Month: April 2015

I Should Be Eating

I should be eating right now but I’m so exhausted I don’t even know if I’m hungry or if I have the capacity to heat my lunch.

When I first lost my apartment and had to move in with my dad I went to work with my husband every day. This way I didn’t spend all day alone in a place that I hated,  it also allowed my husband to keep an eye on me since the move sent my depression into full swing and I was extremely suicidal.

The problem is that because of my husband’s hours this caused us to have to eat out constantly, almost entirely fast food too. We have both gained so much weight our clothes stopped fitting, we got new clothes, they are getting tight. We feel like crap all the time. Our stomachs hurt. We are weak.  We are throwing money away.

After a few attempts to bring food to work, I stopped going to work with him so I could stay home and cook for us. It lasted a few days before I realized the counter space for our make shift kitchen will not work. It was a night stand. It was so short I alternated between bending over it and kneeling next to it while prepping food. By dinner the second day I could barely stand, my back was in such bad shape. Cooking went back on hold for weeks,  maybe months.

Finally I decide to get a folding table. I mentioned this to my dad. I wanted a 4 or 5 foot table.  That’s all we have space for. And all I can manage to put up and take down three times a day. He said he had a five foot table. We got it up to the room. It is obviously a six foot table. Now I can’t get to my pantry for ingredients unless I crawl under the table.

I have been cooking three full meals a day for the last three, almost four, days now. Climbing under a table multiple times every meal with fibromyalgia and a bulging disc. Using only a toaster oven, hot plate and a rice cooker. I feel like I’ve been taking 20 mile hikes every day. My feet and legs ache so intensely. To keep on schedule I should have eaten almost an hour ago at the time I’m writing this but fuck moving right now. I’m trying to smoke but can barely sit up long enough.

Today had an added challenge. I had to take two buses (one I’m not used to taking and public transit in general is an anxiety trigger) to a different city to my first appointment at my new therapists home office. Anxiety central! Especially with as tired as I was from all the cooking. Then two buses back and a stop at the grocery store. Fucking kill me. On the plus side the therapists office was really peaceful but I’m thinking that should be a different post. 

The crazy thing here is that the goal is to cook three meals a day and go to the gym. Normal person brain says hey no big deal, that’s not a lot at all. Current state of acceptance in fibro brain says whoah that will be rough but you fucking got this! Reality says what the fuck were you thinking? How is this really this hard?  Is this really this hard? Obviously it is for you but should it be this hard?

So yeah I’m exhausted, should be feeding myself, and all I want is to be able to cook my meals for the day and go to the gym. *Big Sigh*

Good News

I’m not dieing! Got a same day appointment today. The nurse did an EKG and the NP I saw listened to my heart and declared me fine. She did say I should stop the Prozac. Now I’m going to try Paxil as soon as the side effects from this are gone. I’m a little disappointed because I had this wave of unexplainable happiness wash over me yesterday. I felt like smiling, I did smile, I felt like singing and I did. I found myself thinking of my husband and feeling so overwhelmed with how much love I have for him. I was disappointed that I was home alone. I wanted to be able to enjoy something, something besides being in bed watching Netflix every fucking day. I wanted company. When I left the house for my therapist appointment on Wednesday the world didn’t feel so scary. It looked a little bright and shiny, still does a tad. But…I can’t take the Prozac any more. This will end. I would have happily lived through the nausea, sweating and chest pains for a chance to keep smiling. Hopefully the paxil will work better.

The Scary Thing

Right now, at this very moment, my chest is killing me. And it has been for at least the past hour. I am on a new medication (Prozac), l’m fairly certain increased heart rate is something I am supposed to be on the look out for. I also have a heart murmur.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. This has happened before and after starting the Prozac. A few years ago this happened so intensely in the middle of the night my husband called my doctor and spent at least 20 minutes on the phone with him describing my symptoms and checking my pulse. Tonight I have checked my pulse 3 times, seems normal, felt my heart beat, seems normal. My chest is fucking killing me.  Of course this triggers anxiety, making it even worse.

