Dear Internet,
Benadryl is a cruel and demanding mistress.
TheHusband and I dove into chocolate bars last night, rescued from the cabin this past weekend when we cleaned it out for the winter, with the intent of having a late night snack. TheHusband, his will and stomach of pure iron, was fine. I, on the other hand, started going to into allergic sensitivity mode: My throat started closing, I started scratching, and I was trying not to panic.
In hindsight, I SHOULD have used my EpiPen, but I doubled down on the Benadryl and waited for it to kick in before making any formal decisions, my throat started relaxing and I eventually fell asleep.
This is not the first time this has happened to me, but it is becoming more frequent. Some of it is my own stupidity: Eating a milk chocolate bar when the first ingredient is milk fat or having a slice of Chicago style pizza, but others times it seems overly innocuous when eating a candy/spiked water/crackers/chips where milk/whey/lactose are so far down the list and ergo in minute proportions I don’t even think it would be harmful but yet. Yet here come the symptoms and the signs, and the double dosing of Benadryl.
This is the second time in a month I’ve called in sick due to the effects of my stupidity: Eat something I’m not supposed to, start early stages of anaphylaxis, drug up to cure it, and surrender to whatever effects the drugs give, and then fall asleep. I slept 12.5 hours after taking the Benadryl last night, waking up long enough in the morning to email work I wasn’t coming in and then I was back down for the count.
I always feel so off and surreal when the drugs empty out of my system, not quite 100%. Hell, not quite 50%.
Two years ago I revealed my diagnosis of my dairy allergy and for the better part of that time, I’ve been mostly good. Lately, I’ve gotten fast and loose on what this allergy means when I’m starving at work, nothing is open except the vending machines, and I want some kind of crunch. Hello Doritos. When there is no repercussions, then, of my indulgences or if the repercussions are small, I store that bit to remind me it could be okay to eat Doritos/spiked water/whatever again.
According to my allergist, the milk protein is so fragile, that being able to eat pizza makes sense since there is so many processes into making it while eating ice cream, which is hardly processed, sent me into various sick modes. Why eating chocolate cake at a restaurant was fine, while eating bars of chocolate is not.
It would seem most prudent then to stop eating/drinking/using anything that contained milk in any forms or context, which means going back to being strict even with non-food stuffs.
I never want to go through this again, Seymour. Never again.
xoxo,
Lisa
Category: diary
weekenders on our own, it’s such fun
Dear Internet,
It wasn’t until the day was almost over that I realised today was a pretty perfect day.
I was intent on waking up early this morning, hopefully naturally, so I could spread out my day in larger chunks rather than waking up at noon, zombifying it around the house until I realize it’s almost 5PM and then it’s time to get ready for the week. Nothing ever completed, nothing ever done, not even relaxation. The almost insurmountable stress of trying to do ALL THE THINGS in a short amount of time while feeling strangled with reproach. There is always some residue guilt of not having done laundry, waxed my ‘stache, vacuumed the house, or the million of other chores. Somehow this week I wasn’t feeling that pressed to get much done chore wise other than swap the sheets on our bed and I felt totally okay with that.
I got my wish for an early rising when one of our smoke alarms started chirping it had a dead battery at 730AM. Not too ungodly early, it seemed, and instead of rolling over and hoping it would magically die on its own, I woke up and got ready for the day. And by getting ready for the day, I mean put on my glasses, yoga pants, and stealing one of TheHusband’s hoodies when I took the dog out for a walk in the drizzly mess outside and not taking it off when I came back into the house.
TheHusband, who was grumpily complaining he did not want to wake up at some inhumane hour while the alarm continued to annoyingly chirp, was fixing the broken alarm when I came back from the dog’s morning constitutional. We foraged for breakfast, which was simple since we had thrown boxes of Yummy Mummy and Count Chocula into our grocery basket last night. Coffee percolated, bossa nova on the home stereo, some kind of vanilla concoction candle lit, and I settled on the couch to read the New York Times.
Four hours of near vapid article reading later, coffee was consumed, toast nibbled, and paper tossed into the recycle bin, and it wasn’t even noon.
With my afternoon free, I opted to do some organizing on the site and work on some back-end work, which I did while catching up on podcasts. When was the last time I sat down and really listened to a podcast, more importantly, for longer than say 30 minutes? Months maybe, if not years. I was able to plow through five or six of the BBC History podcasts, putting me firmly now in July 2013.
