Jeanne Faulkner

Gratitude and Chaos

I spent the past week working "unfortunate" labors - patients who stand very little chance of raising their baby well.  They live in horrible, toxic homes surrounded by angry, nasty people.  The cute element of having a new baby around will last about as long as that baby remains docile.  When that first sleepless night of nonstop crying happens - there won't be enough cuteness to go around.  That child will grow up angry and neglected - forever trying to either clear out or add to the chaos that is their life.  Jesus = what the hell is the purpose of that?  There are those who say, "every baby's a miracle"  and I say - maybe not.  Almost anybody can have a baby.  You need a license to have a dog.  But babies?  Have at it - free rein.  Have a ball. 

The flip side of working with crazy people is how clean and well-lit my own life is.  I've always known I'm an uncommonly lucky person.  I have everything - a great home, husband, family, children and really rewarding work.  Hell, even my dogs are better than most.  Much of the time, I'm really healthy and those times when I'm not - well, let's just not go there.  I'm lucky - damnit - and grateful for it. 

My column on the My Regence health & wellness website.

published June 13, 2007
Adventures of a Fortysomething: Needle Mania
When it comes to coping with needles, our fortysomething employs that old standby, the four-letter word.

by Jeanne Faulkner, Contributor

Jeanne Faulkner is a freelance writer and registered nurse in Portland, Ore. Her work appears regularly in Pregnancy and Fit Pregnancy, and she has contributed articles to the Oregonian, Better Homes & Gardens, Shape and other magazines.

Nobody's more of a needle-freak than I am. I hate those suckers. HATE. I'm a nurse too. I can stick anybody with anything. I start IVs, draw blood and give shots all the time. But don't try to poke one into me or I'll probably have to kill you. I've been on the receiving end of so darn many that I've gotten hostile about it. Or couldn't you tell?

I have a coping strategy for whenever I have to get a lab test or (God forbid) an IV. It's really ingenious and very mature. First, I warn the nurse or tech who's waving the needle near my arm. Then I let it hurl. I cuss and cry. That's it. That's my method for getting through a needle poke. I'm not polite about it either. I use as many four letter words as I can (I warn them first--if they've got virgin ears, they can go get another technician). When they're done stabbing me, I put my head down and get dizzy. Once I've recovered, I bolt the heck out of the office like a zebra chased by a cheetah and cry a bit more in my car. It's been working for me for quite some time now. I don't care who I offend with this. If you've been jabbed with as many needles as I have, you can join me in the cuss-and-cry club, or go form your own.

That's why it's so bizarre that I've started getting acupuncture. Yeah, that acupuncture--the one with the needles. I've been getting it for a few months now and I haven't let one foul word fly. I've been plagued with allergies, arthritis and insomnia (along with irritable bowel, pelvic pain and a list of complaints that gets boring really quick) for so many years that I've been around the block in Western medicine and found varying degrees of relief. When my prescription bills started tallying more than my insurance premiums and the side effects from the drugs required their own accompanying prescriptions, with their own side effects, it was time for a new direction.

I was reading a very thought-provoking women's magazine article about the best jeans for my body type (and determined it costs a boatload of money to have a cute denim-clad booty) when the article on the next page caught my eye. It was about a gal who struggled with occasional insomnia (who doesn't?) and decided to give Chinese medicine a try. Turns out, it worked like a dream for her. Occasional insomnia? Heck, I'm a professional insomniac. There isn't anything I won't do for a good night's sleep, and even after doing all those things, I still find sleeping to be the most challenging element of my life. It's not like I'm one of those who does fine on a mere four hours, either. No, I need, NEED eight to nine hours minimum, or else.

