Ramped up the gabapentin today. Can't take this level any more. Entire nervous system feels so raw. Also, discovered this week more areas where I absolutely feel nothing, have a nice bruise to prove it. I'm officially calling this plan C now, per earlier future planning. No turning back now.
In the meantime, I continue to be a pain to all around me. 😂 I need to stop thrashing around hating on phone blogging with a cpap on so Scott can sleep. Why did I even start this, I hate blogger so bad on my phone.
Hopefully from here there's nowhere to go but up. Crack of dawn is always the coldest. Check this windchill. We are officially colder than Antarctica. Saw that roll through on my local weather on facebook.
Really thought my stats would calm down after I privatized my facebook feed 9 days ago, since facebook was my strongest traffic driver, but apparently that didn't deter anyone. And doing that definitely nailed down a solid steady number of notification hits, because I thought maybe those were extra pings from facebook redundancy 'safety' settings, but apparently not. Whoever you are, I'm holding up my coffee cup to you. I am now able to look at a naked core readership before I even link outside of the bloggersphere.
Okie doke, where were we. I happily jogged down a weird path this week while I let my head settle around real life, and I kinda need to bullet point and catch up.
MRI came back, confirmed the usual aging spine thing with a new twist, cervial hemangioma shows up in report now. No idea if it's just better reporting for something there all along or if it's new, but it is 'unremarkable'. Probably something they'll just keep an eye on...
Laying super still on a hard, flat MRI bed for 40 straight minutes was stupid hard on me over the weekend, between bodywide fibro flare and nerve compression was almost unable to walk for a few hours on Saturday, but thankfully coming back out of that.
Everyone around me keeps getting sick the last 2 months. I haven't yet been really sick like that. Hope I didn't just jinx myself. But if this is real, I've been sticking to raw cruciferous in salads, buncha cooked cruciferous like caramelized brussels sprouts with aged balsamic and parm, yogurt, and chicken. Little bit of cheese and occasional microwaved nachos in small portions. Lotta water. I don't drink anything else but coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the evening. If diet has an effect on positive immune health, that's what's doing it for me. Stop eating your candy and ice cream and get off the cigs and booze, guys. I'm the puny one and here I am not sick.
My new 3x3 daily/weekly/monthly personal/home/internet chart is working really well. Syllabus doesn't seem to be doing it for me this winter, so I'm doing chart, ticcing off as I go. Tic chart, guys. In the 3rd grade I got gold, silver, blue, or red stars on a weekly chart for how fast I timed on a multiplication test. (A 'times' test.) In 5th grade I got a circle for every book I read to add to a bookworm. I had the second longest bookworm in the class, went around 3 walls. Charts are fun, but a lot of work to make. I use one sheet in a notebook. Upper third is a list for monthly, just need to see one tic beside each item. Middle third is a list for weekly and I divided into five sections across for all the weeks in the month, each section needs to have one tic in it for each item. Lower third is a list of daily stuff I do, and I don't bother ticcing it. I mostly do it anyway. It's there to remind me to stay on track. Concise, contained, at a glance. Each month I'll make a new page, and I can compare how I do to the months before.
I've been allowed to take over twitter duties for my fave minecraft server, now that I'm part of staff. I think it's a great way to divert off the twitter mess and pull a tight focus on something I love.
I need more squirrels in here.
I created a new playlist for positive vibes, to borrow a word from a friend. Music and visuals that calm the mind, as it were. I do this a lot and you guys never see it because I don't share that part of me that goes really deep into the quiet so I can float out of myself. I had a hard time sifting through and sorting out all my Pinky junk the last few years, and I feel like the best direction to go this year is just ignore the F* out of everybody, you know? Be me. Float away in bliss and enjoy my moments. I seem to have arrived to a new place, and I'm ready to take better baggage with me going forward. It's really hard to brain train into calm with chaos and challenge all around, but it's totally worth it. Let's see what I can find this year. :edit: Sorry, didn't realize I had this playlist on private, lol.
I can't have both a nice and quiet life and a life well lived, says the cosmos. I woke up to a skirmish between head and heart. My heart yearns, my head is going off like a drill sergeant. I ache for peace, but the screams push me back out.
The typo I just overwrote was super Freudian in a very creepy way, but my skin says it's too tired to make any hairs go up. I ache for me.
Last year was a long muddle. I know what I have to do to unmuddle it. I need to love the pain again.
I see my neurologist today. 'Real feel' is currently 1 degree. I can't get my house up to 70 degrees inside even with 2 space heaters added to central heat. Getting out today will be fun.
2017 was the year I whined and sat around degrading on pain meds after years of steady improvement. 2018 is the year that 2017 becomes a bad dream.
Little steps to a better future. Embrace the pain that is me and get out of bed, get out of the house, get out there and BE. I want my life back. No one is going to hand me that, and 'real feel' in my very real life is that I especially won't be coddled. I will say this one more time- I was babysitting a very hyper child all by myself only one week out from major surgery. No one checked on me, no one brought me food, no one made sure I was safe in a shower, no one asked if I was ok. I know exactly where I rank in importance and scheduling in the world I've allowed around myself, and I'm going to own it this year. My life, my house, my future. My decisions.
Probably NSFW. I should probably have a trigger warning on this whole blog, actually. Caution: lotta crazy scary scifi reinterpretations and possible applications, but it's not what it looks like. Metaphorically. Meta. Get it? Sweet, now I can title this.
Part of the big lead up to surgery is covering all the bases so there won't be any medical mistakes or accidents. I'd love to go into it blissfully ignorant and trust that things will all work out fine, but of course I have just enough experience to know how those stats really work and not quite enough access to my own records (notes of interest) and medical knowledge (search engines and acing medical terminology and nursing school go only so far) to wring any confidence into my head. I'm extremely grateful I got such a good critical care nurse calling me for preregistration or I'd probably have backed out by now. I could tell that person had seen it all and knew every detail mattered for every possible fail rescue.
The propofol from a test last week screwed my brain rhythm, so I've been shunting through extreme depression and worse mood swings. Can't wait for general anesthesia to add to that. Plus the preregistration questions about chest pain and family history of everything cardiac and brain fail prompted responses as me being already there with the pain/fail stuff since spoonie nerve probs, pretty much whatever statistical outcome for more serious chest pain and brain fail during recovery might not even be noticed. I live with fibro of the chest wall and on meds to help control Lhermitte's sign level pain, so just saying 'chest pain' is pretty complicated. I won't even go into the brain part again.
And of course I'll be asking a nurse tomorrow to get a note to the surgeon to please consider a different pain med than he's used to scripting and then having to deal with protracted withdrawal all over again on top of recovery. While my support system at home keeps zooming around full blast over-planning, the main question is how quickly will I be able to be left alone again. Um... I just asked my husband to make sure I don't do anything stupid and not to assume I'm ok. I'm pretty sure my depression will be more severe for a few days with my brain coils all tangled up again.
