Anxiety

Anxiety. Anxiety is my biggest enemy. Due to it I tend to not have the ability to be graceful under fire. It has harmed relationships and kept me from living my life to the fullest, such as a fear of elevators since childhood, that generally morphed into a fear of being stuck or trapped in an enclosed space, such as a subway car stopped in a tunnel or even stuck in traffic sometimes while in my own car. I thought that I was better, or at least getting better. Now I'm not so sure.

For the last few months I have been taking Celexa to help me deal with the additional anxiety that the stress of my wife's breast cancer was bringing out in me. And for the most part it has worked wonders on me. I no longer find myself getting angry, or at least reacting inappropriately (blowing up) when upset. I find I enjoy life more, am able to play with the children better. I even was able to ride the elevators up and down to the 22nd floor at the Manhattan office building my company's headquarters is located in without freaking out (at least too much -- I still don't like elevators that make noises or have floors that fall away).

What set off my latest anxiety attack was relatively small. My wife and I  set up trust funds for our children in case we die young back in the spring. The trusts would be primarily financed by life insurance policies owned by the trusts. There are a few steps to take to make sure that the life insurance premium on me is paid. Three months ago was the first payment and it required a bit of work. Fast forward to this month and my premium bill came due again. I made a mental note to transfer the money from one account to another and placed the bill where our bills go to remind me to do it over the weekend when I and my wife do our bills. All our bills go in the same slot and my wife each pay them from our own checking accounts (long story, both our accounts are joint, it's just easier with direct deposit and direct billing to keep things as they are). I noticed the insurance bill was gone and figured that my wife paid it. Then, the day before it was due she told me it wasn't. Here comes the problem.

My wife is very bad about using specifics, sticking to generalities like "transfer the money from your account to the trust account" as if I know what accounts she is talking about. I am very bad with general terms; like our Aspberger's son, I need specifics, like what specific account are you talking about. Written instructions are best. I just can't handle generalities. And, as I almost always leave my cell phone, shoes, keys or glasses in a specific place (or places), I also need no disruptions to my bill paying system. If my phone is not in one of it's designated spots, I'm screwed. If a bill is not in the to be paid slot, I assume my wife has paid it. That is what works for me. I have enough things to worry about, the systems I have created for myself helps me easily find what I need to find. When I was done with the bank I wrote out the simple, but direct steps I took to help me next time.

Going back to this morning, I asked my wife what to do with the bank and if she needed to be with me since the account the money was going into was hers (accounts are at same bank). And here is where her public worker mentality that really annoys me kicks in -- when asking a question, she just gives the most basic information instead of spilling her guts. I had totally forgotten how to do things with the bank and couldn't find my notes from last time, she remembered but I had to tweak the information from her, practically line by line. What is the account number? Do I need the bill? I started getting upset, because I still didn't understand what to do. Finally she dropped the final bit of information that helped everything make sense for me. I successfully made the transaction and when I texted her to tell her she turned around and told me I got too anxious from dealing with a simple bank transaction and here lies my question: was I upset because I was anxious or was I upset because she wouldn't share the information she had? 

I initially believed it was the later, but then wondered what if she is right, and my getting upset was because I was anxious about doing something unfamiliar. Compared to our son, whose reaction to hitting a wall when he runs into a new challenge is not smashing through, but crying and screaming until it dissolves, my anxiety levels are nothing. While I don't like being taken our of my comfort zone I am usually OK with it. And I know that was part of it with the bank. Was my getting upset over the lack of sharing the information equally annoying or was it just my anxieties taking over? Or perhaps, it is just how I am.

As an attorney, I know the importance of keeping certain information close to the vest, and I suspect that all these years or working with attorneys and judges (I work in a non-judicial setting) she is just used to that, even with her spouse (or maybe it is a defensive mechanism she developed as our marriage became dysfunctional -- but that is for another day). For some reason that just hits my anxious nerves and gets me upset, but no matter how often I try (and it could be this only comes up in the heat of the moment), I don't know how to convey this to her. She rightfully calls me anxious for wanting all the possible information I can have before doing something but I can't seem to get through to her, even after all these years, that that is just how I am wired and nothing will change that. And in fairness to myself, my anxiety would have been much worse before the medicine.

Many years ago ago, my company ran all of us through a Briggs Myers workshop, where I discovered I am an introverted, judging, thinking, sensitive person (ISTJ: Introvert(44%), Sensing(12%), Thinking(25%), Judging (56%)) (note: that score is from a recent test I found online, I don't recall my exact score but it was something similar). No real surprise. I have always been an introvert. And, as an attorney, it should be no surprise I am a bit anal retentive. I like strict observance of established rules after  careful planning. I am almost never late for an appointment, whether it is going to a party or meeting the school bus, preferring to leave early to make sure I am not late. I end to get upset when we are late, practically irritated. And, after taking the test, it was a relief to discover that I was not weird, I just marched to a different drummer.

