My psychiatrist may be brilliant.
I've been in my standard winter useless-lump-slump. Every year I forget that it happens every year and I fight it tooth and nail, or at least "fight it" as much as I can without leaving the house or accomplishing anything and really just fight my own sense of self-worth. But every year I try new drugs and new therapies and new resolutions to not be generally miserable and this year has been no exception. So far it's been a sun lamp and that horrible, horrible Ritalin experiment and lots of yelling at myself to be fucking positive and get off my fucking ass and accept my health and my family and get on with it already.
It's not working. At all. Which is much of why I'm not writing. I don't feel like doing anything, writing included, but I also am trying so fucking hard to be positive and I don't feel positive so I can't write positive so I can't write. Hell, most of the time I can't feel because it's feel crappy or feel nothing. We're messing with my medications again or still or more or however you want to look at it. The migraines have been so much better, I don't know why The Sads have been so much worse.
But in the past 9 hours I've gotten more done than I've been getting done in week-long stretches, and without stressing or straining; just quietly working and accomplishing like I do when I'm not in depression mode. Like I said at the beginning, my psychiatrist may be brilliant.
I was trying to explain to him my listlessness and days of foggy nothingness, migraine or no migraine.
Is it cognitive? Motivational?
I don't fucking know, probably because I'm having too much in the middle of it to have a clear understanding of what it is.
So is it a medication? Does it get better or worse at different points of the day? When I've taken things?
I'm clearest at night. Always have been. I wake up at 9 or 10 and can only start to think then...which is right around or after I've taken my night dose of the same crap I take in the morning and feel like a fuzz-bucket.
So maybe not the medication...
BUT!
If I'm naturally nocturnal and am clear at night, what if I actually allow myself to be nocturnal? Get shit done at night when I can get shit done and sleep during the day when I'm a grog-monster? I can still see my friends in the evenings, when I see them anyway, and spend some portion of business hours awake so I can make phone calls and go to stores and things.
It took me about 24 hours to get over the idea that staying awake all night and sleeping during the day made me an automatic freak of nature and quite possibly bad person who just couldn't make it in society. But why? Other cultures have different sleep patterns than ours, anyway. It's just when the sun shows up that tends to dictate the most popular times for productivity, and even that's BS as proven by the existence of Cleveland where the sun never shines yet at least three companies still operate (though I hear one is in talks with Miami).
I'm still adjusting and figuring out what works with my biological, medication, dog-walking, hypothetical social, and errand-running schedules, but today started to feel right. I slept hard from 5-10 PM and it's now 7:15 AM and I've done all kinds of Etsy stuff, written this, worked on a BS time-wasting project I enjoy (in which case maybe I should be nicer to it and stop calling it a BS waste of time), did all the dishes, researched prices on printers and contact lenses, talked to my brother and Aural Girl on Facebook, and walked the dog twice. Maybe the return of the bitter self-hate is an indicator that it's bed time again. Also I'm itchy, another good sign. I'd wanted to write a bit about The Boy, but I'll give the extremely condensed version instead:
Boy. Talked hours and hours of IM pre-Christmas. Then didn't hear from him between Christmas and New Years. Heard from him New Years Eve, ended up talking to him on the phone for a long time, now no sign he's alive for a week. He's on vacation and working on his own stuff (and getting a shitton done, it sounds like). And I had a fear it'd be like Love in the Time of Cholera or something...passionate love letters curdling when faced with actual proximity...but he comes back in a week and I'm trying to play it cool when we all know very well I'm a giant dweeb whose unsure about everything in the entire universe, worst of all myself and second-worst-of-all Boys.
7:30 AM. Sounds like a good bed time to me.
Showing posts with label therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label therapy. Show all posts
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
No One Understands Me Like My Barometer
The fog inside my head spread out to cover Chicago.
