New Whirled Order

I feel stoned. I kind of am stoned, in that I am on drugs, but I am not on marijuana, or anything else illegal. I went to my new neurologist on Monday and he spent three hours with me and was extremely thorough and asked all sorts of questions about the exact location of my pain and the type of pain and if I preferred hot or cold on my face when I was in pain and if external pressure felt good or bad during headaches and things like that. He also determined that my specific type of migraine is very high stroke risk and I never should have been on a number of the drugs I've been on in the past. Awesome. So the new short-term plan is to keep me on what I was on most recently (50 mgs twice a day of Topamax and 225 mgs of Effexor XR once a day) so we don't mess with where I was before as we add the new drugs: Gabapentin (generic for Neurontin) three times a day and Oraphenadrine Citrate (generic for Norflex) twice a day as needed. The Gabapentin is normally an epilepsy drug, like Topamax. I'm starting on 100 mgs at a time (three times a day) for a week, and then I'm supposed to move up to 200 mgs at a time for week 2, and 300 mgs from then on. That means eventually I will be taking at least 14 pills a day, every day, theoretically for the rest of my life. We'll see if I can do it on schedule, since that's apparently a bit faster than my doctor would normally get me started, but since I've been so crappy and told him to "just fix it," he went with the more agressive dosing.
But I'm not so sure I can handle it. I've basically been stoned out of my mind since Tuesday. I'm not quite sure what I did the last few days. I slept a lot Tuesday, but then yesterday and today I know I was awake, I'm just not sure what I did. That's fucked up. I made some greeting cards. That's good, I guess. I don't entirely remember making the greeting cards, but I have the results to prove I did it. I've been on Etsy, too. And some other websites. And I took pictures of my dog in his hoodie in the snow on the beach. Oh! And yesterday I went to my first therapy appointment with my new therapist! How the hell did I forget about that!?! I got on a bus and went downtown and she was good and quickly recognized that I am intellectually aware of many of the things I need to see (the big one being that my mom doesn't see anyone as capable of doing anything without her help and it's not just that she sees me as a permanent child who will never be able to be a functional adult) but our big goal for therapy needs to be getting from the mental knowing to the internal feeling and accepting. She also told me to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, so I stopped at Borders on the way home. Then the bus was running late and there were a gazillion people waiting for it, so I figured I'd go into Lush and poke around since the first bus would be crowded and just get one of the next busses. And I did. And I ended up talking to the salesladyperson about Etsy a lot since she had a friend who sold jewelry on there and she was thinking about opening a shop of her own, so I gave her my card and she gave me a bunch of free samples (standard at Lush anyway) and as I left my bus was just pulling up and I even got a seat. I ruled.

Maybe now I'm just tired. It is after 5 AM. I thought it was 4 AM at 8 PM, but now it's really after 5 AM. In theory I'll get used to these drugs and not feel so damned stoned anymore, but I'm hoping that happens soon. The migraine is better, though not gone, but holy crap I feel stoned. Oh, and I also watched The French Connection, which wasn't nearly as good as The Last Picture Show, and The French Connection won the Oscar that year. Gladiator also won the best picture Oscar, so there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

I'm going to go to the bathroom and refill my water bottle and go to bed now. I don't think I am going to take another Norflex because I am plenty stoned as it is.

I listen to emotional music because I am dead inside

This is a friggin' long entry. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, and very little of it talks about anything I've actually done for the past month. If you only read one part, read the blue text. If you read any more than that, sorry in advance.

I don't know why The Sads are winning now as opposed to some other moment over the last few weeks, but they are. Probably hormone-related and all terribly logical, but I'm still feeling The Sad. I should listen to Emo and wear sweatbands around my wrists.