I had no plan on mind rather thinking I’d start cleaning up some of the broken links, several consisting of near full nude of pics of me from the past when I was getting photographed for my earlier tattoo work and a NSFW pic of my very spanked behind. The images are not going to be easy to find — the content of the pages, tags or titles doesn’t lend itself to the images at hand. Consider them easter eggs linked somewhere in the nearly 700 pages on this site. Happy hunting.
(I remember the spank picture, hysterically so, for it was taken with an analog camera on a roll of film that had everything from pictures of flowers to sexy time pics. The boyfriend at the time was near lunatic thinking the processing place was going to turn in the images for their content or refuse to print them. Neither of course happened and I have both the images, complete with very vivid date stamp, and the negatives still on hand. Ah, the momentary discretions of youth.)
TheHusband had started slow roasting a roast beef dinner this morning (which ended with smashed sweet potato/squash and amazing green beans for sides), which was filling up the house with delicious smells. For the rest of the afternoon until dinner, I plugged away at cleaning up broken links, adding new to the site content, and whatever other miscellany the rabbit hole took me. Including a link to TheHusband’s 1997 Geocities site.
It is becoming increasingly clear I need to set up a plan of what work I’ve got up and how it is formatted as well as a more concrete path. I came across a folder today I had forgotten about, while cleaning the broken links, containing works written for the web but were not blog pieces but more prose and flash fiction. I ended up scrapping a few of these that were already up as blog entries, turning them into pages to make the work consistent, and viola! A new section, Ephemera was born. Stylized as the prose companion to The Lisa Chronicles, this contains pieces that were written as mainly non-fiction creative prose rather than a diary entry as well as some earlier flash fiction I had written for contests and the like. Most of this stuff hasn’t been up for a decade, and a list of the works added will be on this weeks Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes, so please do keep your eye there.
Dinner rolled around, which was delicious as almost always (the one incident of TheHusband adding corn to chili has kept me on guard on his cooking for the last few years), and by 6PM, I was back to finagling some more back-end work on the site and mulling over other ideas.
I did have plans on doing some fiction writing today, but I got so wrapped up on getting the site back-end cleaned, but time just slipped by. And for once I do not feel guilty about losing that time, for finding that trove of written work I had forgotten about was a brilliant replacement. Now the question is – what to do with it?
The day meandered slow and steady, there was no rush, no plan, no agenda. TheHusband and I, and of course the hate-pooping dog, just went our own ways, meeting up in the hallway or in one of our offices for stolen kisses. Neither of us bathed, brushed our teeth, and the bed was only made because I changed the sheets. My desire to treasure the day, even if the day glossed over with the seemingly mundane and the wink of a cliché, was a success.
x0x0,
Lisa
in the forever now
Dear Internet,
This morning, in between telling TheHusband to continue smacking the snooze button so I didn’t have to quite get up, I watched the sun rise from our bed. Half propped up on pillows, for about 45 minutes I just watched the sky change from brilliant red to a deep orange to a medium pink and finally fading into lemonade yellow. I thought of nothing as I watched but I was also struggling between being fully awake and the call of dreamland and our fantastically cozy bed. When I was close to being 100% lucid, I enjoyed the spectacular sight that was ever changing in my window until I had to absolutely, positively had to get out of bed.
Ages ago when I was hopping on and off Weight Watchers, I remember in the beginning one of the section leaders giving a lecture about personal love. Not just sexually, but remembering as we struggle with our challenges, regardless of what they are, to always do something for ourselves which can be as tiny as reading in a hot bath with favorite scent in the water to buying a new THING or could be on a much grander scale, like a trip or a large purchase.
The point being is to always remember to love you.
A few years later when I started dialectical behavioral therapy, much of the same concept applied — you need to create a room, a space, a THING to soothe you to bring you back from the edge of whatever it was you were feeling frantic about. This is kind of the underlying architecture of DBT, with the idea of changing one little thing and creating a safe haven for yourself can create a whole new world.
This is something I think everyone struggles with regardless of the state of their mental health; the ability to actually say to themselves in the mirror, “I love you.” And mean it.
——————–
The weekend had a potential, much potential, which at least gave me some breath of hope. I’m now on day 4 of no Lithium and so far, I feel okay. The worst of the side effects, with the Lithium and the tapering off, have passed. I don’t feel like I’m floating, face up, under water as much as I have been. Even if the days are not extraordinary, the more the drugs are emptied from me, the more hope for them to become extraordinary increases.
I’ve started collecting moments of the day to create touchstones to reach back to when things start getting rough. Watching the sun rise in bed, smiling randomly at a stranger, a particular outfit that works well, or writing a random note to someone just because. If I create a fortress of these touchstones, then nothing can stop me as I battle this disease, this taker of life.
