11. The hospital visit that taught me to slow down

Welcome to She's Honestly Mental, a podcast for women who are done pretending they're fine when they're falling apart on the inside. I'm your host, Karina Rawlinson, ADHD brain medicated mind and proud mental health hospital alumni.

Still here, still showing up somehow.

This is the space for the feelers, the fixers, and the ones who carry it all and still wonder if it's enough. We talk about the chaos, the connection and everything in between because science violence nearly killed me and these conversations save lives. All right, cacao in hand, headphones on, chaos semi contained. Let's get honestly Mental.

Welcome to another episode. I want to be like, yeah, so excited to be here and trust me, I am. But also, we've got a really stressed household at the moment and it's a weigh in deep on us. So for those that don't know, Jared, my husband and I own a mechanical business, ag machinery dealership. We sell tractors and mowers and sprayers and it's harvest here in the south coast of Western Australia. And it is crazy. It is actually crazy. There is farmers going left, right and center trying to get the crop off, trying to get it into the bins, trying to get the money into the bank. And this is literally, it's like make hay while the sun shines. This is our season to make bank. But it comes with the heaviness of the hours and the effort that goes into it as well. And our business has gone from this time last year it was just Jarrod working on his own to another like full time mechanic, a third year apprentice. And up until about two weeks ago, we had a first year apprentice and we have enough work that we could take on another two mechanics. But it's like a dog eat dog world when it comes to mechanics, especially in a small country town. And we're paying absolute top dollar, which is wild considering what Jared's hourly rate was when he left working for a dealership. I think it was like 50, $54 an hour compared to $64 plus an hour these days. So there's definitely been the times when the thoughts where we've gone, gosh, is owning our own business actually worth it? Yeah, it is. I think so. But it's definitely been a process and we're working through it. So tonight's episode 20 past 8 on a Monday night. We've just gotten home from basketball. I have been coaching my sons, Graydon and Austin. They're 12 and 10. They're basketball teams. Played basketball for one year of my life and suddenly I'm a basketball coach extraordinaire. Please send help. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I feel like it's okay. The team's doing okay. We've had a couple of wins, we've had a couple of losses, and all in all, it's totally fine. So last night I stayed up till midnight reading a book, Christian White. And I think it's called the Last Night or the Late Night. I'll put the details in the show notes, but I read the first chapter the night before. And reading it, I thought to myself, fuck, this is scary. The first 80 pages, I was shit scared. I thought, what the fuck am I reading? I've read plenty of Christian White books before and I absolutely loved them, but this one had me shaken in my boobs. And my rule with books is I have to get to the hundred page mark. If I get to a hundred page mark, and it is not my thing, DNF put it on the pile. But generally once you get to the hundred page mark, you're good to go. And I got to the hundred page mark and it definitely had piqued my interest. And so I finished it last night and holy smokes. I just love how authors like Christian White, Sally Hepworth, Jodi Picoult, Pickle. I don't know those authors. You get to the end of the book and you just think, what the fuck have I just read? If you've been around for a while, you already know My mornings don't start without my cacao. I've been drinking Invictus Apothecary ceremonial cacao since 2020. It's literally been everywhere with me, across Australia up to Broome, and even in my inpatient hospital stays. It's my one little moment of sacredness each morning, usually brought to me, made with love by Jared, bless him. The beautiful humans behind it. Jody and Ben, AKA the Captain and the Crew, also run Naturally Esperance, their gorgeous local store and dispensary. They've been part of my world for years and I'm honestly so grateful for what they've created. And now they give me a little something for you. My choose. Honestly, mental fam. You can get 10% off their 250 gram and 1 kilo cacao in store and online using the code SHMFAM, all one word. Just head to invictusapothecothery.com or pop into Naturally Esperance if you're a local. So I was up till midnight last night, Woke up at 5 o' clock this morning had some work stuff that I needed to do and Jared's been working ridiculous hours. So he fell asleep at 7:45 last night. So I had this beautiful period last night when all of the kids were in bed. Jarrod was snoring next to me and I was laying here reading my book and it was just magic and peaceful. That was. Oh, I loved it. But