someone so new to all of this medical stuff. She sort of knew what she was getting into when she said “yes,” but I’m sure you can’t ever really know what it’s like to live with a CFer and deal with things that we deal with.

Imagine all that she’s done for me in the last 5 years:

• figured out billing and saving for our medical events
• got me to become compliant
• port flushes
• taking care of bloody bandages after sinus surgery
• driven me home from procedures
• driven me to the ER at 1am with blockages
• stayed with me for 36 hours at the ER with incompetence surrounding us – and known it

I know that not everyone’s family can step up to do things like she has, but I highly recommend it if they are willing to try. It’s so much better to be loved on with medical care by family than calling in a home health person and dealing with all of that paperwork and bringing someone else into your life. I’ve got to give kudos for Ronnie giving Mandi all those shots (NSFW) in the rear a few months ago… and videoing it from 2 angles for our amusement. Go check it out if you haven’t seen it.

Some days I feel like I’m dying. Other days I feel great.

It is the great killer of busy CFers. Stress!

I’ve never handled stress well, physically, although I have found myself to mentally thrive on massive amounts of stress. In fact, Beautiful has told me (on a number of occasions) that she knows I’m stressing out about something – often something I’m not able to put my finger on for a number of days – when I begin to take on more and more things while she’s fully aware that I’m overworked. I guess for me, it’s not really the stress itself, but how I cope with stress: exertion.

Maybe I was called “lazy” too many times as a kid or teen, I don’t know, but I do know you won’t find anyone who knows me now that could say that with a grain of truth. I’ve come to realize that enough is enough and too much really does have a physical effect on me. My greatest example: the last few months before we got married almost killed me.

I really couldn’t have been any happier, but anyone who’s gone through the whole wedding process knows it’s stressful, even for the groom because he’s got a stressed out bride, parents, and in-laws. Make it a 4-month engagement, and you’re asking Fatboy to get sick, and sick I did. In 2006, I was on IVs 4 times before the end of October, on home O₂ for a month, and had my port placed 3 weeks before our wedding. I was working 40-60 hours per week with some hair-brained idea of trying to be “worthy” to marry Beautiful, as if I still had anything to prove after she said, “yes.” More on this later.

Our next example is when we moved to our new house. I was on IVs within a couple of weeks after we were “settled.” The packing, moving, unpacking, and adjusting to life in a new space didn’t sit well with my immune system. IVs again when I got unjustly let go and spiraled into a good 3-month depression and drawn out sickness. Again when I was in full swing with college and running my business. I didn’t have a spare moment as I was up by 5:30 and often working or doing homework past midnight. I narrowly escaped IVs last Spring for graduation – an incident that we are convinced was because I was fully compliant and on such a high-calorie diet that I was able to cushion myself enough.

So, here I am again. Stressed.

We’ve had plans to meet with our marriage mentors for weeks, but someone or another keeps getting too busy or sick, so we finally get to meet with them tomorrow night after dinner. Maybe they’ll have some creative ideas since they also both work from home in a situation similar to ours, except she also home-schools their 3 daughters while he works at the computer like I do.

We do our best to take off quality time to do things that we enjoy, but with the ups and downs of business, it’s easy when it’s a great month but time off during a scarce month just adds to my stress rather than relieving it.

We have 2 weeks until we fly to SoCal for my first trip to Cali, and I am very much looking forward to R&R at the resort and very much dreading the anxiety of not working.

I need to relax.

One day I’ll figure out how. I just want it to be on my terms…