And I will win.
x0x0,
Lisa
we were all waving flags
Dear Internet,
This morning I cried because I couldn’t put on a pair of shoes.
The inability to put shoes on is not an uncommon thing, but it is a frustrating one. Over a year since my first surgery and six months after the second, I still unable to fit anything beyond flip-flops or Chucks on my feet, with the occasional foray into a ballet flat. This is made even more difficult as my right foot post-surgery is now an 11.5W while my left is a 10.5B.
I’ve been piecing out my shoe wardrobe to keeping only what fits or I absolutely positively love rather than keep everything. While I was never really a heel girl, even the ones I own and loved are almost useless to me at this point and into the pile they go. A recently purchased and rather expensive pair of flats I got at 75% off, talked into buying them via a beloved shoe courtier who silkily promised they most assuredly would fit, turned out to be a “thank fuck I did not buy these at full price” mistake. Several wearings indoors per their instruction and then the eventual public airing of the shoe found they were, after an hour or two, almost unbearable. How a pair of flats could cause so much issue with my feet is beyond me. I do not blame the shoe courtier for the pressure because they do fit at slip-on and comfortably so at that; I blame my feet for their rebeling at being fashionable.
My current obsession is finding a pair of dress boots that are flat heeled (more due to height than comfort) and can accommodate my tennis calves and odd feet. Boxes have been arriving from various vendors for me to try on — funny how I never thought of the shipping of shoes from Zappos and the like to Throbbing Manor to be similar to the receiving of gifts from my subjects but there you are — and again, the frustration at mismarking and advertising of wrong sizes and widths is causing more stress. Last winter, after the first surgery, TheHusband counted I had purchased and returned a dozen pairs of everyday boots before finally finding a pair by happenstance at the mall.
The crying this morning was not simply over the fact my shoes don’t fit, but more about this bottom of this often never ending and seemingly black oil pit I find myself in. Yes, it sucks I couldn’t wear my walking shoes to go on a walk and had to opt for flip-flops, but it’s not the end of the world. Yet to me, it was and also rather symbolic of everything going on in my life.
As I continue the tapering down of Lithium, in fact today is the first day I’ve been Lithium free, my moods have started shifting like a radiograph, even more rapidly in the last week. I started bawling yesterday reading Facebook and then proceeded to go into a several hour depression that quickly, and shockingly, emptied me of life. The black clouds descend so quickly and with such force, I felt powerless. TheHusband spent a couple of hours walking me through my feelings, which continue to be a catalog of everything I feel are to be truths:
- Nobody loves me
- Everybody hates me
- I will never be happy
- Everyone leaves me
- I will not amount to anything
- I will have never accomplished X,Y,Z
- I will never have the kind of life as seen by X,Y,Z
- I am too old
- I am too young
This has been the same laundry list since I could remember keeping track of all of my demons.
TheHusband got me calmed and by bedtime I felt relatively able to sleep with peace. This morning however, when I woke, the black cloud was back and circling with a vengeance. Since we woke at mid-morning, the sun had been up for several hours and our bedroom was bathed in light which was even more depressing. This blinding happiness depressed me more as the idea of staying shut in all day while the day glowed like the summer. Toss up: Stay indoors and become more depressed because everyone is seemingly having some kind of life, the world looks shiny and new OR go outside, even against your will, to at least experience what it feels like. Which will hurt more?
TheHusband made the executive decision we were going to walk Wednesday and then talk a walk ourselves. Chop-chop, wash your face, put on a sports bra and let’s go. He tempted me with treats from a local bakery conveniently located around the corner from our house if we did at least a quick jaunt around the neighborhood. Instead, we found ourselves roaming farther and longer, and the quick jaunt turned into a four mile walk in flip-flops, which ended with breakfast at a local place and some Gerbera daisies for the dining room.
We made half-heartedly plans for the afternoon, but found ourselves hiding in our offices while I read and wrote and TheHusband played video games. I was also opposed to the idea of having to put on pants for some reason, but that is not a black cloud thing, that is more of a sensibilities thing. Because, well, pants.
On occasion there will be days where I’ll get a glimpse of happiness, where I know that even at the darkest hour there will be a snap and things will become stable again. That as is before, as in the future, and as is the now, I will climb out of this slick pit of despair and change something. It’s hard to remember the positive in your life, when you’ve gotten so used to the idea that happiness is fleeting. HOW DARE YOU NORMAL PEOPLE HAVE HAPPY LIVES? Which is why I cry at Facebook. And stalk some people’s lives online because I find it so fucking hard to believe someone could legitimately be happy. SURELY, they must be faking it. Or projecting it. Or something. The world is unreal, ergo, what I am seeing is also unreal.
