I Will Not Suffer In Silence

I felt crampy this morning, so I took 600mg Ibuprofen before work.

George arrived around 11am, so I took 600mg more.

I left work around 1:45pm today. Light cramps had begun by noon, but mostly, I was falling asleep on the phone and I wasn’t comprehending the customers anymore due to both the daze that sets in before the pain, and all the Ibuprofen I’d taken.

It really started yesterday – I was really tired all day, and I hadn’t taken any Ibuprofen. I got home and took a short nap, and lounged on the couch for most of the evening. No energy whatsoever. I had to force myself just to do the dishes.

All the way home, the pain threatened to grow worse, but never did. Just slight pain continues along with feeling verrrry tired. But yet I’m restless. The restless part is always annoying. I’ll pace the house. Sit down and get back up. Lay down and toss and turn before getting up again. Just can’t get comfortable. That’s part of having george for me.

When I got home, I thought I’d just fall down on the bed and sleep. That was the only thought on my mind the entire drive home was to fall face down on the bed and sleep. But once home, there was the restlessness.

The house is 66°F (18°C). Outside it is 56°F (13°C) and sunny. It feels warmer outside because of the sun.

The other part of having george for me is the freezing. For the past week and a half, I’ve gone to bed with three blankets and a freaking HAT. Yes, a week and a half before george is normal for my body temp to be so low.
And now that he’s here, I’m wearing full body pajamas with footies AND slippers AND my damned hat. In the house. I’d be wearing gloves, too, if I could type in them. Too bad I don’t have any fingerless gloves.

The other thing that I hate about george (I could go on and on) is the Hunger. I’m STARVING. I’m craving all kinds of things. I’ve been coming home and having gluten-free brownies for dinner for nearly a week, now. No matter what I eat, it isn’t what I need or want. So I push it away, searching for what I REALLY want. But I don’t have or can’t find what I want, so I stay hungry.

Aw crap. I think the pain is really trying to set in, now. I know I won’t be back to work tomorrow. At least my boss had advance warning and knows of my health issue.

Time to force myself to lay down for a bit. Perhaps I’ll try to read a book my friend loaned me. She found the book to be hilarious, but I haven’t been able to get into it yet – it’s not doing it for me. In fact, it’s reminding me waaaay too much of the Midwest in general, and a certain Appalachian family in particular. But it’s not just the Midwest or Appalachia that has people who act like the characters in Sellevision. It’s all over the U.S. and it’s big and ugly and scary.

By the way, the book in question is called Sellevision. I get to see Sellevision in online format every day at work when I provide customer support to people selling stuff on websites hosted by the company I work for. People are selling horses, puppies, cars and parts, real estate, psychic readings, shoes, religion and porn. Those appear for some reason to be the big categories, and many of these people are located in the Midwest and Deep South. All their stuff is crap, and all these people are new to the Internet trying to sell their crap in 22pt Arial font with blink tags and other “effects”.

I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, only to realise I’ve just emerged from dreamland where I’ve been troubleshooting someone’s website. Again.
I wake up for work with the same type of dream several times a week.

So maybe reading that book is a Bad Idea™.

Yeah. I’ll find another book to read for now.

October 16 (starting weight): 154lbs (70kg)
October 23: 153lbs (69kg)
October 30: 152lbs (69kg)
November 6: No weigh-in due to george
November 13: Forgot to weigh in
November 20: 153lbs (69kg)
November 27: 152lbs (69kg)

Due to george, depression and holiday feasting in the past month, my weight hasn’t changed much. I’ve still not cut cane sugar from the diet, although I am doing well keeping corn syrup and refined sugar out.

I’m still happy to not be weighing 184lbs like I did seven months ago. Keeping gluten out of my diet has proven key in keeping that weight off, but has not kept me from my depressions, as I had at first declared to be cured from.

The culprit in my last really bad fall into the pit was Oxycodone, which I had taken at a doseage of 162mg once per night over 3 nights. That week, I had the breakdown. I looked up side effects – CNS depressant. I was already on my way down due to job stress. The oxycodone thrust me under water and held me there, flailing. I’ll never take that shit again. I’ve always known I was overly sensitive to pharmaceuticals outside of Tylenol and Ibuprofen.

I’ve had major aches and pains throughout the mid to upper back all day today, extending to my shoulders and neck. By this evening, however, I developed acute photosensitivity, followed by my jaws hurting. And now I have a moderate headache.

So now I’m paranoid that it’s onset of flu, which I’ve not fallen to in years.