I'm very much looking forward to this particular pain being over after surgery/recovery. I'm also very much looking forward to holidays. But I've already been through the kind of fail that kept me from driving for 4 months or being able to read or watch TV for a couple of years. I sincerely hope I'll be touching base as usual as soon as possible, but it may or may not be a few days. I don't know yet.
I don't have any contingency plans in place, so if I'm one of those weird statistical fails, oh well. The only things I've done for real are getting laundry and dishes caught up and the bathrooms cleaned, and untrusting everyone on my game server claims. Don't want to come back to my stuff pillaged if I can't log on for a week or something. j/k #clanfam Hopefully, though, I can log on and play through recovery for distraction.
Apologies for my rough week. A few people got caught in a bit of brain flux.
Fighting with Jawn trying to get loaded into a resource desert and Jawn insisting the launcher is the jerk, not him, and me stomping off in a huff and then remembering Halloween is in a few days and promptly getting lost in a search and running right into this. Click for pink gothic awesome.
And then @bonenado stumbled out of bed asking if I tweeted that because he forgot to put the pizza up last night, kinda bending my brain around sideways going wut because #notaclue (I put the leftover pizza into the fridge last night, no big deal), and then I was like OH, that was 5 hours in the ER waiting room by myself the other day, lol. Turns out a particular pain I've been blowing off all month might be an ulcer and they actually nearly admitted me. The GI cocktail changed my life, I've seen the error of my ways, and suddenly we're all understanding the whole Jekyll and Hyde thing and started meetings about restructuring around my spoonie fatigue wall and getting me off the captain's deck before the Titanic asplodes a gasket into outer space and we all go spinning off into Whatthehelljusthappened Land.
click for funny sox
I still don't know for sure until I get a referral to a gastro guy, but if it's real, I've never had an ulcer before and this is new territory. My history clearly nailed the only anti inflammatory med I've taken for the last 3 years because it's a bitch and I was supposed to stop taking it last summer and kept sneaking a couple by every week even though I felt gross when I took them, and then this big pain exploded in my stomach a month ago during an allergy flare up and pred burst, and then antibiotic shortly after that, and that was the last time I had that pain pill because it was a bit scary. I'm so preoccupied with other pain areas and keeping up on the gerbil wheel around here that it was easy to just stop eating and ignore my guts. Guess that was a bad idea.
I was up 24 straight hours yesterday. I'm going back to bed.
Life goal- an empty conference room full of laptops like this guy.
in case your weekend is going all wrong
and you need to click on this pic
to get more monkey memes
So it turns out Saturday the 14th is a sneaky bastard behind an innocent acting Friday the 13th holding its hands behind its back and telling us to guess which hand for a surprise. I could whine or I could move on.
Don't look up hand behind back memes, btw. Humans pretty much hold the 'I can type better than a universe full of monkeys' title and that's about it.
9 days till my birthday. I've already announced there will be absolutely no cake. The universe is trying to knock off @bonenado and it's not going to use my birthday to do it. Lotta people don't get that a diabetic refusing a big bowl of cake and ice cream is like an alcoholic desperately refusing a fifth of whiskey, and I'm not doing that to him while he's fighting off both shingles AND the snotty head cold from heck. I'm thinking filet mignon, though.
Ok, ok, I'll whine. It's nothing, just that snotty cold virus thing slamming my old cranial nerve damaged areas. If any of you have ever had Bell's Palsy, Ramsay Hunt, or even just a really bad blow to the side of your head and jaw area, THAT. The pain is unbelievable. I've been told by doctors that viruses will usually hit your weakest areas, like sometimes my thyroid aches during a cold, or sometimes all my joints hurt, but yesterday it hit my cranial nerves like a freight train, and suddenly I was flashbacking into 2004. There was no way I could use CPAP, but I actually slept anyway, thank goodness. And this morning isn't quite as bad, so hopefully it's just a fluke.
I know, right, I just blew all that off like meh. I'm the main household glue around here, if I go down, this ship will be like a sub that can't surface. I put myself on mandatory bed rest last night, and I may be doing it again today. No idea yet how @bonenado fared the extra Bunny care hours. With shingles. With a head cold trying to knock him flat. But you know what? It all worked out and everyone's sleeping in today and I have the router all to myself, MWAHAHAHA. Actually, I can't even sit here, I keep having to get up.
I'm really looking forward to this. I'm a big Mr. Glass fan.
Total spoilers if you haven't seen Unbreakable, but this is about the best movie ending scene I've ever seen in my life. I know, I've said that before.
My last thought before waking up was wondering if I had died because everything was going so perfectly right that I couldn't imagine any other reason. It was one of those mall/church/lots of people dreams that feel like I'm in between lives or something. Those are really rare dreams.
click for a runner's story
Pretty sure my latest foot problem is extensor tendonitis, and I'm pretty sure it was my shoe being laced up way too tight at the shoe store followed by heavy shopping at Walmart and no time to stop and get shoes off before Bunny after school. Then yesterday I was back in those shoes for several hours, and even though they were heavenly comfortable and I had loosened the laces, that area just couldn't take any more. I've done a lot of things to my feet, but I've never seen them look sprained on top and inside just from wearing new shoes. I kept reading (here is a search list), and I also ran into a lot of fibro and feet pain on another search. 10 years ago there was *nothing* on feet with fibro. A rheumatologist even told me point blank fibro doesn't cause foot pain. Guess that's all changed, it's apparently well known and accepted now that fibro can wreak havoc with foot pain because it's a nervous system disorder. At any rate, I'm sticking with this one. Control Fibromyalgia Foot Pain - Living smarter with fibromyalgia
I'm having a better year (very challenging, but way better), and I'm on my feet a LOT more for lots longer at a time. I've been slamming my poor feet around and ignoring them, mostly just getting my shoes off and kicking back and hoping it all works itself out. 8 months of that- maybe I need to pay more attention. I'm putting myself back on intermittent bed rest through the weekend (I'll still be cooking and cleaning, of course), so that means hauling the laptop back to my bed and pouring my focus into gaming so I won't feel frustrated all over the world at large. But not till I get back from town today. Sorry, feet.
Oh, yeah, punkin spice was in my dream last night, too. I remember telling my sister I was going to buy her some cloves for her birthday, and then I went Christmas shopping because I had money to blow. The strangest part was near the end, people from long ago (? not in this life ?) finding me and telling me I did really well. If I had told you the really creepy dream from earlier this week all your hairs would go up. Pretty sure there was an abrupt fork in the road we successfully made it past.