I am not a spontaneous person. I am generally quiet, almost shy. I am happy just reading. I like a plan of action with a lot of facts. My electronic calendars, all synched, are filled with reminders to myself to do certain things. I need to understand an issue before I can react to it. Before Briggs Myers, I always hated these features about myself, envious of extroverted friends who could light up a room with a quick quip. It was this test where I learned that being introverted is OK.

And now that I've written all this, I see the problem is mine. Just as I get irritated when my wife makes us late, I was irritated when she she wouldn't give me all the information for the bank. While getting angry is OK, getting upset and reacting poorly is not. My wiring makes me anxious when things aren't properly aligned, even with the medication. And I find that incredibly frustrating.

Looking back, that period just after the workshop were my best years, at least personally. It is when I started learning how to be comfortable in my own skin. I need to relearn how to make my anxieties work for me, not against me. Just as our son has had to learn techniques to calm himself down when he feels himself going over the emotional cliff, I need to relearn them for myself. Something for me to work on next time I see my therapist.

Electronic publishing

When not worrying about my family's health or commenting on various political issues, I do have a day job in professional publishing (by this I mean we create research materials for a certain professional field, in our case, attorneys). Over the years I have seen many changes. When I started at my company, the big excitement was about the creation of electronic versions of our books on DOS based CD-ROMs. Today an entire library can be downloaded to an iPad in seconds. To outsiders, the offline print versions of our books look the same, but the production of them has changed tremendously from tapes being converted into metal camera ready copy sheets for the printers when a book was ready to be published, a process that could take several days, to sending the files via ftp in seconds. So it is with interest that I saw yet another article about the demise of print, particularly, the weekly news magazine.

Really this should be no surprise. Like the CD-ROM of 20 years ago, the print magazine has been surpassed by something newer. However, while physical books can compete with the newer technologies for quite sometime, magazines can't due to one fatal flaw: timeliness. By time print magazines and newspapers reach readers' hands the news contained in them is out of date. Not a big deal for magazines like Rolling Stone with feature articles or even those with in depth news analysis that doesn't have to be particularly timely, but death for print newspapers. I'm thinking of switching our weekend NY Times subscription to digital only because by time Sunday rolls around, I've already read most of the paper on my iPad. And, working in publishing for nearly two decades, I am still amazed that "books" that once told up a full bookcase in my office can now fit in my pocket on my phone as ebook files (down side is I can't access them if the phone loses power).

Still, there is something to be said for print copies. I enjoy re-discovering hard copy books on my bookshelf, paperback or hard copy, to read again. Physical books are easy to lend and always accessible, with or without an account with a private vendor or electricity. I also enjoy walking the stacks at the library to see what strikes my fancy. Still, while I gave up print a while back for news, I find myself moving to electronic books for two main reasons. One, I find it easier to read a 1,000 page book on an e-reader that weighs just a few ounces, as opposed to a book that weighs a few pounds. Second, and more importantly as my eyes reach their mid 40s and find it increasingly hard to read small fonts without glasses, I can make the fonts on my e-reader larger to make the letters legible. Vanity no longer has to go before the fall.

Bedtime stories

I saw this article in the Daily Fail, suggesting that bed time stories for children may be a thing of the past due to declining attention spans of children. Horse hockey!  Our children are 7 and 12 and have been read bedtime stories since they were born, even with the internet, TV, video games etc. The only nights missed have been ones where one or all of the parties was tired and just wanted to go to sleep -- which is the exception not the rule.

Granted it has become a bit different as our children have aged, but that is a maturity thing. Our 12 year old, who reads/gets read to, longer novels like Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia and our 7 year old is just as happy reading to us (or me taking a library book and reading in "funny mode" -- editorial comments by me). Still they read, as do many children. And these are children who are actively engaged in screen-based activities such as watching TV, playing computer games and surfing the web for a few hours in the morning and evening after school activities and we are winding down. They get an hour or so, depending on when they wake up, in the morning and an hour or so in the evening for screen time. Less for the 7 year old, more for the 12 year old who "hangs out" with his friends online playing video games on the xBox -- and before you mock me, think about this -- my son hangs out with his buddies and we don't need to drive/pick-up our son or host, clean the house or feed his friends (xBox is in the living room so we can keep an eye/ear on things).

