reports of my physical and mental breakdown have been greatly underexaggerated
I don't think it's news to anyone that I'm an up and down person. I have mood swings, and until recently I have always gone with the flow. Back in February the anger end of those issues started to hinder relationships, so I tried to locate causes and tracking on a calendar, and lo and behold they were cyclical, like another cycle I have, go fig. Knowing that it was "that time of the month" for my anger issues had helped me to control that. That's fine.
A few weeks ago, I started to notice that I was developing a series of symptoms that I couldn't ignore. I was overbreathing, or rather, taking too many deep breaths, and it's pretty much, if I understand what I was being told, hyperventilating or something. I also developed a lump in my throat, like that lump you get before you start to cry? All the time.
I was convinced that I had cancer. My tongue was swollen in the back. I met resistance when I tried to breathe through my nose, even though I wasn't congested. I yawned excessively. All of this led me to believe something bad, but I wasn't sure what.
I figured that looking for things it would be on the net is about the dumbest thing you could do, so what I did to get around that was looking for things that it couldn't be. As in, it wasn't likely cancer because of other factors I didn't have, and it wasn't other diseases because of things that I didn't have. What I did find was that I was amassing a lit of strange symptoms that I hadn't though of that when all combined created a bizarre painting of my ailing body. LIKE HOUSE!
So here I present, what in the world is wrong with Amand-r? TMI, dudes
Overbreathing
Lump in throat that leaves when sleeping
Trouble sleeping (staying asleep)
Unexplained muscular soreness
Swollen tongue
Inflamed sinuses
Headaches
Exhaustion
Excessive yawning
Palpitations
Depression
Twitching muscles
Koilonychia (spoon-shaped nails) [I put this in here because I just discovered the word and the doctor confirmed it. Woot!]
Intermittent hives
Occasional upper lip swelling like allergies.
Pacing
Teeth grinding or jaw clenching (my dentist just told me that I do this recently. I'm wiggling my teeth in place and they get loose and then they rub at the gumline and erode the enamel. SHITBEARS.)
I am sure there are more. I can't remember them all. I had a list. It was ridic. All I knew was that it was probably stress/anxiety related, and by the time I went to see the doctor 2 weeks ago, I was a wreck who could barely breathe. He had me do a spirometer and gave me an EKG and then did what I thought he would: told me to take some iron and proscribed Prozac. I was told to see a therapist and get back to him.
He was a lot nicer about it than that, and I cried in his office and he was very good. I had also just learnt that I had no mental health coverage, so I was afraid he was going to prescribe something hideously expensive.
So, here I am, in week 2 of Prozac, feeling better, and that's probably not the drug entirely since it takes weeks to kick in, but just the fat that I did something made most of the anxiety symptoms go away. How insane is that?
My brain still isn't processing all of this properly, so the rest if what I wanted to say, numbered as I think of them:
1. About three weeks ago I had a frightening revelation that we are all going to die, regardless of whether we want to or not, and we never had any choice in the matter. You didn't ask to be brought into this world, and you're going to die. The sensation made my head pulse and I got this burning sensation that started in my legs and ran up my body and I had to go take a shower to distract myself. Even now I can't think about it too much. Distraction is good.
2. I'm looking at subbing in the fall, since the teaching market is shit. I like teaching. I really do. It's all the things I have to do with teaching that I don't like, but that's life. I'd like to go back to school, but everyone is going back to school. That's just one of those things you do when you don't know what to do, and I don't know if that would solve anything. I'd like to try my hand at writing. Which leads me to my next big thing-I can't write short stories. We'll get to that later.
You know what, though? When they ask older people what they regret the most, they say "not taking enough risks." I have the money. I'm going to write.
3. I'm being better to myself. I go to bed earlier. I don't read the internets as much. I write more as a result. Yay. I use lotion every day. I floss. I take a multivitamin religiously. I'm trying to exercise, but that's still hard. I'm looking into yoga classes. I have to fix the physical anxiety issues as well as attack the mental ones.