Checking my pulse is hard, all of my doctors have had trouble, always had to reposition their fingers a few times with a puzzled look on their faces, this also makes it harder. Am I sure that’s really my pulse? Am I doing this right? Does this app really work?

This leads me to what I feel like is one of the worst parts of living with fibromyalgia. I never know if something is actually wrong with me. I used to be so in tune with my body, this specific side pain means I’m getting a UTI the tests won’t pick up for a week, this type of headache means I’m dehydrated, etc.  Now,  I feel like I’m having a heart attack, maybe, maybe fibro.  Been working out, is that a pulled muscle or fibro?  Back hurting, is my bulging disc inflammed or fibro?  Tooth hurting cavity or fibro?  I’m sure you’re getting the idea.

I never know what’s actually happening in my body any more.  I never know whether I should be worried, if it’s something I should get checked out, or something I should just grit my teeth and get through. This is terrible for my anxiety. I am scared, a lot. I swear it’s almost as if having fibro turns me into a hypochondriac because I never know what’s wrong with me. I always have to consider all the possibilities.

Right now, right this minute, is my heart slowly giving out on me, or is it just my monster, my fibro here to scare me again?

I want to

I want to write but there is so much floating in my head I wouldn’t know where to start. And am too anxious to put that much energy into a single thing. Dieing to update you on my therapy, share some thoughts about gender identity and try to be better about including how my fibro effects my days but it varies so rapidly it’s difficult. Right now I’m feeling anxious, sad and lonely. I had a therapy appointment today which makes me feel like I need a session with someone else to deal with that session. And I’m on my fourth day of starting Prozac. Definitely in a wierd ass place right now.

Finally

Okay, so I finally got in to see a primary care provider. It has taken four months. I had a lot of stuff to deal with. My therapist pushing me to get on antidepressants, some of the medications that I take regularly requiring prior authorization, some medicine that I take occasionally being either expired or me being out; We had a lot of stuff to tackle, oh and referrals. Surprisingly I’d say it actually went really well.

I went to a doctors office I used to go to before I had Medi-Cal. I liked the doctors there but I had to stop seeing them when I switch to covered California and now I’m on Medi-Cal so it’s been about a year and a half since I’ve been able to see this doctors office. I took the first appointment I could get so it wasn’t with one of the doctors I’d seen before, it turned out it was actually with a nurse practitioner but I actually really like her. It seemed like she actually gave a shit which is really uncommon in my experience. I got almost everything handled, I left a few things out because she was so thorough about talking with me about my antidepressant I didn’t want to take more of her time. so I still have to talk to her about my allergies and then a possible referral to an allergist. Also my rash which is a little uncommon for my eczema so it would be good for her to take a peek at but other than that I got everything handled pretty well.

We decided to start me on Prozac because it’s one of the only, I guess, “mainstream” antidepressants I haven’t tried, it was either that or try an old one. So I guess we’ll see how that goes. I am obviously really nervous about it, trying new psychiatric meds doesn’t normally go well for me. I’m giving it a shot though because there’s got to be one of them out there or some combination of them that’s right for me. Hopefully it’ll give me some relief with my fibromyalgia. I also have a referral to a new rheumatologist though. I just really hope that it can make me a little bit more functional of a human being because I would really like to take some of the pressure off of my husband. He goes through a lot to take care of me, it be nice if I could help him out.

I’m also pretty sure that I automatically have panic attacks around doctors now even if I don’t feel too panicky. I’ve noticed that my heart rate goes up and I sweat profusely around any sort of doctor including therapists or psychiatrist. So yeah that’s a lot of fun, lol.

