Tag Archives: body stuff

New med tracking

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Started Amitriptyline last night, primarily for nerve pain. I got a solid 8 hours of sleep, which I don’t always do and that seems nice. As I was going to sleep I felt like I got to watch a firework show on my eyelids. Lots of bright white lights dancing. As is typical for me it took more like an hour and a half to really hit me instead of an hour.

ETA: Yeah, I barely stayed awake long enough to eat a little breakfast then I almost passed out on the table so I crawled back to bed. I was in and out for a while making sure that oldest got to school. Then I slept hard until 10:30 when I could tell that I needed to go to the bathroom to deal with blood (it’s the heaviest day of my period. What glorious timing).

My dreams were super intense and overwhelming and constant and highly sexual which I did not expect on a medication known for lowering libido.

I am so groggy that middle kid has been talking at me for a while and I have literally not retained a word of what has been said. I feel slow and stupid and exhausted.

It’s a very good thing I homeschool my 10 year old and Noah works from home because I don’t know how I could have provided care for the 2 year old today while alone. Scary thought. Woof.

I have a really intense headache at the back of my head near the top of the spine and it shoots straight through the skull to make it throb hard on my left temple. My mouth has been throbbing, which is a weird ass feeling. I keep feeling like I am falling only I’m lying prone at the time.

Strangely it was easier to sleep than usual because even though my neck/head hurt quite badly my shoulders already feel a little easier. It didn’t instantly hurt lying on my side. If I reach back gently the surgical wound site still hurts.

The headache is absolutely massive but I am worried about taking another medication on top of what is in my system.

I am sad because my lack of help today is going to mean that Noah has to work more days into December. (He was going to take the month off.) But at least I think it’ll only be a couple of days next week and not the whole month.

Also of note: my typing has been super shitty. It’s taking me 3-8 tries to figure out how to spell a lot of basic words. Yay spell check preventing me from looking in writing as stupid as I feel.

Everything hurts

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I’ve been trying really hard not to complain. Things are tough all over right now.

I’m having problems with my shoulder. Almost 11 months ago I had surgery to remove skin cancer. I had fairly extreme wound dehiscence. If you don’t know what that is (lucky you) it means after a surgery the healing wound site pops open. It was pretty fucking gory and bloody and resulted in a giant, garish, ugly scar. I don’t care that much about it being ugly.

I care that it still hurts. If I lean back on a chair a little too suddenly it hurts. If Noah gently strokes my back and he gets to within an inch of the wound I feel so much pain that my knees turn to jelly. I am not a wimp. I can endure significant pain.

My shoulders have been in bad shape for over 11 years due to nursing all night long with my oldest child and sleeping on my side in a rigid position. But it’s so bad now that I feel pretty constant pain. I miss chiropractic care and massage but with Covid it doesn’t feel like a good idea to be pursuing these sorts of intimate treatments.

Instead I endure. My brain feels cloudy. I know I am more irritable than I would be otherwise. It’s harder dealing with my general feelings of depression.

When I say it hurts I mean lifting a pot of tea to pour a cup hurts. Sometimes there is burning and stabbing pain all the way up and down my arm. Washing dishes is really painful; the pinching movement of holding things as part of the process is nasty.

To give you a bit of perspective… I have finally cracked. House cleaners are going to start coming to the house. That’s a pretty gigantic admission of defeat for me. I need help because I can’t do as much anymore because it hurts too much. I feel really despondent about this. I feel pathetic. I feel sad. I feel weak. I feel like a failure. I literally cannot carry my third child the way I did with my first two. She has to walk. Pushing a stroller is horribly painful. She has to walk. Luckily riding my bike is fairly comfortable because I have worked hard at adjusting the positioning of everything so the only time I really put pressure on my hands is when I am actively braking.

I often wake up with intense, nearly blinding pain in my neck and shoulder. I feel so embarrassed when I take pain medication first thing in the morning. It’s not that anyone in my family judges me. But I didn’t want to grow up and be like my mother.

I think I should probably reach out to the medical staff, dermatologist probably? But with Covid and cancer patients and people with urgent medical problems not being able to access necessary-for-life care I don’t feel at all comfortable raising my hand and asking for help.

So instead I sit in my house and I take the over the counter pain meds and I cry. I don’t feel any hope about ever feeling good in my body again. I am very scared of the degradation that is coming. There is nothing I can do about it. I just get to endure it. I made commitments and I take them very seriously. I will be here as long as I am physically capable of clawing my way through.

It’s going to hurt so very much and I’m scared.

Scraping the bottom of the spoon drawer

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Well fuck everything. The last two ish weeks have been absolutely horrid. I mean, there’s all the things (*wave arms in the direction of the whole world*) and then my body is being a real nightmare. My PMDD symptoms this month have been utterly unreal. My pain levels have been sky high. My mood is in the toilet. (Or rather in the scalpel drawer–not that I did anything. But I thought about it. Hell I don’t even own a scalpel at this point.)

And then when I did start my period my mood got worse and the pain got worse and I passed some clumps that were the size of golf balls and that’s just not fucking ok.

I’m watching two very different communities go through growing pains. I’m learning a lot about myself as I watch them process. I’m thinking about Sobonfu. I will never find a community; I have to make it. What are my values?

I’m more than a little bit of a dick. So my line can’t be that people can’t be dicks. I can be a bully so that can’t be the line either. Ah shit.

I try so hard to lift people up but right this minute all I can see are my failures.

So close and yet so far.

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I was done. My share of the project was finished. I had no more painting to look forward to. Then I noticed… Middle Child is really and truly not ready to do her own room. She tried. She did a lot! She did great! She can’t edge to save her life. And she takes the dark edging color and smears the brush all over the super light colored wall when she thinks she has too much paint on it. Insert head smacking emoji.

My hands are in a bad place. Holding a paint brush sucks. I’ve got about three hours of pinchy movement in my hands in a day before I have shooting pains. I did three hours of trim today. I will do three hours of painting on Sunday. And on Monday. Hopefully I will finish on Tuesday. I am both looking forward to and not looking forward to this process.

Eldest Child says she is done and her mural looks fabulous.

Now we get to wait for carpet fitting to be done. ECs room smells strongly of nicotine–that was part of the motivation for her paint job and the carpet is gross too. I don’t like the idea of her having to breathe that crap through another winter so we are making the room less nasty. Apparently the teenage boy who used to live in the room was a heavy smoker. Ugh.

MCs room had a shower/sink wash room taken out of the corner so there is a big patch with no carpet at all and that’s not going to work in the long run.

Neither bedroom has carpeting on the redone closet and they should have. The sub flooring is not meant to see the light of day.

In 34 days we have been in this house for a year. I’d really like to be done with the big fixing jobs. I’d like to spend a lot more time puttering in the yard but by the time I’m done with inside chores I’m so wiped out. I’m still trying to deal with the sleep deprivation I put myself through for the dining room. In 27 days I missed 8 full nights of sleep. That’s too much. Ah well.