I missed therapy this morning. First time I've completely missed a session. It sucks for my therapist because I know she'll often schedule me on a day when I'm the only reason she has to go to her office, but today even as I apologized I didn't feel my standard penitence and guilt. Wednesday we'll talk about ways to keep track of everything and remind myself and stay organized and all of that, but fuck that and fuck every well-intended coping mechanism. I've been poking around some of the other migraine/chronic pain blogs out there. All these things that make me feel crazy and worthless and alive and everything else get echoed across the internet. It's the stuff that makes it hard to take care of yourself when you most need to take care of yourself, the helplessness, the outlook adjustments, the assertions, and the thin shadow puppet "normal life" stories we project to distract and amuse ourselves. So I'm sorry to anyone I've inconvenienced with my disease, but try living with the uncontrollable monster that causes such "inconvenience," the guilt and frustration of constantly messing shit up, and the uncertainty as to whether or not anything you do has any kind of impact or if you're just being tossed around.
Some days I can cope with no control. Today was not one of those days.
Thank you, Aural Girl, for coming over and bringing me food and human contact. I don't think I even asked how her fucking trip was. She just did this huge thing. I was very lost and self-involved in fogland. The humus is delicious.
I missed therapy this morning. First time I've completely missed a session. It sucks for my therapist because I know she'll often schedule me on a day when I'm the only reason she has to go to her office, but today even as I apologized I didn't feel my standard penitence and guilt. Wednesday we'll talk about ways to keep track of everything and remind myself and stay organized and all of that, but fuck that and fuck every well-intended coping mechanism. I've been poking around some of the other migraine/chronic pain blogs out there. All these things that make me feel crazy and worthless and alive and everything else get echoed across the internet. It's the stuff that makes it hard to take care of yourself when you most need to take care of yourself, the helplessness, the outlook adjustments, the assertions, and the thin shadow puppet "normal life" stories we project to distract and amuse ourselves. So I'm sorry to anyone I've inconvenienced with my disease, but try living with the uncontrollable monster that causes such "inconvenience," the guilt and frustration of constantly messing shit up, and the uncertainty as to whether or not anything you do has any kind of impact or if you're just being tossed around.
Some days I can cope with no control. Today was not one of those days.
Thank you, Aural Girl, for coming over and bringing me food and human contact. I don't think I even asked how her fucking trip was. She just did this huge thing. I was very lost and self-involved in fogland. The humus is delicious.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Side Effects
Today at therapy I was yammering at a million miles an hour about everything in my life and in my head and being "on the prowl" last night and my therapist asked. "Are you feeling lonely?"
I've gotten much better at handling myself during my migraine isolation, accepting it as not a big deal because it can't kill me and I still can do so many things; but once I'm feeling like a normal person again, I want normal person things and I want them all at the same time to make up for days lost and prepare for days to come. It's like living in hurricane-prone paradise. Will everything you own be destroyed and washed away? Maybe. If so, you rebuild as fast as you can and board up the new windows so you have someplace to hide when the next one hits, if the next one hits. When they're bad, you're grateful to be alive, but still you lose something. The garden is washed away...is there a point in replanting the garden? Swing set crumpled...do you buy a stronger, better swing set or do you accept that you'll just have to be happy with the pool?
I hug the people I love a little too tight and want to eat as much of the world as I can. Yes, migraines are painfully lonely. I have my dog and I have as much internet as I can handle and I have wonderful people all over the country who send me text messages and make me smile, but sitting alone in the mostly-dark for a week and a half is lonely. More lonely than just the standard having to go through life without feeling complete lonely. It is lonely because I am alone.
That was one of the major plus sides to my friendship with NBF: we were happy just to be in the same room together, so I could be half-dead and he could play his computer games and we weren't alone. He was my husband-without-benefits. He wasn't particularly gracious about it, but if I needed to go to the store for something and couldn't drive or think, I could usually convince him to take me. Monday when I was mostly dead and needed to go to Walgreens I almost called Possible Boy for assistance but I decided I wanted to do it myself to prove I didn't need anybody. And I don't need anybody in a literal sense. For as bonkers and flighty as I feel much of the time, I'm quite self-reliant. But I don't want to be alone. This doesn't require Husband or even Boy, just humans. Basically, it's no surprise I was ready to feed last night and spent today itching to affect the entire universe.
I've gotten much better at handling myself during my migraine isolation, accepting it as not a big deal because it can't kill me and I still can do so many things; but once I'm feeling like a normal person again, I want normal person things and I want them all at the same time to make up for days lost and prepare for days to come. It's like living in hurricane-prone paradise. Will everything you own be destroyed and washed away? Maybe. If so, you rebuild as fast as you can and board up the new windows so you have someplace to hide when the next one hits, if the next one hits. When they're bad, you're grateful to be alive, but still you lose something. The garden is washed away...is there a point in replanting the garden? Swing set crumpled...do you buy a stronger, better swing set or do you accept that you'll just have to be happy with the pool?
I hug the people I love a little too tight and want to eat as much of the world as I can. Yes, migraines are painfully lonely. I have my dog and I have as much internet as I can handle and I have wonderful people all over the country who send me text messages and make me smile, but sitting alone in the mostly-dark for a week and a half is lonely. More lonely than just the standard having to go through life without feeling complete lonely. It is lonely because I am alone.
That was one of the major plus sides to my friendship with NBF: we were happy just to be in the same room together, so I could be half-dead and he could play his computer games and we weren't alone. He was my husband-without-benefits. He wasn't particularly gracious about it, but if I needed to go to the store for something and couldn't drive or think, I could usually convince him to take me. Monday when I was mostly dead and needed to go to Walgreens I almost called Possible Boy for assistance but I decided I wanted to do it myself to prove I didn't need anybody. And I don't need anybody in a literal sense. For as bonkers and flighty as I feel much of the time, I'm quite self-reliant. But I don't want to be alone. This doesn't require Husband or even Boy, just humans. Basically, it's no surprise I was ready to feed last night and spent today itching to affect the entire universe.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Between A and B
Possible Boy said everything I've ever wanted to hear a person say about something I wrote. And he meant it. Really, really meant it. If I could make myself cry honey and rose petals.
Aside: Other Girl needs a different name in here. It's the code name that seems wrong every time I write it. NBF always cracks me up to call him New Best Friend because how the name came about, the irony of it, the double-edged smirk. Possible Boy is a bundle of still-blooming kinetic energy, so I think of him as Possible Boy like a super-hero name: Super Man, Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Possible Boy.
I discussed Other Girl's need for a new name with Other Girl and, plied with wine, we decided on Aural Girl. We think it's funny.
We can talk now. All the things I was so careful to hide. Hide the crazy, right?
I want to fix him. I want to take all of his sad and make it go away. I don't know how to make my own sad go away, and I'm back on my weird self-defeatism again. When I feel physically ok, what am I doing to make money or somehow improve the world every moment of the day? Oh, look, it's that little hole in my heart. I can't just stuff it full of imaginary Possibilities and dreams to distract myself, so how do I fill it? I ate all the cookies last week. Warm dog, that feels good. I want something bigger, something to pop or burst or push me in some direction. I have to recognize that I'm the one who makes the choices, chooses to pop and burst things, can set things in motion at any moment. But I keep waiting for something external to happen; peg my emotional currency to random forces. I'll just keep playing until I get one good score, take a nap until I wake up refreshed, walk my dog in any direction until we come across something interesting. If I'm a feather in the wind, then I don't have to take responsibility for any of the decisions I make. Decisions have consequences and then I dwell dwell dwell. That came up in therapy today. Therapy that I had over the phone because I forgot we switched it today to her new office. I definitely didn't remember when I crawled back into my nice warm bed this morning post-writing, but I've been weird about it changing to a new place on a new day. What the fuck? People go about their business all the time with changing appointments and things. Ok, so this has been the only constant appointment in my life over the past year, but I also walk my dog every day and go to the bathroom and ingest food. The other things that I don't keep constant, I wrestle with my real commitment to them being constant. What is my life? What do I want it to be? How and when do I remember I'm alive? At least I'm not jumping off airplanes or anything, but I over-analyze every thought and action and then try to insulate myself from myself by hiding in the hole in my heart and reading or watching Hulu. Never mind all the things I got done today because look at all the time I spent not getting things done. Look at all the oxygen I wasted.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
I'm not the only one like this, but can I use that to inspire myself to keep improving? Hello, Annabell! Do you not remember what you were like six months ago? I'm making insanely tremendous leaps here. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day, and other such sayings and aphorisms and blah blah blah. How much do I coddle myself and say "look how well you're doing!" and how much do I yell at myself to get the fuck off my ass and stop analyzing my lack of motion and (apologies to Nike) just do it? Carrot, stick, carrot, stick. Isn't there another way? An easy answer? Something solid and definitive I can hold onto? I wanted a human to be that thing I could hold. I've imagined that as my panacea. I had a friend a few years ago who was adopted, and she always thought finding her birth parents would be her "cure." White wales and golden fleece, why do people all feel so incomplete?
My parents have all kinds of faults and difficulties and incompatibilities, but there is no question in my mind that they are the ends of one anther's beginnings. They also still have the incompleteness and the insecurity and the melancholy.
Books and movies and television are filled with lies. Like drugs, they get us high on the illusion of a simple answer, a simple happiness, definitive answers and paths from point A to B with story arc and happy ever after. When I wake up and remember I'm trying to narrate myself in a complicated universe, I throw temper tantrums and curl back into my head and books and tv and don't want to do anything that doesn't go into the story. No paying bills or daily tedium. No routine. You don't write about all the days you got up, flossed, brushed your teeth, walked the dog, ate cornflakes, watch Colbert Report, and then farted around on the computer for two hours before showering if you even bothered to shower. The narrative skips to what you did, and I feel I'm failing myself and the narrative and my debt to being alive every moment that isn't story-worthy. At least, that's how I feel while I'm writing.
While I'm talking to Possible Boy, I want to make everything whole, in myself and in him.
While I'm talking to Aural Girl, it's scaffolding around an archaeological dig; building up more support, digging a little deeper.
And then there's the general flock of Boys at the bar. It takes so little for them to tell me I'm pretty.
That's enough rambling and ranting for tonight.
And they all lived happily ever after
and had direction and purpose and willpower and shined like cattle guard on the Little Engine that Could.
Amen.
Aside: Other Girl needs a different name in here. It's the code name that seems wrong every time I write it. NBF always cracks me up to call him New Best Friend because how the name came about, the irony of it, the double-edged smirk. Possible Boy is a bundle of still-blooming kinetic energy, so I think of him as Possible Boy like a super-hero name: Super Man, Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Possible Boy.
I discussed Other Girl's need for a new name with Other Girl and, plied with wine, we decided on Aural Girl. We think it's funny.
We can talk now. All the things I was so careful to hide. Hide the crazy, right?
I want to fix him. I want to take all of his sad and make it go away. I don't know how to make my own sad go away, and I'm back on my weird self-defeatism again. When I feel physically ok, what am I doing to make money or somehow improve the world every moment of the day? Oh, look, it's that little hole in my heart. I can't just stuff it full of imaginary Possibilities and dreams to distract myself, so how do I fill it? I ate all the cookies last week. Warm dog, that feels good. I want something bigger, something to pop or burst or push me in some direction. I have to recognize that I'm the one who makes the choices, chooses to pop and burst things, can set things in motion at any moment. But I keep waiting for something external to happen; peg my emotional currency to random forces. I'll just keep playing until I get one good score, take a nap until I wake up refreshed, walk my dog in any direction until we come across something interesting. If I'm a feather in the wind, then I don't have to take responsibility for any of the decisions I make. Decisions have consequences and then I dwell dwell dwell. That came up in therapy today. Therapy that I had over the phone because I forgot we switched it today to her new office. I definitely didn't remember when I crawled back into my nice warm bed this morning post-writing, but I've been weird about it changing to a new place on a new day. What the fuck? People go about their business all the time with changing appointments and things. Ok, so this has been the only constant appointment in my life over the past year, but I also walk my dog every day and go to the bathroom and ingest food. The other things that I don't keep constant, I wrestle with my real commitment to them being constant. What is my life? What do I want it to be? How and when do I remember I'm alive? At least I'm not jumping off airplanes or anything, but I over-analyze every thought and action and then try to insulate myself from myself by hiding in the hole in my heart and reading or watching Hulu. Never mind all the things I got done today because look at all the time I spent not getting things done. Look at all the oxygen I wasted.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
I'm not the only one like this, but can I use that to inspire myself to keep improving? Hello, Annabell! Do you not remember what you were like six months ago? I'm making insanely tremendous leaps here. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day, and other such sayings and aphorisms and blah blah blah. How much do I coddle myself and say "look how well you're doing!" and how much do I yell at myself to get the fuck off my ass and stop analyzing my lack of motion and (apologies to Nike) just do it? Carrot, stick, carrot, stick. Isn't there another way? An easy answer? Something solid and definitive I can hold onto? I wanted a human to be that thing I could hold. I've imagined that as my panacea. I had a friend a few years ago who was adopted, and she always thought finding her birth parents would be her "cure." White wales and golden fleece, why do people all feel so incomplete?
My parents have all kinds of faults and difficulties and incompatibilities, but there is no question in my mind that they are the ends of one anther's beginnings. They also still have the incompleteness and the insecurity and the melancholy.
Books and movies and television are filled with lies. Like drugs, they get us high on the illusion of a simple answer, a simple happiness, definitive answers and paths from point A to B with story arc and happy ever after. When I wake up and remember I'm trying to narrate myself in a complicated universe, I throw temper tantrums and curl back into my head and books and tv and don't want to do anything that doesn't go into the story. No paying bills or daily tedium. No routine. You don't write about all the days you got up, flossed, brushed your teeth, walked the dog, ate cornflakes, watch Colbert Report, and then farted around on the computer for two hours before showering if you even bothered to shower. The narrative skips to what you did, and I feel I'm failing myself and the narrative and my debt to being alive every moment that isn't story-worthy. At least, that's how I feel while I'm writing.
While I'm talking to Possible Boy, I want to make everything whole, in myself and in him.
While I'm talking to Aural Girl, it's scaffolding around an archaeological dig; building up more support, digging a little deeper.
And then there's the general flock of Boys at the bar. It takes so little for them to tell me I'm pretty.
"She had begun to notice something strange.
Her ugly duckling features
Had undergone a change.
In short, she was growing pretty.
For the
first time in her whole life--pretty.
And the shock so stunned and thrilled her
That she became
Almost immediate
Incurably
Insane."
(From The Fantasticks by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt)
That's enough rambling and ranting for tonight.
And they all lived happily ever after
and had direction and purpose and willpower and shined like cattle guard on the Little Engine that Could.
Amen.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Pretty Pretty Princess
How do I let the Boy I actually Like know that he's the one I actually Like? So far I'm showing it by saying really dumb shit to him while I flirt easily with all the other Boys. I don't think that's the best plan. Are his mixed signals a symptom of him doing the same thing? If so, he needs to fucking call me. Ask me out. I have tried to invite him to things twice when he was validly busy, but I am not inviting him to a third thing without some hint of reciprocation. Ok, I have hints. I want more than hints. It's his turn. That's how this works. I'm done. I quit. Only I don't really quit because I'm clearly still interested. He meets all of my most basic qualifications (clever, has depth, and I'm attracted to him) and that's exciting. Poor James Spader is extremely smart and clever, and he has more depth than I give him credit for, but I'm not attracted to him. NBF thinks James Spader and I should run off together and have hyper-analytical socially awkward sex all the time, but NBF doesn't give me credit for being capable of working a social situation. Then again, I frequently forget I'm able to work a room. The Colombian and the 8-year-old boy who said "You look very pretty" as we passed on the street and the older CTA worker who told me on the train "You are a very pretty girl...a very pretty girl," I'm still not entirely convinced they are not all figments of my imagination. Hallucinatory side effects of the drugs, or schizophrenic delusions, or I'm asleep or dead and none of it's real.I have an easier time believing I'm crazy than believing I'm pretty.
That's not fair. I'd say it's about an equal chance.
Why would I be pretty now when I wasn't pretty before? People think I'm prettiest now in certain outfits (my cherry sundress, which isn't particularly showy or revealing, seems to get the most vocal approval) wearing mascara, some mineral foundation powder and blush, and Burts Bees Lip Shimmer in Nutmeg. But people still respond to me like I'm pretty now when I'm rolled out of bed and looking like crap. Did something vital change? Mature? Relax? Wisen? Unfurrow? I feel stupider lately; does that make me pretty? Or that I'm finally working through all the layers of gunk over my heart and really changing things about myself.
I've stopped being late to things. Since I still have no internal clock or sense of time, I'm frequently insanely early instead, but I've learned to leave way more time than I think I need, because I am aware that I don't know how long things take and if I leave with just enough time if everything goes right, something will go wrong. Then there's plenty of time for traffic or lifted bridges or impossible parking or whatever else comes my way. I have my therapist to thank for this.
My condo is 100 times cleaner than any other space I've ever lived in. Right now it's messy and it's bothering me and I'll clean all or part of it in the next 24 hours, I'm sure. My house is cleaner than my parents house. The maid service that used to come every other week is now scheduled for once a month and once I convince myself to clean my own damn bathrooms again I can eliminate them completely.
[Side note: lately, I haven't been able to write much. Today, it seems to be the only thing I can do. Write write write!]
Maaaaybe done writing for now. I can feel the barometric pressure changing in my head. Very strange. Trying to do my biofeedback relaxation. Pressure in the forehead, relax the forehead. Still haven't figured out how to relax my temples. If it doesn't rain or relax soon, I may have to lay down and/or take my Norflex/Vistaril cocktail.
Have you ever wanted to shoot a cloud?
Thursday, July 03, 2008
remiss
In an email from a friend: "I've missed reading your blog posts - have you given up on Annabell Jo?"
Hell no. Out of the habit. Distracted. That's bad enough, but I'm not giving up.
I'm still migrainy. Nowhere near as bad as they were, but I've had almost zero days with zero pain and symptoms. They're just more livable, and I'm doing a lot more around them, and I'm only really losing maybe a day or two a week instead of only having a day or two a week. I've sold my cards in person more than once now, and my aunt and uncle are hiring me to do some stuff on their website that can be done whenever I'm physically able. I want to take one class in the fall back at school, but I'm not there yet. There's a whole lot of tests and a few doctors' appointments I need to make to hopefully get me to that point, but first I need health insurance.
I still don't have health insurance. On the phone yesterday with the iChip people makes me think I'm really, really close, but I would have said that months ago, too, so I don't want to get too excited. The adjuster from iChip had the exact same problems with the idiots at my last insurance company that I did (it took her EIGHT CALLS to find someone who could give her my policy number, something I was never able to get in writing), so that made me feel a little less crazy.
My car is still "in the shop." It's now done except for a tire, which wasn't the result of the accident (Chicago pothole(s) damaged the tire and wheel itself), so it's out of pocket, so I got a tire for half the price online that has to be shipped from Saturn or something. I'm borrowing my sister's car until I get my own back, which my sister just loves, but my parents are redoing their kitchen which somehow translates to also repaving their garage and outdoor parking space thing, so my sister's car needed a place to stay anyway, and parking is terrible around her summer sublet apartment in the now-cool South Loop.
She and I went to the Taste of Chicago yesterday and had a very nice time. It was as uncrowded as the Taste gets, and I think I was sufficiently distracted by food and being the Person With a Sense of Direction to ignore my persistent mid-grade migraine long enough to have fun. With two strips of tickets (a total of $16) and "Taste sizes" only (each booth offers one of their items as a smaller portion for 3-4 tickets), the two of us had:
My grandma turned 85 yesterday and this past weekend most of my maternal extended family converged on San Diego. That's where NBF is for the summer and I almost didn't see him at all because he is a big fat poo-head. My mom's sister hosted the whole thing (she lives there) and she's pretty fabulous. That side of the family is much easier to deal with in general, since they say what they mean and don't care how much money you make. On the other hand, my grandma can be pretty difficult, but also people have stopped being nice to her and about her. And my siblings were being total schmuck-heads to me in general. Let's just say it was a real test of my Newfound Positivity (thank you therapy...I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic).