It’s hard to remember not everyone is like me, that feelings are felt and gone so fast, their tail is often the only reminder they are there. It’s hard to remember often what I’m seeing in other people is really a projection or a sum of their life, I don’t know everything going on in their world. All I do know, their happiness reinforces my lack of having any. It’s hard to remember a trigger by something sending me into a spiral, should not be reinforced by swimming in that sea.
And even harder to remember, no matter how prickly I may be, I am not unloved.
x0x0,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003
two pints of lager and a packet of crisps
Dear Internet,
Randomly discovered today this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. I’m not sure if I had found out sooner if I would have done something to celebrate, you know, other than going off of Lithium. So we’ll just chalk it up to it’s the thought that counts.
Hello there.
I’m coming down from my last dosage of Lithium and the last few weeks have been kind of an emotional nightmare. Keeping it all together has been much more exhausting than I would have figured and I’m attempting to save all of my energy when I head to California at the end of the month for Internet Librarian conference, of which I’m on a panel. Professional development for the fucking win! The cost of the trip is bordering on staggering as flights are more expensive (GRR is a large but not really airport. Monterey is the same.) then if I had flown out of a metro area. The conference and pre-conference times start from the weekend until the middle of the week, which jacks the flight price higher. So then, of course, I have to have more days at the hotel (5 nights, 6 days). Now I’m whinging about money and time, which wasn’t my intent.
I just hope I’m somewhat back to normal by then. By back to normal I mean not what I’m feeling right now.
At first the way I would describe myself is sharp, like a knife. Anything coming close to me will get poked. My physical boundary space is highly protected. I shut down how I feel emotionally, about anything really, unless provoked. Being provoked could range from someone outwardly doing something to me to someone annoying me enough in some capacity I snap and give them a what for. Or, more often then not, I’ll just choose to ignore them. It’s much easier online, and as expected, in person is much more difficult.
As one would expect, it’s quite lonely here.
Some days I grasp at the straws of which I proclaim, silently mostly, I AM Lisa Motherfucking Rabey! I have done great things! Before turning into a sobbing mess a few minutes later. Those brief seconds are the sign I know not is all but over. I’ll keep taking those flashes, no matter how minute.
One of the small steps I did to help with, well, everything was getting rid of using our bedroom (and bed) as my personal office space. The tired laptop hobbling along I’ve been using as my desktop has finally bit the dust and I just decided to dock my Air. Moving all of my electronics out and also forcing me to sit up and use a desk should start the mental separation of tranquility and solace (bedroom) and pew pew of the digital world (physical office).
I should move my DS3 as well but you never know when you have to check turnip prices in Animal Crossing.
x0x0,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
la princesa de los Ingenios
Dear Internet,
It’s the 272nd day of the year or the end of September, whichever is easier to remember. As I quipped to TheHusband today, my favorite time of year for it’s one of the few months we’re not running our boiler or the central air, ergo the electric and gas bills are down.
And here I bet you thought I was all seriousness and no fun.
I’ve been purposely withdrawing from a semblance of social life as I meter down on the Lithium. I’m currently taking 900mg a day (I started out at 1500mg), and have found that this particular dose is working well for me. At the advice of Dr. H., who suggested if I found a level that worked for me to stay there so I’m heeding his request.
Most of the problematic side-effects from the higher doses have gone, which has been a tremendous amount of relief. As I don’t know how I am going to respond on the lower doses, I thought it best to curtail anything I don’t need to be actively involved in. This includes but was not limited to withdrawing my volunteer work with a few local comic cons happening this fall, my application for a part-time job at a new local comic book store, a few classes I was going to take, sponsored by Grand Rapids recreational department, and a few more things.
If my absence around town before was due to mobility, before that to some sort of depression, this time for a fairly sensible reason: my mental health. Some of the scariest moments this year was going on a new ADHD drug and having it take over my life. When I sampled Adderall and Focalin, I was living in emotional hell and the strain of being “normal” for everyday things took its toll.
I became a sketch of a person who only seemed to exist in novels or on a television show.
This is always the part that never seems to get discussed: the ramifications of going on/off controlled substances and how if done wrong, can fuck with your life in many serious ways. This is the reason why I write about because I want others to know they are not the only ones going through this particular hell. I also noted to my small support circle of those who also were gifted with being Bipolar my tactics and plan and they also agreed what I was doing was sensible.