Earlier today though, I was convinced that my back was ‘going out’ again.
It’s been a few months since my back/shoulder/neck has given me grief, so I guess it’s time again. As of early afternoon, it hurt to turn my head to either side or tilt my head back.

I looked up some doctors on my health plan but nobody’s open on a Saturday. I didn’t want to go to the emergency room to beg for muscle relaxers, because it’s so expensive to even enter the goddamned E.R..

And I don’t know of any good walk-in medical clinics in this area, and I didn’t feel like driving to San Mateo where I know there is, or at least used to be, a good clinic that accepts all types of insurance.

Once the migraine started, I popped half a percoset. Thanks to my boyfriend, who has quite the stash leftover from his throat surgery. But it’s not a muscle relaxer. That’s really what I need. I laid stretched out on the bed for about twenty minutes, slowly stretching and moving parts of my back, shoulders and arms. That helped a bit. I should inflate my yoga ball and start using that again, too. Haven’t used it since we moved to the new place in July.

There’s something else that’s been affecting me, too. More and more, I notice how much memory loss I have. I always seem to shrug it off as stress, but lately it’s become kinda scary and so I’m wondering if I should see a neurologist and/or get an MRI.

Today I told my boyfriend some of my immediate plans for the day. I then walked into the computer room and that quickly, I forgot what I said I was supposed to be doing for the day, and I had to ask him what it was I’d just told him I’d planned for the day. Needless to say, he was a bit concerned, too.

This evening, I wanted my bottle of water. I was in the kitchen when this want developed. I knew the water bottle was in the bedroom. But as soon as I exited the kitchen, I went into the bathroom, then stood there wondering what I’d gone in there for. I had to focus and really think, and then it came to me – I was in the kitchen on my way to the bedroom for my water bottle. How I ended up in the bathroom instead, forgeting entirely within a span of about 8 seconds what I set off to find, I have no idea.

This concerns me greatly. I’m far too young to have dementia. But I know my head bowed out the windshield of a car back in 1994, and I know I’ve had memory loss ever since. But this is getting scary, as I said.

A few weeks ago, I took it as a game when it happened. My boyfriend and I had made plans for a Saturday. When that day arrived, he had to keep reminding me to get ready to go. I decided to not tell him that I had no idea why he was getting us out of the house. Happy to spend time with my honey, I followed along, got in the car, and enjoyed the ride to wherever we were going.
I grew concerned after we got about ten miles away from town when I still didn’t know where we were headed to, but I stayed quiet about it. At the time, I felt more excited, like a kid being taken to a surprise. That won out over the concern for my memory loss.

The place we were headed to? A pumpkin patch. So that ended up being kidlike fun once we took the exit and I finally remembered where we’d planned to go.

But today… the memory loss was scary. It’s been scary like this before. I just never talk about it. Is it stress or is my brain deteriorating?
I have full medical coverage thanks to my boyfriend’s domestic partner insurance. I need to look up doctors tomorrow and make some calls – leave some messages. I need to schedule time off work and GO to the damned doctor.

Got up this morning, no sign of george. That’s good, right?

Found out the Democrats took the House and at last count may have had the Senate, too. That’s AWESOME, right?

Traffic was a bitch – I was ten minutes late to work. Couldn’t call cuz I don’t have a cell phone, yet. Was supposed to do that this weekend when I get paid.

Got in trouble for being late cuz I didn’t call and it’s a huge deal to CALL IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE.

Was taken into meeting with the boss who said there’s too many people on the 8am and 8:30am shifts, can I come in at 7am?
I politely protest, and lay out the fact that it takes an hour to get to work in the morning and I can’t just eat a piece of toast and dash off to work – I need a full protein meal, otherwise I sugar-crash – I have health conditions. Add to that the fact that it takes nearly 20 minutes just to get off the goddamned island and onto the freeway because the speed limit on the island is 25 M.P.H. (40 K.P.H.).
So to be at work at 7, I have to leave at 5:45, which means I have to wake up at 4:30am.

Boss winced. Then asked if I could at least TRY it out.

Got back to desk and logged into email, only to find that the agency had written me yesterday to tell me they’d not received my timecard for last week AGAIN. I wrote back demanding a new fax number, stating I’d faxed them on Monday and the secretary had stated my frist week there that there’s a problem with the fax number from the agency. Got an email back saying my fax was received this time, and to CALL them every time I fax to make sure they get it. NO new number was supplied.
I wrote to the recruiter and asked for a new assignment, stating the early hours and shitty commute. She wrote back to say there’s NOTHING out there right now til at least after the holidays, and to try to stick with it until then.