I forgot to get the good pic again, but remembered to grab one coming back thru on my way home this time. The other side says Partridge Family. Also noticed this time it's for sale. Don't know if you can read that, maybe next week I'll get a better pic.
And I felt bad for not doing the neighbor's squash blossoms justice last week, so here's a better shot.
I have done my planning, my shopping, and yesterday initiated my original paleo / South Beach / Rosedale health plan combo diet. The only thing I purchased with Rosedale was the book (used, spent under $2), didn't buy anything else or take any supplements, and the rest I just studied online and did on my own.
Back around 2009 I had become desperate and bent my mind around putting together my own health care team. By 2011 I was cleaning off years of medications and lost 50 pounds in 4 months, but it took a lot of research on how diabetes actually works, how 'nutrition' is skewed into the wrong foods by big companies, how to survive without medications by actually paying attention to what I put into my own mouth. It's work paying attention and keeping track, but it's very easy with all the mandatory food labeling we have nowadays.
This is my public trail through healing.
pill phobia at its finest - coming out of the stupor of medication addictions, poor medication management, over prescribing
Diabetes and Steroid Meds - Surviving steroid treatment for other chronic illnesses and allergic reactions while maintaining control with diabetes
I've come a very long way since I wrote those articles. I've slipped off my own path a bit, regained a little weight, backslid into pain complications and medication problems, and now I'm very tired of 2017 dragging on like this. Time to get my control back.
Because I keep after continual physical therapies throughout the year, I am still not only maintaining function around my home, but keeping up with far more activity than I ever dreamed I could do. I still can't get on my knees at all without destroying them and have almost continual pain somewhere in my body during everything I do, including reclining and sitting, but it's manageable. However, I've lost my grip on that manageable part a few times this year, and I want it back. Part of losing that grip is because I'm slipping on my nutrition planning, and it doesn't take much for the diabetic headaches and slower healing and stomach problems and nerve pain to pop back in my door with a cheerful Howdy!
It's too easy to grab quick and starchy bites on the run because I have high energy young people in my house now. I must menu plan for MYSELF and stick to it. I work around food allergies, so I heavily depend on dairy for proteins, but some dairy has lactose and lately my glucose spiking is worse on lactose because of my new blood pressure pill. So, I bought an extra dozen eggs this week and boiled them up. One boiled egg a day will replace my second cup of coffee with creamer (canned milk).
I also bought bacon. Bacon gets a really bad rap when it's actually much better for you than cookies and cake and pie and spaghetti, especially when you're diabetic. It's easy to cook up a package of bacon and then keep it on hand in the fridge. When others grab a cupcake, I can grab a piece or two of bacon, and later I can use the bacon drippings to cook up a big load of pan roasted brussels sprouts, which are even more awesome with aged balsamic and grated parm.
Guys, I lost 50 pounds in 4 months one year without even trying just doing THAT and stopping when I reached 1500 calories. I could nibble all day and still dropped 5 bowling balls off. It never really hits home how much we carry around until you pick up a bowling ball and go wow, that was IN ME.
Anyway, I reached a point in 2011 where I felt like a skinny fat person, which was really fun for new clothes (got down to an 18), and I would really like to go past that now. I've been in size 20 jeans for awhile and if I'm going to be having difficulty with pain and possible falling (the klutz is becoming strong again), I'd like to be easier for others to help getting back up, knowhutImean? So I bought butter and bacon and eggs and cheese and brussels sprouts and broccoli and lettuce (I love lettuce wraps around chicken tenders!) and stuff like that, and let's see how the rest of the year goes.
I've been hovering just above 200 pounds for months, I wanna break through that. Can I do it? I've never lost weight on gabapentin before, plus I'm back on low dose xanax and still on daily zyrtec. In 2011 I was NOT on meds bossing my weight/water retention around, because I had spent 3 years cleaning off most of my meds and got into physical therapy. We'll see what happens. I do know that I gained weight this year on baclofen and higher doses of gabapentin, so the baclofen is gone and the gabapentin is back on very minimal pain control.
I used to do little ad promos on Xanga before the big server move. I finally caved to Facebook shoving ad boost thingies in my face and tried it out. Was very surprised the Janika promo far outstripped the Lexxperience promo. I won't be doing it again any time soon, really don't need to be throwing my $$ around like that, but it was a fun experiment.
I've been getting 80-90-100 percents on my CPAP readouts, but last night was a bust, don't think I made it even 3 hours. Therapy on Friday musta caught up with me, kinda feel like I took a tumble down a big hill. Since I got chores caught up yesterday, I'm going back to bed for awhile. If I can't sleep, I'll be rewatching a bunch of old Strong Bad emails that are being loaded this last week.
The Cassini Grand Finale was kind of like a TV series finale, wasn't it? Years with characters and a storyline, and then it's just over.
I wish Spaceman Spiff was a TV series...
So the really biggie this month was the flip off atenolol to metaprolol. Unless you're on long term meds, you probably don't realize this is a very sucky thing. Current and Resolved Drug Shortages and Discontinuations Reported to the FDA Fortunately for me, this slide over to another med actually made my life a little better, and a couple of long standing issues seem to be resolving. Atenolol is known for cold hands and feet and poor circulation, and may have exacerbated the nerve pain in one of my feet badly enough to making walking difficult. Three weeks on metaprolol seems to be relieving that issue. X-rays reconfirmed degenerative arthritis at L5S1, very common spot where nerve trunk compression causes all kinds of referred pain down the legs (hip joint and foot x-rays are fine), and since I've already been through all my physical therapy options, the best I can do is stay mobile and do the good nutrition, hydration, exercise, and sleep thing so my body will be in top shape to get through the possible shots and surgeries that come next as I get older and this possibly gets worse. It's vital that my foot be able to handle walking as long as possible, and my blood pressure pill change, of all things, seems to be helping that. Who'd a thunk.
The next really biggie this month was completing the 12 visit atlas-axis correction therapy with my chiropractor. X-ray confirmed old whiplash healed wonky and was right there on all the trigeminal and cranial neuralgia. I spent ten years working slowly up to this spot because the pain was so bad for so many years that I could no longer tolerate medications and couldn't handle conventional therapeutic hands on. Short story, I still have issues because all that scar tissue is still healing, BUT getting through focusing on this one spot for a month definitely made this year's stalled out feeling go away. My neck glide from side to side is improved (I couldn't even turn my head left 5 years ago) and I've gained in my control over pain flares. My jaw pain is nearly gone at the moment, and the pressure at the base of my skull that kamikaze'd me through two med fails this year has eased off, thank goodness.
Overall big picture, I'm still saying I'm running to keep up. This wasn't even possible 5 years ago. This year I am keeping up with a real time 3-way schedule- @bonenado's work hours, Bunny's school hours, and her mama's work hours, and I'm able to keep my balance and actually help them keep theirs. I am able to consistently be a positive function with the meals and clean up around here while they do what they need to do to keep everything going, and I'm enjoying my family. That's the really important thing. Just 5 months ago I was having a difficult time with that part because pain and meds.