I have new glasses! They are amazing! I can see better than I have in such a long time. I like the cool grey metal.

I’m having more interactions with young people here than I am used to. In California my friends group skewed noticeably older and here I seem to be finding a lot of folks in their 20’s. I suspect it is related to people my age being busy and not having time to go meet new people. This is leading to a lot of feelings. Some of the folks are really stellar–don’t get me wrong. I’m truly thrilled about some of the folks I have met. Ironically the ones that please me the most are the in person ones.

I’m having a fair number of online interactions that I’m struggling with. I am a judgy motherfucker. When I was 19 I had this interaction with a 39 year old woman who told me I shouldn’t be in the scene and I should go off and have normal people sex for a decade or so. Now I get it. These kids scare the hell out of me. They… sigh.

They scare the hell out of me. I’m not going to get into what they are doing.

I worry a lot about them as individuals and how their behavior will contribute to their community. I worry about the girls and young enbys in the community and what they have to put up with from the macho “lad” crew. I feel like I can watch this chat room for a couple of days and go “Ah. You either already have or will have a bad reputation because you are dangerous.”

These are instincts I totally lacked 20 years ago.

I have so many mixed feelings about myself these days. I have come so far.

Recently I pissed someone off when I said that I didn’t feel like 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, or this pandemic are going to be the central life changing traumas of my life. I was told that saying that meant I was rubbing my good luck and privilege in other peoples faces. 9/11 happened across the country and I was at least two or more degrees of separation away from people who were really effected. I would feel like a poseur if I said it really changed my life.

I mean, this explosion in Beirut isn’t going to be a formative trauma for me either even though it is absolutely a horrifying trauma. It isn’t mine.

Most of my friends were either above or below the 2008 financial crash. I was in the process of quitting teaching when it happened. Teaching was a career that was insulated from the results. Is that all luck or privilege? A lot of my friends were in marginal jobs or retail or child care and they weren’t impacted. Is that luck or privilege? I lived in a house that had been purchased long before the crash so my housing was secure. That was both luck and privilege.

I feel weird about having white people who started out in the exact same place as me at the brink of adulthood tell me that my life is different from theirs now because of privilege. I think almost everything that has happened to me since I got married has been about privilege. But there was this gap period that I have funny feelings about. I lived a hair above the national poverty line for the first seven years of being an adult in one of the most expensive places in the country. I definitely had times I went on dates in order to eat. Being told that everything that happened to me in that time period was because I was so privileged is complicated. I’m not saying it is wrong.

Sometimes I’m not sure what privilege means.

I’m ready for slower days. I’m ready for shorter days. I’m ready to stop with the fucking pinchy work. I am pretty sure I can finish the painting this week. When I do I think we are entirely done painting for a long while. That’s good. This year has been so slammed and I am so utterly exhausted. I feel half dead.

I want this toddler to stop waking up three times a night and climbing in my damn bed.

Oh, toddler sayings I want to remember: “I have a pooty” for I have a poopy booty. “Clean the pipes!” is emphatically screamed when I am cleaning her up after a pipe. It’s time to go to sleep.

It’s a lot

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In lieu of proper emails to the people who have expressed concern, here’s a blog entry.

I’m not doing so hot. It’s a whole bunch of things. This PMDD cycle is ridiculously brutal. I’m on day fucking 35 and I wish I would just god damn bleed already. I think I would be doing poorly even if everything else was going well. But everything else is not going well.

The pandemic is not hitting my area hard at all–there haven’t been new cases in a while and we’ve gone a few days without a death in the whole country. There will be a few more deaths as this trickles to an end, but Scotland as a whole has managed this pretty darn well. I am terrified of when tourism opens up again. That’s going to fuck us. But I also recognize that an awful lot of the industry exists around supporting tourism so it’s a double edged sword.

All the stuff in the US. I feel ashamed for not being there to participate. I feel grateful that I am not part of it. I feel fear for all of the people on the ground doing the work. I feel scared for the future. I am watching the revolution on tv because I was a coward and I got out.

Things in my house. Stuff with Noah is at a weird/hard point. We are having some troubles. I don’t know how to fix them and I don’t know what the way forward looks like and I’m really scared. I am really really scared. I feel so hurt. I feel wounded. I feel sad.

My oldest child is truly into puberty now. Woo! In the process of trying to celebrate her having a big milestone (in a way we have been discussing for three god damn years) she told me that I am the most embarrassing thing ever and there was a whole lot of “you are gross” face and body language. I’m totally butt hurt. I know it is normal. I know it is to be expected. I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. But I’ve already been crying for a few days so that was just not something I could shrug off in that moment.

Middle child is… she’s having a hard time with everyone taking care of their own needs right now. She is angry and being difficult because she still wants to be catered to like a little kid and no one has that to give her right now. We are all tired and doing stuff to deal with our own shit. I’m trying to talk her through how to meet her own needs a bit more and it’s just hard. So she’s getting in trouble a lot because bad attention is better than no attention.

Youngest child is an adorable little shit head. She has taken to yelling at us all because she wants to be top dog. YOU. WILL. NOT. SAY. THAT. TO. ME. (When we say something like, please don’t kick me.) She’s starting to get more consequences and she’s learning that when mama says something it fucking stays true. If you get into the fridge and steal multiple pieces of fruit and take one bite and leave them to rot, no you don’t get a slice of cake when the rest of us do. We don’t do that with food in this house. If you take the fruit you eat it before you move on. Sorrynotsorry.

Well, I’m writing behind this password because Jenny promised me that I could write what I needed to write and I didn’t need to password protect it–she would choose not to read it. Then she read it and yelled at me. So awesome. Jenny is trying to rewrite history. “I’ve said one wrong thing.” Oh fuck that. You started out our relationship 26 years ago calling me a stupid slut. There have been incidents like this for over two decades. You don’t get to say that calling my kids retarded was saying one wrong thing. She also clarified that she didn’t spank her daughter for a panic attack she spanked her because she was being defiant and screaming in Jenny’s face. Hello? You have rewarded her for bad behavior and defiance all her life and now all of a sudden it is not ok to the level you have to hit her for it? Yeah I don’t find that more excusable.

I don’t want to end the relationship. But I don’t know how close I want to be either.

I am not doing well at responding to anyone’s emails. I feel trapped inside my head. I feel unable to reach out because I feel wrong and bad and stupid and unwanted all over the place.

There was drama in some online forums. A couple pieces in a couple of places. In one of the womens-support groups there was this one woman who was really fucking antagonistic and when I got sick of being bullied I left. The one person from the group who has remained my friend then wanted me to spend weeks helping her process her feelings about being bullied by the one problematic woman. I’m like, this is not good for me. So she left the group too. Some of the other members came to her and asked about forming a new group without the problematic woman and I feel rejected, unworthy of defense, and really unimportant. I feel fucking bad. I provided a lot of emotional support to those people for over a year and me being chased off was fine but once it is this other gal all of a sudden the bully is a problem. I feel like shit.

