One Woman’s Voice

Over the next couple of days I’m going to be changing the blog design, so if stuff looks weird, then please bear with me.

Thanks,

Laine

The past few months I’ve felt the need to step back and take a break from all of this.  There have been certain aspects of running One Woman’s Voice that were starting to get to me.

1. I have no idea what I am doing or what would be the best thing with the site.  I put the forum up, yet it’s barely grown.  I’m wondering if maybe a forum isn’t the best idea.  Maybe abuse victims are too scared to post on a forum, because they’re afraid of being found out.  So I’m considering getting rid of the forum all together.

2. Am I saying the right things?  Am I giving the right advice?  I have no idea.

3. Do I really want to do this?  Do I really want to spend so much effort digging up old memories to do this site?  I don’t even know if it’s worth it anymore.

4. I’ve struggled for a really long time to get over my past.  And I feel like I’ve made progress.  If I keep on with this site, will I continue to make progress?  Or will constantly dealing with it just destroy me?

I could go on and on…but as far as things that I’m struggling with that pertain to the site, those are up there.

I also feel…alone.  The site, forum, and this blog are being run by me.  Only me.  And I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s too much for one person to handle.  Maybe if I had a couple of other dedicated people help out it would make it easier.

Something else has been irritating the hell out of me.  I feel like I’ve gone from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’.  Meaning that I’m living my life NOW and I’ve gotten over what went on before.  Yes, it’s changed me and sometimes in ways I wish it hadn’t.  I’m a whole lot less trusting than I used to be and a lot more cynical.  But that doesn’t mean that every time I get upset or am unhappy about something in regards to the relationship I’m in NOW, that I’m still dealing with stuff that happened before and that that is the reason I’m upset or unhappy.  Several people lately have insinuated that if I’m not happy NOW that it’s because I’m still dealing with what happened before.  And that’s not the case.  I’ve gotten over it, why can’t every one else?

Anyway, if anyone has any advice or input or whatever in regards to www.onewomansvoice.org, PLEASE let me know.  It would be nice to know that it’s made a difference in someone’s life.

Laine

Right, so I’ve had a couple of months break from all this and I’m almost read to get back in the saddle again.

Fact is, I’ve got a shit lot to do before school starts again in August, and this year, that means me going back too.

Yup, I’m going back to University again after a couple of years off.  I’m nervous, scared, excited, etc.  I’m freaking pleased that I got a small scholarship because my GPA is 3.8.

It’s not so much that I’m smart.  I work my ass off and I just test well.  I don’t go to school to screw around, go to parties, join silly sororities.  I go to learn.  Yeah, I’m a geek.

So keep an eye out on the main site.  I’ll be starting work on it again very soon.

And hopefully, I’ll stop being a morose bitch about everything on this blog!

Today is turning out to be one of those days where I just want to throw up my hands and say “I GIVE UP”. Every time I look at www.onewomansvoice.org I think “This is such total crap”. I should know what works. I should know what those women need.

I know fuck all. It’s one of those days where I’m sick unto death of Photoshop, Coding, web design, all of it. Tired of it.

Today I want to run back to college and immerse myself in my safe little academic world and just give up on all this shit.

I suck at it.

I’m letting things irritate me again when really, I should just say screw it.

Why the hell should I put myself out there just to hear nothing but complaints and criticism?

Why the fuck should I sit here and struggle to concentrate, struggle to get the damn code right, struggle to just keep plodding along when it really seems like no one could care less?

Beats the hell out of me.

My daughter recently told me, after I suggested that she should call her dad about something, that he was had taken a week off of work…to spend time in California with his girlfriend and her son.

Since he’s been back from Iraq, he has spent only about three days with my kids, his biological children.

My daughter didn’t seem angry about it.  She was very matter of fact, so I think that she’s just written him off.  I doubt anything he does surprises her anymore either.

I don’t cry much for myself anymore when it comes to my ex husband.  He treated me badly, but I’ve dealt with it and moved on.

When he’s done something and it’s made me cry, it’s because he’s hurt my children…again.  He’s disappointed them and let them down…again, not caring how it changes their delicate psyches.  Not knowing or caring that his actions have impact on the people they will be.  And I can only hope that my ‘damage control’ makes sure those changes are good ones.  I do the best as I am able.

However, my kids are also luckier than a lot of kids from broken homes out there.  They have Matt, who will be their step-father very soon.  He’s turned my daughter from an angry, hurt, confused little girl into a beautiful, secure, girl verging on womanhood who has a definite idea of self.  My son may still be angry and hurt, but Matt gives him the best idea of manhood he is able, by simply being himself.

So I want to say, to all the men who have taken on the monumental role of ’step-father’ to children who’s biological fathers are horrid, this:  DNA means fuck all.  Your step-children don’t care that you weren’t a part in the initial making of them.  If they have a bad biological father and you are a good step-father, they will look to you for guidance and what should be expected of a man.  Your step-sons will model their own behavior after yours and your step-daughters will look for men who are like you.

Speaking as a mother who was abused, and spent a great deal of time feeling like she had to protect her children, I can say from a mother’s point of view that it’s hard.  Hard to not feel like I have to protect them from possible hurt, even when I know I should keep my mouth shut and let Matt do what a father, step or not, needs to do.  Establish a relationship, set boundaries, dispense discipline with justice, and earn the children’s respect.  I’ve had to learn (and am still having to remind myself at times) that having a man discipline my kids doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve to be punished and that I don’t have to protect them from discipline meted out with love and justice.

While I did not have a good father growing up, I didn’t have a step father either.  All of this is still somewhat new to me.

I’ll leave you with a bit of parting advice…

While you may have come into your relationship out of love for a child’s mother and come to love that child for his or her mother’s sake…don’t forget that they are people too.  And don’t be surprised that one day you will come to love that child for himself (or herself), and it won’t matter a whit who’s DNA they carry.  Their memories of a father will be of YOU.

Any man can plant a seed.  But it takes a very special man to ensure that seed grows into something beautiful.  And an even more special man who will do that with a seed he never planted.

I’ve been letting stuff get to me lately, a lot.  I’ve got so much on my plate with this website, another website, a couple of forums, and just not enough time.  Then we’ve set the wedding for June (which I’m so freaking happy about) and possibly moving back to California this summer as well (which I’m happy about too).

My ex-husband comes back from Iraq in a matter of days.   I’ll be honest, it’s been so nice not to have to deal with him these past months.  But I’ve been thinking about stuff a lot, what with him coming back and the site and all.

I got really stressed out and upset the other day and cried all over Matt.  Fact is, when it comes to the kids, my ex-husband does the bare minimum required by law.  He pays child support and that’s about it.  In the year before he left for Iraq, he saw them a handful of times.  Kept them over night less than that.  Doesn’t call hardly ever.  He couldn’t even be bothered to call on their birthdays.  He doesn’t ask me how they are, how they’re doing in school.

It makes me angry that through them, he has so much control over my life still.  I can’t move where I want without his permission.  He rarely sees them, so what does it matter where we live?  I want to move to England with the kids and Matt.  But I can’t because he’ll never agree to it.  He uses them to control my life, still.  If he bothered with them, then I would understand him wanting us to stay in the states.

I need to take him back to court, I know.  But I’m waiting for the wedding and such.

Fathers like him don’t deserve to have rights.

My ex-husband comes back from Iraq again next week and I’m not looking forward to it.  It was nice not having him around (even though he lives about 4 hours away from us).  No drama, no bitching…how lovely it was to not have to think about him.

His mother, who hasn’t spoken to me in about 5 years (I told her to go screw herself last time we spoke after she called me a whore basically), came over last weekend, nice as could be butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and asked if she could take the kids down to be there when he gets back.  I said yes only because I thought the kids would like it.

She’s the type of person who holds a grudge forever.  A bitter nosy bitch.  And she can’t even bother to call her grandchildren, much less come and see them, because she doesn’t like me.  But she sure will spy on me for her son.

While doing research for www.onewomansvoice.org yesterday I came across this blog post about the HPV vaccine Gardasil.

On One Woman’s Voice v1 (the old site before I started redesigning) I had a lot of information about Gardasil, thinking it was brilliant. Now after seeing that blog post and doing some research of my own, I’m not so sure it is.

