Before We Adopted Khan...

He was quite possibly a murderous evil kitteh who devoured his old owner. I love my cat...but I'm just sayin'...you know, he has the evils about him sometimes!

The Migraine Worm

So a few nights ago I had a horrible migraine. I get migraines fairly often and have been off and on medication for them for quite a few years now - although nothing much seems to help stop them so I usually resort to taking Mercindol and knocking myself out for a few hours. Not the healthiest option, but the easiest by far.

I picture my migraine like a worm that is stuck in my brain. A horrible little worm that wriggles and bites and makes pressure build up. I hate the migraine worm.

Some interesting facts about my migraines:

1. I smell an artificial strawberry smell when I get migraines.
2. Artificial mint and strawberry lollies always trigger a migraine – even just the smell of them.
3. I always crave white bread or white rice before and after a migraine AND if I eat white bread and drink coffee when I feel a migraine coming on, I can sometimes prevent it.

I first started getting migraines in high school. I can remember sitting slumped in my chair in classes with my head on my desk trying to block out all the light and sound going on around me. I must say that I adore all my high school teachers for being so good to me throughout those years – never once did they yell at me or pressure me to get up and do work. They just let me be.

My migraines got progressively worse the older I got. By the time I was attending university they were horrible and lasted for days at a time. After one especially bad migraine I went down to the university doctor and encountered Doctor T.

Doctor T was probably not the best doctor for me to have seen. For one thing he seemed convinced that I was making it up and that I was just trying to get out of university classes and work. His response after I gave him my symptoms has stuck with me for all those years…

 I was not impressed! Luckily the second doctor I saw was much more professional and diagnosed me with chronic migraines.

Migraines have resulted in some very painful and embarrassing moments for me. For instance when I was in my last year of high school I went shopping up town and got a migraine. Normally this would be no problem but this was in school holidays so my parents were working, I didn’t drive and I lived several kilometres out of town.

 After vomiting violently in the public toilet in the mall I lay collapsed on the floor of the cubicle, my mind whirling over how many germs I must be lying in, but my brain and body were too pain racked to care. I eventually called my mum and she said she’d come and get me. I stumbled up and made my way out to the top car park near the movie theatre to wait for her. Unfortunately it was raining and cold outside but I was worried that if I waited inside I’d not notice my mother’s car, so I curled up on the ground in the rain to wait, only moving to crawl a few metres away to vomit.

It was horribly humiliating to be huddled in the rain in a public place with so many people walking past. Big thanks to the two women who stopped to ask if I was okay. There wasn’t anything they could do but they waited with me until my mother arrived out of the goodness of their hearts. I have no idea who they were…but thanks. I less impressed with the dweeb and his dumb blonde girlfriend who came over to see if I was "alive".

I’ve also spent time huddled under my desk at work with a migraine to escape the light and I’ve driven 120 kilometres in a car with a migraine, only pausing to pull over at truck stops and be sick. Big thanks to the random trucker who came to see if I was okay on this trip and gave me an unopened bottle of water and some gum during one of my vomit breaks. See? Not all truckers are evil!

Personally, I look forward to the day when scientists cure migraines or find some amazing way to stop the pain.

Needles Don't Hurt!

So, remember my post about my needle phobia and how I had to go back to the hospital to get more blood taken? Remember how I was determined that I was going to get over this because needles really aren't that bad? Remember how I mentioned that the world likes to screw things up for me?

Well, life did it's usual little trick of throwing a spanner in the works, and I endured what is probably one of the most horrific bleeding experiences ever. Really.

Things actually started off quite well - I explained my phobia to the lovely old lady who would be taking my blood, and she was very reassuring and promised me that she would be extra gentle with me. Then the guy from Device Technologies turned up with his little box of...needles and syringes...and things took a turn for the worse.

First of all, I found out they were taking twice as much blood as last time - 120ml of blood, I think. He had these two massive syringes that both had to be filled to capacity.

Then things got worse. You know what you don't want to hear when you go to get your blood taken? This...


Nurse: Wow, these needles are huge! I don't think I've ever taken blood with a needle this big.

Man: Yeah, normally we take blood from people when they're unconscious and having biopsies. This is the first time I've seen these used to take blood from someone while they're awake.

Nurse: I suppose they have to be big to stop the blood coagulating. Say, these needles are a little strange. How does the needle and tube attach to the syringe...?

Man: I'm not sure...

Meanwhile I was sitting on the chair freaking out while they waved giant needles and syringes around and tried to work out how to attach the needle and blood tube thing to the syringe. Eventually they got set up and it was time for the needle.