We'll see how the holiday slide goes this year. This is the time of year I get all my holiday stuff lined up because by the end of October I'm usually so aspienado shutdown that I can't function, so I duck into a hole and let it all gloss over me while I look at the pretty lights. Got my chicken stock (recipe with pix if you want to try it) done up yesterday for the freezer, so the Thanksgiving prep has begun.
So this new BP med actually has a strong "nightmares" notation because it crosses the blood-brain barrier. So far they're not actually nightmares, but the dreams are extremely vivid. Last night I was in Mo Creatures running around (literally, in the game), and I paused by one particular very large wall face that happened when admin moved one of my claims from Haven to Valhalla, beautifully flat and tall and perfectly placed for a mural, and then the whole dream turned into Jon Snow discovering cement (imagine how thrilling GoT would be if it could be LARPed out in 3D minecraft) and Sansa wrangling with whether to have her men dig deep shafts to periodically throw someone into with a load of cement. Like Lord Baelish.
Ok, that was fun, accidentally published this already. Fumble finger hit tab and next thing you know I was ripping through the schedule widget without realizing it. Those of you who get emails, sorry about that. Live blogging.
So Bae is a creepy guy. When I got to the part about putting him in cement, I was actually jumping in with pointers on how to maximize one's cement shafting pleasures and showing Sansa how to use mode 3 (spectator) to float through the cement and see the bodies. We can't really use mode 3 on Mo Creatures, but we aren't leveled up for cement, either, so it was a really exciting dream. I was kinda sad when I woke up.
I've been having some fun with extra joint pain all over my body this year, especially feet, and last night one of my feet ramped up into #alltheattention, and then I remembered having eaten a can of tuna, which I rarely do. Ah-HA! I think I can put a finger on the problem now. If you guys don't know the gout diet, there you go. My dad is a very healthy Mennonite and still gets gout really bad, and we had to really sit on him one year to stop eating so much purine rich food. I've completely stopped sending him smoked salmon for Christmas, which makes him sad. Anyway, apparently I'm genetically predisposed and extremely dependent on dairy for my protein intake, and when I deviate into enjoying beef and fish, I sometimes hurt all over. There's nothing I can do about it, and I know better. And yesterday I ate a can of tuna. My bad. But at least now I have some kind of clue why 2017 has been a bit suckier.
I wanna thank a couple people who kept me from totally freaking out yesterday about my kid and her kid being right in the middle of Houston. I managed to get through the weekend ok (my blood pressure was off the wall) and even got through Monday in fairly good shape, but yesterday I maxed out and hit the ol' wall like a bug, splatting my upsettedness around. I personally know a couple of people who've completely lost homes, know a number more who are either displaced or hanging tough swimming around their houses, and having been around a few neighborhoods down there in person, it's really hard to watch it on TV without eventually being knocked over with the fact that it will never be the same again. Even though all those people are actually ok and safe, their homes are ruined and their lives will be upside down the rest of the year, maybe much longer. When your bank and post office and work are all under water, what do you do? When your power is out and there is no plumbing and you can't just hop in your car and fill up with gas, what do you do? It'll be a long time before all that gets back to normal.
I don't know how, because in years and storms past my kiddo's house has had water lap up to the door and knock (hi, may I come in?), but this year they are somehow in the middle of a very small dry patch and even still have power. HOW? I don't know. But we all know that doesn't mean everything is fine and dandy. Schools are out, work is flooded, power could still go out any time, mosquitoes are about to become a huge problem, and all the spiders and snakes are probably finding their way to the little island they're on, doesn't that sound fun.
Need to get my focus back on. I'm with you in my heart.
Ug, my internet is so screwed this evening. I kept trying off and on for an hour to get an easy download and kept timing out so badly that I couldn't even pull 3 minutes of video. I tried to get on server and it was so difficult just completing login that once it took nearly 5 minutes just for chat to show up. I've got a live draft coming up in a few days, will I be able to even attend? I might wind up having to just auto draft this year. Our broadband host is offering discounts, so it's not my laptop, it's not our setup or router, it's everyone on this service. We're basically hostage since no one else offers service to my house.
We got a ton of stuff accomplished around the house today, though. Major space reallocation around the kitchen, buncha stuff moved upstairs, one major appliance sold and another installed, closets and drawers and cabinets organized.
It's difficult to tell where I am with therapy progress on the atlas/axis cervicocranial thing. The nerves around my face that went numb in 2004 and then redeveloped all new maddening itching and tingling and numbness for years afterward seem to be waking up. All that is lately replaced with extremely tender sensitive areas that seem to feel normal otherwise, but I can only guess since I haven't felt what normal is since I was 19. It's coming across as kinda painful (think scalp sensitivity where it hurts just touching your skin, but all over my face too, almost like I'm bruised or something), but it's also actually kinda feeling like the nerves are able to feel more correctly for the first time in years. A lot of the painful ear stabbing sensations have nearly stopped. The tinnitus is unreal and my sense of smell is going in and out like it can't decide. I had lost quite a lot of my sense of smell and taste years ago, and it's interesting when I suddenly notice something smells really good or I'm hearing something I hadn't noticed before. My hearing used to be super awesome, like 110% on hearing tests, and then I went through the nerve fail and could barely follow tv because I was like so consonant-dyslexic with my real time hearing processing, and now I'm keeping up way better again without having to pause every other sentence making sure I heard it right. The first season of Continuum five years ago was so difficult to audio process that I was pausing after nearly every sentence. @bonenado got a lot of gold stars that year for being so patient with that. (The broohaha years ago over an interview transcription I did- no one had a clue how labor intensive that was for me, and how many total hours that took.)
The hope is that this will also positively affect all my nervous system going on down, like arms and legs. Still difficult to tell, but there is enough relief overall, however vague, to keep a thumbs up on it. The hardest part is the local area itself. When I whiplashed just beneath my skull (usually how people wind up paralyzed or killed), I damaged so much soft tissue that it got really swollen in there and laid down enough scar tissue to prevent my C1/skull area to sit together properly, and I have lived with that horrible nerve pressure for decades. If you need any kind of context, this is a good site to check out.
I never talked about this for years and it took awhile for me to start getting really honest on Spaz and Pinky blogs about it after I committed to physical therapy a few years ago, and even then no one knew quite what the real truth was when I first brought it up. Between a chiropractor (started 2007) and a physical therapy team on hospital campus, it has taken ten years now to reach this point, where we are able to successfully work on this area directly, and it is still very slow work. Before I started this, I reached a point of needing help with everything, including self care, and had plunged into such long illness and terrible depression that I didn't believe I would live much longer. The pain itself was rough enough, but piled on top of it were complications galore, which I've been untangling on my blogs. It's rough and parts of it suck because I'm really feeling that nerve reverb as the pressure is slowly being trained back off and the nerve tissues continue to heal, BUT I'm so busy now keeping up with everything going on in my house, how can that not be a miracle? It's still so very hard, though, and at what seems like a dead run. And now it's today.
Pain can be a wonderful teacher, a powerful motivator, and even a good friend. Pain has been part of who I am since I can remember. I've chosen pain over relief based on cost/benefits so many times, and I'm proof that really deep hard unremitting pain can be survived. If there is one thing I absolutely know, it is pain. I can see it in others, I can read it in animals, I can feel it when I'm near it. I will have a few things to say about pain and the cruelty some use to inflict it as a learning/teaching tool, as an entertaining toy, as a regenerating profit cycle, and as one of the despairing anguished who cried in the night not knowing if my existence was heard.
In the meantime, I'm quietly growing my wealth on the game server and even more quietly building beautiful things while I very, very quietly keep molding the real build I sculpt out of words.
Oh, yeah. Sploit and Batman are still on high ground with #Harvey. I can't begin to describe how stressed out I was going into this weekend. I'm finally starting to relax a little.
I am loving this vid. I can't believe how buried on youtube it is and how few views it's gotten, because it's very cute and really quite good.
New season, new syllabus. (Syllabus post collection here.)
The world revolves around tiny people. It's subtle, and you probably don't notice it unless you have a tiny person in your life. For instance, Game of Thrones. Not tiny person viewing. If you have a yappy 4 year old in the house who can't sit through a 15 minute favorite cartoon, there is no way you're making it through Game of Thrones. May as well DVR that b*!c# and put a bag over your head, turn off twitter and facebook for 2 days and plug your ears at work, only to have someone casually BLURT THE MAIN SPOILER IN A GAME SERVER CHAT.
😂 I'm laughing. I laugh.
Yeah, if you don't have a tiny pet human in your life, you really don't have a clue just how much the world actually bends around them. This one recently flipped from daycare in the city to small town pre-K. She's like super savvy #handleallthethings to the staff, but a little fuzzy on the cool rural stuff the kids around here take for granted. Like buses. omg she thinks the school bus is the coolest ride ever invented in a theme park, for realz.
But this is about my new syllabus, not hers. Remember how I used to boing out of bed and hit the blog every morning? All that cool disciprin and focus and GET TO WORK!! ? That's gone. Well, except for today. Today I'm starting off with the Weather Channel because other kiddos being out of school for Harvey. Anyone else noticing that the mid-alphabet hurricanes kinda push for more attention than the other ends of the alphabet? Alphabet philosophy is an extra credit course this week.
This fall's syllabus is the most rigorously strict schedule I've ever had since 2006 because I'm winging around 3 other schedules and filling in the holes. There's is Papa's work, mama's work, and Bunny's school. It's my job to make sure there's no #foodfail, #laundryfail, or #pickingupBunnyfail. I'm pretty good at my job most of the time, but we've had a couple of #facepalm days in the food and laundry departments, so I might not be getting a + after my A even if I can keep my grade up. Right now I feel kind of at a B, but that's my personal dissonance problem and I try not to let it bother me.
For example, I'm having to balance OCD laundry compulsions with fibro flares, and I learned long ago that fibro flares are more controllable if I can let myself shut my eyes and just do stuff without extra steps. You know, like sorting. Just throw all that laundry in there! Don't worry if it's wadded up! Who cares if it's lights and darks and tiny things with big heavy things? Who cares if the sox don't all match back up after every single load? (You guys have no idea how hard that is on me...) (Srsly, bcuz everyone else in the house wears matchy sox.) (If you don't yet have context, see #PinkySox.) (That search thread goes back to January 2, 2015.)
One of our biggies this season is Communication. Our current skills include Hit and Miss, Forgot to Tell You, Nearly Mentioned It, and Oh Yeah. Tutoring from yours truly is on the fly as needed, and I'm sure the cinnamon thing will be a joke for years to come. They'll learn fast if they want me to shut up.
Part of my curriculum includes another round of intensive work on my nervous system challenges. 3 days a week focus on cervicocranial junk. Since I haven't smashed anyone's face into an info screen, my family is unaware of the big dealiness of this kind of stuff, and that I'm handling all their stuff on top of my stuff. They are unaware of how I feel about this being a last ditch effort before I wind back up on heavy meds and possibly big surgery that would complicate our lives really fast, since original cause miraculously didn't kill me. Their plates are very full and they're handling loads of stuff I thankfully don't have to handle myself. Like jobs. Car problems and car shopping. Paying bills. Somehow.
Today is a field trip to my massage therapist. I will be driving myself round trip about 30 miles, and I will have roughly 2 hours of 'free' time before I pick Bunny up from school. Then I will have (if the day remains typical), 3 hours of Bunny time. We're adapting into a new afternoon routine. Come home, put on play clothes and wash our hands, get yummy food started for supper, help with laundry (she loves laundry so far), and then settle into an hour of TV and an activity like matching or coloring. By the time other big people start arriving, I feel pretty done and do my best to escape to my room, where I set up a little tech center. I'm getting good at minecrafting in bed.
This weekend is extra credit. I'll continue watching the hurricane coverage and hope my other kiddos keep power and don't get any water damage. It'll be a long weekend for me.
Since I've covered Pain Levels 101 in other posts and even other blogs, I'll spare you that. I'm relying on sheer obsession to see me through this semester. I don't even care if I'm in in a fantasy world. Survival is priority. Cut to video!
I haven't been touching base very well this month, have I?
My sleep doctor gave me permission to take breaks from my CPAP when allergies make my face puffy.
I've joined the millions in athletic shoe fail who suffer muscle rupture. Mine was tiny and under the inner ankle. Being careful now.
No more awesome one week shags just before a whole summer of ponytail fail. Really feeling that one.
My time orientation kinda feels worse this year. Had the date wrong on the eclipse, despite reminders up in my face at every turn. Threw a bag of chips away that expired Nov. 2017 and later realized it's not 2018 yet. Have reworked all kinds of scheduling multiple times. August is suddenly gone, too.
I think part of the morefail around me is because I'm a little deeper in the writing again. That and being on a much stricter Bunny schedule now. After school we start Papa's supper. Last night was hamburger helper. She's four, she can learn how food happens. I was cooking from scratch by seven. Today we will construct a pie with those refrigerator rolled up crusts and a bag of apples. Easy peasy.
Still doing the atlas therapy thing. Not getting worse, but the challenge of real life on top of it has been... challenging. There has been no stopping and resting, no real recovery time, no coddling of the nerve reverb. And I don't have time to stop and think about it.
Had a flashback this week. I really do miss this era of my life sometimes.
It's been a long week. I've been pro-wrestling the game server today just keeping internet long enough at a time to execute and complete one or two actions, such as properly signing a player shop chest or reaching a teleport destination before another abrupt disconnection. The brownouts have been so bad around the house that I could see the microwave dim just trying to make a cup of tea. We haven't actually lost electric at all, but it's like my whole house is on 1980 level power support, and my router is definitely feeling it. Blogger will go 4-5 minutes telling me it can't auto-save as I go, so imagine me pulling off not only keeping up with the economy flipping in game, but ramping my wealth from 25K to I think around 113K before I finally gave up awhile ago. Meanwhile, the continual brownouts assured that I'd be frustrated enough to spring out of my chair getting all the dishes and laundry caught up before the weekend.
And I'm having a headache.
I recently started another therapy schedule, this one focusing on cervical atlas and axis. I don't know why no one's ever thought of this before, but since I had a SEVERE whiplash when I was ejected from a car flipping at 19, no one's ever actually looked at it like this among the plethora of x-rays, CTs, and MRIs over the years for nasty trigeminal and cranial nerve pain and migraines that even had people doing random spinal taps on me. At any rate, getting a proper look at that area, if you are actually looking for it and at it, shows an off-balance tilt and a slight cockeyed compensation. Yes, the bones are actually not straight like they should be, which means the soft tissues around them are taking turns swelling and being squished. In short, everything below that point is at the mercy of the nerve trunk and nerves in that area being compressed. I lived with what one doctor called a sprained neck for over 2 decades, basically a permanent charlie horse that took physical therapy 4 1/2 years to get back to kinda normal because it evidently affected and referred down through shoulder, chest, and even leg. But it's still a compensatory kind of normal, meaning that I'm still using workarounds to fake being able to live normally, which has been really interesting as I've watched professionals discover I can't feel large parts of the right side of my body while the left side hurts quite badly, and they're telling me the right side is actually worse. Meanwhile, I've had problems swallowing for years, and have brought it up a few times with various doctors. I've had my entire face and head go completely numb. I've lived with nerve fail coming and going in my left eye (couldn't make tears for 3 years), left ear (unremitting stabbing pain in my ear drum), and crazy itchy spots that was all I could do not to tear my skin off for months, and this is the first time anyone has ever said hey, let's really look at this area.
So through the rest of August I will be doing very specific atlas therapy, followed with clinical TENS. Like any therapy, several hours or a couple of days following will have me feeling 'beat up', which is normal for every therapy I've ever been through. Pain reduction is the overall goal, but along the way, nerves are going to respond to every little thing as things change, and I know I will go through pain changes and some pain referring, and even if I'd say I actually experienced the pain level being lowered, I would still feel 'beat up' and sometimes cry. To me it's more like a relief cry, like when you're sick and start antibiotic and then feel gross as it kicks in, even though you know you're getting better.
Being an interactive emotionally well adjusted person during this kind of pain focus (on top of autism, which is a sensory overload issue at the heart of it) will be very challenging. I'll do my best, but if I grind any of you up into hamburger and feed you to rats and then grind the rats up to stuff into snake skins for kielbasa, please accept my apologies ahead of time, because you'll probably feel unforgiving later. Like I've said here and there in past posts, if I'm not talking to you, it's probably a good thing.
I'm getting an 'out of disk space' warning. Sorry, no youtube today. I don't even care, this week has been stupid with my laptop and the power brownouts.
"I cannot heal heart, soul, mind, and body while I'm focusing on orchestrating a cheering section for execution festivals." -me
I think that is worth restating once in awhile. No reason.
I've received notice from Google that my "Dare" Lexx Sex Survey can no longer be supported on tumblr. There were 3 specific notations, but each of them clicked to details that were extremely vague and nonspecific. I can't tell if my content material has been hacked and redirects outside of my own web empire, but I'm not at all surprised photobucket might be at the heart of it. This wouldn't be the first time that linking from photobucket caused problems. I can't tell if the post was reported or not, and I wasn't asked to remove the content, but the ultimatum is that particular post will no longer be eligible for AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)-related features in Google Search. I got ticced 'critical' for invalid stylesheet, invalid layout property found in AMP tag, and prohibited or invalid use of HTML tag. Since I pasted that html directly over from blogger, which is a Google supported format, I'm not understanding what they're pointing out, but from the laborious difficulties I've had with tumblr since I made one, I can only assume that tumblr is the real problem here. And if it was someone reporting content, then I'm really surprised it took so long.
So Bunny is 4 now and there is joy throughout the land. We work on 'homework' sometimes, and she's getting pretty good at doing those cute workbooks you can pick up for pre-K. I've started letting her press the arrow keys to make me move directions in Mo Creatures while I do the steering, but she bumps the 1 a lot when she gets excited and we nearly chopped her bunny in half with my enchanted sword (because it's in first position, if she had pressed 2 it would have been my silver sword for werewolves, 3 my pickaxe, 4 my tree axe, 5 my shovel, 6 my bow and arrows, 7 a block of cobble, 8 a mutton steak, and 9 a torch, but 1 is right by the forward arrow button, egads). I told her be careful so we don't kill the pets, and instantly she was like KILL ALL THE PETS, and I'm all NOOOOOOoooooo... I may have to get her onto singleplayer on a tablet we have around the house. Anyone else know a 4 year old playing minecraft?
I really screwed up my CPAP last night ripping it off in my sleep, so I'm intermittently trying to make up time wearing the mask while I play this morning to make up the 4 hour minimum requirement for insurance. I've got 30 more minutes to go. Night before last, no problem, 6 1/2 hours, so whatever happened last night, no idea. I'm going with 'abducted by Jeff' (People of Earth).
Tomorrow is @bonenado's birthday. I made a birthday pie. I think that's the first time I've ever made an apple pie with confetti sprinkles. Bunny is really big on sprinkles.
I'm in dual mode lately, super bumbly and disconnected on the outside, super focused and humming along quietly on the inside. Still having problems with my feet, and the only way I can handle walking at all is in athletic shoes. The second they're off it's like I have different feet. I discovered yesterday that this complaint goes clear back to March, so that's pre-baclofen and I can't keep blaming the med for me noticing it more, another plus for somewhat daily blogging or journaling, guys. All I know for real is that after Christmas I started asking for med help and it's backfired twice, but underneath it all the nerve problems continue no matter what I do or try. So I'm kinda relaxing and going with ok, we're either in a setback year or defaulting into a new progression, but the important thing is that I'm still functioning on my own and still mostly keeping up with the basics around the house. I even cleaned floors this last weekend and recovered more quickly than expected, so something is still going right. I'm eating salads several times a week, getting more raw veg in my diet kind of thing (I love cauliflower and radishes) and I super avoided all the bad birthday carbs, so I haven't done any crashing through all this stuff. We're all noticing that using my laptop in bed is helping my stress levels a LOT. It keeps my legs up, keeps me resting, and keeps me out of the way while other people do the fretting, lol. I'm able to hopefully keep being a nicer person like this. I'd almost feel weird about all this 'bed rest' except that I've stopped taking naps now with the CPAP, so if I'm not laying down during the days like I used to, what's the difference if I'm sitting in bed working or at least accomplishing tasks on a game server, right?
That is the hayfield across the street from my house. Those weeds along the street are as tall as my head. My allergies this year are horrible. I wonder why... lol. The guy that originally owned that used to keep it all mowed down and it was really beautiful. He got old and finally died, last we heard the lot had sold, and since that lot is empty we assumed a house would be going up. Well, that was a couple years ago and we haven't seen anything since, and the field is neglected. The deer love it. So do the other critters. Big snake year, must be a boom in mice.
So I'm working on the whole big picture now with my psychologist, why Pinky showed up, how 'we' all tied together after blowing apart for so long, pretty much the story of psychological scarring and healing as a person on autism spectrum. It's complicated and full of sad-scary-funny and very soon now I hope it's a real thing on shelves. I've been 'out' as autistic for over ten years now, and out since about 2014 or so about all my internet history.
I had a weird mental picture yesterday of running into a particular person (not from around my area or family) again if I wind up traveling for marketing or something and how that could conceivably blow up into a big deal, and then I started wondering if that guy is still even alive since he was taking over another drug lord's territory in a huge city when he was still only 17 years old, already on the run from another state. I mean, would it be awkward? I used to hang out with him and his girlfriend and watch TV in their apartment. I have a long list of people I wonder about, many of them either off the grid or living double lives or simply just cut off from former families and friends because huge life changes over orientations and stuff. Other people I simply just haven't kept up with but still find on the webs apparently living pretty normal lives. People are people are people.
Played around again, so now this blog is verified as my property through TrustedSite. If I forked out about $30 a month (dreaming), all my stuff could be verified all in one place like that. It's one thing to have separate social media verifications and authentications, but to be able to pull everything I've ever done online into the whole lump would be marvelous. Gravatar (WordPress) and Google+ use their own verification systems, but site verification is still easy to fake unless all your accounts share the same phone number and email address and you've got them all locked into 2-step security. It's not enough any more to be able to log in anywhere by connecting your Facebook account. Anyone can stake your claim behind your back saying they're you, but they can't hook onto your verified linked hub disguised as one of your user accounts once you've locked them down. Ten years ago that was a piece of cake and everyone was doing it. Anyone and their dog can use multiple free email addresses to create a hundred different accounts across medias, forums, blogs, and games. I steer very widely clear of that. I'm done scattering myself like debris across a minefield.
Right now I'm just tired. It's very hot out, and me and heat don't get along. I'm ahead of ragweed season because of the nettles family, so I'm already doing both zyrtec and benadryl round the clock just to keep from ripping my eyelids clear off. That's not why I'm tired, though. I'm one of those people who can get hyper on benadryl. We're also passing around some kind of weird bug that is making us all feel nauseated and wiped out, but not much else going on with symptoms. I was ready to go curl up in bed at 6 p.m. last night.
In the meantime, my punkin patch is up and running full force, over 2000 punkins strong and the growth rate so much better on the new vanilla server than the custom biomes world that is soon to be deleted because the lag got so bad. On the custom server I was able to harvest about 2000 punkins twice a day. Now I'm doing it twice a morning and again in the afternoon AND working on builds and my player shop in between. Ok, and that in between chores, I don't just sit there the whole time. You know me, always popping out of my chair to do something else.
Speaking of, almost back to normal after the baclofen withdrawal thing. I know, it's been what, about 3 weeks since I finally stepped off a 7 week taper? Geez. Anyway, I'm actually doing mild workouts again, and definitely back on the muscle stretches and nerve glosses. This morning is spa therapy. Took me 3 visits to adapt to that from physical therapy, very different, and actually way more rigorous even on low maintenance because it covers more ground in one visit. But I'm loving the entire spine thing laying on one side and then the other, that never happened in 5 years of physical therapy, and I think it's vitally been keeping me on my feet through all that baclofen crap. I seriously wonder if I had a systemic nervous system flare or something because that was incredibly debilitating, to the point of barely being able to walk for several weeks, and that's ON a pill that's supposed to make life easier. I'm way better again without it, just embracing the pain lifestyle again.
And that includes arms, I'm afraid, but I was noticing yesterday that even with the nagging nerve pain and dropsies, I was stronger doing stuff and not having to crash into recovery time. I actually got 2 watermelons into the house without losing my arms and hands the rest of the day, so something's working, and I think it's the spa therapy on my spine. I'm on every other week visits right now, so that's twice a month maintenance. I'm still puny running around town, so glad the local post office got a new auto door in that doesn't rely on faulty buttons any more. Those doors were hella heavy, and I know I don't look disabled, but you try being ejected from a car sometime and living with nerve fail in your arms. Getting through a door is nearly impossible sometimes, and the pain doing it is incredible. I don't cry until I get back into my car, but who can tell with my sunglasses on. I'm just thrilled I'm still able to walk into the post office and check my own box by myself, you know?
Wordy words this morning. It's time for me to get moving into the shower and then out the door.
for @bonenado
clicks to source, and the article is making me laugh after the week he's been through with mother, sisters, daughter, and wife
This is my 11th day sans baclofen. I spent 3 weeks breaking pills down to taper slowly, finally jumped off after 2 days of 1/8th of a pill. Still in withdrawal. My moods are horrible, my nerve pain sucks in ways that are so much worse than before I ever started, and I was on the smallest dose only once a day for less than a month before I started tapering. This is about the nastiest med I've ever been on, heavenly and super addictive, screws diabetes all to hell, rebounds like a super ball on a trampoline, and the mood swings, omg.
I've had difficulty walking ever since I jumped off. I'm finding that happens to other people, too. Yes, you heard me, literally having difficulty using my legs and feet. I don't know how this med isn't outlawed. Anyone making a big deal about opiate or benzo abuse gets a hardy laugh out of me after this one.
This has been fantastic for context, though. Next time I think I'm miserable with nerve pain, I'm going to remember this withdrawal, pull my big girl panties clear up to my chin, and suck it up. I can't even begin to describe what charlie horses between every facet of my whole spine is like. Every joint in my body hurts like I got smashed around in an accident. My neck feels like I've been whiplashed. Whatever sciatica hell I'm in reminds me of the year in college I could barely walk, and I'm wondering if that must've been a med withdrawal, too, and I just never knew it. It's really stupid when a med withdrawal is worse than the condition that is crippling you.
At any rate, most of my crabbing has been spread out so at least I didn't hit you guys every day on Pinky blog. This is my obligatory crab post here since it's been so long since I posted last.
I wrote this on Sunday afternoon of the 28th when Pinky blog was still closed.
click for wallpaper
So I put myself on bed rest, because I'm terrible for grinding myself to an actual standstill even when all the sirens are going off and defcon warnings are going on system wide. I've made it, what, about 3 years now since an autoimmune flare? I'm in severe fibro flare, and some kind of spinal nerve trunk flare, because my left leg and foot ache really bad and all my toes feel like I broke them on a coffee table or something, but so far so good on appetite, sleeping, and the usual restlessness. I'm trying to medicate more, y'all know I really hate that and any doctor would heartily laugh and then go, Yeah, NO, like this, and then triple everything I'm taking and then I'd morph into a lethargic reptile. I mean, no offense against reptiles, but srsly, I'd be like that.
Played single player for a little while in between surgey power stuff because big storm last night shredded the forest a bit and threw a few branches around, hit a bored jag and dug through wallpapers for awhile, then played around with the search bar, plugged in variations of Pinky, by the way here's other Pinky if you really wanna check her out, she's actually pretty cool.
Anyway, I'm flipping search engine pages and run right into 'pinky, guerrero, hypertorus, rulz- giphy' and thought, hm, I've never loaded anything to giphy, what's up with that? So I went over there and saw that, indeed, there was Pinky blog listed as a source for this thing.
And it does click to the post I used it in, but MY post sources it correctly from blingee. I don't know how and why stuff like this happens, no idea if it's auto curated or someone manually loads.
K, just discovered I have more followers on Quora... I never go there. Not even going to link it.
Yeah, I know I'm talking to myself because Pinky blog is still dark, I'm just waiting for it to flatline. I mean, srsly, my stats have looked like a heart rhythm for months. Too bad most of it was from one source or that might've been cool.
Personally, even being a search engine queen and a super lurker and part time stalker, I have *never* opened up anyone's page multiple times a day, certainly not for several days in a row, much less for weeks and even months at a time, and even though I have actually been lurked hard in the past (my heaviest lurker back in 2008 opened my blog nearly once a day for 8 straight months, and I had full stat details every single time, including location and service right down to street address) by a number of people with no idea how in the world I could possibly be that fascinating, ok long run on sentence where was I. Oh, yeah, even with my own skillz, I've never been obvious. I imagine there are a couple of people who have noticed me because they're like me and pay attention and I was actually stalking a little bit, but dang, I never did it like anywhere even close to this level. It's completely not like anything I've ever seen in all the years I've been blogging. I'm very experienced with stats and being super lurked and even stalked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now it's Tuesday.
Monday was hard.
Ok, Sunday evening I got some stuff thunked out. This last month I've been snacking. A LOT. Especially this last week. On carby stuff. A LOT. Years ago before I got my diabetes dx, I remember all my joints hurting real bad and feeling miserable, and my doctor back then kept throwing prescriptions at me instead of letting me see an endocrinologist (she finally relented after several months and we discovered my TSH was horribly flying right out of the solar system), and it helped to get that med adjusted FINALLY, but it didn't fix all the things. I remember back then that she wasn't worried about my blood sugar reading, which surprised me looking back once I discovered she had noted my ketones were high. A new doctor in 2011 dx'd diabetes and my whole life changed and I started feeling better, and everything since then has been about recovery and healing and coming back from years of immobility and excruciating pain. My diabetes has been well controlled for 5 years.
Until now. I checked my fasting glucose Monday morning, was 110. There are jobs out there requiring their workers to keep their fasting glucose below 100, so you KNOW that's the best predictor of lost work hours. I started sliding all through May, since my empty nest routine has been skewed into a whole new lifestyle and I'm surrounded by high energy people eating very high energy food. If I really look at what I'm doing, I bet my ketones are going back up and that's why I hurt all over and feel so tired. I'm dragging through sticky blood sludge and backed up getting the trash out of my body, and simply calling this a fibro flare is just me being stupid. Time to get back on track.
Point blank, I did this to myself, and I know better. I created this internal misery that affected all my systems and other health problems and threw my psychological balance off on top of it all because I felt so rotten. I felt in the way, got super crabby and peevish, and we can't just blame all that on autism spectrum complicated with anxiety and depression. Diabetes affects brains. If I don't want to be a drag on my family, NO MORE JUNK FOOD. My brain cannot handle carb loads, and woe be to ye if that's what I'm doing.
Aside from that, Monday sucking was a whole lotta neurodiversity hurricanes going on in my area that would make for great TV. I just stayed out of it as much as possible. I know the brains around me only see the klumsy outside of me, and I don't always make sense, and I don't emotionally connect well, so they can't believe that on the inside of me I really do get how their brain styles shape their world views and that they can't see several moves ahead on the chess board like I can, and they don't remember and learn from the past the same way I do. They don't see themselves objectively, the way they assess their situations is different from the way I assess mine, and their missing gap is a vital problem solving skill set that I was born with because I'm autie. ADD and autie working together makes a great team, but when we're all stressed, it can be pretty disastrous. I know I'd have handled things better if I'd been taking better care of myself physically, and I see controlling my diabetes as first line of defense against life sucking in all other ways. I cannot have a good life if my brain is flailing around in sticky blood sludge and I hurt all over.
THAT is aspienado's problem solving skills. Start with me first, assess, organize, prioritize, schedule. Get my own stuff lined up before I step into trying to fix anything else. Other people's lives are their own business, but I can make things easier by smoothing out the wrinkles as they fly by, and that makes me valuable. I like being a valuable person. I can't be valuable like that if I'm stuffing my face with crap.
So here we go, #transparency. Going to spend the summer getting the fasting glucose back down, shedding a few pounds, getting my workouts going again, and focusing on positivity and feeling better. That's my job. Sliding into depression fueled by carbing out and chain reacting a serious disease across all my other issues is stupid stupid stupid. It's one thing to live with depression, it's another thing to coddle it and support its cancerous growth.
That was fun. What else is going on? Hang on a sec, I need to say something, if stalker person ever actually reads all my stuff instead of just poking me over and over. Dear Person Doing This- I'm not a mind reader, and I don't do head games. I'm busy. You could be Christopher Pike stuck in a chair pushing a button, or you could be a brilliant psychotic enamored with Pinky, or you could be a 5 year old with someone's stolen phone, or you could be... you get what I'm saying. If there is a point to this, it's getting lost. But if this is what I think it is, maybe this (below) will make sense, and if it does, then I hear you. And that is all that needs to be said as long as this continues without real change. All I care about on my end is what I got out of the flatline and then the resuscitation.