This entire year has been exhausting. And I feel incredibly vulnerable, tender, and weary of the world at large.
My session with my talking therapist, Dr. P., have been ramping up pretty well. A year into our therapy and I’m finally revealing more about the inner core of me than before. I’m realising more so than ever talk therapy may be one of the few drugs I have left in my arsenal and I don’t want to waste it on discussing stupid things. I need to get rid of the burned husks and lay it bare.
I’m still solidly working on my archives, bouncing through different back-ups to add back in here at EPbaB. TheHusband often reminds me the back-ups I pulled from former SQL tables, still chock full of injected code, can easily be cleaned up by him. I then explained there is something Zen in the grabbing the data I need and cleaning it up myself. It can be so automatic but at the same time, soothing. There is sense of accomplishment to the act his fancy scripts cannot give me.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in 2003, mainly working through the entries where I found my high school sweetheart when I moved back to GR and what happened after. In 2008, he would track me down to my place of work to try to rekindle something, and follow up with the same move in 2011.
Reliving that extremely short period of 2003 has been much more painful than I would have imagined even a decade removed. I was so absolute and sure about our relationship even though he failed me over and over again. I was smart enough in 2008 and again in 2011 to recognize the bridge he was trying to sell me was never, ever going to materialize. It also didn’t help matters after 2011 connection, I found out he was still living with his girlfriend of many years and has a long rap sheet for various offenses. Politically, we’re so far apart it’s laughable and his various social media streams indicate he’s one step away from writing a manifesto while solitary living on the mountain.
In 1989 we were not an ocean apart. By 2003, no matter how much our hearts begged to be joined, our differences outweighed us. By 2008, I had no idea who this man calling on me was for he was not the man I had fallen in love with 20 years prior. By 2011, I was just tired of the ping ponging and the lies.
It is like a bullet has been dodged multiple times. The 17 year old me weeps for the death of someone she had loved, who had died many, many years ago and instead now sees just the shell of a person she used to know.
But it is finding those lost moments of time, which are ripe in their honesty and candor, so appealing as I go through my archives. They remind me I would not be here today without these events happening, the decisions and sometimes the regrets I have chosen. My personal history may not have world changing moments, but there is a richness to the layers of my struggles, pain, and happiness that helped define me as a person and charted the course of my life.
And it helps to remind me, as I come off the drugs, all of that is inside of me. That life, no matter how monochrome it may feel, can always randomly burst into technicolor.
x0x0,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
My history’s mysteries, curios, and future delightfulments
Dear Internet,
I’m so terribly glad the week has ended.
It began the previous week when a fire at work started out as a slow ember. By Monday, it blew up gorgeous blaze that only I could fix and spent all of my waking time working on the problem through the course of the week.
Monday eve I saw my medicating doctor, whom I’ve partially fired. He agreed to start downgrading me from the lithium, which is going to take about a month or so to happen. He’ll still be my klonopin dealer, thank fuck, but my involvement in the world of chemical imbibement is going to be gone.
Tuesday saw the advent of my period, who’s new thing is to play a game of “Heavy, heavy, normal, light, YOU ARE GOING TO BLEED TO DEATH!!!!!” pattern by the end of its cycle. Tuesday also was the day of my EEG, which after the procedure I had the energy of slug and slept for most of the day.
I taught all day Wednesday and Friday.
Thursday was the day all faculty had to have their projected performance evals done and turned in. Mine was not so. When I was at work, not teaching, not on the reference desk, I was trouble shooting the aforementioned gorgeous blaze that the final data collection submitted to IT was closing in on half a dozen pages of notes and results, which was submitted on Thursday.
Friday morning an email from my dean on why my eval was not completed and he wants to see me ASAP. My response was a copy of the six page ticket I opened with IT and an explanation of what I had been doing for the past week and half. I promised to finish the eval this weekend, but of course! The online system we use for such things, running on Oracle, is dead in the water. Oh, how bittersweet! Monday’s early appointment with my dean should be loads of fun.
TheHusband and I spent a good portion fo the weekend cleaning – it’s that time of year you know. People get overly excited for decorative gourd season and the onsalught of pumpkin spice latte whatever. Me? I dream about cleaning. We divided up the work over two floors and two days, and if we’re honest, we probably didn’t work as hard or get as much done as we had planned. But we’re okay with that, as we plan on pecking at it during the week
I burned through a lot of appointments this week and some commitments that I have set up for this upcoming week are going to be curtailed. I’ve decided to start reigning in on some things for the moment, only temporarily, as I wean off the drugs. If anything has been learned of the lesson of my drug life, the lack of any kind of emotional planning for what is going to happen is naught. Yes, I get it – you can’t control when the crazy comes but it would be nice to at least have an inkling. Thus, I’m clearing everything off the decks while I detox.