Now, I should mention that the last time they took blood from me, I was in tears by this stage. This time I was dry eyed and in reasonably good spirits. The entire thing was pretty surreal.

Then this happened - now you have to excuse my terrible drawings (worse than usual!) but my arms hurt a lot from the needles, so I drew these quickly. I think they illustrate what happened pretty clearly though...

Apparently the tube thing hadn't attached to the syringe properly, so when she stuck the needle into me, blood went everywhere. Everywhere. It was all over me, all over the chair, bench, floor and everything else within about a foot of my arm.

I will never, ever forget the poor lady screaming out, "Don't look! Don't look! Oh god, don't look!" As blood went everywhere.

The Device Technologies man kept his distance while the nurse desperately tried to stop the blood from spurting everywhere. Me? Surprisingly, despite the fact that the giant needle had really, really hurt, was too busy laughing to do anything. It was surreal.

Finally the tube attached and they took the blood. Then they realised they still had to take a second syringe of blood, and they realised that they would have to use my other arm to take more blood. Luckily, the second syringe of blood went better - it didn't go anywhere except in the syringe! It did however really, really hurt.

It was over soon enough and the lady bandaged up my arms and told me to leave it on for 6 hours, because the holes the needles had made were quite large and they would take longer than normal to close up. She also told me that she had never seen needles this big before and apologised for the blood and the pain that I'd experienced.

I was able to tell her, in between giggling fits, that although it had really hurt, I had actually found this the least stressful needle-related experience ever. Which is funny because I think this is the kind of experience which would have usually cause needle phobias in people!

So, despite lunch serving up giant horrible needles and a bucket load of blood, I think I've actually taken quite a big step to getting over this phobia of mine.

Take that, fear!

Childhood Trauma Movies

I think everyone has a childhood trauma movie. You know; that movie that you saw when you were a child that scarred you terribly and haunts you to this day? It didn’t have to be a horror movie, it might have been a science fiction movie or even a children’s movie...but something about the movie reached out and touched you and said, "I’m going to screw with your mind for the rest of your life."

For a friend of mine it was an episode of The Storyteller. He was traumatised by the porcupine man and was convinced that the porcupine man would burst through his ceiling and attack him at night. His paranoia was so great that he used to sleep under his giant teddy bear, figuring that when the porcupine man eventually came through the ceiling it would land on his bear and attack that, giving him time to get away.

These fears are usually highly irrational and when you grow up and become a big brave adult, you can laugh off your silly childish fear as being nonsensical!  "A porcupine man isn't really going to burst through my roof and attack me! Ha ha ha ha!"

But, in the dead of night, when you're surrounded by darkness and you're all alone...that silly fear will wake you in a cold sweat. You see, the power of childhood trauma movies is that they worm their way into your subconcious and they scar you deeper than any knife could ever cut. They injure your soul. Yes, your soul. The fear becomes a part of you and no matter how rational or sensible you become; you'll always be afraid.

For me, it was a movie called ‘Fire in the Sky’ that was shown to me by my well intentioned mother. Apparently, and this is going on my memory as a child, a friend had recommended the movie to her. So my mother sat down to watch it one bright sunny Saturday afternoon and thought that it could be something we could do together. Thanks mum.

I believe this was my reaction:

Fire in the Sky, for those that don’t know this particular gem of a movie, can be summed up pretty easily by a few choice words: 'Horrible aliens', 'abduction', 'alien medical procedures' and 'needles in eyes'.

Here is a brief (and misleading) synopsis care of IMDB:

"This film recreates the strange events which happened November 5, 1975 in the town Snowflake, Arizona. Travis Walton works as a logger in the woods. When he and his colleagues drive home after work, they encounter an UFO. For the next five days Travis disappears and his colleagues are accused of murder. When he reappears, first he didn't remember that he was gone, but in time the terrible memories come back..."

It doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But it wass the horrible little alien abduction sequence in it that scared me! I came away from Fire in the Sky with a few thoughts running through my mind - and they've stuck with me ever since.

Firstly – Random bright lights in the woods are bad.
Secondly – Don’t walk around in the woods at night chasing after bright lights.
Thirdly – Aliens will abduct you for no good reason to do ‘experiments on you’.
Fourthly – If aliens do abduct you, you will get dragged down a hallway and have a needle stuck into your eyeball while you scream.

It occurred to me after watching this movie that the aliens (and I had no doubt they existed) would get me no matter what I did. I could be walking home at night and BAM! The aliens would catch me. I could be at a friends house and BAM! The aliens would get me. I could be at home in bed hiding under the covers and BAM! I’d be gone!