To My Father

There are some pieces about fibromyalgia I’ve been wanting to share with my dad but have yet to.  One is the “letter to normal’s” and another is something along the lines of “what it’s like living with fibromyalgia” between the two of them I think it covers what having fibro is like and what I need from the people in my life because of it. After that little incident with him laughing at me I really want to say my piece to him. But he’s so intimidating, hard headed and smug I can never stand my ground. He always says something to knock me on my ass. So I wrote an email. I haven’t sent it and I still need to include those… Articles? Essays?  What ever they are. I really need outside opinions on how this comes across I guess. These are the screen shots.

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Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions about this.  Thanks.

How Long

How long do you wait when testing out a new therapist? I normally know right away, but every once in awhile I just can’t decide. This week I had my 4th appointment with a new therapist. She is both winning and losing but I don’t know if she will be any help to me. In my first appointment she told me I needed to be on medication which I had made a conscious decision to get off of years ago. That is normally a big no no for me. I would normally shut down right then and there and ignore anything else she had to say.  But I didn’t. I didn’t because this time, I’m pretty sure she’s right and I can’t really hold that against her. Our first appointment she squeezed me in before leaving for two weeks for a conference. My second appointment she was settling back in from being away and my third she was getting over feeling ill.  She obviously has not been at the top of her game since we began meeting. So besides my vague issue with her recommending meds right off the bat I have some other issues.

First of all it took me one maybe two appointments to fill in my last therapist on all of my pertinent history, I am four sessions in with this new woman and I feel like we have only scratched the surfice. 

On a related note,  she is just so slow.  Even with my fibro fog I think and talk fast. I try and slow it down with people who don’t know me well but I have to repeat everything to this woman.  I can make one point and need to repeat three of the major components immediately. Like what?

Also related, she talks a lot, mostly repeating herself too.  Like she will tell me she thinks I need to be on meds like 3-6 times in one appointment and has everytime. I get it if I disagreed and she wanted to revisit,  but I have an appointment with my PCP and a psychiatrist. I GET IT!  When’s my turn? Isn’t this the talking cure?  Who is getting cured here?

And finally on the bad side, I just don’t think I’m actually comfortable with her.  I started to get into my past when I was living out of state with my brother. And explained how I started escorting to pay bills while I was in school. This is something I have no shame about, this is something I told my last therapist as easily as if I told him I took a nap today, this is something I joke about with my husband, this is something both of my parents know.  I slept with men for money and it kept me fed while I tried to better my life.  But when I tried to tell her,  when she asked what I meant by escorting my throat tightened up,  it was hard to talk, my answers got short,  I began sipping my drink constantly. Why did I care what this old lady thought? This restraint I am feeling probably will not help my progress.

She seems so focused on fixing the situational problems that I’m facing instead of dealing with deeper things. I’ll admit I spent a lot of my past time in therapy obsessing about situational issues and avoiding anything deeper. But I realized that I was doing this and went into therapy again to try and do it right. I want to talk about not being able to forgive people and if I’m drowning in anger because of it, not how hard it is for me to do dishes because of my dads wife.

Oh and she also portrayed that she is familiar with fibromyalgia but when I say something like my feet go numb if I walk to long she asks why and then “instead of pain?”. No not instead, in addition to, fibro has so many symptoms. That may be more frustrating than someone who has no clue what it is.

On the plus side she keeps giving me “homework assignments”, initially to make a list of the things I’m grateful for once a week, then to think about those things as I wake in the mornings, and now to spend five minutes twice a day staring at an object I have no emotional connection too and thinking about the qualities of that object and nothing else. No other therapist of mine has ever given me homework or tried anything like this. She’s doing something different and trying to change the way I think.

So I can’t for the life of me figure out if this woman is a good fit for me or not. How long does it take you to make a decision about a new therapist?

Laughing

My dad literally laughed at me just now when I explained that something horribly uncomfortable for a normal person would be dangerous for me to risk because of my fibromyalgia. Laughed at me.  I normally get the sense that’s what he wants to do when I explain things like that but tonight he actually did and I really just want to punch him in the face. He’s so cruel to me and I have to play nice because he gives me a place to live. I hate that man.