During the downtime this weekend, I worked a lot on the archives the site, hanging out mostly in 2010 – 11, which was not as interesting as 2003 or 2008, but there is a lot there for me to process. I also updated a few projects that were found such as Book List and To:Be Project, both which will remain current.
I get a hankering to look at the archives as work continues because seeing some of those years fill in makes me happy. I don’t only feel like I’m doing something here, completing a task, but I feel like I’m making art.
x0x0,
Lisa
frequency ranges and spatial distributions
Dear Internet,
I learned today that one cannot tweet when one is having electrodes placed on their skull. But then, you’re so tired from the sleep deprivation, the last thing you want to do is lean over and grab your phone to tell the world you’re beginning to look like the Bride of Frankenstein.
The EEG test required me to be sleep deprived, so I fell asleep at midnight and woke up at 4AM. No caffeine. At 7:15, I woke TheHusband up for us to head to the hospital where the procedure was going to take place. I was feared I was going to end up getting amped up on adrenalin that would prevent me from falling asleep during the procedure. I also feared of falling asleep while driving. There are times when having a husband is useful.
The EEG testing unit is buried in the bowels of the hospital, a set of complicated instructions arrived in the mail, but we got there will little delay. After I checked in, I was called back by one of the techs who was admonished that “Donna has to learn patience. I have to finish checking her (meaning me) in before Donna can have her.” More conversation. I’m told to sit back down. Then stand back up to follow the not Donna to the actual testing area. The not Donna kept apologizing along the way for what has just transpired. There seems to be some drama fraught at workplace.
I meet the Donna when I’m led into the room where the testing is going to take place. Donna goes through my paperwork and seems perplexed as to why I am here after I answer her questions. I document my seizure history, starting when I was 3. She then wants to talk about “my other issues,” which she means my mental disorders. These I had already mentioned to her earlier questions and I notice she has a hard time saying their names, her mouth seems crippled. I say them clearly, for her to make sure we’re clear: Bipolar I, Borderline Personality Disorder. ADHD. General anxiety. I explain, again to her since she seems confused, some of the symptoms associated with one disease is duplicated across other diseases. For example, the tremor in my right hand and leg, which happens rarely, is from the Bipolar, not neurological.
Donna’s seemingly reluctance at my answers is making me anxious. I find that slightly hilarious so I giggle while she finishes up my paperwork.
Prior to the placing the electrodes, the not Donna measured my skull and gave Donna seemingly random numbers that sounded like some sort of key, “6. 5.8, 6, 6, 5.8” and would act slightly intrigued when something came up as a “7.” “Are you sure?” the elder would ask. “I’m sure. It’s a 7.”, the junior responded.
I still have no idea what they were talking about.
After my head was measured thoroughly, and marked all over with red grease pencil, they began placing the electrodes on my head, using a heavy glue for the attachments. I’m assured the glue, another sticky product, and the grease pencil are all water soluble.
Donna and not Donna start working on placing the electrodes me, one obviously more confident or has been at her job far longer than the other. Donna’s confidence in what she was doing overshadowed the other tech, who while as agile with her fingers, often seemed to pause or was hesitant about what and where she should mark. I was getting annoyed with the confident one as she marked and place the electrodes on my skull, she had a habit of pulling my hair just enough to make me cringe for a nanosecond, but not so much that it actually hurt. Since her counterpart managed to not do this, I took it as some passive aggressive act about her job. This was cemented when one of the electrodes seemed to apparently not be working correctly, as she worked on fixing it, she had no problems being rough with moving and cleaning the electrode around my head, pulling my hair roughly a few times about with the shift.
After I was wired up, my head was wrapped with several rolls of gauze and I was told to lay down.
The room was sterile and devoid of any comfort. I was wearing a cardigan, sports bra, tshirt, and yoga shorts and I was shivering. The not Donna asked if I wanted a blanket, which I gladly took. I couldn’t get warm and I tried not to be scared.
There were several tests that were performed, the first of which with my eyes closed, various patterns of flashing lights were pulsed in front of me. Some flashings did nothing to me, others caused my eyes to rapidly move. Was that normal or was I having some sort of non-epileptic seizure? Another test was a breathing test where I breathed out, from low in my diaphragm, for three minutes. Harder than it sounds. The final test was the sleeping test, in which my brain waves were measured as I slept for 20-30 minutes.
