Friday, April 29, 2011
Getting ready...
Oh my goodness you guys, I just went through all my previous BADD posts, and they're all so negative. I'm going to try to come up with something more positive, but I'm in a pretty gnarly mood, so the rant I've got rolling around in my head right now might be it. :shrug: it's Ableism, it's not all going to be shiny and nice, right? Anyways, please consider Blogging Against Disabilism, this Sunday May 1, 2011. You can sign up here, at the beautiful Goldfish's place.
Friday, April 15, 2011
(PS - Spell check? If Unreedemed is a word, why isn't unredeeming?)
I spent the week feeling like I was in the middle of an ocean, floating and bobbing along, attempting to eat crackers and drink ginger ale without having them revisit me. That's what I get for trying new drugs. And now that that is starting to truly pass (hey: I ate real, non-cracker foods today... this is a plus! Except do you know what happens to your stomach when you try to put non-cracker foods in it after a week of crackers? It does not take kindly to the intrusion, I can tell you that!), I get to have huge emotional upheavals instead! Hooray!
Seriously. Sometimes I think moving to Australia* might be the wisest choice. I'm starting to think of aliases, see which ones fit me best. I don't want to talk about it again, right now, but suffice it to say that I have both cried and cursed more in the last 8 hours then I have in the last three years. Easily. If you are guessing that the drama is somehow sister related, you would be correct. You would also be correct if you guessed that there was no actual resolution (peaceable or otherwise) /conclusion achieved in the final analysis of the day. In fact, while I think some very important things were said, I'm not sure if any of the important things that needed to be accomplished were accomplished. But I tried. God almighty, I don't think I could have tried any harder, and that's all anybody can ask of me.
By "anybody", I of course mean 'anybody but me ', since I apparently am not satisfied with having done my best, but instead am upset that I wasn't able to achieve miracles and (our little) world peace while I was at it, but that's just because I am kind of a jerk to myself.
I am going to go and find something completely unredeeming to watch on television, or some cracktastic type of book to read, or a computer game that will devour my soul for a few hours. (Or perhaps all three of those things at the exact same time.) Anything to not be me for a little bit.
I'll check back in with you all soon, and hope your weekend is full of bright spots that don't include crackers or drama (unless crackers &/or drama are your idea of happiness, in which case, have at it!)
*Bonus points for all children's lit majors who managed to find the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad portion of today's post.
Seriously. Sometimes I think moving to Australia* might be the wisest choice. I'm starting to think of aliases, see which ones fit me best. I don't want to talk about it again, right now, but suffice it to say that I have both cried and cursed more in the last 8 hours then I have in the last three years. Easily. If you are guessing that the drama is somehow sister related, you would be correct. You would also be correct if you guessed that there was no actual resolution (peaceable or otherwise) /conclusion achieved in the final analysis of the day. In fact, while I think some very important things were said, I'm not sure if any of the important things that needed to be accomplished were accomplished. But I tried. God almighty, I don't think I could have tried any harder, and that's all anybody can ask of me.
By "anybody", I of course mean 'anybody but me ', since I apparently am not satisfied with having done my best, but instead am upset that I wasn't able to achieve miracles and (our little) world peace while I was at it, but that's just because I am kind of a jerk to myself.
I am going to go and find something completely unredeeming to watch on television, or some cracktastic type of book to read, or a computer game that will devour my soul for a few hours. (Or perhaps all three of those things at the exact same time.) Anything to not be me for a little bit.
I'll check back in with you all soon, and hope your weekend is full of bright spots that don't include crackers or drama (unless crackers &/or drama are your idea of happiness, in which case, have at it!)
*Bonus points for all children's lit majors who managed to find the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad portion of today's post.
Friday, April 08, 2011
Postage Stamp Island...