I asked a friend if she knew an acupuncturist and she gave me a name--Clarissa Smith, of Jade Acupuncture in Portland (www.jadeacupuncturepdx.com). "What the heck," I thought, "I'll give her a call." A week later I found myself in Clarissa's office with a belly full of needles. I also had them in my scalp, all over my feet, wrists, hands; even a couple in my neck. I told her up front that I was freaky about needles and warned her about the cussing. She didn't flinch and said I probably wouldn't feel them. Yeah, right. Whatever. Well, guess what? I really didn't feel them. At all. She pulled the skin tight and--"tap"--they were in. Nothing to it.

Then she turned on a warming lamp over my belly, put on some twinkle-ding-dong music on the CD player and left me alone for about a half hour. I swear I almost drifted off. That is sooo not my style. I'm not the airy-fairy type and, thank God, neither was Clarissa. She was down-to-earth, but not in a hippie way--just brass-tacks and practical. She made a number of dietary suggestions (one was to give up the morning coffee; she was very nice about it when I said no), gave me some herbs and sent me away with an appointment for a week later.

That first week, I slept (the kind where you lay down and drift off, waking up again eight hours later--that's the gold standard) two out of seven nights. Not great, but two's nothing to quibble about. The next appointment, she changed herbs and punctured me with a lot more needles. This time, I felt some of them, but they didn't really bug me; maybe because they didn't inject anything in or draw out anything. Or maybe it was because they really only go under the first layer of skin. Or maybe because they held the promise of the elusive and most hot commodity--sleep. The next week bought me three out of seven nights of "gold sleep." Clarissa switched herbs again, opting for something called Free and Easy Wanderer and some little black BB-like herbal pills for restless legs.

Those next few nights were horrid. One night I was literally awake all night long. I was seriously tempted by the Ambien on my bedside table, but I talked myself out of it. The next night wasn't much better. By moving to the couch, I managed a few hours but felt like a royal shrew when I woke up more tired than ever. Night three, I sort of slept. Since then, every night has been a miracle. I do that amazing thing some people do. Here's how it goes: I get in bed, close my eyes and sleep. Yeah, sleep. With dreams. Even when I get woken up by a wandering first-grade daughter or a son with stomach flu, I can get back to sleep. I wake up refreshed. Yes, refreshed, like they tell you in the Ambien commercials, except without that "I took a sleeping pill" guilt.

It's been a few months of biweekly acupuncture treatments, and guess what? The list of ailments is essentially gone. It's been kind of spendy, but oh so worth it. My current insurance policy doesn't cover this sort of thing, but they offer an upgrade covering all kinds of integrative wellness services. You can bet I'll be buying that upgrade next time open enrollment rolls around. I'm still taking pills--Chinese herbs and vitamins--but they have no side effects other than the best one: I feel a lot better. I'm sleeping and dreaming, and my joints don't hurt. I don't need any medicine for my allergies, not even when I hang out with my nephew's cats. I rarely use my asthma inhalers, and my stomach doesn't hurt. I don't think I can explain how acupuncture works well enough to do it justice in this column, but here's the bottom line: It works. It really, really works. And I haven't freaked out Clarissa Smith at all with my foul vocabulary.

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Let go

It's time to give this blog the attention it deserves. My writing time is parcelled out to all-business-all-the-time leaving me with little time for the love of the word. My challenge is defining what my personal blog is about. Is it about my family? They give me plenty of writing ammunition but it seems like an invasion of our family's privacy to just put it out there. Is it my marriage - again, privacy, please. My nursing job? That seems well covered with the fitpregnancy.com blog. What then? Whatever is uppermost in my mind.

Currently that is the work of letting go. Letting adult daughters go out in the world without hovering. Letting worry about their safety balance with security of knowing we raised them well. Remembering how much fun it was to be young adults and wishing I'd had the same kind of support to jump off the ledge that my children have. Raised in different times by different parents, my own launch was more jumping ship than a send off. My older sister and I both moved out on the same weekend, essentially dumping out what was left of our parents' empty nest. AFter 40 years of raising children, their parenting career was abruptly over. That was pretty cruel of me to leave them that way yet, I had to go. Right then and not a moment later. The world is waiting for them. I hope they receive it well.