Raising a Teenager Is Tough Business

I am feeling quite distraught at this late hour.  My son turns 15 on Monday and I am having so many issues with him and with our relationship.  He always only wants to spend time with his friends.  He does not hold down his responsibilities here at home which are basically just picking up after himself and doing things like trash and such at times.  If I ask him to do something with me or family it is like asking him to let me tar and feather him.  I totally get that he wants to spend the majority of his time with friends but to me it is a bit excess.

As far as his responsibilities, he took four days to pick up the cups and trash out of his room which should have been done without my even having to ask him in the first place.  When I tell him he cannot do something he states how he picked it all up.  Picking it up after several days of my telling him does not count as doing it to me.  I try to pick my battles with him but it is so frustrating.  I cannot figure out where that sweet boy went most of the time.  He feels like I am always griping at him when in reality if he would do what he is told or should already know to do I would not have to gripe at him at all.  I do not want him feeling so frustrated and like that is all I do but he is at the age where he must learn some responsibility and stick to it.

Sciatica rants

I have seriously been neglecting my blog and I intend to change that.  Life has me so busy I forget to express myself sometimes.  I write blogs in my mind on a daily and even hourly basis.

Today I am getting ready to go find out my EMG results and see what type of muscle and nerve damage exists from my automobile wreck almost a year ago.  This has been such a long process for me.  I never would have thought a year later I would still be dealing with the pain I have from sitting long periods and still not have a definitive answer.  I know there is something going on with my sciatic nerve.  The pain from sitting long periods goes from my low back down to my foot.  That is the largest nerve in the body and it runs in that area.  Why I have endured chiropractic care, pain management, three injections in my lumbar area that were not really necessary, and finally a spine examination and EMG is beyond me.  If you ask me this probably should have happened first.  I did not know what to do and that I probably should have spoken up.  The lumbar injections were done based off my telling the pain management what my chiropractor told me in that I had a protruding disk.  Come to find out the disc only protruded a minute amount so not enough to cause my pain.  The pain management did not see an actual copy of my MRI until after I had endured three injections.  I went through three injections for basically no reason and that irritates me.  It was pain for no reason and it was money spent out of my settlement that could have been put toward possible new injections I may need.  I lost my job and can no longer do it right now due to that fact that it is sitting 8 hours a day typing (transcribing) and running a foot pedal.  Heck just the hour and a half drive to the doctor in Dallas today will leave me in pain.  I am so thankful to have found Thrive in my life so that a lot of the other health challenges I have are gone or greatly diminished because all of those issues AND this were just too much for me.  At the age of 40 I still have way too many things in my life to do including being healthy, being there for my son and more!  I can at least tackle sciatica now better than I could have 4 months ago but it does not take away from the frustration I feel that it has taken this long with still no relief.  I will update later as to what the study showed.