I don't think my parents ever really read books to me, or maybe I was just too young to remember it (there were 4 of us and I was the oldest -- they had their hands filled dealing with my younger siblings), but I do remember reading to them and being really excited at reading to my grandparents. In addition, my parents always had a book in their hands or at their nightstand. Our house was filled with books then as it is now, though we've pretty much switched over to e-books. If you surround kids with books and they see you reading (print or electronic), they'll want to imitate you and start reading too (well at least for our 7 year oldm our Aspbergers 12 year old doesn't read for pleasure for the most part -- just for learning, school assigned or on his own).

To say bedtime stories are going away due to shorter attention spans, especially for younger children is just silly. However, if you want to blame today's parents for short attention spans, then you are being overly simplistic -- parents have always ducked out of bedtime stories if they really wanted to. If attention spans are shrinking it is because parents have become more adept at finding activities or electronic babysitters with which to preoccupy children rather than trying to nurture them with a little time, such as by reading.

Low white blood count

My wife couldn't get her chemo today due to a low white count. Her numbers were only 800, apparently doctors get concerned when the number is below 1,000. On the plus side she wasn't admitted to the hospital. For now, it seems that the medical staff is taking a wait and see attitude. On the home front I'll have to see what we can do.

For now I've changed our weekly food (I cook for the week on the weekend) to something heavy in spinach, kale, navy beans and other ingredients that are good for producing white blood cells. I've added more of her chores to mine (never enough) but the real thing she needs is sleep. Problem is our children are still young(ish) and like for her to read bedtime stories. I've suggested she give that up and go to bed earlier but she refuses, saying it would upset the kids (truth is, I think she likes the down time with them). We're avoiding visiting my mother, who is in a nursing home. I'm included to make sure I don't bring anything home, though as my wife works with the public I'm not sure if that really makes a difference. Making physical changes is easy, mental ones are harder.

I did make one mistake though, concerning her abilities to do things on her own versus me working at home more to help her out. I recently applied for a managerial position at my company's headquarters that went to somebody else. My director and I spoke about why I didn't get a promotion recently (I was one of the finalists, guy who got it is equally qualified, if not better as he worked in a law firm much more recently than I) and one reason was the bad timing here as I really didn't want to commute to NYC more than 3 days a week. They knew about my wife's condition and know I'm a bit distracted. Truth is, for the money they were offering, a 4-5 day a week commute wouldn't have been financially rewarding and I would have only taken the position for a resume filler (that and I really was interested in the job), but I let them think my wife's condition would prevent me from going in more than three days a week. A no harm, no foul type of thing as I would be looked upon as someone interested in moving up but for temporary personal issues in my family.

When I mentioned that to my wife, she asked me if I blamed her for not getting the promotion, noting that she could do everything with the kids on her own if need be. Whoops. I apologized as soon as I realized how my comments were seen by her. While it is true I am happy taking on more responsibilities and giving her more time to rest, exercise etc, that telecommuting gives me (her office is 10 min from the house, mine is an hour), I rather enjoy the work/life balance telecommuting gives me and, at our older ages, commuting to Manhattan more than a few days a week no longer appeals to me. At least I am getting better at realizing when I've put my foot in my mouth and said something hurtful. Still, I have to admit, if we lived closer to Manhattan (or still in the city) and there weren't family issues right now, I would have been more disappointed I didn't get the promotion but I've come to believe that things happen or don't happen for a reason. It is better for my entire family that my schedule remains flexible for now and my wife is better able to heal.

But, to put everything in perspective, these are a minor setbacks, for now. A woman I went to high school with has been battling  angiosarcoma for several years. Most recently she was clean and ready to live again. Earlier this week she went for routine scans. Today she got the results; it spread to her lungs and she needs to start chemotherapy again -- today. I don't know what her prognosis but the general long term prognosis for angiosarcoma is not too good. Hopefully we never find out how that is.

Worries

My wife's attitude regarding her treatment for her Stage I breast cancer has deteriorated lately and I'm getting worried. Up until now, she has had a fairly positive attitude and, for the most part she still does. However, I've noticed a shift in her mood the last few days. She has become really worried as her chemotherapy is getting close to the end, expressing concern that her only barrier between her and a return of the cancer cells will be gone. Even though the surgeon got the entire tumor and they are medically shutting down her ovaries since her breast cancer was estrogen fueled, she is convinced the cancer will come back and she will die young. While she has had that fear since her diagnosis back in May, this has gotten worse the last few days.