4. I went to see a therapist, and we're going to work on the thing, whatever it is. I was in there talking to him for about 30 minutes when out of the blue he asked me, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty to you feel over your husband's death?" and I think I just lost it. So I guess you know, things. He also rather implied that I might be thinking about Tianyu's death a little too much, or rather, the whole issue of suicide. That may be true. I think maybe I looked at it from too many angles. I'm starting to get the suspicion that I overthink everything in my quest to understand it, and most people don't bother, possibly because it's not necessary.
So yeah, I dunno what I have been like for you all the past few months. I have felt as if every little thing irks me, when it didn't used to. I have felt like I can't do anything right, etc etc, that I am always wrong. You could have said, "Hey, nice ass, baby," and I would have thought that you wanted me to lose weight or stay in my house for the rest of my life. I dunno. The real Amand-r that I like to be is THE CAPSLOCK ONE OF JOY because that's who I genuinely am, people who have met me will attest, so hopefully I can find that person again, and not just intermittently.
LATER I WILL POST ABOUT MY INEPTNESS IN WRITING SHORT STORIES, BUT FOR NOW I LEAVE YOU WITH A TALE OF TRAGIC BOOB WOE: (men, you may leave now.)
Dudes, last week, I was making coffee in the morning, and the cup I wanted was on the upper shelf. I leaned up to get it and felt this sharp pain in my breasts, and sure enough, I was still in thin jammy shirt, and I had just leant into the coffee pot steam. It burned like a son of a bitch, and I actually leaned over the sink to run my breast under the cold water. LOL acrobatics. Anyway, it was sore and rubbed against the shirt and then when I put a bra on, it felt better because it was immobile. Then I forgot about it. Steam burns are just things you get and the skin is red and then there's no blistering and you feel raw for a day and then it's all-okay, at least for me.
So this week I'm I dunno, washing or something and I feel hardness on my breast. OMG, THE BURNS ACTUALLY SCABBED OVER. LIKE THEY WERE BURNT ENOUGH TO SCAB. WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT.
I guess the moral of the story is not to lean over hot steamy things, but OMG BURN SCARS ON BOOBS. WEEPZ.
A few weeks ago, I started to notice that I was developing a series of symptoms that I couldn't ignore. I was overbreathing, or rather, taking too many deep breaths, and it's pretty much, if I understand what I was being told, hyperventilating or something. I also developed a lump in my throat, like that lump you get before you start to cry? All the time.
I was convinced that I had cancer. My tongue was swollen in the back. I met resistance when I tried to breathe through my nose, even though I wasn't congested. I yawned excessively. All of this led me to believe something bad, but I wasn't sure what.
I figured that looking for things it would be on the net is about the dumbest thing you could do, so what I did to get around that was looking for things that it couldn't be. As in, it wasn't likely cancer because of other factors I didn't have, and it wasn't other diseases because of things that I didn't have. What I did find was that I was amassing a lit of strange symptoms that I hadn't though of that when all combined created a bizarre painting of my ailing body. LIKE HOUSE!
So here I present, what in the world is wrong with Amand-r? TMI, dudes
Overbreathing
Lump in throat that leaves when sleeping
Trouble sleeping (staying asleep)
Unexplained muscular soreness
Swollen tongue
Inflamed sinuses
Headaches
Exhaustion
Excessive yawning
Palpitations
Depression
Twitching muscles
Koilonychia (spoon-shaped nails) [I put this in here because I just discovered the word and the doctor confirmed it. Woot!]
Intermittent hives
Occasional upper lip swelling like allergies.
Pacing
Teeth grinding or jaw clenching (my dentist just told me that I do this recently. I'm wiggling my teeth in place and they get loose and then they rub at the gumline and erode the enamel. SHITBEARS.)
