catching up part 1
Hello again, livejournal. Happy Ides of March. I see that I've lost some friends, but that's understandable. My commenting record is pretty pathetic, and for the past year or two I've been in the habit of taking long sojourns from the website.
The past few months were pretty rough. Intense depression/hopelessness and flashes of unwelcome memories, stressful workload, Shadow got mauled by one of the dogs (he recovered), poor health, weight gain, realization of how lonely and fucked up I truly am that I wasn't ready to face. I feel like the worst of it is behind me now, since I've come home from the hospital. Let me tell you about that...
Like I said, I've been in pretty poor health lately mentally and physically. Over the past couple weeks the bodily bit of it had become more and more difficult to function under. Went from insomnia and anxiety to fatigue, pain and shortness of breath that got progressively worse until I couldn't walk up and down the stairs and just lay in bed all day and night, smoking out the window and watching dvd's, living off orange juice and dry cereal. Finally I made a doctor's appointment. On the day of the appointment **irony** I was in such bad shape that I went into the bathroom to change and just lied down on the ground because had no strength to dress or bathe. My father's shouting at me (he didnt know) that I'm going to be late, I tell him I can't get up and he helps me down the stairs into the kitchen. I start hyperventilating, collapse into a chair, gasp "I can't breathe my arms hurt I'm gonna throw up" puke up everything in my stomach (liters of orange juice and stomach stuff)--props to Dan for bravely cleaning up that enormous disgusting mess, btw-- and next thing I know I'm in an ambulance and people are asking me questions and shouting about my something or other declining quickly. Oxygen mask, needles, prodding, instruments, hospital bed, blank...parents, doctor, needles, "massive blood loss, we have to find where the bleeding's coming from...dehydration, she's supposed to have 40 some blood unit or other and she has 18"..."her heart"..."her heart"...blood transfusion, blank...stuff in my mouth, informed a probe is going down my throat, blank...wake up...tired..."you would have died"...parents, more blood, wheeled into another room, needles, more blood transfusions, iv liquid, etc etc stabilized. Diagnoses: 2 sizable ulcers, I'd been bleeding for a long time. The cause? I made myself sick over time, plus my anxiety/stress and shitty diet probably exacerbated it I'd guess. I had no idea I was that close though, I thought I had the flu or mono and so did my parents and the doctor at first. It's not that I was determined to hurt myself or that I wanted to die, more like "I don't give a fuck about my life, I'm gonna do what numbs me now and fuck it if it shortens my life". You might too if you felt how I felt.
So that's the exciting part: I almost bled to death internally, my heart went all wonky and nearly stopped. I'll leave out the yuckier stuff, for my dignity and your peace of mind. I ended up spending 5 days and nights in that hospital hooked up to iv's and getting a total of 6 pints of blood, which apparently is a lot. Having cold blood pumped into your veins feels weird. I know virtually nothing about medicine, although when they said something about a GI bleed I knew that was bad because I'd heard of it on Scrubs :P They didnt feed me solid food until the 5th day and obviously I wasn't allowed to smoke. I couldn't sleep either, with the loud noises and the uncomfortable position and the anxiety of missing class. It was hell. Not to mention being pricked with needles every 3 hours and needing to be pricked more times than should be necessary to find a vein half the time. I left looking like a junkie, and still have some bruises and track marks. Would have been a good opportunity to quit smoking, but no. That first cigarette after 6 days was exquisite, mmm.
You know, 12 years ago I saw my brother Dan crash through a pane glass door and bleed nearly to death? His blood still stained our wooden porch the day we moved out 4 years later...isn't that weird?
There you go. It is what it is. I feel a lot better emotionally and physically now, though still getting the rest of my strength back and school is actually going great. Reading a lot of fascinating stuff, bangin out a poem here and there when I'm not writing papers or studying. I'll share those things, and more, soon. This entry's getting rather too long.
**edit
by making myself sick, I don't mean bulimia; I'd been taking a lot of otc drugs
The past few months were pretty rough. Intense depression/hopelessness and flashes of unwelcome memories, stressful workload, Shadow got mauled by one of the dogs (he recovered), poor health, weight gain, realization of how lonely and fucked up I truly am that I wasn't ready to face. I feel like the worst of it is behind me now, since I've come home from the hospital. Let me tell you about that...
Like I said, I've been in pretty poor health lately mentally and physically. Over the past couple weeks the bodily bit of it had become more and more difficult to function under. Went from insomnia and anxiety to fatigue, pain and shortness of breath that got progressively worse until I couldn't walk up and down the stairs and just lay in bed all day and night, smoking out the window and watching dvd's, living off orange juice and dry cereal. Finally I made a doctor's appointment. On the day of the appointment **irony** I was in such bad shape that I went into the bathroom to change and just lied down on the ground because had no strength to dress or bathe. My father's shouting at me (he didnt know) that I'm going to be late, I tell him I can't get up and he helps me down the stairs into the kitchen. I start hyperventilating, collapse into a chair, gasp "I can't breathe my arms hurt I'm gonna throw up" puke up everything in my stomach (liters of orange juice and stomach stuff)--props to Dan for bravely cleaning up that enormous disgusting mess, btw-- and next thing I know I'm in an ambulance and people are asking me questions and shouting about my something or other declining quickly. Oxygen mask, needles, prodding, instruments, hospital bed, blank...parents, doctor, needles, "massive blood loss, we have to find where the bleeding's coming from...dehydration, she's supposed to have 40 some blood unit or other and she has 18"..."her heart"..."her heart"...blood transfusion, blank...stuff in my mouth, informed a probe is going down my throat, blank...wake up...tired..."you would have died"...parents, more blood, wheeled into another room, needles, more blood transfusions, iv liquid, etc etc stabilized. Diagnoses: 2 sizable ulcers, I'd been bleeding for a long time. The cause? I made myself sick over time, plus my anxiety/stress and shitty diet probably exacerbated it I'd guess. I had no idea I was that close though, I thought I had the flu or mono and so did my parents and the doctor at first. It's not that I was determined to hurt myself or that I wanted to die, more like "I don't give a fuck about my life, I'm gonna do what numbs me now and fuck it if it shortens my life". You might too if you felt how I felt.
So that's the exciting part: I almost bled to death internally, my heart went all wonky and nearly stopped. I'll leave out the yuckier stuff, for my dignity and your peace of mind. I ended up spending 5 days and nights in that hospital hooked up to iv's and getting a total of 6 pints of blood, which apparently is a lot. Having cold blood pumped into your veins feels weird. I know virtually nothing about medicine, although when they said something about a GI bleed I knew that was bad because I'd heard of it on Scrubs :P They didnt feed me solid food until the 5th day and obviously I wasn't allowed to smoke. I couldn't sleep either, with the loud noises and the uncomfortable position and the anxiety of missing class. It was hell. Not to mention being pricked with needles every 3 hours and needing to be pricked more times than should be necessary to find a vein half the time. I left looking like a junkie, and still have some bruises and track marks. Would have been a good opportunity to quit smoking, but no. That first cigarette after 6 days was exquisite, mmm.
You know, 12 years ago I saw my brother Dan crash through a pane glass door and bleed nearly to death? His blood still stained our wooden porch the day we moved out 4 years later...isn't that weird?
There you go. It is what it is. I feel a lot better emotionally and physically now, though still getting the rest of my strength back and school is actually going great. Reading a lot of fascinating stuff, bangin out a poem here and there when I'm not writing papers or studying. I'll share those things, and more, soon. This entry's getting rather too long.
**edit
by making myself sick, I don't mean bulimia; I'd been taking a lot of otc drugs