I am definitely missing having Jared around the office and the workshop at the moment. Every time someone drives past and they've got a big V8 RAM or sounds like Jared's car, I get my hopes up and then I watch the car drive past and realize that it's not my husband. And I was saying to Celeste, who works in our office today, I feel like we should ban two 500 rams from driving down this road because all it's doing is getting my hopes up all day long. And it's not my husband. So he's getting up at 3 o' clock tomorrow morning to head 150ks out of town to go and do an aircon on something. And then he has another job to do on his way back into town. He's like, yeah, I should be back in town by 10 o' clock tomorrow morning. And every time he's come back to town this week, he's just literally just coming to pick up a part and then I'm heading out again. So for us with our business, that's our reality and it's just tiring. But I am really excited to share an absolute win. I have gone to Woolies twice in the last week on my own with no panic attacks in sight. It's just wild. The fact that the story that I was telling myself six months ago was that it's okay that I don't go to Woolies and I don't do the shopping. And now I do go to Woolies and I do do the shopping and I am not. I'm putting myself out there for sure, but I'm not pushing myself to do it because Jarrod has been working these big hours and we've got two big growing boys that need to eat a lot. I've gone, well, I need to be bulking these kids up with protein with good food to make them fuller for longer and give them fuel for all of the sports that they're doing. And on the flip side, something that I struggle with is my weight and food. And so I've kind of worked out now, well, if I'm feeding them really good, high protein, nutrient dense food, then I get to do the same for me. So it's literally I'm killing three birds with one stone. So that's been an awesome win for me and I'm fucking proud of myself. I now have a fridge that is overflowing and a cupboard that is overflowing. And this week it's like, round of applause. I have also got a cleaner is coming in, but they're coming in twice. So Mondays is our normal like house clean day. And then Wednesdays when they come in, it's a bit of a housekeeping day and they will be guide through sorting my pantry, sorting my fridge, putting things in containers and making it very functional for me because I've slowly been going around the house and just doing one section at a time of reorganizing and then looking at the rest of it and just accepting it for the current state that it is and going. I know that I could hyper focus and go down the rabbit hole of trying to fix it all now, but me spending time, because this is how my brain's wired, it's constantly on the look for the fix and trying to make things better for how my brain is wired. I need to be able to kind of rein it in sometimes and just say, hey, I see that shelf over there that's full of essential oils and books and whatever. Yes, I know. It would be so great if it was beautifully organized and aesthetically pleasing, but for right now, it's actually functioning okay. I'm okay with where it's at. I know where the things are in my doom pile. If you're adhd, you know, you know, and I can just move on with it. Funniest thing was Tuesday last week. I was really sick. I woke up in the morning with like gastro. She was a tap on my back end, I tell you. It was absolutely horrific. The cramps were insane. The pain was insane. I'd sit on the toilet and then I couldn't get up again. And I text my mum and Jared and I said, I am in so much pain, I can't get up, I can't move anything. And so my mum, bless her heart, came around, picked me up to take me to the hospital and she's like, come on, Dal, get dressed. And I'm trying to get dressed and as I'm putting my pants on, my. The pressure of pants, like, these are my trackies, so they're nice and big and loose. The pressure of them on my belly was excruciating. And I just felt so tender and bloated and I'VE got dressed, got up, gone to go get in the car. And as I've got out to the lounge room, here she is folding my towels. Sorry, Dal, I just. We can't get in the car yet. I need to fold these towels and then we can go. Yeah, Mum, sorry. I'm actually here in a fucking shit ton of pain. Can we get in the car? And it was just. I mean, it was really nice for her to be able to do that for me, but also I was like, you've literally just dragged me out of bed. We're going to the hospital. I don't want to be standing here. So it was so nice of her and I love her and I love that. That's her way of helping me out. But also I was like, come on, later, let's get the fuck out again. So I ended up at the hospital. Everything kind of looked okay. They just put it down to some kind of gastritis, Gave me a good dose of fentanyl, had that in my system for about two minutes, absolutely spewed fucking everywhere and gave me some fluids. Pain settled down and I came home and I just slept and woke