Her white blood cells were very low when she went for her chemo last week, so low that she needed a shot (not sure what) to get her count up so she could get her treatment. She is trying to do everything right, exercising, eating correctly, drinking her water, etc. but still her count is down. That is a concern as she is more susceptible to catching a cold, not hard to do when you have a 12 year old and a 7 year old in the house. But that is physical and there is not much you can do about that aside from take precautions. Mental health is another matter and for the most part, hers has been pretty upbeat. She has been pretty open as her moods and opinions on things, like me, have swung wildly the last three months and I have been able to take the body blows knowing that this is just part of the process (only put me on anti-depressants and sent me to a shrink). She has told me she is very happy that my anger issues have faded away and our marriage seems to be doing better than it has in years. However, it is what she is talking about lately that bothers me.

This weekend she was looking up information on different cancers. At first, probably due to her low white cell count, she focused on Myelodysplastic Syndrome, the same blood disorder GMA's Robin Roberts contracted after her chemotherapy for breast cancer. Understandable. And then yesterday, she spent some time on rectal cancer lately, presumably because the husband of one of her friends was just diagnosed with it (outlook isn't great). However, some articles she found have suggested that survivors of breast cancer have a slightly higher risk of getting colorectal cancer, among other things. At that point that was all she could think about.

Ok, I know my wife tends to obsess about things so I originally thought that this is what that latest round of research was -- looking into treatments for her friend and she just happened to stumble upon this. But then she mentioned she wants to lower her 401k contributions so we could buy a new car and travel a bit. Sounds nice but I reminded her that my 401k alone won't be enough for both of us to retire on. She replied that she didn't think I would have to worry about that. When I asked her if she thought she was going to die young, her answer was yes. That's the first time, at least since she started her treatment, she has said that.

Maybe she is just tired. Between the hot flashes and medication that causes her to go to the bathroom constantly, she is barely getting two hours of sleep at a time. And even if she does get back to sleep, she is not finding it as restful. Or it could just be another reaction of her hormones bouncing all over the place. I've checked out several breast cancer boards and have seen similar issues so I am not too worried. And I hope that is all that this is. Because if it is not, then she is the one who needs to see the shrink, not me.

And I don't mean that in a negative or nasty way, it's just that I don't know what else to do. I've picked up more chores, do most of the cooking, work at home more often to help with the kids and give her time to go to the gym and generally try my best be positive. I can cook the right foods and try to say the right things but, at this point, like her physical condition, her mental condition may need professional assistance.

Time over a promotion

I didn't get the new job I applied for last month in NYC and I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I wouldn't have minded a challenge in an exciting work environment again, the other hand looks at our crazy home life the last few months and realizes that it is best if my time reminds flexible for the next six months or so as my wife continues to heal from her lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation from her breast cancer surgery in June.  While it is nice I don't have to eliminate our nice leisurely before school mornings I am a bit concerned what this does to my long term career plans as more and more of my position's duties, which are highly skilled, are getting shipped overseas.

I hadn't planned on interviewing for a new position last month, although  my wife and I had been talking about both of us looking for new opportunities in the spring, once she was healed. But sometimes opportunities just happen. The position is a managerial one in a fairly new division of my company. I have been working with them as borrowed talent from before the days that division officially started up and am familiar with the work and the players involved. The previous manager retired and, when her job was posted, I debated about applying for it, leaning against it as I wasn't sure this was the right time for our family. I worried about time, time away from caring for the children and what that added time restraint would do to both my wife's and mine health (less gym time for both plus her ingoing cancer treatments). And I didn't want to commute to Manhattan five days a week again, which is what was originally required.

But then they reached out to me, which was flattering, so I decided to apply. And I am glad I did. It has been a long time since I was excited to go to work and, after interviewing with the higher ups, I saw this may be an opportunity to get excited again.  Career wise, assuming I stay in the company and I and the initiative succeeded, it would be an excellent long term move. Working at the company's headquarters in NYC, not a pleasant semi-back office in the suburbs, would have made me more visible. However, there were personal time issues I had concerns with. 

Some of my fears about time constraints probably wouldn't mattered as much as they could have. On the day of the interview I left the office at 6:15P and was walking in my door by 7:45P. This may sound lousy to most of the country, but is actually almost decent for those commuting from Manhattan. With evening activities keeping my wife and children out of the house until the 7 o'clock hour anyway many evenings, coming home close to 8PM is not as bad as it was when the children were younger and required more hands on dealings (and I will still be able to pick up the slack two evenings a week). Add in 20-30 minutes on the treadmill in the morning and evening and I could have made it work.