Apparently I conked right out, because one minute the Donnas are talking to me and the next, I’m being woken and informed we are done. I was uncomfortable in the room, cold still. I’m a side sleeper, something I couldn’t do for the test with my head wrapped in electrodes, thus the fact I slept was surprising.
The Donnas spent a few minutes unwrapping me, taking the electrodes out. The not Donna hands me a comb similar to the one we used to receive in grade school on picture taking day to run through my mop to get the electrode gel out and I laugh because my hair would break such a comb. I run it through anyway and it pulls and tugs but does not yet break, that it is easier to use my fingers to hunt of gel bits. Once I’m made somewhat presentable, I’m let free and taken back to the waiting room where TheHusband waits.
I’m told I will hear in 7-10 days from my neurologist.
Me, personally? I’m betting it’s what the doc said: I was epileptic when I was a kid and now the symptoms I’m thinking are epileptic are actually non-typical migraines.
We went to breakfast and came home by 11A where I slept for a few hours and TheHusband went right to work. I spent the rest of the day lounging, keeping up with my RSS reading and TV watching.
In other news, my appointment on Monday with Dr. H., the medicating doctor, went as I had hoped. He agrees to take me off of lithium, which will be much more involved process than I had hoped. I had already taken myself down from 1500mg to 1200mg, so I’ll remain at 1200mg for the rest of the week. Then I’ll go down to 900mg for a week, then 600mg for a week, then nothing. Dr. H. also cautioned that if I felt good on a particular dosage, to stay on that dosage and call and let him know. So if the crazy is tempered by 600mg as opposed to my 1500mg, then bully for me. I’m willing to do this, but if things don’t work, I’m not staying on it. Period.
I can almost taste the mental freedom and it will taste delicious.
x0x0,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010
the falls of the gods
Dear Internet,
It’s just shy of 8PM and I’m already for bed. Tomorrow I have to open the library and man the reference desk at the unreasonable hour of 730AM. To be sure, however, I’ll need to be partially awake for that to take place and I’m already plotting my caffeine consumption. I am going to need it.
I was in a dark place this morning when I got to work, made darker still by some work dealings that I blew off because if I had taken them seriously, I would have slit someone’s throat. Sometimes people are just obnoxious, but fighting me on a one time change is just ridiculous. Did the world end? No. Now go the fuck away.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon, after my tepid lunch of stale pasta salad and food I ravaged from the vending machines, working on stats.
While I got incredibly engrossed in my stat doing, I noticed the heaviness on my chest and the sense of foreboding that was plaguing me in the morning had almost dissipated. The existential crisis of this morning seemed to just leave a taste of what it was – but I find at times I can’t shake it completely. It usually begins with a Talking Headsesque series of questions (How did I get here? This is not my beautiful wife!) and then leaps into me making tally sticks of what I did have (husband who loves me, a good job, good income, a beautiful home, a cabin in a desired area, anything I could possibly desire) and even then, making notes of what I have — all very good things mind you — didn’t seem enough.
I am hungry for more.
But more what – – ahh, that is the question I can never answer. At least, not sounding like an insane person.
Over the years I’ve come across people who were similar to me and whose lives for a brief moment, joined mine in parallel. Then they move on, and I move on, and later I find that the lives they lead are the lives I want to lead. I have never known abject jealousy before until this happened. And I didn’t know, don’t know, how to handle it.
I know it’s healthy to look up to someone(s) and be inspired by them, and I feel that I’m inspired all the time by many people. But these 2-3 others, whose lives I don’t want to be inspired by, I want to have their lives. I can’t shake this demon off my back because I would truly like to enjoy them for their products, not be a creeper plotting to SWF them.
[Though, to be fair, one of them has liberally lifted some ideas/concepts of mine that were published publicly on this site years and years ago for their (now published) fiction. So thanks. I guess.]
But that isn’t really it either, this wanting the life of someone else because in my mind’s eye, I’m more than the sum of my parts. I’m more then these adjectives or these people’s lives that I covet so far from the body. But I can’t shake the feeling that I should be doing more, doing a lot more, and that the doing more isn’t here. It’s somewhere else. And it’s with or without my husband (depending on the time of day when the crisis hits).
Fight or flight.
Pattern for my entire life. I had thought, assumed even, that once I got the degrees, and the boy, and the job, and the house, and everything I worked for, my life would settle into some kind of happy state of domesticity.