As much as my brother-in-law might laugh at me for attempting to rap (or, more accurately 'sing a rap song',) my current life resembles nothing so much as the line from Grandmaster Flash's The Message "Don't push me, cuz I'm Close. To. The. Edge. (I'm trying not to lose my head)"
My pain has been turning it up to eleven lately, following a couple of infection setbacks and my dumb insistence that I do not need as much down time as my body thinks it requires (because "downtime is boring!" ... So is suffering, you ass). Because of that, I am living with the near constant feeling that my muscles and bones are attempting to burst through my skin, as if I've taken some excess Skele-gro* without the accompanying broken bones. You know how on the Hulk (original TV show Hulk), his eyes would glow green, and then his clothes would start falling to pieces as he just expanded into this terrifying green monster? Yeah, it basically feels like that, complete with bonus "Hulk Smash!!!!#!@!" anger because who the hell wants to feel like that? It hurts to breathe, or move, or put clothes on - I literally cried the other day, when we had to leave the house and I had to put on a bra. (And yes, I know it is beyond stupid to put whether or not you look good over whether or not a piece of clothing makes you hurt so much you cry, but I can't get over it: Leaving the house without my bra makes me feel naked and not in a good way.) Sleep is a joke, because rolling over in bed is as dangerous as rolling through a field of landmines, and the other day I just got up and baked cookies at 2 in the morning because if I laid there for one more minute, I was going to flip out.
This is usually the point where my readers who don't have chronic illnesses say something like "Why don't you call your doctor and tell him/her that you're hurting so much?" And I appreciate the thought, I really do, but here's the thing: My doctor's know. They know, and it's not that they don't care, because they do - it's that they don't have the answer for me. They just don't know it. They keep trying - I am, in fact on my third new medication trial in as many months - but if you don't know the answer, you just don't. So calling them and telling them that I feel like the Hulk, it doesn't get either of us very far. "Give the meds more time to work" they say. Or "Did you take the narcotics I gave you - you don't have to be a hero" Right: because wanting to be present, even vaguely in my own life, is heroic. No - I am medicated to the gills, as much as I can be without just being completely out of it (and I can't guarantee that either, sometimes), but (so far), we just don't know the answer.
So there's that. But it's not just that: I feel near the edge on just about everything.
While I won't be homeless if the government decides to go offline this weekend (as I know some will), if it continues for any length of time I will be medication-less, which, for me is quite a serious condition. (I depend on my government to allow me to breathe: what do you depend on it for?) There's no way I could afford the $400 required for a 30 day supply of one of my medications, let alone the over a thousand dollars that would be their sum total - and that's just for the basics, not the 'optional' things like the stuff I use to treat my allergies or the cream I use when the allergy stuff doesn't work. Financial worries would start building if the government was shut down for any length of time, but that's biting off more worries than I need, at this point. But we're there - at the edge.
I'm at the edge with my family, with sisters who are so hurt and angry and frustrated/ing that I just feel like everything I do is wrong. With my mom who's obviously hanging on to her own edge, but won't admit it. With my dad who's having problems at work and thinks it's funny to come home early and say things like "I got fired." (Hint: it is not funny.) With pregnant cousins and non pregnant me, with sisters moving to freaking Iowa or getting married (with no plans, yet!) in the fall, and brothers who don't see the glory of their own children. With a grandmother who asks you for help picking out her funeral clothes when you go over to visit her, in the same breath that she tells you how well she is doing. ("It's not morbid: it's practical. I'm going to be 94." Well, let's be the opposite of practical, then, shall we?) With best friends who don't call or write, and with myself for not calling or writing.
I'm just so close to the edge that it feels like everywhere I turn, there's another edge. Like I woke up on an island, all of the sudden, instead of a continent. Like there's no place safe.
And yet, between me and those edges are little girls with curly hair who say things like "My tooth is loose, even though you can't feel it move," because the girl down the street got money from the "Tooth Bunny". There's 11-yr-olds who direct their own 60 second movie clips on low res digital cameras, that include such action packed sequences as "Fort elephante & how it crumbled!" There's three derpy fluffy bunnies made out of pom-poms and googly eyes, named KC, Sunshine & Band. There's meringue cookies at two o'clock in the morning, and the fact that I can make them sans recipe. There's the fact that the nurse at Zack's office, the much loved Maryellen, worked for five days to get the approval I needed for this latest medication, even though the MassHealth people were being assholes about it. There's Facebook statuses from people far away that I miss very much. There's the fact that my window is open right now, even though it's freaking April. There's all these words typed into little boxes all over the country that show up on my screen, right here on my bed. There's a lot of stuff that pushes me back, and I try to remember it.