I’ve been chatting with some of the bay area kinky folk. Some dude was making “jokes” that weren’t funny about covid at at ime when one of the members had a mom who was doing quite poorly and she was terrified. A few of us called him out for not being funny and told him he should apologize. He then proceeded to go on this extensive tirade about how pointless it is to apologize to mentally ill fuck ups. He said that the request for an apology was tantamount to him being falsely accused of rape. WTF? Now one of my friends is his new submissive. I’m like, “well. That’s fucking awesome.” I’m trying to just set boundaries with her about how I don’t want to hear about him and it’s only so successful. I may end up having to stop talking to her and that will be sad.

I don’t know why emails feel harder.

House stuff continues……..s…..l…..o…..w…..l….y….. which means I can’t just be done. I am in this constant state of waiting for the next step and it feels awful. This house will be great when everything works. And I just want to cry.

Sleep is not going well. I do get a fair bit sometimes but mostly I don’t get enough sleep and I feel poorly. I’ve had more than a few days lately where I got almost nothing done because I feel so awful. I’m depressed and I’m definitely getting the full-body malaise.

That said, I have been completing my miles. If I feed the kids, get my miles in… that’s enough to count for a day right now. I’m only up to 16 miles/week right now. I’m adding 1 or 2 miles every other week (mostly 1 but there are a couple of jumps) until September of 2021. My birthday week next year will be my peak week: 54 miles in a week. Then I start ramping down again (hopefully for a marathon the first weekend of October, we’ll see) the week of the marathon I only do 35 miles. It’s more in a day than I did during training, but the hope is that my body will be so accustomed to just going and going that it will be fine. Knock on wood for no injuries. I am a little worried about how often I will need to use the treadmill over the winter because it just isn’t the same as running outside, but it’s a lot better than injuring myself on ice or not running.

I am 10lbs below the peak weight I hit a bit ago. I have done pretty well about cutting sugar from my tea (only had one teaspoon one time) and I’ve not 100% eliminated alcohol (it’s not a great coping method and I get that but I don’t *have* a great one) but I’ve gone from drinking 5-6 days a week to having some 3 times in the past two weeks. I am also running out of stuff and I think I will be good about not buying more for a while. I mean, I have a whole bottle of whiskey sitting there I haven’t touched yet so I won’t be out out for a while.

We have some tenants and they are super sweet. I found them through the mosque. A bit ago my heart was moved to reach out to the mosque and tell them that if one of their members ends up in a tough spot because of job-loss in the pandemic and they need emergency housing, I have an empty apartment. The kind doctor who talked to me at first said he didn’t know of anyone at the moment but he’d keep me in mind. Almost a month later I got a call. They are a really sweet couple, she’s pregnant and her cooking is mind bendingly good. They are not paying rent yet (that’s the whole out of work + being an immigrant means you can’t get government support thing) but they are giving us stuff they make and offering help around the yard and being super gracious. The long-term goal is they will pay rent once jobs happen again. I am willing to extend some faith here. These are rough times all over the place. We are having really fun conversations and they love playing with youngest child when she’s outside. The young lady moved here just over three months ago and basically doesn’t know anyone. We are talking as best we can with her emerging English and my bad Hindi which is close enough to Urdu that we can communicate some.

Seriously, just having those smells wafting through my house from her cooking is worth the price of admission. Oh golly. It smells like home.

The yard has come along quite a bit and I feel like I am ready for the growing season. I still have a long way to go before I figure out all of what I need to do and what I need to prune and when. It’s a process. The yard is feeling overgrown and more jungle-like and I love it.

I mean, I’ve been feeling pretty crappy. But instead of feeling suicidal I have self mutilation ideation. It’s still not great (and I’m not doing it) but after so many years of “I should die” being my first impulse it is in fact an improvement. I’m sad. I feel bad about myself. But I have work to do and I need to wait for this wave of sadness to pass so I can get back to it.

Weather and exercise

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It’s been absolutely gorgeous here and I am forcing my kids to be out in the yard as much as possible. I haven’t started moving all of my plants from the polytunnel to the yard (well, the ones I will move at all) yet because we keep having -1 at night still. I’m hopeful for next week. After next week I think it is do or die.

I’m using the treadmill. I am surprised by how much faster I go on it than I do on the road. I can do 4.5 miles on a treadmill going faster than 12 min/mile. I can’t do that on the road at all at this point. Although, I haven’t been on the road much lately and I don’t really know where I am. I have started using the TRX for PT again. It is fucking killing me. My shoulders are so fucked up. Doing the exercises means hearing grinding and clicking the whole way through. It’s almost exciting only it sucks.

I’ve been pushing too hard on gardening and painting the wood. My hands are a mess. They hurt more than they have since we got here. Ok, I found my limit. 14 hours of painting in three days after building a rock staircase… that’s too much.

I’m super unhappy that yet more things have broken in the house since my last fucking journal entry. This house is ridiculous.

I think we are going to start playing in the burn further up the road a bit. My neighbor is… being mixed in his signals. He tells me it is fine for my kids to go play on the other side of the fence then he erects barriers. I’m not sure if he is worried about us or the random other people I keep seeing on the driveway. Either way I’m going to stop listening to his words because most people are liars.

I broke my glasses and I’m still using them until replacements arrive. The focal point moves around while I wear them and I keep getting dizzy. This is super annoying.

We have gone through just about 5kg of flour in the last two months. Holy saucebuckets of baking, Batman. That’s on top of multiple kilos of self-raising and strong flour. Turns out baking is a stress activity for me?

I hope I stick with this, but when I run out of alcohol in the cupboard I want to not buy any for a while. I should probably pick a plan like T and say I can buy a bottle for my birthday, Yule, pick one or two other holidays during the year and other than that… don’t buy it. I am still not a problem drinker by Scottish standards but I am not happy about the weight I have put on and I strongly suspect it is alcohol related. I am exercising enough that I should see the numbers move. I’m not. Something needs to change and you will pry my cake away from my cold dead hands.

I’ll give up fucking meat before I give up cake.

So. First: booze.

The tap I got to replace the broken one in the bathroom is wrong and cannot be used. The tap I got to replace the broken one in the kitchen doesn’t fit because there isn’t enough space in the cabinet to install it. The lights I got to replace the broken one in the kitchen has the wrong facing on it. The powder room toilet seat just snapped off entirely.

I want to cry. I am so tired and so frustrated.

I don’t want to be nice.

I’m on my period and my back hurts so much I feel like I would like really heavy drugs. And a bath. And I can’t take a bath.

Fuck and fuck and fuck everything.

I have approximately five minutes…

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Then I need to go take the bread out of the oven and start soup for supper.

I’m thinking really a lot about how I want to structure my goals over the next few years. Because I won’t talk about this in front of my kids, here I will admit: I want to lose weight. I will not, however, go on a diet. I don’t want to lose weight because I think I look better I want to lose weight because I can’t wear my best clothes and that is pissing me off. I don’t want to spend the money on larger replacements. To that end I want to set the goal: run another marathon when I turn 40. That gives me 18 months of training time. I need to do this independent of the kids running with me. If I do it based on everyone feeling healthy enough I won’t do it.

Fuck diets. Yay running. I think running around this town will be a proper treat. I should figure out a realistic schedule for that, but I don’t have time this entry.

I want to paint the interior of the house starting in September. I have six months to plan. I think the interior paint job is going to take over a year. Each room will take a minimum of a month. That’s pretty fucking daunting, yo. I need to start sketching on that.

I have a perty new polytunnel. I want to grow tomatoes even if I’m not supposed to plant in the ground. Home grown tomatoes taste so much better it isn’t funny. Also I am allowed to work on hard scaping….

Shit. I had less time than I thought. Toodles.

PS: I can’t wait to turn 40.

Anxiety management

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Yesterday I was told that I have three months ahead of me where I am on restriction for arm exercises. That means no yard work until May or June. That means when the bookshelves finally get built I shouldn’t put books on them. That means I really shouldn’t be doing so many house chores.

It’s time to hire a house cleaner and I feel really upset about it. I hit that level of disabled and I can’t expect my family to carry my weight of chores on top of their own for so long. Not in a house this size.

I did a big batch of cooking a week ago and my hand is still swollen. I have to buy and get into the habit of using a food processor. My arthritis is that bad.

I am not feeling good about my body, my self worth, or my general competence. I feel pathetic. I feel like I am seeing my usefulness as a tool slip away.

I was cleared for riding a bike and for going out and doing walks. The doctor was quite firm that I must not pick up my nearly-two year old at all and pushing a pram is… not really wise. I can’t swim but I could supervise my older children swimming.

But I can pull her in the bike trailer and attaching the trailer to the bike is dead simple and no real strain. So that’s something.

I feel absolutely horrid about myself. All of the things that make me like myself are falling away and I am left with the bits I despise.

And that means I want to get into stupid arguments on the internet over paper plates. I didn’t. I walked away. I know it is a stupid control issue. I am anxious as fuck. I want to be stupidly defensive of my choices and there is really no point. It doesn’t matter if this stranger agrees with me or not. I did what I did and… there is no value to arguing. I am not going to live how they live and I don’t need to argue about it.

I feel stupid and useless and I want to not feel so bad about myself. I won’t get that from stupid arguments about consumer choices.

I’m not sure I am going to feel better about myself from anything this morning.

Cabin fever is setting in

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I feel like I am going crazy. I am such a bad patient. I’d like to be doing about 9,482 things. Every couple of days I go crazy and I do something like chopping vegetables and then I spend the next day feeling like shit sitting in a chair. Yesterday while sitting in a chair I spent some time carving holes in a chunk of wood (I am not finding a candle holder that I like) and my stupid watch was yelling at me because my heart rate was too high while sitting still. Fucking body.

Apparently the hole is a bit wider (I’m pulling stitches because I can’t seem to stop moving my shoulders) but it’s not that deep anymore… this is progress. At this point the surgeon just wants it to heal from the inside out. It’s happening. The red swollen bits around the wound look much better. The skin is peeling and ugly, but it looks like healing.

I’m bored. Only boring people get bored. Thus, I am now boring. I want to stop being a boring person. I am not allowed to until I heal. waaaaaaaaaa

Night before last it snowed and the snow lasted all day; we live in a beautiful winter wonderland. (It was just a light dusting; I’m not sure it was a whole inch.) Today it will be 3/4 degrees and raining. Tomorrow is climbing back up to 9. Might snow again on Sunday! It’s not going to be in double digits again for quite some time. I’d love to be going out and hiking the Roman road in the frost and chill–it sounds peaceful and romantic. But I know me. I would be wanting to pick things up and bend and do things like wear my toddler. So… that’s out.

I’ve read a few books. It’s not keeping my brain occupied. I want to do more. Healing sucks.

Fud

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I suspect I am thinking about food so much because I am bored. I am not really enjoying sitting around waiting to heal. I am doing ridiculously bad at it. I just want to go work, damnit.

I used to date this guy who wanted to play with my genitals for a few hours without me ever getting to the exciting part. After twenty or so minutes of this I would dissociate and I couldn’t even feel what he was doing anymore. It was really boring. Thinking about what I want to do in the garden is starting to feel like that. It’s not feeling like the fantasy bathroom I didn’t really think I would ever get to do. (But I did it.)

So today I made a big raw spread for lunch. Then I made cock-a-leekie soup and I started the stock for potato leek soup. I made a French toast casserole for the morning. For lunch tomorrow we will have the potato leek soup and steak (if the steak isn’t bad because we missed the use-by date; damnit). Then dinner is cock-a-leekie soup (we didn’t eat it tonight….) and haggis and neeps and tatties because it is Burns Night. We will be reading poetry and being silly with it.

This week we are doing a big spring cleaning for Imbolc. We also want to make a cake and a feast to go along with the holiday on next Sunday. The cake will be made ahead.

I have unpacked that which I can unpack until the bookshelves are made. This is… not feeling like enough. I want to be done. I want to be fucking moved in. I loathe cardboard boxes. I mean, I will keep some around to play with because they are dead useful but having my belongings in boxes feels like an affront to my spirit. Either get fucking rid of it because obviously you don’t love it enough to take it out of the box or UNBOX YOUR STUFF. Moving has been such an intense thing in my life. I’m not saying that no one else should be allowed to own stuff in boxes; this is a me-thing.

I’m ready to take down the winter twinkle lights. As of my wee one’s birthday in a couple of weeks we will be down to a measly 10.5 hours of night. That’s how much time my house should probably be dark anyway. Ok, so it isn’t quite there yet… but it’s spring cleaning time! Get the house tidied!

Whyyyyyyyyy?

Because I always do a spring cleaning and it makes me feel like a hard worker and I take pride in that. For each thing there is a season and at the end of the season I take it down and put it away so that it feels special again next year. This is my one dust a year, dangit.

I have my bike trailer now. And my back is still open and strained and unhappy and I can’t go anywhere with it. My impatience knows no bounds.

I should be in bed. It’s bleeping 11. But tomorrow I will get to take care of YC for 4.5-5 hours alone while Noah and the big kids go off to the theatre class. Noah will get to have some down time while the big kids play. Ah well. I will play with my lovely little girl. She’s frustrated I am not taking her out but I can’t. Not until I heal.

Fuck healing! Hurry up! This is ridiculous! What, has this wound been healing for 14-24 days depending on how you look at it?! Isn’t that long enough?!?!?!

Bodies are annoying. I FEEL LIKE THE CASTLE IN THIS COMIC. But three years from now… watch out! I will do things!