I am sure there are more. I can't remember them all. I had a list. It was ridic. All I knew was that it was probably stress/anxiety related, and by the time I went to see the doctor 2 weeks ago, I was a wreck who could barely breathe. He had me do a spirometer and gave me an EKG and then did what I thought he would: told me to take some iron and proscribed Prozac. I was told to see a therapist and get back to him.
He was a lot nicer about it than that, and I cried in his office and he was very good. I had also just learnt that I had no mental health coverage, so I was afraid he was going to prescribe something hideously expensive.
So, here I am, in week 2 of Prozac, feeling better, and that's probably not the drug entirely since it takes weeks to kick in, but just the fat that I did something made most of the anxiety symptoms go away. How insane is that?
My brain still isn't processing all of this properly, so the rest if what I wanted to say, numbered as I think of them:
1. About three weeks ago I had a frightening revelation that we are all going to die, regardless of whether we want to or not, and we never had any choice in the matter. You didn't ask to be brought into this world, and you're going to die. The sensation made my head pulse and I got this burning sensation that started in my legs and ran up my body and I had to go take a shower to distract myself. Even now I can't think about it too much. Distraction is good.
2. I'm looking at subbing in the fall, since the teaching market is shit. I like teaching. I really do. It's all the things I have to do with teaching that I don't like, but that's life. I'd like to go back to school, but everyone is going back to school. That's just one of those things you do when you don't know what to do, and I don't know if that would solve anything. I'd like to try my hand at writing. Which leads me to my next big thing-I can't write short stories. We'll get to that later.
You know what, though? When they ask older people what they regret the most, they say "not taking enough risks." I have the money. I'm going to write.
3. I'm being better to myself. I go to bed earlier. I don't read the internets as much. I write more as a result. Yay. I use lotion every day. I floss. I take a multivitamin religiously. I'm trying to exercise, but that's still hard. I'm looking into yoga classes. I have to fix the physical anxiety issues as well as attack the mental ones.
4. I went to see a therapist, and we're going to work on the thing, whatever it is. I was in there talking to him for about 30 minutes when out of the blue he asked me, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty to you feel over your husband's death?" and I think I just lost it. So I guess you know, things. He also rather implied that I might be thinking about Tianyu's death a little too much, or rather, the whole issue of suicide. That may be true. I think maybe I looked at it from too many angles. I'm starting to get the suspicion that I overthink everything in my quest to understand it, and most people don't bother, possibly because it's not necessary.
So yeah, I dunno what I have been like for you all the past few months. I have felt as if every little thing irks me, when it didn't used to. I have felt like I can't do anything right, etc etc, that I am always wrong. You could have said, "Hey, nice ass, baby," and I would have thought that you wanted me to lose weight or stay in my house for the rest of my life. I dunno. The real Amand-r that I like to be is THE CAPSLOCK ONE OF JOY because that's who I genuinely am, people who have met me will attest, so hopefully I can find that person again, and not just intermittently.
LATER I WILL POST ABOUT MY INEPTNESS IN WRITING SHORT STORIES, BUT FOR NOW I LEAVE YOU WITH A TALE OF TRAGIC BOOB WOE: (men, you may leave now.)
Dudes, last week, I was making coffee in the morning, and the cup I wanted was on the upper shelf. I leaned up to get it and felt this sharp pain in my breasts, and sure enough, I was still in thin jammy shirt, and I had just leant into the coffee pot steam. It burned like a son of a bitch, and I actually leaned over the sink to run my breast under the cold water. LOL acrobatics. Anyway, it was sore and rubbed against the shirt and then when I put a bra on, it felt better because it was immobile. Then I forgot about it. Steam burns are just things you get and the skin is red and then there's no blistering and you feel raw for a day and then it's all-okay, at least for me.
So this week I'm I dunno, washing or something and I feel hardness on my breast. OMG, THE BURNS ACTUALLY SCABBED OVER. LIKE THEY WERE BURNT ENOUGH TO SCAB. WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT.
I guess the moral of the story is not to lean over hot steamy things, but OMG BURN SCARS ON BOOBS. WEEPZ.