The edges are still there though, and my island's getting smaller.
Print Available Here
*Shout outs** to Harry Potter, the Hulk, KC & The Sunshine Band and Grandmaster Flash in the same blog post? Yeah, I'm complicated.
** Using the term 'shout-out'? No, you're really not.
My pain has been turning it up to eleven lately, following a couple of infection setbacks and my dumb insistence that I do not need as much down time as my body thinks it requires (because "downtime is boring!" ... So is suffering, you ass). Because of that, I am living with the near constant feeling that my muscles and bones are attempting to burst through my skin, as if I've taken some excess Skele-gro* without the accompanying broken bones. You know how on the Hulk (original TV show Hulk), his eyes would glow green, and then his clothes would start falling to pieces as he just expanded into this terrifying green monster? Yeah, it basically feels like that, complete with bonus "Hulk Smash!!!!#!@!" anger because who the hell wants to feel like that? It hurts to breathe, or move, or put clothes on - I literally cried the other day, when we had to leave the house and I had to put on a bra. (And yes, I know it is beyond stupid to put whether or not you look good over whether or not a piece of clothing makes you hurt so much you cry, but I can't get over it: Leaving the house without my bra makes me feel naked and not in a good way.) Sleep is a joke, because rolling over in bed is as dangerous as rolling through a field of landmines, and the other day I just got up and baked cookies at 2 in the morning because if I laid there for one more minute, I was going to flip out.
This is usually the point where my readers who don't have chronic illnesses say something like "Why don't you call your doctor and tell him/her that you're hurting so much?" And I appreciate the thought, I really do, but here's the thing: My doctor's know. They know, and it's not that they don't care, because they do - it's that they don't have the answer for me. They just don't know it. They keep trying - I am, in fact on my third new medication trial in as many months - but if you don't know the answer, you just don't. So calling them and telling them that I feel like the Hulk, it doesn't get either of us very far. "Give the meds more time to work" they say. Or "Did you take the narcotics I gave you - you don't have to be a hero" Right: because wanting to be present, even vaguely in my own life, is heroic. No - I am medicated to the gills, as much as I can be without just being completely out of it (and I can't guarantee that either, sometimes), but (so far), we just don't know the answer.
So there's that. But it's not just that: I feel near the edge on just about everything.
While I won't be homeless if the government decides to go offline this weekend (as I know some will), if it continues for any length of time I will be medication-less, which, for me is quite a serious condition. (I depend on my government to allow me to breathe: what do you depend on it for?) There's no way I could afford the $400 required for a 30 day supply of one of my medications, let alone the over a thousand dollars that would be their sum total - and that's just for the basics, not the 'optional' things like the stuff I use to treat my allergies or the cream I use when the allergy stuff doesn't work. Financial worries would start building if the government was shut down for any length of time, but that's biting off more worries than I need, at this point. But we're there - at the edge.
I'm at the edge with my family, with sisters who are so hurt and angry and frustrated/ing that I just feel like everything I do is wrong. With my mom who's obviously hanging on to her own edge, but won't admit it. With my dad who's having problems at work and thinks it's funny to come home early and say things like "I got fired." (Hint: it is not funny.) With pregnant cousins and non pregnant me, with sisters moving to freaking Iowa or getting married (with no plans, yet!) in the fall, and brothers who don't see the glory of their own children. With a grandmother who asks you for help picking out her funeral clothes when you go over to visit her, in the same breath that she tells you how well she is doing. ("It's not morbid: it's practical. I'm going to be 94." Well, let's be the opposite of practical, then, shall we?) With best friends who don't call or write, and with myself for not calling or writing.
I'm just so close to the edge that it feels like everywhere I turn, there's another edge. Like I woke up on an island, all of the sudden, instead of a continent. Like there's no place safe.
And yet, between me and those edges are little girls with curly hair who say things like "My tooth is loose, even though you can't feel it move," because the girl down the street got money from the "Tooth Bunny". There's 11-yr-olds who direct their own 60 second movie clips on low res digital cameras, that include such action packed sequences as "Fort elephante & how it crumbled!" There's three derpy fluffy bunnies made out of pom-poms and googly eyes, named KC, Sunshine & Band. There's meringue cookies at two o'clock in the morning, and the fact that I can make them sans recipe. There's the fact that the nurse at Zack's office, the much loved Maryellen, worked for five days to get the approval I needed for this latest medication, even though the MassHealth people were being assholes about it. There's Facebook statuses from people far away that I miss very much. There's the fact that my window is open right now, even though it's freaking April. There's all these words typed into little boxes all over the country that show up on my screen, right here on my bed. There's a lot of stuff that pushes me back, and I try to remember it.
The edges are still there though, and my island's getting smaller.
Print Available Here *Shout outs** to Harry Potter, the Hulk, KC & The Sunshine Band and Grandmaster Flash in the same blog post? Yeah, I'm complicated.
** Using the term 'shout-out'? No, you're really not.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Cursed wombats are so loud!
Well, I took my pain pills at noon, and now it's about 4:30, and they're just kicking in. That's the short explanation of why I got almost nothing accomplished today. (I did manage to run out this morning for a blood test I needed to get done, so that's not absolutely nothing, it's just almost nothing.) All of the phone calls and errands and what have you will be postponed until another day, because I am not feeling my best. Now would probably also be an appropriate time for us to discuss why pain medications are so useless for my chronic pain condition, but since none of us (as far as I know) are chemistry geniuses, we'll just put that aside for now*.
Instead I've brought you some random internet interestingness, in case you wanted to know where my mind has been wandering lately.
First up, this Cracked article about "Seven basic things you won't believe you are doing wrong," which is not only curious, but quite informative. I was originally led there while digging up more info on deep breathing, but the other six (particularly that part about sleeping in segments) were intriguing enough that I thought I'd pass them along to y'all.
I've also found a ton of stuff in/through Pinterest, which, if you are not on there and do not have copious amounts of time to be sucked into gorgeousness, probably you should continue to maintain your distance. I'd link you to my pinterest account, but it has my real name, because I had to sign up through Facebook, originally and then FB friends starting following me, so I couldn't very well un-connect them. But here's one of my favorites from there, anyway: A lovely book nook:
Go here for some grammar nerdiness.
Wishing I were in New York for this weekend's Philharmonic performance of Company, with the most amazing cast.
And lastly, the blasted wombats (via Damn You Autocorrect)
PS - If you are a chemistry genius, could you please get started on creating something that works for my chronic pain condition? I'd appreciate it; K Thnx Bye!)
Instead I've brought you some random internet interestingness, in case you wanted to know where my mind has been wandering lately.
First up, this Cracked article about "Seven basic things you won't believe you are doing wrong," which is not only curious, but quite informative. I was originally led there while digging up more info on deep breathing, but the other six (particularly that part about sleeping in segments) were intriguing enough that I thought I'd pass them along to y'all.
I've also found a ton of stuff in/through Pinterest, which, if you are not on there and do not have copious amounts of time to be sucked into gorgeousness, probably you should continue to maintain your distance. I'd link you to my pinterest account, but it has my real name, because I had to sign up through Facebook, originally and then FB friends starting following me, so I couldn't very well un-connect them. But here's one of my favorites from there, anyway: A lovely book nook:
Go here for some grammar nerdiness.
Wishing I were in New York for this weekend's Philharmonic performance of Company, with the most amazing cast.
And lastly, the blasted wombats (via Damn You Autocorrect)
PS - If you are a chemistry genius, could you please get started on creating something that works for my chronic pain condition? I'd appreciate it; K Thnx Bye!)
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