I feel like I was wrong.
I kept telling Dr. P. that something big was going to need to happen and then I realised that in order for that something to happen, I’d have to make it happen myself. Then I start to feel strangled, as if I can’t function in some capacity whether emotional or physical. The heavy weight sits on my chest and demands to be petted.
Then I hide in my bedroom until the next day comes and I start all over again. I look at time frames and see self-promises made weeks, months, years ago remain broken and unfulfilled. I am nothing, in the cosmic sense, and it doesn’t seem to all matter. The only freedom is the flight in my brain when the drugs hit me with a left hook to soothe me down.
Then I wake and start all over again.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #39)
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
In which we buy a cabin
Throbbing Cabin, circa August 2013.
Dear Internet,
Since we did not end up going up north this weekend, it seemed like a good time to tell you about our latest harebrained scheme.
The plan, of course, was to pay off our house in Grand Rapids, my student loans and car debt before doing any more big purchases. The house in GR was (and still is) to be the collateral for a home in Europe somewhere, with intent to purchase that within the next decade. Owning a cabin in one of the most expensive counties in the state wasn’t even a twinkle in either of our eyes at any time in the near future.
In a way, that sentence is not true. TheHusband had been coming up to the area on and off as a kid and I had been here myself when I was dating TheEx and loved it, ergo, a mutual desire of the area was acknowledged between us. TheHusband and I have vacationed up here often together, so there was a twinkle, but one of a nano scale, I promise.
TheHusband has a penchant for stalking Zillow and while I was in the middle of my recuperation from ankle surgery last summer, he found the listing for a short sale cabin in Leelanau county for scary cheap. When I got the all clear to travel beyond my bedroom, we road tripped up to the area for the day (dog in tow, of course) to check it out.
I will tell you dear reader, upon first blush I was meh on the ordeal. While the exterior A-frame was lovely to behold, the interior was sketchy.
And by sketchy I mean the kitchen, with the exception of the fridge, has retained its original 1972 charm. The entire first floor, with the exception of the bathroom and back bedrooms, was entirely carpeted in white berber and it seemed they decided to take the no clean approach to keeping the carpet healthy.
The loft, which contained the master bedroom, was done in red shag so blinding of a color, you’d think we were in a house of ill repute.
The half bath in the loft was hastily added in later, it seems, for the toilet was not a standard toilet but one for a RV or a boat, but they added in a standardized sink directly in front so the only person who could use the bathroom was me. I could essentially pee and wash my hands at the very same time.
The previous owners did a lot of DIY, but terribly so. They built cupboards under the eaves of the roof in the loft for storage but the doors didn’t fit. They sanded down and painted the kitchen from the natural cedar to a burnt green, but only did one coat. They stained the exterior of the cabin itself but only did it half way up until they could reach no more. The platform the gas fireplace was sitting on had been redone in field rock that was so loose, if you stepped on it, pieces would roll away.
In addition to the interior work that needed to be completed, there was a lot of what TheHusband referred to as infrastructure work that needed to be done, such as:
- Repair the well
- Replace the septic and drainfield
- Have mold removed from the crawl space and condition it
- Replace the gutters
- De-moss and de-lichen the roof and clean it
- Power clean the deck and restain it
So even knowing all of this work that needed to be done, that it could end up being incredibly expensive beyond our savings, we took the plunge in the fall of 2012 and put a bid in for the place.
After several months of going back and forth (they wouldn’t leave the bear skin, they wanted the modern fridge, we didn’t want the cedar furniture they were trying to sell to us for $9,000), we closed the week before Christmas, 2012.
I had the good sense of getting our Internet turned on before the closing. We had no fridge, no furniture except an air mattress, no lighting except what we brought up, but by jove! We had incredible DSL speeds. Also, interestingly, my brother who is an industrial electrician, had just turned up 4G in the area a few weeks prior.
The cabin, thankfully, is all season and has heat, so we stayed for a few days. Initially, we planned on staying for a week but time started ticking as a winter storm was approaching, with discussions of feet of snow. Not inches, but feet. We talked about toughing it out, but we are 10 miles from two villages in either direction, and while the county plowed our road, we still had a long driveway to worry about. No food on hand, no fridge. We came home. We scheduled for a local plumbing company to come out after Christmas to winterize the cabin and then we put it to sleep for the winter. We left one breaker on, the one electrical outlet that had our router plugged in for the Internet and our smart home application.
In the spring 2013 we would begin the renovations.
Oh. Joy.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #37)
This day in Lisa-Universe in: