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.

In dreams

In my dream, right before I woke up:

“Little girl! Do you know where you are trying to plant your seed? In that soil is all the sadness of the world!”
“Yes, I know, and I think that’s the best place for a tree to grow.”

Quick bullets to catch up with possible expanded stories later:

• I tried out for Wheel of Fortune. I was awesome. I won't find out if I made the show or not for another two weeks.
• I made new friends on my hallways when one of them was almost mugged at 2 AM on a Sunday night/Monday morning
• I'm now also friends with the substitute mail lady
• and a pedophile
• Classes start next week and I haven't signed up yet, but I plan to take prose forms and that's it since I'm still having lots of migraines
  

In and Out of the Flow of Life/Mucus

Screw neti pots and their recent surge in popularity thanks to Oprah and the New York Times - my OCD tendencies had me eying those saline nasal irrigation things for years. Normally I want one when I have a cold, since I seem to have been spared the classic runny-nose seasonal allergy crap, but with more evidence and doctors suggesting that perhaps my migraines are sinus-related, I splurged and spent $12 on the NeilMed Sinus Rinse kit. 8 oz of warm water (I did it right from the tap, livin' on the edge, instead of buying distilled water and heating it in the microwave) with the little packet of salty crap to make saline, mixed in the bottle, leaned over the sink, held it up to my nostril, and squeezed.
Gross. But the good kind of gross. Except for the part when it started snotting down the back of my throat and I had to spit out snot. That was mostly the bad kind of gross. But overall, I am pleased. I do feel better able to breathe through my nasal passages and feel they were very well cleaned and irrigated.

I'm a member of this awesome co-ed fraternity now: Alpha Alpha Alpha. They're really into travel, and they'll help you out anywhere if your car dies, and all sorts of places give you discounts if you tell them you're a member. AAA loveeeeee!!!

After spending way too much time and energy insuring my new car (have I mentioned lately I love my new car? I don't think I have. I love my new car.) I was getting renters insurance through AAA because they were significantly cheaper than anywhere else and my dad decided I needed renters insurance. Then the AAA insurance guy asked me about my car insurance and blah blah blah now I am paying a lot less and I trust AAA more than the no-name company I ended up with before. So that was all good insurance news, even though I spent a very long time going through the different quotes and people and things.
After the fiasco with my old health insurance, I decided to get new health insurance. Pay more and make sure everything was covered. I did lots of shopping around for that, filled out the application online, answered more questions over the phone last week when they called to clarify certain things about my health and insurance history, and told my mother every other day that no I hadn't heard back from the health insurance people yet. Well, the same day all my other insurance got happy, I got rejected from the health insurance. Probably because of my migraines (yes, they can do that), in which case I just need the letter to show up here that states they rejected me due to medical history and I can apply for the Illinois Lame People Insurance, but (and here is the moral of the story so I will bold it) Why is it so fucking difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to insure our health and property to a safe, legal, minimal standard?

My migraine has been much better behaved and I was all ready to do an I Love Topamax dance, then the weather shifted and it kicked my ass. Maybe less so, I'm not sure. It was a few days of bad that I first thought were the result of chocolate and didn't know what to do if it turned out chocolate was my trigger, but then I went outside and it was very clearly the weird crazy weather shift shit that normally gets me. Now the weather is back to Standard Chicago Winter and I'm doing better and I want to register for classes and such, but I still don't have this crap figured out and I don't want the same thing to happen again and I don't quite know what to do about it all. My school starts really late, so I have a few weeks, but I don't know what monumental change will happen in those few weeks to make things any clearer.

To end on a positive note: I have an audition for Wheel of Fortune on Tuesday! I got an email saying I'd been selected for an appointment time to audition for the Chicago taping of College Week! So excited!

and then it was 2008

I spent New Years in a ballgown* in the international terminal of O'Hare airport. On purpose.