Speaking of therapy, big revelation this week: being less loud and/or obnoxious and/or "annoying*" and generally changing what I say and how I act to fit a situation isn't "giving in," it's more like being a teacher altering your methods until the students understand. My therapist is very good.
That should be enough for now. I need to get my ass back writing again in less than seven weeks.
*My sister thinks I'm annoying. All the time. She tells me so. All the time. It's swell.
Hell no. Out of the habit. Distracted. That's bad enough, but I'm not giving up.
I'm still migrainy. Nowhere near as bad as they were, but I've had almost zero days with zero pain and symptoms. They're just more livable, and I'm doing a lot more around them, and I'm only really losing maybe a day or two a week instead of only having a day or two a week. I've sold my cards in person more than once now, and my aunt and uncle are hiring me to do some stuff on their website that can be done whenever I'm physically able. I want to take one class in the fall back at school, but I'm not there yet. There's a whole lot of tests and a few doctors' appointments I need to make to hopefully get me to that point, but first I need health insurance.I still don't have health insurance. On the phone yesterday with the iChip people makes me think I'm really, really close, but I would have said that months ago, too, so I don't want to get too excited. The adjuster from iChip had the exact same problems with the idiots at my last insurance company that I did (it took her EIGHT CALLS to find someone who could give her my policy number, something I was never able to get in writing), so that made me feel a little less crazy.
My car is still "in the shop." It's now done except for a tire, which wasn't the result of the accident (Chicago pothole(s) damaged the tire and wheel itself), so it's out of pocket, so I got a tire for half the price online that has to be shipped from Saturn or something. I'm borrowing my sister's car until I get my own back, which my sister just loves, but my parents are redoing their kitchen which somehow translates to also repaving their garage and outdoor parking space thing, so my sister's car needed a place to stay anyway, and parking is terrible around her summer sublet apartment in the now-cool South Loop.
She and I went to the Taste of Chicago yesterday and had a very nice time. It was as uncrowded as the Taste gets, and I think I was sufficiently distracted by food and being the Person With a Sense of Direction to ignore my persistent mid-grade migraine long enough to have fun. With two strips of tickets (a total of $16) and "Taste sizes" only (each booth offers one of their items as a smaller portion for 3-4 tickets), the two of us had:- rib tips from Robinsons No. 1 Ribs
- cumin-dusted fries with mango chutney from Vermilion Latin-Indian Cuisine
- jerk chicken with red beans and rice from Vee-Vee's African Cuisine
- chocolate-dipped frozen baby banana from Aunt Diana's Candy Makers
- samosa from Arya Bhavan
- alcapurria (pork filled banana dumpling) from Sabor Latino
My grandma turned 85 yesterday and this past weekend most of my maternal extended family converged on San Diego. That's where NBF is for the summer and I almost didn't see him at all because he is a big fat poo-head. My mom's sister hosted the whole thing (she lives there) and she's pretty fabulous. That side of the family is much easier to deal with in general, since they say what they mean and don't care how much money you make. On the other hand, my grandma can be pretty difficult, but also people have stopped being nice to her and about her. And my siblings were being total schmuck-heads to me in general. Let's just say it was a real test of my Newfound Positivity (thank you therapy...I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic).Speaking of therapy, big revelation this week: being less loud and/or obnoxious and/or "annoying*" and generally changing what I say and how I act to fit a situation isn't "giving in," it's more like being a teacher altering your methods until the students understand. My therapist is very good.
That should be enough for now. I need to get my ass back writing again in less than seven weeks.
*My sister thinks I'm annoying. All the time. She tells me so. All the time. It's swell.
Friday, February 29, 2008
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.
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