Adventures in the NHS

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On Friday when I noticed that the wound popped open again I left a message on the voicemail of the surgeon who did the procedure. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear back over the weekend. We watched the wound and it improved a lot in appearance over the weekend. Today I got a call to come in and let the surgeon see what is going on.

I went in and sat in the waiting room for well over an hour. Given that I was being slipped in during a fully scheduled day this didn’t bother me a bit. My children are well behaved and polite so it wasn’t a problem for anyone. We sang very quietly to YC and read books and MC wiggled a little in her chair listening to music on headphones. No trouble. When I finally got called in I sent the kids off to the cafeteria with some money for a snack.

The nurse who was examining me was chatty and social and she had a bunch of tangentially related questions to the wound. Generally speaking she just seemed to be trying to develop a bit of a relationship. Given how small this town is, I’m not surprised. She took the dressing off and asked for specifics about the timeline of how healing is going. She asked who has been changing my dressing for me as the one we used seemed small. I told her that we are doing it and we ran out of the bigger ones and haven’t made a trip to the pharmacy yet. She was pretty shocked I am not having a community nurse do all of it–she asked how we were managing. I laughed and said we both have a lot of experience with wound care so it’s not really a hardship for us. She asked what I meant by that and I gave a run down of medical procedures either Noah or I have had to care for and her eyes just about bugged out of her head. She could not believe that people would be sent home with such major injuries to just figure out care on their own. I laughed and said, “It’s really nice to be living in a civilized country now.” She startled. She said that she guesses you don’t really appreciate what you have.

The surgeon came in (I’m having a bit of a hard time with the fact that surgeons are Mr/Ms not Dr) and started off with an abject apology for blowing me off when I brought up the EDS during the surgery. I got the distinct impression he spent part of the morning doing a cram session on what the fork it is and why it matters. He and I were quoting very similar details back and forth to one another about the condition. He is absolutely adamant that I need to get in to see a rheumatologist ASAP because my notes are bare and this condition is a big deal. He apologized again that there isn’t an EDS specialist in all of Scotland. He spent our entire interaction apologizing over and over again. I don’t think I have seen a medical person quite so deeply in “Oh shit I fucked up” mode.

He was clearly very grateful that I wasn’t angry. I told him we are learning together and things will happen along that path. Not everything will go smoothly and as long as I don’t die… we’ll improve in the future. His eyes kind of bugged a bit.

He is now quite concerned about the EDS. He stressed that it cannot be cured it can only be managed. I told him I am fairly chill about it because I’ve had all these problems for my whole life and I’ve been managing and now I have a name for it.

He said that since my wound has popped open twice and the second opening happened several days ago that it can’t be closed again and now I need to just keep it covered and wait for it to heal from the inside out. It does look like it is making progress healing and he does not want to remove the current stitches anytime soon. It doesn’t look like there is any sign of an infection and antibiotics were not mentioned. The occasional twinges of pain I feel are well within the expected level for the depth of cutting he had to do.

In the US the feeling when interacting with a doctor is often “How can I get this person out of my office” because the likelihood that you will really be a specific doctor’s problem in the long run is fairly small. There aren’t many surgeons in this region and I have a complicated medical reality and I’m not that old. The likelihood that I will end up under this surgeon’s knife again are really quite high. When I mentioned the name of the GP I am developing a relationship with he said, “Oh she’s quite nice! Good I’m glad she is getting to know you.”

This is a small town.

The generally expected rate of EDS says that there should be something like 10-12 people in a city this size. That means that information about the disorder is pretty rare and I can understand why people who provide medical care react like they are getting hit with electricity when they realize they really must learn more to care adequately for those specific people. He flinched when I said my daughter has it.

But not in a way that made me feel bad? He seemed like “Ok, I need to step up to this situation” and he was recognizing that the step rise was a few inches higher than he first assumed. That’s not insulting to me at all.

Our breakfast conversation at the house was about how you have to make mistakes in order to learn. I feel like this surgeon wants to get more information so he will never make a mistake like this again. He will handle my post operative care differently next time. That’s nice.

Uncomfortably not-numb

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I am trying to sit still and heal. I really suck at this part. I slept well last night but I feel groggy and stupid. My back still burns and aches.

I feel frustrated with myself for not doing more research on EDS before the surgery. I have a history of complications and no one is going to track them or advocate for me; I have to do it. I told EC this morning that I am glad that she is learning these lessons before she is even a teenager because someday something is going to go wrong with her body and she will know enough to advocate for herself early and hard. EDS means difficulty in healing: our collagen is different. I already knew that I had issues with local anesthesia. This is the first time a wound has popped open like this, but I’m getting older and it’s going to be a bigger concern as time goes by.

I’ve been talking to a buddy who has EDS and a bunch of similar issues. She’s trying to help me figure out how to present this information to the doctors here. She’s upset because the surgeon told me that EDS wouldn’t have any impact on this kind of surgery. That’s not a great sign for the folks around here knowing how to handle my condition and it’s a small pool of doctors here. I am going to have to educate them all.

Festive.

But if I frame it as “There is a small pool of doctors here so these are the same people who will treat EC when she has issues” then it feels a lot more worth the hassle.

I’m tired and I hurt but I’m bored too. I want to be working on something. I want to be moving forward on something.

My last contact with the shipping company says that the next company that will touch my stuff is just waiting until they next have a delivery scheduled to come to the Highlands. It could take a while. Our stuff has sat in warehouses for more than three months. That was supposed to be the maximum amount of time for shipping it. So the transit time is within the estimated time… but people just don’t feel like doing the transit part very quickly. Still no sign of them wanting to do this soon. Fuck everything.

Oh crumbs. I just remembered that we are going back to Edinburgh on Tuesday. That’s going to be fun right now. That means I get three days of “rest” before getting to travel/walk/take care of business for 16 hours. Fun.

I put rest in scare quotes because I was alone with the baby for five hours yesterday.

Shit.

I feel like absolute shit. I’m past the point where I’m holding my right arm to my torso to prevent any muscle movement. Yay? This is all massively confounded by the fact that I feel really guilty about “Noah’s month off” turning into “Noah doing everything for Krissy for a month”. I feel so overwhelmed and guilty.

I’m in the narrow window of the month when I’m more likely to be interested in sex but hahahaha no.

I feel really bad about myself right now. I feel useless and lazy. I feel like somehow I did something wrong because I should have known that I needed to do a bunch of research before the surgery and come in with documentation of my fucking special needs. I should have known that it was too soon to take the sutures out. I…

I should have done everyone else’s job for them or it is my fault things went wrong. Because I didn’t do more than my share now Noah is getting stuck with my share and that feels really unfair.

I’m tired and sad and worn out. I’m sick of resting.

But, I emailed the professor who has been on my mind for over a month. I did a bunch of research into the education system in Scotland. I know more about what I’m going to need to learn over the next few years.

Even being idle doesn’t have to be idle.

Sidebar: I WANT MY FUCKING STUFF.

Complications

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I had the stitches out yesterday from the surgery I had on the 31st. Then the wound popped open and I had to go see another doctor to have the giant gaping wound restitched. Apparently that’s called suture dehiscence and it’s common for folks with EDS. I’ve been doing research this morning. Apparently EDS means I should have had my sutures left in for twice the normal healing time. I am going to figure out how to get a bunch of research on EDS to my medical team. I mentioned on the operating table that I have it and the surgeon said it wouldn’t matter.

My kids were understandably pretty freaked out. MC told me she had an unhappy tummy when she thinks about the wound.

I said that being afraid of the wound is like being afraid of riding your bike. I am going to die someday–that’s the end result of being alive. You are going to fall off your bike sometimes and the only thing you get if you are afraid of it is that you can’t enjoy the time you are on the seat. I am going to die some day and my body has a lot of complications that I’m trying to manage so that I can stay alive as long as possible. My body has more complications than average and that means I have to do a lot of research and I have to advocate for myself because keeping me alive isn’t the same process as it is for other people. If we waste a lot of time being afraid of my eventual death we won’t get to enjoy the time I am alive.

This research is extra important because EC has the same condition and the more I find out about myself the more I can save her from suffering through similar issues. She can advocate for herself earlier and harder.

Now I need to figure out how to get this research to my medical team. It’s entirely from highly reputable/peer researched locations. I’m not researching on blogs (Even though blogs are often pretty fucking accurate) so I hope this is taken seriously.

I need to assume this will take twice as long to heal as “normal”. I need to have the stitches stay in longer than expected and I need to say that to the doctors involved in my case. I need to be proactive because I am the only person who suffers from these fuck ups. My back hurts a lot again today. There was partially healed skin there that ripped open. It doesn’t hurt as much as it did the day of the surgery but it probably hurts as much as it did on day two or three post surgery.

I almost certainly tried to bounce back faster than I should have. I feel so much shame for “being lazy” when I don’t help and do chores around the house. But here I am with more complications post-surgery because I didn’t let my body have the time it needed. It’s like what happened after the septoplasty when I probably had three or four times as long of a recovery because I didn’t take the twice as long I should have taken.

Ugh.

I should probably sit in this chair for ten days or more this time. That’s hard for me. I must work to feel worthy. But if I don’t rest I will be less able to work in the long run. It’s complicated.

Aging and recovery

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I am not shaking off this surgery very quickly. It happened almost 48 hours ago and I have barely been out of bed since. I guess the upside of that is that the body battery on my watch says I am up to 84%. It said 93% when I woke up. Then I got up, ate breakfast, and took a shower. If I burned that much fucking energy with breakfast and a shower no wonder I feel like warmed up dog food.

Every time I breathe it hurts. The wound is in the center of my back. Every lung movement hurts. Any time I grip anything with my hands it hurts. If I lift my arms it hurts. If I hold my body upright under my own power it hurts.

I am feeling really fucking old.

I am also writing this from bed, where I intend to stay. I took pain killers the day of surgery and yesterday. I haven’t had any today and I don’t know if I will need them. Yesterday it was a solid 6 for me. Today it feels down to a 5 but it is still distressing and interfering and unpleasant.

I’m reading fluffy books because I can’t bear to try to seriously think. I watched some Netflix, but that’s less good for some reason.

Youngest Child is coping surprisingly well with me being in my room behind a gate. Her siblings and her dad are showering her with attention and play so she’s doing well.

I wonder how many days until I feel good enough to be up and about.

Always more

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Yesterday I was looking at the “body battery” function on my watch. I know it isn’t perfectly accurate or anything, but it measures how my heart rate is doing, compares it to how much exercise I’m getting and how my sleep I get and it sort of figures out when I need more rest and when I should probably get off my ass and exercise some more because I have extra body reserves. It was really low. I got down to 3 by the time I went to sleep. This is not a battery you are supposed to use up every day. It’s a negative thing to keep it under 20 on the regular.

Yesterday was a high heart rate, stress the fuck out sort of day. I don’t think it had to be and I don’t really know how to calm down. I opened the box of Christmas card (I’m never using Minted again because they ship the cards straight to you instead of to all the fucking addresses we entered) and learned I had to put return addresses on every envelope and stuff the fuckers. Just what I want to see when I really need to get those bitches in the mail. Surprise! Fussy work! Noah helped and it got done in a bit under two hours. Our address is a pain to write that many times.

I walked over to the Tesco and mailed off the Christmas cards, a letter to the grandparents from MC, the birth certificates we neglected to bring to the Consulate, and the notarized documents for selling our DVC property. Even with extra fast shipping and tracking on a lot of it… postage was a whopping £40. I sent all the US cards to a buddy and she’s opening the box and taking it to the post office to have them all stamped and sent out. If we had sent them all individually from here it would have been in the neighborhood of £140 all told. We are getting a deal. Thank you, kind friend.

I’m having some big feelings about freakin Christmas presents. A whole bunch of presents were in the boat stuff that is… I don’t know where. I am starting to feel really paranoid that they lost everything and just haven’t told us yet. I haven’t heard a word from the UK company in 11 days and that’s a bad sign. The last time I was told a UK shipping company would be contacting us for delivery it turned out the company was given our contact information in error and our stuff wasn’t on the god damn boat it was supposed to be on. This is incredibly distressing and I don’t know how to get my heart rate to stop skyrocketing every time I think about it.

Noah’s Santa present arrived broken in November. I’m glad I ordered the blasted thing as early as I did. The replacement is sitting in customs in town and has been for 3 days. I don’t know why since it already spent several days in customs in a different part of the country. My stomach hurts.

The parent of a kid who has been whacking on MC came to the school yesterday to intimidate/threaten my children (EC had told the boy to stop hurting MC or she would tattle… she didn’t threaten to hit him or anything) and that’s causing some rage and panic. The school needs to handle this mother-fucking today or I am going to cause a massive stink. I don’t give a flying fuck that it is the last day until after Christmas holidays. I’m not giving the school a lot of leeway here. I will go to the Council first and if it can’t be resolved to my satisfaction then I’m withdrawing my children. Fuck school. Other parents do not get to harass my children.

No wonder my heart rate is sky high.

My body feels like I am gearing up for a big fight and I hate it. I feel sick.

Oh, and YC is sick. Life is awesome.

Second round of triage.

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I went to an incest survivors support group for the first time on Tuesday. It went well. No histrionics. The other three participants have been together for over a year. I swear to god I am a professional new kid. 

At one point we went down a checklist of all the various symptoms and physical problems that Early Childhood Sexual Assault (ECSA) survivors have. With the exception of a shy bladder (I can pee anywhere) I have everything. If there is something bad associated with ECSA I have that problem. I am completely textbook. I spend a lot of time feeling fairly ashamed of this.

Stomach and GI problems are big for us. My stomach has hurt my whole life. As an educated adult I will label it anxiety. As a kid all I knew was that I kept being told over and over again, "Oh quite sniveling everything will be fine" and then someone else would beat the shit out of me. I have no idea how many times I was beaten as a child.  I went to 25 schools. I didn't get into a fight in any of the last five high schools. By then I had managed to avoid that specific issue. I got into fistfights–several in both middle schools. That leaves the 18 elementary schools. I don't have any memories of elementary school that are not tied up in people physically hurting me. The teachers beat me (in Oklahoma and Texas) and the students beat me everywhere.

My mom would tell me that people would like me more if I didn't dress like such a freak. From when I was very young I dressed like an orthodox conservative religious group. If I had been able to get away with covering my hair I would have. I wore long dresses. No one saw my skin. 

But I still got raped over and over. My dad sexually assaulted me/raped me over and over for more than a decade. Before I stopped him. First by requesting no more visitation and then when I prosecuted him.

The other eleven people who raped me all started out as "friends". They were going to "help" me. They "loved" me.

My stomach hurts all the time. I live my life in an incredible amount of fear.

When I turned 18 I decided that since being raped and beaten was unavoidable I was going to try and figure out how to control it. So I got into the bdsm community. I played with all the Big Names. I was an extremely heavy player. I have safeworded exactly once and that was when someone used a cattle prod on my vulva after I had specifically told him that my three hard limits for the scene were scat, water sports, and cattle prods. He saran wrapped me to a table so I couldn't move and then got out the cattle prod and said, "I hear you don't like these." I was 19. I had been in the community for less than three months. He was a Pillar of the Community. Of course I didn't make a stink.

That's just how shit happens in my life. I say: don't do ______ and then someone immediately does it. It is far safer for me to not think about the things I don't want to have happen to me. If I say, "I don't want to have sex with you" it is nearly inevitable that I will be raped.

No wonder I don't leave the house much.

So I need to talk to a doctor about my stomach and GI issues. A big part of the reason I smoke as much pot as I do is because I use it as an appetite stimulant. Most of the time my stomach hurts too much to eat. I feel cramping and waves of nausea on a daily basis. My stomac hurt. When I'm stoned I feel fine. I can even eat vegetables. Trying to eat vegetables sober means I will be in horrifying pain. It hurts so much to digest. And when I eat a salad completely sober I have burning painful diarrhea not long afterwards. 

This is why I didn't eat vegetables as a child.

Over the past few years of being a heavy stoner I have managed to get my diet to a place where pretty much any nutritionist would say, "Well done!" I get a weekly CSA box. We eat absolutely all of it. We eat pasture raised, humanely treated meat. Maybe slightly more than strictly necessary… but I don't think so. I eat a lot of fruit. We eat some starch still, but not even with every meal. White flour and white sugar are now things that are more like sometimes foods.

But I can't really eat sober. It hurts too much. I can take a few bites. I can never eat enough. 

When I was a kid I solved this by living entirely on carbohydrates and staying so full that my stomach never had the chance to get this empty painful feelings. Getting hungry is agony. Simple carbs are the primary thing I can eat without pain.

And I've almost entirely cut them out of my life because they are "bad for me" so when I'm in pain and I'm hungry and I want to eat I can sometimes end up sobbing and sobbing because either I can eat something "good for me" that will hurt me more or I can eat something "bad for me" that will long-term hurt me in another way  but provide instant relief.

I've been doing some googling on chronic bronchitis. I have to stop smoking. I have ordered a vaporizer and I will have no choice but to completely stop smoking. (It should arrive on Monday.) I grew up in a house where you couldn't see the opposite walls because of the haze of smoke. My lungs came pre-damaged. My mother was a chain smoker. Auntie smoked heavily during my early childhood but quit by the time I was in middle school. Uncle Bob smoked longer than her but I think he stopped when I was in high school. Our house was incredibly difficult to function in. Apparently chronic bronchitis is one of those incurable it can kill you super fast if you keep fucking with it sorts of things. I want to see my daughters grow up. I have to stop.

I think it is pretty reasonable for me to be scared right now. I don't know what the next step is. I need to be able to talk to a doctor about this. I need to try something else. This is something where I really don't know what to do. I have tried so many things over my lifetime.

And there's the weird pulsing thing that feels vaguely like trapped intestine in between the walls of my stomach muscles. That kind of shit sometimes happens after pregnancy. But I don't know what has been going on with that. Since I stopped marathon training the pain has gone dow dramatically hich makes me want to JUST NOT MENTION IT. SEE–IT'S FINE. Now it's genuinely in the 1-2 range for pain. It hasn't spiked up to 5 since October. Obviously I healed myself. It's fine. I can ignore it, right?

I'm not sure how to write this script for a doctor. I think of these problems in context of my life. But if I tell people about my life they respond with, "that is unbelievable" and there we are.

I tell Shanna that my problem is that a long time ago I had good reasons to be scared and my body has never managed to really understand that I don't need to feel scared any more. Something in my brain broke and that feeling just keeps happening even though it should stop.

I don't know how to make my stomach stop hurting. I don't know how to be able to jus eat food ithout thinking the whole time about how much pain I will be in when I have to shit it out.

Having children has been the best thing that has ever happened to me in terms of food. I don't have crap in the house because I don't want them to eat it. Well, we eat ramen a few times a week becaus like always hat is one of the primary things I can handle eating without pain. Yay simple carbs. When I am really really anxious it is one of the only things that doesn't cause violent stomach cramps.

Doesn't everyone spend all day every day fighting with how much pain they are in because they were stupid enough to eat vegetables?

Eating vegetables hurt as a child. So I wouldn't eat them. So people hit me and told me I was bad. And ungrateful. Let's not forget ungrateful. I am ungrateful stupid bitch because I won't eat what someone has made for me. Even though it will cause violent stomach cramps and horrible burning diarrhea. stupid stupid stupid bitch.

When people tell me to just "get over" my childhood I don't even know what that means. Should I have a lobotomy? Should I surgically cut out all of these memories? There will still be all the damage to my body. I don't know how to undo it.

I feel so scared.

(This started over here so it will be cross posted.)

I was asked a question! I

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"Triaging you mental health? That sounds really useful; I'd love to know more about this process if you're willing to share!"

tri·age

/trēˈäZH/
Noun
The action of sorting according to quality.
Verb
Assign degrees of urgency to (wounded or ill patients).

I are fucked up. If you want to know why, now there is a book!  I'm pretty excited about that. 🙂 The whole being able to post a link thing. Anyway.

Ok, not all of my fucked up is in the book. I have other stuff too. Lots of stuff. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning.

I'm not very good at talking to doctors. I have had a very high number of extremely negative experience with doctors. When you're starting off by being institutionalized and strapped to a table it's hard to not go downhill.  I went to a gynecologist once, asking her about extreme pain in my vagina and lack of libido. She told me to just think of something else because it didn't matter how it felt to me I was only doing it for the man anyway, right? I have had doctors refuse to treat my stomach until I get on psych medication. I have a lot of stories. I don't like doctors.

 Sometimes whether I like it or not I need help with my body. I try to get by without seeing doctors but there are things that I need them in order to accomplish. I want my arms to stop hurting. I understand that this is self-imposed damage; the problem is I really don't understand how to undo it or how to stop doing more. I require help. I need to sleep; without sleep my crazy is totally unmanageable. I've been having pain in my abdomen since Calli was born. the problem is that as more of a phantom pain. It will be hard to figure out what's going on there. It will take somebody trusting that I understand why this feels weird for my body; finding a doctor who will respect what I have to say about my body has been a pretty impossible task so far in life. I have been getting terrible headaches for a long while. I knew my vision had degraded. My eyes are working too hard. I have a lot of ambient stress in my life. I've had some really nasty bacterial infections that only got treatment because friends came to my house and dragged me to the ER. I don't seek medical care unless I feel like have no choice. Usually because I think there is a chance of something killing me or a bone is broken. 

When I decide to take the step of involving a doctor it's a big one. I need people to pressure me to go. I spend my life with the default expectation that I should be in pain. That is just life. I have been depressed for most of my life. It just makes everything hurt more. Keeping going when it hurts that bad feeds my masochism. Of course it is supposed to be this hard for me I'm a fucking loser.

Somehow I always keep walking. I get slower. I drop balls. I bring my focus of life in closer and exclude more and more people. But I always get up every day and am productive. 

So if I want to make a change in my body that is not about immediate death or injury or bleeding… it's kind of complicated The very action of scheduling an appointment and then knowing it is coming up aises my stress level throughout every level of my life. Everything is harder when I have the horrifying impending visit with yet another person who may dismiss me and refuse to help me because I am a fucking loser who doesn't deserve help. I dont really need more confirmation of how unworthy I am.

My abdominal pain is going to be hard to track down. It could be. I don't know. I thought about scripts of how to introduce the problem and I couldn't figure out how to word it for a stranger I don't trust. I can explain it to someone I trust. I can't say it to someone who is going to be nasty to me. I jus can't.

Walking in and saying, "I'm a writer. I hurt my arms." is one of those things wher they just believe you and then start treating you as a writer who is someone of status. quot;Oh what do you write? Do you write professionally?" 

A murky conversation revealed that getting paid for writing does make you a writer. I'm just starting in the transition after being a teacher and now I am a stay at home mom so things aren't instant. I told him I was just a blogger. He corrected me and said I published a book–which people bought thus I am a professional writer.

I like the doctor. 

When I say I need to triage I mean I need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse scripts in my head for how I will present data to a doctor in order to get what I want. If I can't come up with a good script I just can't visit that issue on a given day. I just can't. I have to perfect the script or I can't talk about it. So I try on a whole bunch of different ways of presenting information.

This time I focused on what would bring me the most instant benefit and the easiest available scripts for building trust. My abdomen is hard for me to talk about. I'm very serious about wanting to not damage my arms. I will gosh darn be proactive about that. I have friends who are in really bad places. I'm scared. Obviously there is information I need to learn in order to not seriously hurt myself. Ok. I can take that seriously.

And I feel like I have taken too much over the counter sleep aid in my lifetime. I need to stop. So I rehearsed how I wanted this problem approached.

I am not a long term insomniac. Since having children I have become an early waker. I'm aware that is a common depression symptom. I deal with atypical depression. Medicating it in the standard ways do not work. I have PTSD. It causes a lot of problems for me but they tend to happen around anniversaries and milestones and holidays. In the scheme of my life they are kind of brief. 

My problem is when I get one night of sleep disruption it starts a cycle. If I let it go I can end up being seriously sleep deprived and it can go on and on for weeks. I've been using the over the counter stuff to stop it at about a week. I want to change my approach.

I asked for something that would be safe to take every three or so days if needed. In general I hope I won't be taking it that often. I will be taking it as soon as I get home from therapy on Tuesdays because that night of lost sleep is a particularly rough one. I slept about six hours last night with .5 mg of Lorazepam. Usually Tuesdays are nights when I get two or three hours of sleep. That's a big step in the right direction. I can't take the over the counter stuff in the same way because I am too groggy the day after. I get home too late at night and I would spend all of Wednesday a zombie; I have to take over the counter stuff by 8pm or it is just a bad plan. I don't get that with the Lorazepam. I have used it in the past for anxiety. I am far less groggy than with over the counter meds.

So the triage process was realizing that I really need to treat my stomach issues, but that will require trust. So I need to go build a relationship. Which means I need to be honest about some of my other sub optimal body issues and kind of pick from the list. My arms aren't something that I experience shame talking about. It's a common, straight forward issue. I knew I could start there and have that be probably taken well.

I was scared about sleep. I probably wouldn't have brought it up only I know I have to stop taking so many over the counter sleep aids. I'm going to die in a car accident driving the next day. Seriously. They just aren't great for my body.

I have to have sleep or I can't manage the stress of my life. Right now my life isn't very stressful. I have a pretty easy life all things considered. But I still can't function without sleep. Sometimes I can't get myself to sleep. I understand my cycles. I've been living in them a long time. I've done hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of reading about my set of issues. I understand how my atypical depression/anxiety/ptsd bounce around. I can describe the process. I can point at dates on the calendar when I will have bad spells. Inevitable as the sun rising.

Figuring out how to explain it was hard. I worked on that script really hard. I am so ridiculously grateful it went well. 

I expected him to send me home with 5-10 pills and instructions to email him and ask for a refill. Instead he gave me 30 pills with three refills. I feel kind of overwhelmed because he asked me point blank questions and I told him that I overdosed on sleeping pills as a teenager so pills are kind of weird for me. I can't swallow larger ones very well–I have a really overactive gag reflex. I don't take pain meds like ibuprofen because I can't deal with swallowing the pills. I barely manage sleeping pills. Those suckers are blessedly tiny. And half a Lorazepam I can't even feel. It's great. 

I will be able to make an appointment to talk about my abdomen. And I'll find other things. But I'm going to wait until after the glasses arrive because I want to see how much difference in general pain the headaches are. I feel like right now I don't have a concise and clear enough case. I will. I'm working on it. I will go to PT and talk about posture and all kinds of aches and pains and ask for advice. I'm going to bloody well take advantage of having this access. I'll be user. Then I will ask for help with my abdomen.

That is what I can handle dealing with right now. If I try to do this faster than I am ready for then I will experience a general uptick in anger and frustration and I will take it out on my kids. That's not acceptable. It is not acceptable to raise my stress level beyond what I can handle while being nice to my kids. That's the line. 

The triage process is slowly increasing how much I think about a given problem until I figure out how to solve it while carefully watching how I behave with the kids. If I start slipping I know I need to distract myself and stop trying to solve the problem for a while.

I need to settle in to this level of progress. Find out what it feels like. See what it does for me. Then think about more change.

Baby steps.