After three weeks with his girlfriend in Florida, NBF's flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:25 PM on New Years Eve. Had I not seen the sign for the airlines when I dropped him off, I wouldn't have believed his domestic flight was really going in and out of the international terminal or that this "discount carrier" actually existed.
With all my recent migraine hell, I wasn't going to make any big booming New Years plans, and my one other big non-booming NYE possibility fell through, so I agreed to pick up NBF so long as I was physically capable of driving. A week of my family mostly behaving themselves and then an energy jolt from being back at my apartment again put me on enough of an upswing that I even drove to Target in a snow storm hoping they had better evening gloves.
I put on my funky Jessica McClintock ballgown and did my hair and make-up and packed a bag with:

• cheap champagne flutes and cheap champagne to match
• sparkling blood orange cranberry juice for my new booze-free self
• marijuana as my partying alternative, packed neatly into my first aid kit because I think it's both appropriate and funny
• cherries, because I had them in the fridge and they were portable and delicious
• these Trader Joe's raspberry brie filo appetizer things that taught me 1) my oven has no temperature numbers on its knob 2) it still works and 3) so does my smoke detector.

I checked Imaginary Airline's Website before I left and discovered NBF's flight now wasn't getting in until 12:12 AM, so I took my time. My dress fell all the way to the floor and I thought about wearing my best snow boots, but ended up in my black dress boots as a compromise between form and function. I drove through what was crappy driving weather, but I was in no hurry and my new car is super comfortable with its seat warmers and anti-lock breaks and Garrison Keillor the radio and hardly any other cars on the road and everything so beautiful and still and white. I could have been miserable and cranky, but instead it was one of those strange moments of pure joy where you just have to laugh at the beauty and perfection and ridiculousness of it all.**
Garrison and I counted down at midnight on the exit ramp to Terminal 5. In a ballgown. In the snow.
Terminal 5 parking is entirely outdoors. I found a spot right by the entrance, grabbed the champagne and food, lifted my dress above the sludge, and went in.
The terminal was warm and almost empty. I put my coat and purse and food down on some seats near the middle and wandered back and forth within 20 feet of my little "base camp." The monitor still said the flight was due in at 12:12. A man slept on a few seats nearby. I wondered if he'd missed the new year. A man and a woman stared at me. I smiled. After all, I was wearing a ballgown. Another man walking passed, also staring, said, "I'm sure whoever you're here to meet will be very happy; you look wonderful." I thanked him. I wanted to say, "Yeah, and the dickwad isn't even my boyfriend!" but I didn't.
I called my parents to wish them the obligatory Happy New Year. They were having fun with their annual party and my dad as drunk as he ever gets. We hung up and it was 12:24. I noticed a bunch of people over beyond where the bar was. I thought it was just restrooms back there and the bar was closed, but maybe there was something going on. A champagne toast? People coming out of the flight?
I picked up my stuff and walked over. Heads turned. I felt like a warped version of Cinderella walking into the ball, except this turned out to be a solitary "domestic baggage claim" in the international terminal and the closest thing to Prince Charming didn't even notice until I was right next to him.
We waited at least half an hour for the bags to come out. Another hour driving home in the snow, counting down with NPR to New Years on the west coast. Then I ate all but one of the brie things, we drank our respective sparkling beverages, smoked a bowl, and he and the dog fell asleep while I lay awake and convinced myself I knew what he was thinking and overthought every turn of his head and move of his arm for at least an hour before finally passing out myself.



*Ballgown is now one word because I think it should be.
**C.S. Lewis talks about those a lot in the appropriately titled Surprised By Joy. They're like microbursts of happiness. When I try to explain them, some people know exactly what I'm talking about, some smile and nod, and others think I'm crazy. I consider them much more logical than and a welcome balance to bouts of depression and sadness. Why is unprovoked sadness common but unprovoked happiness crazy?

Things I think are funny on Christmas

• Spelling Jesus "Jeezus" and Jeebus" and wishing everyone a Merry Baby Jeezus Day a lot
• The phrase "tree-worshiping pagan infidel"
  
• When collecting torn wrapping paper, refusing to put it in the garbage bag, saying quite deadpan, "I want to put it in the middle of the floor of my living room."
• The dead silence and glares that followed
• My Jew family going to the movies, because that's what Jews do on Christmas
  
• My Jew family ordering Chinese food for dinner tonight, because that's what Jews do on Christmas

You, Topia

I just cleaned the living bajeezus out of my kitchen. My fingers are all pruney. I still need to mop the floors and finally put away all the dishes and shit thats been living in boxes in the dining room since I moved in (AKA stuff I won't need unless I throw a dinner party), but then I can put up a large "Suck It" sign when my parents pick me up tomorrow.

I have a new guess at a possible migraine trigger: the turtle. It seems totally random, but it showed up right when this batch of migraines did, and it's right by my computer, so maybe something in the woodchips? And thinking back to when I had the really awful bout in Oberlin and Cleveland, that's when I had my turtle. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's worth taking the turtle back to my parents' house at least and seeing if the head gets better. How weird would that be?

Ever step back and wonder why basic food, shelter, and medical coverage aren't provided by the State? Of course upgrades should be available for purchase, but why the hell don't we make sure our most basic needs are met? We're just so primative in certain ways, it's amazing.

Happy thoughts for tonight

Standard overwhelming fears:

• Our parents don't love us*
• We will never live up to our parents' expectations
• We are doomed to turn into our parents
• We have already turned into our parents
• We are undeserving of our parents' love
• No one is deserving of our love
• We will never be capable of love
• We are unloved
• We are unlovable
• We will die alone

*For me, I've never been so concerned about if my parents love me or not. It's much more an issue of their disappointment. But that's just me...

"sick"

When people ask about this period in my life, I'm going to say I was "sick" in a vague finger-quotey way so they think I was dealing with an unwanted pregnancy or had a nervous breakdown or was otherwise put in some sort of mental facility or had some other medical problem so traumatic I don't care to be reminded of the specifics. I just feel like for all my pain and inconvenience, there's very little drama and story. Just pills and dog and no end to my whining.

pain knit pain pain pain

Stupid fucking inescapable pain! I just can't distract myself from it or do anything else or make any decisions right now. I want to do something else. I want to knit. Let's knit. But I finished the Priority #1 project (my cousin's Chranukah present fingerless mittens) and now I wanted to work on a dog sweater but I don't see my dog sweater book and I looked for it and I can't find it and it hurts to think any harder about where I last had the book and I just want to do something to distract myself from the pain and decision-making is not helping and it hurts a lot in my head so book must magically appear or I will have to just start making another pair of fingerless mittens for no one in particular because they are easy and I don't have to think and think=hurt and hurt=bad and I was supposed to call my neurologist again today but I was asleep and I don't know when he'll be open next week thanks to stupid Jesus (never too dead to insult religion) and I really want to drill a hole in my skull right now except it would have to be a quiet drill because loud drill would be bad.

in dreams

More sleep, more dreams, including:

• tracking down my redneck fugitive biological father, then being torn between working with the authorities to pass along his address and information or just leave him alone, which is all he wanted
• being part of a military tactical team that trapped a pedophile in action in a New York City park, but then something went wrong and someone set off an atomic bomb that split up and bounced a several times, creating four or five mushroom clouds around Manhattan and contaminating everything from the air to the water to the soil to the pizza. Places that claimed to decontaminate pregnant women and sell clean pizza were big deals.

tally marks

Last night I went to bed at 1 AM. Not that late for me. Then the dog woke me up at 3 AM. I thought he wanted to go out. He didn't. I fell back asleep before too long. The next time I woke up, UPS was at the door with a package for me. It was 4 PM. Holy fuck. I had all these phone calls to make today, and I sold another item on Etsy that I wanted to mail immediately. I took a lot of Vicodin yesterday, so today I'm avoiding the stuff in case that's what zonked me, but I'm on enough pills now that it could be anything. Pills pills pills. Also, Aunt Flow is in for her monthly visit, which makes everything so much better.
The worst part? I'm exhausted and my vision's totally fucked up and the pain is "around a 6" and I just want to crawl back into bed.
Drill hole in head now, please.

the coldness that is my life/tea

Last night I had a strange dream (so what's new?). My name was Coleen and I was at a hospital getting all these tests done and I tried to joke, "It's not like I have cancer," and the nurse wouldn't say anything. And I kept saying "At least I don't have cancer!" but no one would respond. Somehow, I figured out they thought I might have blood cancer, but they didn't want to tell me.

The passage of time is a strange thing when you're dead. Sunday is only different because there is no mail and I can't make phone calls to business establishments. Some days, all I have to show for myself are three more punched out pills from my Effexor packs.

I shouldn't be such a fucking fatalist. Yesterday I was in a GREAT mood. I was on two Vicodin and my dad came out and took me to get my new double-dose of Topamax at Costco and we picked up his iPod car adapter thing I pre-purchased online from Best Buy and I gave him his back his now LibriVox-filled iPod (both Jewnukah presents) and we listened in the car on the way to and from truly fabulous Indian food at Tiffin. I'm in Daddy's Girl mode these days, and it helps that he seems to know how to handle me in Migraine Mode, so we had a lovely evening while my mom was off visiting my sister and grandmother and aunt and other such relatives in California. It was blizzarding and cold and lovely. But because at this particular moment I am not on Vicodin and I am cold and in pain and fussy, you get the Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow version of my life. Lucky you!

Also, I am PMSed. That helps. A lot. Nine times.

Oh, crap. I put Chai in the microwave and forgot about it. Now it may be strong and cold. My life is ruined. Living with constant pain is one thing, cold tea is quite another.

I like writing. It makes me happy. It is cathartic. Particularly writing about myself. Narcissism is cathartic, too. Me me me mine mine mine write write write.

And this is without the Vicodin.

Now where's that effing tea.

Death and Marriage

This week has been pretty lousy and boring again on account of the migraines. That plot line is just so old I've stopped writing about it. I try not to tell my parents unless they call in the middle of it, and even then I find myself lying to my mother so she'll leave me alone.

New things within Migraine World: I saw a new internist on Tuesday who was great (even though her office sucked and made me wait an hour with no explanation or communication and saw people with appointments after mine before me) and she gave me an entire months worth of drug company samples of my Effexor and told me to come back every month to save myself the $300+. Awesome. I talked to the new neurologist again today and he's doubling my dose of Topamax and gave his blessing to my Vicodin popping and said call again in a week or so. He's very involved. I wonder how much medication he'll give me before he lets me drill a hole in my head.

As for the marriage portion of my post title, I have found my future husband. So I don't know how old he is or what he looks like or if he's a child molester or ax murderer, but those are all minor details. This is his site on Etsy. If you read his descriptions, you too will want to marry him, but I'm terribly sorry, he's mine.

bid-ness, yo

Why is it any of my mother's business if and when I call insurance people and doctors go to the DMV? And why is it her job to tell me if and when I should have done these things? And why, at age 25, do I find myself having to explain my perfectly valid reasons for rearranging the dates, times, and priorities of my errands to my mother? This is stupid. I know it's her weird neurotic thing, not mine, but it is unbelievably unnerving and annoying and I just have to avoid talking to her whenever possible until she gets over whatever is making her get all up in my bid-ness.

crafts and crap and life and strife and monkey and chunky

Saturday, I was a real person again! On my way out the door I ran into my cousin-in-law, who was rehearsing for a play in the lobby of my building. I then ran errands and met with a friend at the Handmade Market, a craft fair at a bar, coincidentally located around the corner from where my cousins live. It was pretty entertaining and I managed to buy only a $2.50 home-made lipgloss that is really quite lovely, though I was smitten with a series of bracelets made from old watch faces and subway tokens, but I don't wear bracelets and didn't know for whom to buy one. As we were heading towards the door to look for food, I was thinking I should call my cousins and ask where Bite, a restaurant I'd been to a few times with them that I liked very much, was located. Then I noticed that one of the exits for the bar actually led into Bite. So we ate at Bite and the food took forever and I was very hungry but it was good and the conversation was good and I was out and social and human, even if we were surrounded by hipsters. On my way home I stopped at Joann Crafts and spent too much money, came home and immediately made a completely lovely set of cards and one of my weirdest cards ever. I listed them on Etsy before going to bed, and the really weird one sold Sunday morning! I win.

Sunday morning, NBF and I drove my old car to my family-friends' house and signed papers and picked up my new car! I have a new car! 2003 Saab 9-5! It is GORGEOUS! It is all silver and sleek and pretty and leather and has seat warmers and I have to be nice to it and not mess it up because it is too nice to mess up. I even put a towel down on the front seat because my dog was getting snowy salty paw prints on it when we drove to my parents' house and I didn't want it to have snowy salty paw prints. It's too pretty to have snowy salty paw prints. Pretty pretty princess car.

Last night I went to my parents' for dinner. Brisket and latkes and menorah lighting. Jewish much? I'd mentioned that I had to leave first thing this morning because I had a lot to do today, with going to the DMV and errands and phone calls and whatnot now that I'm functional again and it would be a weekday. My mom was asking about all the specifics of my phone calls and such, as though it were interesting conversation. I hate talking about that crap. It's lame and annoying enough to have to do it without it becoming the topic of polite conversation. Plus as soon as my mom knows I have to do something, she takes it as something she has to remind me to do. So I kept being vague despite her odd prodding and changed the subject.

I frequently dream about being walked in on when I'm changing or going to the bathroom, or that strange uninvited people keep getting into my house or apartment even after I thought I locked all the doors. My subconscious isn't always subtle.

I drove home from my parents' this morning feeling that thick heavy pre-migraine tired, but I didn't sleep well last night, so I figured I'd pop pills and crash for an hour before getting started on my errands. Woke up with my alarm and MIGRAINE. Again. Fuck. More pills, more sleep. Still migraine. Basically slept all day and it's still here. I have another doctor's appointment in the morning, this time with a new internist, and since it's right next door to NBF's school I was driving him down there anyway, so maybe he'll get to do the driving and we'll see what New Doc can do for me if the headache doesn't die overnight. Fuckfuckfuck.

At least I'm getting several real days of real functioning between my migraine days now. Even if this is the new pattern, it's a better pattern. Let's go, optimism!

Burning stove experiment: Trial #3453462352

Maybe I do stupid shit/put myself in bad situations because I have no great global wars to fight or worlds to save, so instead I must rescue myself from the Perils of the Unpaid Bill or the Overdue Homework Assignment.

Maybe I am looking to be rescued by someone else. Oh no! Look at me, precariously placed on the edge of procrastination! Whatever can be done! And then my stupid parents keep being the ones to rescue me, and they are not the ones I want to have doing the rescuing. I want some sort of proof that the world is big-hearted and good and that someone else will catch me, like a fireman or an insurance agent, and set it all right again. But no matter how many times I keep falling on my head, I climb back up again to once more plunge over the side with the hope that this time will be different.

How many times in a row can a child touch a burning stove before she is labeled retarded?

Monday Revisited

I have to backtrack a touch, since the fire distracted me from other important Monday events.

Monday morning I called my "health insurance company." From the beginning, they made it impossible to get anything concrete with my name, dates, and benefits on it, constantly referring me to their general brochure. Had they not been the insurance through my school, I would have assumed they didn't actually exist and were some sort of scam or money laundering outfit. Well, I should have gotten something writing, because now they say my benefits expired back in July. What? I still can't get a frigging clear answer (customer service keeps feeding me lines from their general BS list and I'm beginning to think they don't actually have access to their own records) , but I have a guess as to what happened and it is partly my fault for not figuring it out sooner (even though they didn't mention my lack of being insured the several times I contacted customer service since July).
So I was extremely frustrated and a little freaked out because a lapse in my insurance means my next provider can consider my migraines a "pre-existing condition" and refuse to pay for their treatment for a year, and that is bad. But it isn't "killed a puppy" bad, as NBF put it, and my parents seemed to think it was "killed a puppy" bad, and I took it as "killed a puppy" bad, and it was all very tragic and "a clear indicator of my problems with basic organization and executive functioning skills that I have to do everything within my power to fix as soon as possible before I ruin my own life." My parents and I feed off of each other when it comes to this sort of intense demanding perfectionism, and it's not healthy. This is why I need to live in another state, some time before the invention of the telephone.

That was the morning. In the afternoon, I saw a neurologist. I printed out an amended version of the Things I Have Tried list for him and we spoke for less than 20 minutes, but still managed to get through the following:

• I have done a shitton in my pursuit of migraine panaceas
• Either my last doctor or my understanding of my last doctor was incorrect, because while Depakote and Topamax are both epilepsy drugs, they are very different and Topamax is absolutely worth trying, even after Depakote failed
• It is strange I have never been given a steroid in injection or "pill pack" form to break my cycle of headaches.

So I started Topamax, which builds up in my system and I take daily forever, and some generic steroid pill pack, which I take less and less of every day for a week until I take none at all.
Monday night was terrible. I was back to my worst level of pain and I gobbled down the Vicodin in desperation at 3 AM.
But since then, things have been much better. I went out for coffee (well, chai lattes) with NBF this evening and even in bright lights and loud music and talking, my head only poked at me a little. Maybe this will finally do it for real and I can get out of this piece of shit mother fucking 5+ week cycle of hell. That would be delightful