Later on, I got in trouble for daring to email the entire sales team with a lead, prefaced with admission that I am new to the company and unsure of procedure with regards to providing a lead. My boss emailed me in bold case to never do that again, and told me that she’ll give me some more training tomorrow.

Then, george started moving furniture around in my pelvic region. Ever so slightly, but I knew he was home again and would be killing me soon.

Got home from work and within thirty minutes, george started to kill me. I hadn’t even had time to prepare a meager dinner. So I ate a couple of spoonfuls of ice cream and washed down a Tylenol 3 so as not to have a completely empty stomach. Then I had broccoli and cheese for dinner.

Now it’s 9:10pm and it’s already time for bed. I’ve set the alarm for 5am. We’ll see how much my appearance deteriorates on this new schedule. We’ll see if I’m even able to make it in to work tomorrow if george is still around. Perhaps this is what my boyfriend calls george’s Last Gasp – where george goes away for a day, then returns briefly, like a mafioso armed with a bat to club someone’s knees to let them know Vinnie hasn’t forgotten they owe him.

My thoughts have become quite dark again. Too dark for online consumption. It’s time to start up the pen and paper journal again.

And yet, despite how low I feel, today some of my friends suffered worse. One lost her 3rd home this year. Another lost a dear pet – more important than most humans. And another nearly lost her father. So what’s my problem?

Must….keep….my….head…..

Oh and by the end of the day, the Democrats DID also storm the castle Senate, too. And then Rumsfeld resigned!

Things are looking up, Steph. You can do it. Stay with us now…

I called in sick to work today. My pod manager sounded sympathetic, so that’s a good sign.

Today was voting day. So, stoned and in pain, I spent the day studying the candidates. I had plenty of time to do this before voting day – but somehow I just kept forgetting.

My friends are awesome – they picked me up and took me to the polling station and drove me back home again. I got home and the pain renewed. I had to take more drugs. This has been the worst day this cycle – I’ve been medicated straight through since 6am.

The thing that depresses me most about having george is when I get him on bright warm sunshiney days. I miss the entire day because of him. I was driving home from work yesterday and it was so pretty outside. But my vision was dull from the pain. The beauty of a warm fall day had a blurred filter around it, like in a hazy dream. That is literally how the world looks when one has chronic pain, so no matter how pretty a day it is, it can’t be enjoyed. It’s stolen from you.

I’ve had hundreds of days stolen from me since the age of 15 because of george.
I didn’t even go out into the sunshiney warm day outside today. I’ve been a drugged zombie all day.

I’m proud of myself for sticking to studying the voter guide, and actually voting this evening.

Two more months until surgery. I need to start saving my money for the downtime. I’m trying not to think about how the time off for surgery (2 weeks) will affect my employment.

Blah. I made it til 2:30 before george decided to kill me dead. I finished an outstanding issue and left at 3pm. I had already taken 800mg of Ibuprofen, which didn’t kick in even after half an hour, so I popped a Tylenol 3.
That kicked in on the ride home – about 30 minutes into my drive. I was just coming off the San Mateo bridge when the drugs took hold….

I did make it out to see my boy’s band last night. They kicked ass as usual, and there was a much fuller house at this venue. Sadly, I had to leave after their set cuz it was late for me and my friend – we work early hours. And george was starting to kick me in the stomach again anyway.

I took a Tylenol 3 and went to bed, and today the pain returned as I was getting ready for work. I did my usual and ignored the bastard. I popped 600mg Ibuprofen and ate my breakfast and finished getting ready for work. The Ibuprofen kicked in while I was on the road to work, and tided me over til lunch. That’s where I failed. I should have taken more Ibuprofen with my lunch or even an hour before lunch. But I was busy taking phone calls and doing emails BAM BAM BAM it keeps coming all friggin day, no rest. I’m always a bit frantic trying to juggle that shit.
So I forgot to take my meds.
Would it have helped? I dunno. Sometimes, like this morning, it did. Other times, even if I medicate at the earliest onset of pain, it’s no use and I must use the big guns and get stoned on T3.

No matter. My boss was sympathetic, which takes away some of my anxiety. And now I’m home.
And now I go fall down on bed.

…and he’s blowing up my pelvic region right now.
The bastard is a day early, and my boyfriend has a show tonight.

I’m stoned on Tylenol 3 and I’m going to have to call for a ride.

I’m also trying not to think of how the new employer is going to take the news when they find out I’ll be out of work for up to 3 days.