up Wednesday morning, still not great. Got up, went back to bed and slept some more. By the time Wednesday afternoon kind of came around, I had a GP appointment to try and get a referral for one of my other sons, for Jarrod and myself to see the genetic specialist that one of my sons is seeing at the moment. And so we were talking to the doctor about that and he looked at me, he's like, what is wrong? And I told him what was going on. He felt my belly and he goes, oh, darl, it's a bit tender around your appendix. And I was like, oh, fuck's sake. Right O, mate. He goes, and you're a bit dry still. Yeah, I really am not feeling great. And he said, okay, let's hop to back up to Ed and Small Country Town Dilemma. I'm sitting in Ed, they've taken me straight through. I'm still in a fair bit of pain. It's definitely tender around my appendix where they're touching. And only to be told like, hey, your bloods are actually okay. Everything is looking okay, but because it's 5:15 at night, we don't have an ultrasound tech that we can call back in to come and do this for you. So if you feel comfortable, you head home, get an ultrasound tomorrow and then go from there. And I thought to myself, you know what? Nothing would beat my bed right now. So I was feeling okay. I'd had some more painkillers and I trotted off home only to wake up Thursday morning feeling okay. So I got up, ordered myself a banana smoothie because my bloods were saying that I was a bit low on potassium and all the rest of it. So a banana smoothie for a few days was where it was at for me to get to town, get my smoothie, have a couple of mouthfuls of it to then be trying to speak to the ultrasound places for one of them to turn around and say, yeah, hey, we can actually do that for you, but you need to now fast for six hours. And I honestly wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I had just taken six mouthfuls of one of the most delicious smoothies because it was one of the only things I'd eaten for the last few days to be told to, you can't even have it. But good news is I had my ultrasound that Thursday afternoon and everything is okay other than a slight kind of ovarian cyst that I've got on my rhy ovary. So I'm very grateful that I've got through that and I'm on the other side. I've kind of worked out that because I've been taking Manjaro, one of the GLP1 medications that slows your gastric system down. But also I googled thanks Dr. Google and Dr. Chatgpt but Dexamphetamine also has the same kind of effect. So my body's been getting a bit of a double whammy. And so with that, it's then, okay, well how do I help my stomach through this? I'll come off the Manjaro for a little while. Priority for me is my adhd. Keep on top of my ADHD meds and just give my body a little bit of time to settle back down. And I'm feeling pretty good. I'm five days post, like very, very bad cramps and feeling really unwell. And yesterday we went out to surf club. I was in the water for most of the morning. I did water safety with the Nippers and then I did the club swim, which I was so proud of myself. It's a 400 meter swim and I did it once at the end of last season. I think I was like 7 minutes 15 or something. And when I did it Yesterday, I was 5 minutes 46. And it's so cool because my 10 year old Austin has committed to doing the club swim as well and I'm right behind him. So I'm like, if I can keep up with my 10 year old who literally has feet the size of flippers. I'm doing much better than what I actually thought I was. Which kind of leads me to my next thought process around what this last week has been like for me. Because I tell you what, normally when I get sick, I'm so stressed because I haven't been able to work and work is piling up on me. But because of the, the work and the effort that I've put into my business too, she's honestly mental to Spotty's Mechanical over the last six months, setting up the system, streamlining the way that I work, reducing the overwhelm and just really being strategic about how I'm working. Being sick last week didn't really affect me stressfully at all. If anything, I felt like today I got back to work and I feel very, very clear about the things that I needed to be doing. Instead of going to work and sitting at my desk and just dilly dallying around, not really doing anything, no dead set hyper focus, not really being able to walk away from my desk that day going, yes, I nailed that. And I feel like that's a really big success for me. Something I want to talk about a bit later on in another episode is around the parental load and living with mental health. But what I noticed Friday afternoon I worked first thing in the morning. I had a monthly call that I jump on with Steph and Tim from Success School. And I had Reuben at my stepmom's. I said to her, can you just have him for a few hours so that I can do this call and then I'll pick him up at lunchtime. Normally me being at home with my kids for hours on end is something that I have struggled with because I'm constantly thinking about the things that I need to be doing at work. I feel like I'm definitely not the mum that sits down and does the arts and craft and the play and the pay the attention. And I don't even know, I think because I see people behaving, you know, how people are acting with their kids or what I think the story is, you know when you see and you assume that, oh my gosh, that mum, she's so put together and she sits and crafts with her kids and she feeds them nutritious meals and you know, she's got them in cloth diapers and all of this other bullshit and I feel like I'm the mum that's got the kid under the arm and my hair's not done And I feel like Angelica's doll off of the Rugrats. So funny. But that's what I feel like. I'm definitely not put together and I'm not that very attentive, mum, particularly when the kids are little. So being at home with Reuben for the afternoon, I really, really enjoyed it. And I think too, you know, he's almost three, so he'll be three in February. He's changed the way he talks and communicate and it just was a really, really amazing afternoon and time for me to be able to spend with him. And normally I'd be hanging for Jarrod to get home to be, hey, take this kid. I'm done. I can't handle it anymore. By the time the big kids got home from school, I was well into this rhythm of chatting with Ruben, doing some fun things with him. I don't even remember what we did Friday afternoon. But I've been on this little mission this weekend, just tidying the house and getting things sorted for, well, knowing, right, that I'm at this time in my cycle, in my menstrual cycle, and that the way the stars are aligned and all of the rest of it, that I'm feeling like this really homey, cozy, put all the things together, fold all the washing as it comes off the line, put it all away, make the house neat and tidy, that that's probably just a for now thing. And I'm not putting expectations on myself to have it all together all of the time because that's just not normal, particularly as a woman, literally, the sun and the moon and the sky, the stars and all of that affects us just as our hormones do. So as we're going through our cycle, you know, we put this unrealistic expectation on ourselves to be able to have our shit together all of the time. And it's just not realistic. It is not the fucking way. And so I do, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, take time to reflect or time to actually stop and go, where am I at my cycle? Have I actually eaten? What's the stars doing? Is it a full moon? Is it a Mercury retrograde? Am I in my chiron season? And just put the effort into that, really putting the effort into understanding who I am honoring where I'm at currently instead of trying to go, okay, well, today's routine has worked really well. We'll keep doing that every single fucking day. I have adhd, just doesn't work like that. I'm a mum with a house full of boys and a business. That unrealistic expectation just does not work for me. And that almost is my normal is just going, okay, cool, nailed it today. Who cares what happens tomorrow? Of course it's going to feel good if I can continue to kind of keep that up. But just honoring that, it's not always going to happen and that that's okay. I'm really proud of myself and the fact that I've been able to nail Woolies twice. The fact that I've been able to have a couple of days at home, unwell, and not put pressure on myself about work and just knowing and trusting that it is actually all going to be okay has been the biggest blessing for me because I know the flip side of that. It honestly feels so good to be alive and to be here and to be pushing myself meaningfully, not just to be doing it to try and get the approval of others. Because I realized this morning just how much I have been pushing myself to. To try and get that approval from others. I really need, when I'm seeking that external validation, recognizing that and going, I actually need to validate that for myself. And it was, you know, at Surf club yesterday, they're kind of like giving out little cheers to the people that were doing bits and pieces. And I'm sitting there going, me, say something about me. Like, I want to be told that I'm really good. But I now stopped and I've looked and I thought, I cheered myself on, I cheered myself on. I smashed that swim. It's something that I've been lightly training for, but I've had that in my sights and I'm just really fucking proud of myself for all of the wins, for all of the things for getting through last week. It just felt like hell. Someone commented on my page today saying, wow, that sounds really tough. And I almost went to comment back, being like, yeah, it's actually my normal, but it's not. That's definitely not my normal. Having a week being in bed and unwell is definitely not my normal. It just feels nice that I was able to have that week off and still be able to do my normal things and not give myself shit about it.

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