There was no escape for me.

No escape at all.

Here, this clip from Youtube will show you why this movie scared me:

Thanks to watching this film as a child I still have reoccurring nightmares where I’m crawling through tunnels trying to escape things and I have an INSANE fear of aliens. Really, just ask my friends and they’ll tell you that Lena is insanely frightened of aliens – especially The Greys. I despise going outside in the dark by myself at night for this very reason. I love looking at the stars at night but if I see any lights moving up there I’m inside like a shot!

However, I’m also intrigued by aliens. I have a strange fascination with anything that scares me and so I have a love of aliens and UFOs. I began researching them not long after watching Fire in the Sky and I can still fondly remember borrowing books on them from the school library and compiling a folder on aliens and UFOs.

Yes, I was a very strange ten year old.

It didn’t help that our neighbour in Woomera saw a UFO one night. Sure, they found weather balloon wreckage a couple days later (which I snuck into the firestation to see!) but that’s what they said in Roswell.

As a child it was like my worst nightmare coming true – at any moment I thought the greys were going to be shining lights on my house, pressing their horrible little hands again my bedroom window and abducting me to stick needles in my eyes while I screamed.

So there you go. That is my childhood trauma movie and, might I add, the childhood trauma movie of one of my best friends. Both of us were terribly frightened by that awful sequence in Fire in the Sky.

Go and rent it. Really. You should watch it. I’m sure you’ll see how it would scare a little girl and be responsible for years of build up and paranoia! And yes, please do share your childhood trauma movies! We all have one!

The story of why some people think I'm a satanist...

Let me tell you a story...the story of why some of the locals back in Norseman believe that the teachers have formed a satanic cult that worships satan at the cemetery.

No, I'm not joking. This happened. Really. Honest. What you're thinking right now is probably what I thought at the time.

Last year, when I was in Norseman, we had some new teachers move into town and myself and my friends being the nice people we are, we decided to take them out to a fancy dinner at the club (Ha!) and then show them around town.

We showed them the tin camels, the horse statue, the dump and the cemetery.

Now whilst at the cemetery we hopped out of the car, walked to the fence and looked in. We spent probably about two minutes standing in the cold and dark, peering through the gloom at the crummy town cemetery.

Eventually we got scared of some shadows and bolted back to the cars giggling and then drove home. This cartoons illustrates what happened:

Great story, huh? Totally fitting for a bust out of town rumours, right?

Well, somehow word got around town that we'd gone to the cemetery that night. It took time but word spread and the story of that night...changed. Warped. Grew.

Months later a parent accused one of my friends of holding satanic masses in the graveyard, of worshiping satan, of calling down spirits and all sorts of nonsense. He was upset, my friend, but he shrugged it off thinking it was just some kind of strange local silliness.

But noooo...the story continued to grow and another parent came forward to complain to the principal that a bunch of us were ripping up bibles on the highest mountain peak (Something that took us by surprise as we certainly hadn't been climbing up any mountains! Not in the middle of a school term! We save that sort of stuff for the holidays! Joking!), worshipping satan and attempting to summon ancient spirits. She claimed she was frightened for our souls.

Apparently this is what the townsfolk believed happened that night:

So yes, now a portion of the town think we're in a cult. Nice, huh? The whole thing is totally and completely silly!

I never win! (Lotteries, that is!)

Every now and again I get convinced I’m going to win the lottery. Usually this occurs when there is some sort of big jackpot happening and $50 million or so is up for grabs.

Despite the fact that I’ve only won money once ($40 on my first ever lotto ticket) I’m convinced every time I see those jackpot signs that I’m destined to win the lottery and of course I waste my dwindling money on buying a ticket.
Reasons why I believe I’ll win the lottery:

1. I should be rich!

2. I don’t want to work as a teacher in Norseman forever (Who does...?)

3. I’m lazy and want to hire people to do stuff for me

In the lead up to the lottery draw I allow myself to fantasize wildly about winning the money…ALL THE MONEY! I could do anything then – I’d give money to friends and family, I could quit my job and enjoy doing fun things and I could buy stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.

Of course, then I start to think about what if I don’t win all the money. I usually find myself thinking that I could probably handle winning a million at least…but any less then that and what’s the point? Sure, I could buy stuff but I’d still have to work :P

When the lottery night comes around I rarely watch it…mostly because I enter the lottery so rarely that I don’t actually know what time the draw is on or even what channels shows it. Usually I’ll have forgotten that I even have a ticket until I’m wandering past the newsagent and remember that I took a ticket in that HUGE MEGA JACKPOT.

I go inside…excited that soon I will be a multi-millionaire. I even practise my excited ‘Oh, I’ve won! Yay!’ expression. So I go up to the counter…scan my ticket and…of course I haven’t won.

I never win.  You’d think by now I might have realised that it just isn’t going to happen for me…but hope springs eternal. Hey, isn’t there a mega jackpot on this weekend too…?

Needles, blood and doctors! Oh my!

I've always had a bit of a thing about needles and by 'a bit of a thing', I mean I am completely utterly horribly terrified of them.

I've had this needle phobia for as long as I can remember and, to be honest, there is no reason for it. I didn't have some sort of traumatic experience involving needles when I was a child and no one ever told me they were horrible painful things. In fact, I can only ever remember people telling me that they wouldn't hut me.

So why am I so frightened of them? What could have convinced me, as a small child, that needles were going bring unimaginable pain?

Well, I think I figured it out.

You see, I was a pretty cluey kind of kid. I was able to pick up things that my parents and teacher's weren't telling me by their body language and tone of voice. You know that look you give another adult in the room when you think you're being all sneaky with a kid? I would have seen that and caught you out. Now, what does this have to do with me getting needles? Let me take you back to the very first time I can remember getting a needle.

I was a small child living at Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory when my mum told my brother and I that we were going to go the hospital to get our needles. I can remember asking her if it would hurt, and I can remember her replying that it wouldn't hurt...I just had to be brave.

Instantly my little brain went into overdrive.

Question: if needles didn't hurt then why would I need to be brave?
Conclusion: Needles do hurt and your mum is lying to you.

I drew my conclusions pretty quickly and convinced myself that needles must be horrible indeed if I needed to be brave to get them. I tried pretending to be asleep in the back of the ambulance in order to try and avoid getting my shots...but my mum wasn't having any of my nonsense and dragged me out.

(Yeah, I rode around in an ambulance as a kid because my father was a paramedic - making me 10% cooler than you.)

My brother calmly got his shots. I screamed and wailed and carried on.

The fear stuck with me. It didn't help that every needle I got from that point on hurt me. It also didn't help that most needles I got from that point on were usually in my mouth and linked to dental surgery - which is always, always painful and really scary.

By the time I was a teenager my fear was deeply ingrained in my soul. Try as I might, and I did from time to time try and face my fears by getting flu shots, I always ended up in tears and shaking with terror.

A few years ago I was unfortunate enough to get food poisoning from something and I spent hours throwing up. Yucky and dehydrating. I ended up down at a 24 hour medical center where they decided to inject me with something to stop me vomiting. It was the first time in my life when I didn't have the strength to try and argue my way out of a needle. I simply lay on a stretcher whimpering while the nurse stuck a needle into my hip.

That particular needle had hurt a tinsy tiny bit...but not much. It helped to alleviate my fears and I started to think that maybe I could get over this whole needle thing after all. Then last year I had another set back when I got a flu shot. The nurse gave me what was possibly the most insanely painful needle of my life. I'm not sure if she stuck it in my muscle or something, but I was in tears from pain instead of fear and my arm swelled and the injection site turned black and purple as it bruised.

My fear returned like an unwanted visitor.

Imagine my horror when this year I was warned by my OS that the knee procedure I would be undergoing would require at least one...blood harvest.

I had my blood harvested last week. It was like a blood test but they whisked my blood off to a lab to defrost my knee cells. I tried to be brave but I did end up shedding a few tears and snapping horribly at my husband in my fear and panic. Honestly, the blood-harvesting was not that bad. It hurt a little bit but not much. It convinced me, yet again, that maybe needles weren't that bad.

Hey, the blood harvesting was over - I could afford to relax a little bit and entertain thoughts that I could get over this needle thing.

Then my phone rang today with an all too familiar number - the lab that was defrosting my knee cells. My heart began to beat faster. When I opened it and heard the voice of Kurt ('the blood harvester') it began to beat harder. When the first thing he said to me was, "Lena, I hate to have to phone you, but..." my heart almost stopped.

I knew what was coming. I knew that life wouldn't just let me pretend that I was getting over my fear of needles. Oh no, life had to test me. That's what life does. Life is an asshole.

"Unfortunately we need some more of your blood. I feel bad because I know how...stressful...you find it, but your cells are really hungry - Which is good because it means they're healthy! - and they've had all your blood and they need more."

I assured Kurt that I was fine with more blood being taken. I'm even going to go and get my blood harvested without my husband.

I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to flinch. I'm not going to picture my knee cells as miniature vampires waiting to suck my life blood.

I'm going to be brave...because needles don't hurt.

Right?