Back in the saddle again

It is almost the end of the school year, my kids are tired of school, it is hard to get out of bed, hard to remember to pack a lunch, annoying to do homework. This is a tough time of year and this has been a tough year besides. Starting over is nice, starting over is a gift of childhood. They will have summer adventures, have a re-set and start the school year over again in the fall. But first we have to get through this. Just a couple more weeks!

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Local theatre company is doing Shakespeare in Love and I’m going to see it this weekend. I’m very excited. I hope it’s good. Result: it was passable local theatre, free and at a neat outside amphitheatre. We took the dog. He had fun!

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I’m almost done with a burst of steroids to help treat my hearing. It has been 2 weeks of high doses and now I’m doing about a week of a taper. The meds have been a mixed bag - some of the usual side effects were not present but I slept like crap and now that I’m tapering down the dose, I’m getting symptoms again - headaches, fatigue, appetite changes. I ate like a starving animal today and I have no idea why. And as the anti-inflammatory benefits wean, there are changes to my hearing & my tinnitus that are annoying and tiring.

Tinnitus is a tough condition to deal with. I was used to the frequency & sensation of my tinnitus but it has changed this week, maybe due to the new hearing aid but probably due to the steroids. I’m spending a lot of mental effort getting re-acclimated to my tinnitus. There are mindfulness and distraction activities that you can practice that help train your brain to either ignore or not be distressed by the constant whine coming from one side of your head. And as you are getting there, it is cause for headaches (different from the steroid headaches) and fatigue. For me, it is hard to concentrate on writing and creative tasks (some of which I have with my current role) when I’m struggling with tinnitus management.

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I got a hearing aid! I’m still getting used to it and I had to get it turned WAY down after a couple of days. I took today off from it to give myself some time to adjust to the tinnitus changes and to recover from the higher volume setting. Apparently getting a hearing aid is more like learning to drive than getting a pair of glasses. It takes your brain some time to be able to make sense of the sounds again. I don’t know that I will ever be able to tolerate a fully compensated volume but the fact that I can hear more now is amazing. Listening to my own voice is one of the interesting changes, I am singing with the radio more now. I was overwhelmed by the return of the hearing, I didn’t realize how much I had lost. Now I’m just trying to get to a new normal.

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I’m getting ready to go back to residency. It is an interesting if somewhat nerve-wracking experience. My program continues to be amazing and innovative and we are talking about how to structure my return to maximize success. Since I’m going to have to take extra time anyway now, we are working on building in some cushion so I can single-parent effectively and still reliably meet obligations to my co-workers and my training. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how to come back mindfully so that my co-workers can be honest about the time I’ve been gone and what it’s meant for them. It is going to be a several weeks process.

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The relevant people have been consulted and notified, specifically my children and the other residents, and it has been officially announced - I’m going back to work on June 10th. I continue to be so grateful for the space and time to take care of my family and myself. I’m a little apprehensive about going back - it’s a bit like choosing to go for a walk in gale force winds. But as soon as I made the decision to go back, I started feeling better about things. This is still what I want to do, still what I am most excited about.

I don't know. It's a Mystery

My favorite scene from Shakespeare in Love:

A: The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

B: So what do we do?

A: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.”

B: How?

A: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

This always makes me think of my dear friend Keith. He often sent me this clip as a reminder to have faith, that living is a Mystery and even when things are hard, strangely enough, it all turns out well.

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I’m struggling with letting go of the high touch, interventionist parenting that I’ve been doing for the last couple of months. Action comforts me, distracts me. Now we’re all in a place where my action is not the action that is needed to get anyone where they need to be. The action needs to be theirs. Which means they do things their way. Which is not my way. And sitting back and allowing my kids to do things their way is hard when I don’t have my own things to do to fill the space. I’m waking them up in the morning but then backing off and letting them get ready for school without my intervention. Which means they scramble at the last minute and rush out the door. Which is a very teenagerly way of doing things. And probably what they did for a year and a half while I wasn’t looking. It works for them, the unease is all my problem. So I’m working on sitting with it. 

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I read an article that said that 50 year olds who did 15 minutes of meditation a day had the grey matter in their brains equivalent to that of a 25 year old. Given the cognitive demands of my training and my profession, I’m happy that I already have a robust meditation habit. At some point I realized that sitting with discomfort was something that I could interpret as an “action” for the sake of my own coping mechanisms. Sitting and noticing how a situation makes me feel or what it makes me think is an action I can take. It didn’t used to feel like DOING something, but it does now.

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I’m going to bring my kids to the Mahec OB residency graduation this June before they go off for the summer. I want them to see the people who have worked harder this spring so I could be here to take care of them. It is strange to spend more time with my colleagues than I do my kids and have my kids not really know them at all. They need to see what a big deal residency graduation is, they need to know that there have been people affected by this windfall they’ve had.

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As someone who Gets Things Done, I’ve developed a surgical ability to jump right over the “emotional reaction” to a crisis and move right into action mode. This is very good for my job, for parenting through crises and for being able to take care of myself and the people I love.


My problem has been that once the crisis winds down, I find myself still having feelings (UGH so annoying!) even though the problems are in the past. It is hard to gain access to feelings of fear, sadness, loss, worry without triggering second guessing, self-blame, spinning my mind’s wheels trying to think of some ACTION I can take to mitigate the feelings I don’t even realize I have. It is usually only while talking to a friend or a therapist that the emotions come out. I’m working on identifying my cover behaviors so I can slow down and find those emotions on my own.


This week I had a bought of “they’re both better now, it’s safe to be sad & scared” in response to my kids’ challenges since about October. That’s 7 months of TCB, of pushing the fear away and just keeping moving. It turns out, I was also terrified about and so very sad for their pain. I’m profoundly grateful for the healing place at which my children have arrived but given what I know about both their family tree and the world, this destination was not the easiest or even the most likely for them.

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I’m having a scary exacerbation of my hearing loss this week. I woke up 2 days ago thinking there was something off with my head but didn’t realize what it was until being at my desk for a while. Around 9:30 I realized that it felt like I was talking to the right of where I was sitting, the dial tone on the phone was hardly audible and I couldn’t hear my fingers rub together at my left ear at all. I went to get an urgent audiogram (mad props to my new audiologist for having an appointment for me 15 minutes after I called!) and was found to have about a 15% reduction in my hearing from the audiogram I had done about 4 weeks ago.


My hearing condition is both cyclic and progressive hearing loss, meaning this big dip will likely be temporary but the general trajectory of my hearing is to decline. I’m getting into profound enough hearing loss that these 10-15dB changes in my hearing are very notable to me. Not being able to localize my own voice really freaked me out.


After some back and forth with my neurotologist in Charlotte, I got a prescription for high dose steroids for 2 weeks and then a 2 week taper. It sucks. I feel lousy and my hearing and tinnitus continue to fluctuate. The tinnitus was so bad this AM I actually called in sick to work. I can’t strain to hear and try to ignore this constant whine in my ear and think at the same time. I put drops in my ear. I took a nap. I gave myself a day with no obligations beyond keeping the dog from making messes on the floor and taking my kid where they needed to be (was a therapy day unfortunately). I feel better now than I did this AM but I’m a little worried what 2 weeks on this dose of prednisone is going to do to me!