I called a therapist today and left a message. I've had the business card of said therapist for a month, but my parents decided to give me an ultimatum on Friday that I absolutely HAD to 1) start therapy 2) find a good psychopharmacologist and 3) hire a housekeeper on a weekly basis. They thought I'd be most upset about #3. Mostly I was upset that they were giving me Life Ultimatums, but as we all know, They know best and have not only a right but a duty to tell me what to do because They are right. At the moment it's particularly frustrating because, as I check off month number four of seriously compromised physical wellbeing, I do need some help and I do need to get my ass to the therapist but I've had such a hard time convincing them I'm a grown-up that relinquishing any of that is terrifying. And being my parents, their fucked up shit is ever so close to my fucked up shit, so it all gets more and more fucked up and shitty and I start regressing and now I'm back in my hole avoiding the universe. And I hate myself for getting like this, and it's not nearly as bad as it's gotten in the past, but knowing my cave-dwelling tendency, it freaks me out to watch myself bolting back in that direction. I have an appointment with a new neurologist on Monday, and I've done a lot of the crap to get myself on the state's health insurance thing, but I haven't followed up and I needed to do that today. I didn't. I called the therapist (and my regular doctor to restock my supply of Effexor samples, though my head was being too fussy to drive down there) and that was very good, but I didn't deal with the health insurance. I should have dealt with the health insurance a week ago. And instead of it just being the top priority on my To Do list tomorrow, it's a fucking albatross.

On the other hand, Etsy has been great. I'm actually selling things. Not nearly enough to consider it a job or even a real income, but at least my crafting hobby is paying for itself and it's given me something to do in my state of permanently-semi-dead. It's mostly a feel-good lovey-dovey community and the chatrooms provide a vague sense social interaction, and when I make something and someone likes it enough to pay me money for it, I feel deeply complimented and at least a little bit productive. I think the next step in Living-With-Migraines is to find some sort of work-from-home part-time data entry job.

It all comes back to trying to balance my current life formula. What percentage of my time should be spent doing each of the following to make the most out of my life:

• actively looking for medical and trying out answers and solutions to my migraines (neurologists, headache clinics, clinical trials, etc.)
• actively looking for and trying out "alternative" answers and solutions to my migraines (acupuncture, yoga, howling at the moon, etc.)
• learning to live with my migraines and seeking out new short- and long-term paths (find more lucrative work-from-home strategies, get degree online, join chronic pain support groups)
• nursing my wounds and just trying to do things that make me happy on a basic day-to-day level (sleeping, Etsy, dog snuggles, watching movies, etc.)

I want answers. And now I think my parents are convinced most of my migraines are self-perpetuating from my depression, and that's definitely on my list of possibilities, but my parents are back so deep in my skull I can't tell if that's really just me thinking it, if it's them thinking it and so I think it, or if both they think it and I think it but one is not necessarily dependent on the other. I'd say a lot of my opinions are going through this process right now. It's like back when I was 10 and I realized for the first time that everything I thought I knew was only because I accepted what I'd been told.

If I let myself, I could easily spend my entire life in an epistemological daze/fury.

It's hard when the voice of my own nagging and self-doubt is echoed by my parents, and then their voices echo in my head in an orgy of aphorisms and "shoulds."

A month or two back my whole immediate family was out to dinner at a very good restaurant. As we were all quite stuffed and contented and happy with our meals, we started ranking our favorites to least favorites from each course. I pointed out, half-joking, that we were such a judgmental family we couldn't even get through a meal without judging and ranking everything instead of just talking about how delicious things were and why. Everyone got really quiet. We'd switched to judging ourselves for being too judgmental.

This is why I'm crazy.

Tomorrow, I will deal with the health insurance. Head willing, I will go to the post office. I will also gather the plates and bowls and things that have overflown my garbage can by my desk and put them in the trash and take that trash outside. Baby steps.

"Baby steps" is so something my father would say.

The Frozen Tundra that is My Soul

It's almost 3 AM. I just finished picking the chicken out of my cold leftover mediocre semi-homemade masala with a serrated knife, because that's what was clean. I dipped a multigrain roll in the sauce (also cold), too. I couldn't really taste the roll, so it was ok. Now I'm eating the Hershey's kisses my aunt sent me. This is why I had indigestion earlier and it will probably give me indigestion again. My period decided to show up 8 hours ago. My apartment is freezing and I am wearing 2-4 layers on almost every part of my body, then wrapped in a bathrobe and again in a blanket. I keep hoodies and hats on my head at all times, and frequently just give up and crawl back into my bed cocoon in front of my ever-blasting space heater. My dog is there 90% of the time now, and it's making him restless and whiny. We are both restless and whiny, but too frozen and fussy and lonely and stagnant to do anything about it. Happy fucking Valentines Day.




PS- Things haven't actually been that bad and I'll post a real post later. But it's 3 AM and I'm fussy so this is the post I'm posting now.