But, I still worried what this would mean for my family. My wife has finally admitted how much all the flexibility my current job allows me in taking care of the children, food shopping, taking care of the pets, doing laundry and, just in general, taking care of her in little ways, has helped her get through this. She has time to rest, though never enough, and time to go to the gym. Because I have time to cook, she always has a healthy meal waiting for her to be warmed up when she gets home from her evening gym classes (which she has time to take as I can drive the kids around in the evenings. Though my wife was able to leave work on time, get the kids from their aftercare programs at their schools and still make a family spin class at 5:30P at the Y, while I was in the NYC office until 6:15P, that was at the start of her paclitaxel, treatment and the wear on her body is cumulative. She might have had problems with that by mid-November when I would started in the new position. Still, these short term positives could be meaningless if my job is eliminated in a few years and my resume doesn't have a managerial position in it.

As to the person who got the position, I feel they made a good choice. The person is a friend of mine who had been working on this new initiative for about as long as I. His skills set was very similar and, when he told me he had applied, I thought that this was the one person who could beat me out. Still, the job may have almost been mine anyway. They low balled him on salary, which my company does, sticking to the typical raise they offer to promoted employees, before they upped their offer (they wanted to give a 10% raise calculated from his base pay, he successfully got them to include the OT with the base pay and up it from there -- which still would not be enough in my view).

However, there are some things money and a more exciting work life can't buy -- time to care for my family and time to take care of me. If I'd have been promoted I would have had to head to NJ Transit before the school bus came (unlike now where, even on non-telecommute days, I am home until the bus comes). For our youngest child, this would have meant going to a neighbor's before school or being enrolled in a before school child care program, for our older child, this would have meant being a latch key kid (he vetoed going to a neighbor's like a younger child). Whereas I can currently help my wife get the children fed and out the door, much more of this would have fallen back on her. As to me, I would have had give up a huge portion of my exercise time. I recently took off a large amount of weight through diet and exercise and wondered how having less time to exercise and cook properly would affect that. Now I still get to hit the gym at 6AM and be home in time to see the children off to school and let the healthy foods cook in the slow cooker while I work in the other room.  Things a job in Manhattan would have prevented.

So while I may not have won this day, the interviews made me realize that while I was on the fence about taking the position, I am ready move on to something more challenging closer to home, where I can have the best of both a challenging position and a home life. While the timing is not right now, I want something that will knock me out of my comfort zone for some time as I've discovered that I usually have the ability to get done what needs to get done. It is almost time to move onto the next stage.

Healing

I know that at least a few people are following this blog and as the last few posts have been about me and my issues, with a side trip to a recent news event, I thought I'd do a quick update on my wife. [Note: April 2013: If you have been reading this blog, you will notice many entries since July, where I wrote of how the chemotherapy was affecting my wife's moods for the worse. When I originally posted this in October, things were still rocky from her cancer treatments.Things are better now so I decided to delete, from public view, all that I wrote. Those posts were a big help to me and helped me reflect on what I needed to do to make me a better person. The chemo was rough but it did help us clear the air and start rebuilding, almost like a forest fire clears out the dead wood so a new forest can emerge. I still have a ways to go, but I am on my way. - DD]

If it was the breast cancer, then it probably helps that she is done with the worst of the chemo. The bi-monthly doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide  portion of her treatment, which is so toxic that there is a lifetime dosage limit is done. And while the weekly paclitaxel treatment is no walk in the park, it is much easier on her, though it does leave her more tired. It has also put her into menopause, which is a whole other story. But, while she didn't want me driving her to chemotherapy at the start because she wanted to be alone, she recently suggested that maybe I could (or should) start coming with her again (partially because she is more tired and finds it harder to drive home). The paclitaxel is leaving her much more exhausted, possibly because it is weekly (or they are giving her too much benadryl) and the cumulative affects are adding up. As it will continue through mid-December (little break around Thanksgiving), she is starting to realize her energy levels can't keep up (I do wonder how much this aging her -- good things she works out and eats healthy, I'd hate to see what this would do to someone who isn't staying as fit as possible).

For now I am just happy that we are in a healing period. Our daughter's broken arm continues to mend, she is even able to restart dance now that she is in a permanent cast, though no hand stands yet. The drugs in my wife's body continues to poison whatever microscopic cancer cells may still be hanging out. The celexa my doctor prescribed continues to heal my bio-chemical imbalance in my mind.

I had been saying that 2012 sucks due to all the bad things that happened this year -- our pet turtle dying, a leak in the slab under our wood floors, our daughter breaking her arm and, of course, my wife's diagnosis and lumpectomy for breast cancer. My wife disagrees, feeling 2011 was the bad year as that is when she started getting sick and that 2012 is the good year as this was the year she became a survivor. Good attitude and if we somehow manage to get through this with a marriage stronger than ever, I will agree. For now, while the verdict looks promising, the judge is still out.