Cookie Dough, Claustrophobia and the Saga of the Breast Fed Baby

I have threatened "nervous breakdown" many times in my life. I never fully understood what a nervous breakdown meant until last week. Because I came really close to it. Dangerously close. The week before last we had our PTA fundraiser where we sold cookie dough. I was at the school everyday that week and that nearly made me crazy. Then I was there all day on Friday because I not only had to open all the envelopes and count all the money but I also had a PTA board meeting that day. Then the following Monday I went to school when I dropped the kids off to count the rest of the orders that trickled in that morning from the kids who forgot to turn them in on Friday. I spent all morning at the school doing that then I had to leave to get an MRI done. I have had all these on going problems which separately and by themselves are all symptoms of different things, but together they are all symptoms of a brain tumor. And since my body is so good a growing benign tumors (I have about 12 of them on my arms alone) my doctor thought it would be a good idea to start by ruling out brain tumor. Which we did. Thankfully. But that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that I had to undergo an MRI. It freaks me out now just to think about it. I am the most claustrophobic person you will ever meet. It's not even funny. And it is getting worse with age. I panic at the thought of taking an elevator. I am sure that one day soon I will not even be able to take one anymore. I think about taking my kids to Disneyland and I seriously don't know if I can ride the rides anymore. The thought of being strapped in makes me crazy. So when we arrived at the place to get my MRI I was pretty freaked. When I got into the room I told the girl that I needed to have a look at the MRI thing before I got in it. It was a long skinny tube that my whole body had to go in. It didn't look pleasant but it was open on both ends and I thought, "if I had to shimmy my way out of this I could". So I told her I thought I could do it. She explained everything to me, said I would have a panic button to hold and if need be they could have me out of there really fast. I would be in the room by myself but they had cameras on me and would be talking to me and they could hear me too. So I'm like ok, deep breath, I can do it! I lie down on the table and she is getting stuff ready and then she says "OK, now I just need to put this CAGE over your face", like it is no big deal. I am sitting there going WHAT THE CRAP! You didn't say anything about that! So I close my eyes and think, if I don't see her put it on I won't know it is there. It won't be touching my face, I will be ok. Kind of. So she locks that into place. Then she sticks some kind of something on either side of my face and says this is to keep my head from moving because the machine vibrates. So much for not feeling anything touching my face. So much for my shimmy idea. I was stuck. And I was trying not to go crazy. I kept saying to myself that I have to get this done because I have 4 kids and I need to know if there is a problem so I can get it taken care of. I thought about each one of my kids and thought about when they were born and about how much I love them. And the whole time I would not open my eyes because I knew if I did that that would be the end of all sanity. Then I knew I had to think of something else because my mind was starting to wander and I was starting to think about my head and whole body being stuck in that tiny thing. So out of nowhere I started singing at the top of my head (I wasn't doing it out loud) songs from musicals. And that got a little psycho. They were going through my head so loud and so fast and I was going from song to song it was like this, "go grease lightnin' your burnin' up the quarter mile..grease lightnin'..go grease lightnin'..If I were a rich man yiddle deedle deedle diddle diddle dittle dittle dum..all day long I'd bitta bitta bum..if I were a wealthy man..five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes..five hundred twenty five thousand moments of love...hi Nancy, hi Ursula, what's the story, morning glory, what's the word humming bird..did you hear about Hugo and Kim...we're gonna score-or-or tonight, we're gonna score-or-or tonight...come on babe, why don't we paint the town, and all that jazz. It got a little crazy in my head but I made it through the whole 40 minute ordeal. By the time I got done I was so physically and mentally exhausted I could hardly function. Then I had to go straight to my doctors office so he could read the results. Then I had to go straight to the school because I had to enter each individual cookie dough order for each kid into the computer. I figured I would be there all night. I was only there for a minute because the cookie dough guy didn't give us the right program to use so I had to come back the next day and take care of it. But the next day was Emily's birthday and I hadn't bought her present yet because I had been so busy with everything else so my plan was on Tuesday while Aubrey was at pre-school I was going to go shopping for her present. I decided I would go Monday night and buy it so I didn't have to worry about it the next day. We had dinner, took Zac to Tae Kwon Do, gave the girls a bath, picked up Zac, had Family Home Evening, and then I went shopping. I was so exhausted it was not the most fun shopping trip. But I did get Emily's shoes and I also had to get cream cheese for a PTA activity we were having the next morning. Oh, and I left out the best part of the story. As they were taking me back for my MRI they said, "and by the way, you can't feed your baby for the next 48 hours." Like it was no big deal. Ok, well my baby has never had a bottle! Kind of a big deal. So on top of everything I had a screaming baby who would not eat. Steve tried to get her to take a bottle. The screaming broke my heart so I took her and tried to give her a bottle. It took more than an hour of her screaming before she finally started to fall asleep and as she would fall asleep she would start to suck a little on the bottle. Then she would realize what she was doing and would wake up and start to scream again. It was lovely. Really it broke my heart. It did make me appreciate breast feeding though. None of my kids have ever had a bottle. The first bottle I made for Addison was the first bottle I had ever made, ever. I had always taken breast feeding for granted. But I grew to appreciate it really fast. I also learned that formula stinks. It stinks in the canister, it stinks in the bottle, it stinks when it comes out as spit up and it especially stinks when it come out in the diaper! I was so sad because I thought Addison would hate me for not feeding her and for torturing her so, but after every episode of trying to get her to take a bottle, she would look up at me and smile and that made me feel better. To know that she didn't hate me. So I go to bed completely exhausted and stressed on Monday night. Then I woke up 4 hours later to get ready for the PTA "Book & Bagels" activity we were having at the school that morning before school started. I tried for another hour to feed Addison while she screamed, and this time she didn't eat anything and I had to get to the school. Thank goodness for the great people on my board who were there to help because I was a basket case. They took care of Addison for me. When the activity was over and cleaned up I took Addison home and this time she did take the bottle. In the mean time the principal at the school worked out the problem with the cookie dough program so we could enter the order that had to be turned in that day. After feeding Addison I went back up to the school and my friend that was going to help me enter the orders found 2 other people to help us so it went much faster than I thought it would. We got the orders entered and then I called the orders in. Then went home to get ready for Emily's party that was after school. We had her birthday party at the Mayan restaurant, got home late, put kids in bed. At some point I woke Steve up in the middle of the night screaming in my sleep, then Aubrey woke me up crying that her ear hurt. The next morning I took the kids to school. Then took Aubrey to the doctor. She has an ear infection. They called me from the school to say that they found out that we were missing orders from 2 classes for the cookie dough. I went back up to the school to try and figure that out. Changed the figures and called in the new order. Figured out who the top sellers were so they could get their prizes. Got to finally feed Addison again. Picked the kids up from school, took Emily to dance, Zac to Tae Kwon Do, ate dinner, made 4 dozen cookies and took them around to all the people I visit teach, took Zac to scouts, went to book club, came home and fell into bed exhausted. Seriously the phrase "I am going to have a nervous breakdown" has taken on a completely new meaning to me.