Before I go into all that, I guess I should really say why I put information about HPV , cervical cancer, and Gardasil on a website for abused women.

Almost three years ago I went for my usual annual pap smear, as I did religiously every year. I’ve always taken my ‘reproductive’ health very seriously, especially since my ex was such an asshole and I never knew who he was screwing. So I went to my appointment, assuming everything would be ok like it always had been. When I get there my doctor tells me that since I’ve never had an abnormal pap that I could start getting them every 3 years instead of once a year. “Great” I thought to myself. I despise having them done. He then did his thing and I went home.

About a week later I get a call from the doctor. I wasn’t home, so he left a message on my machine saying I needed to call because there was a problem with my pap smear. They had found abnormal cells (displaysia) and I needed to come in and have a biopsy done. Talk about terrified. Matt was with me when I got the call and I remember sitting down on the floor and bawling my eyes out.

My doctor at the time was a military doctor since I was still married to the ex. They changed my appointment 3 times and it was a good couple of months before I finally got in to have my biopsy done. Matt had to go home to England so couldn’t be there. My mother refused to fly out to California from Kentucky to be there for me. The sperm donor was in Iraq and refused to ask to come home and I didn’t want him there anyway.

I went to my appointment, undressed and laid on a table in a tiny little room about the size of a large bathroom. There was one nurse in the room and three doctors. The only person who bothered to try to explain anything to me was the nurse. The doctors acted like I wasn’t even there, which is funny considering I was naked and the three of them were crowded around and between my knees with a tiny camera and a scalpel stuck up my vagina while staring at my cervix on a tv screen. When they went to cut the nurse patted my cheek and said, “Don’t watch honey.”.

Doctors can sometimes be so inhuman. They had a young girl in her 20s, all alone having a biopsy done, laying on a table with three strangers staring between her legs, tears streaming down her face and they couldn’t even have the common human decency of acting like she’s a real live person. That nurse was an angel though.

After my biopsy results came back they told me I had CIN-1. Pre cancerous cervical cells caused by HPV. Given my sexual history, it was HPV picked up from my then husband who picked it up who knows where. People, when you are supposed to be in a committed manogomous relationship and you’re having sex with your partner without a condom, and also having sex with other people, you are playing Russian Roulette with your loved one’s life. If it had been worse…I could have died all because my ex husband couldn’t keep his prick in his pants.

It wasn’t long after that Merck came out with Gardasil. The wonder drug, the life saving drug, the drug that has cause lots of controversy because some parents thought that giving it to their daughters at 12 was just like giving them permission to have sex. Given what I had just gone through, I thought it was brilliant and was insisting that my daughter was going to have this drug so her chances of going through what I did would be reduced. I thought it was brilliant given that 80% of the population are walking around with HPV at any given moment.

But now some interesting stuff about Gardasil is leaking out.  Some subjects have died or had serious side effects from the vaccine. Check this out from www.vaccineawareness.org:

Ingredients

• virus-like particles (VLPs) of major cover (L1) protein of HPV Types 6,11,16,18 produced in genetically-engineered Saccharmoyces cerevisiae;

• fermentation media: vitamins, amino acids mineral salts, carbohydrates;
• aluminum-containing adjuvant/catalyst: amorpous aluminum hydroxphosphate sulfate;
• L-histidine;
• polysorbate 80;
• sodium borate;
• sodium chloride;
• water;
• yeast.

Facts

• aluminum used in vaccine and in placebo;

• 4 studies evaluated 20,541 women 16 to 26 years-old who received 3 vaccinations within 1-year in double blind, placebo studies with 4-year maximum follow-up;
• “…17 deaths were reported in 21,464 male and female subjects.” (4: motor vehicle accidents, 1: overdose/suicide, 1: pulmonary embolus/deep vein thrombosis); additionally: 2: infection, 1: pancreatic cancer, 1: abnormal heartbeat rhythm;

• effectiveness measured after 7-month visit;

• clinical trials population approximated general population of American women
• Gardasil does not prevent infection with HPV types not contained in vaccine;
• “On the basis of this immunogenicity bridging the efficacy of Gardasil in 9 – to – 15 year old girls is inferred.”

Contradications

• hypersensitivity to any vaccine ingredient;

• no further vaccine doses if hypersensitivity after injection.

Precautions

• no evaluations of Gardasil for carcinogencity or genotoxicity;

• “Gardasil is not recommended for pregnant women;”
• unknown if Gardasil can cause fetal harm when injected into a pregnant woman or if it effects reproduction capacity;
• “Gardasil should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”
• “Merck & CO., Inc. maintains a Pregnancy Registry to monitor fetal outcomes of pregnant women exposed to Gardasil.”
• unknown if vaccine is excreted in breast milk;
• no studies of Gardisil on male fertility;
• Gardasil and hepatitis B given at same time, different sites;
• no studies on co-injection of Gardasil with other vaccines;
• decision to inject or delay vaccine because of current or recent fever depends o symptoms severity:
• vaccine information and vaccination’s benefits and risks required to be given by health care provider to patient, parent or guardian;
• no evaluations of Gardasil on children younger than 9-years old or in adults older than 26 years.

Adverse Reactions

• appendicitis;

• arthritis: juvenile, reactive, rheumatoid;
• asthma;
• bronchospasm;
• cough;
• diarrhea;
• dizziness;
• fever;
• gastroenteritis;
• headache;
• injection site itchiness, pain, redness, swelling;
• insomnia;
• joint pain;
• nasal congestion;
• nausea;
• pelvic-inflammatory disease;
• upper respiratory tract infection;
• vomiting;
• weakness.

NO REFERENCES GIVEN.

For complete information, ask your doctor for Gardasil’s vaccine package insert.

IVAC’s concerns about Human Papilomavirus (HPV) Vaccine Types 6, 11, 16, 18 from vaccine package insert

• lack of safety studies on the ingredients singly, combined, cumulative, synergistically with other vaccines’ ingredients;

• aluminum as an ingredient and in placebo;
• unknown ingredients in culture medium;
• lack of identity of trial subjects: country, race;
• “clinical trials population approximated general population of American women;”
• only 4 yr follow up;
• no accounts for 7 deaths out of 17 subjects who died;
• confusion re injection into pregnant women:

• • “Gardasil is not recommended for pregnant women.”

  • unknown if Gardasil can cause fetal harm when infected into a pregnant woeman or if it effects reproduction capacity;

  • “Gardasil should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”

  • “Merck & Co…, Inc. maintains a Pregnancy Registry to monitor fetal outcomes of pregnant women exposed to Gardasil.”

• birth abnormalities within 30 days of mother’s vaccination: narrowing of pyloric sphincterthat blocks food passage from stomach into duodenum; kidney distension/obstruction, hip abnormality, club foot:

• no studies on male fertility;

• unknown if vaccine is excreted in breast milk;
• in clinical studies, higher number of breast fed babies, whose mothers received Gardasil, had acute respiratory illnesses within 30 days after mother vaccination as compared to babies whose mothers received placebos;
• no studies of vaccine given with other vaccines other that hepatitis B vaccine nor does it state specifically which hepatitis B vaccine used in study;
• confusion about immogenicity bridging, that effectiveness of vaccine in 9-15 year old girls is inferred;

Adverse Reactions

• appendicitis;

• arthritis: juvenile, reactive, rheumatoid;
• asthma;
• bronchospasm;
• cough;
• diarrhea;
• dizziness;
• fever;
• gastroenteritis;
• headache;
• injection site itchiness, pain redness, swelling;
• insomnia;
• joint pain
• nasal congestion;
• nausea;
• pelvic-inflammatory disease;
• upper respiratory tract infection;
• vomiting;
• weakness.

So no, I would not recommend Gardasil. Glaxo Smith Kline has submitted a HPV vaccine to the FDA for approval called Cervarix. They are also testing it against Gardasil to see if it works better. I’m still digging around for info.

Right now, your best protection is to get your yearly pap smear and ask for a Thin Prep Pap. Use condoms if you have more than one sexual partner or if you have ANY doubts as to your partners fidelity. No one’s life is worth taking that risk. Having chunks of your cervix cut out is NOT fun.