A Little Insight into the Brain of Yours Truly

Today, I have a headache. And I think about how miserable I feel and wish for something stronger than Tylenol. But then all the rational and less selfish thoughts hit me and I think: Other people I know and love have worse and more frequent headaches than I do so I need to quit complaining and then I think about how I'm grateful I'm allergic to most pain medicines so I don't need to worry about addictions and am careful with the one medicine I can take, though it doesn't do much, and then I think, having a headache like this forces me to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, which makes me think about the church camp in Indiana at which I, and the H.I.S. Puppeteers ministry team, just spent the better part of a week where we pushed the hydrate, hydrate, hydrate mantra because it was so blasted hot and remember how great of an experience that was. And yes, that was all one thought. Go me!

I'll be alright, though. I know this is temporary. I do have to say that when I was in Indiana with the puppeteers, I felt physically more well than I have in a very long time. My allergies hardly bothered me at all, my head didn't hurt, and my asthma was practically non-existent. It sort of made me half-consider moving there just for the health benefits. But then my brain took over and I went though the whole thought process again: What would I do for work and what about hubby? Would he be able to start his business up again there and be successful? And I'd really hate to drag the kids out of a community and a school-system they are familiar with. And what about Sandy-mom? I couldn't leave her here! She'd be all alone and that wouldn't be right. And where would we live? And then again, where would I work? And so what if my allergies are kind of terrible in Tennessee? That's why there's a wonderful thing called allergy medicine, right? Right?

Why does the cycle of my brain continually turn thoughts over and over and over?

I don't know. It's constant, though. Every minute of every single day and sometimes lots of minutes at night when I should be sleeping. Just this running commentary/inner monologue of stuff... Some people call it worry, and that could be the truth. I just don't know. Maybe it's anxiety? I do seem to worry a lot more than other people, but I just haven't been able to master the whole "I don't care" or "Let it go" thing other folks seem to have mastered. Well...not that they don't care, but seem to be far less concerned about EVERYTHING than I am.

I worry about how people perceive me, and then I start with: But who really cares how someone perceives you? I mean,  you're you, right? You're not them. You only need to worry about what you are doing and that you don't intentionally hurt anyone, right? I mean, you're basically a pretty good person so what are you worrying about? Perception is useless, isn't it? Though I guess perception and impressions are nearly one and the same.

And truthfully, it's probably the ADD I've had my whole life. I have learned to live with it and work around it and find things to do that benefit from my active and virtually directionless brain. So all these thoughts - all this stuff that's constantly racing around, pinging off the insides of my skull, screaming for my attention all the time - is just....me. Part of who I am. Whether you love me or hate me is irrelevant. Whether I drive you crazy or not is irrelevant. I cannot help who I am and you cannot fix me. It's taken me a long time to get to this conclusion. And yet...

Yes, I'm sure there is someone out there who CAN fix me with medications. And I'm not opposed to therapy, but have been unlucky in my search for a therapist who meets my needs. And then I also am not pleased with the cost of therapy for mental illness - because the ADD coupled with the anxiety and depression IS a mental illness but it IS NOT something to bash me for or be afraid of - so I just...don't. I don't go to therapy, though I probably should. I don't take medicines for it, though again, it might not hurt.

I was taking an antidepressant for a while, and I'm not really sure why I stopped except that I just never refilled the prescription. I was taking an anti-anxiety medicine for a while, and I know exactly why I stopped that. Oh - THAT'S a story for another post, though. It's a doozy. I had to get beyond it before I could even consider writing about it.

Yeah - you see this? Re-read this post! I'm all over the place today.

FOCUS, JEN! FOCUS! Be Peanut!

TTFN

JMS

Tidbits

Do you remember my post called My Current 'Shiny Squirrel'? This is the little thing I wrote a month ago or so about April, the pregnant giraffe. Well, she finally had her baby and I was there to see it. Ok, not there there, but I was able to catch it live! Girl-child saw it, too - sort of by accident - and she recoiled in horror, announcing, "EW! GROSS!" We've had The Talk (most of it) but I think she was unprepared. I said, "Well, honey - that's how all babies are born, except human babies don't fall to the ground, they're 'caught' by a doctor." She said, "Except the babies who are hatched from eggs, mom!"

***

New meds are...underwhelming? I've been on them for several weeks now and the biggest difference I've noted is that my jaw is constantly tight and hurts all the time. It wakes me up at night and I try to relax my jaw but I'm clenching so hard my whole face hurts. I'm grateful I go back to the doctor on May 4th (May the Fourth be with you!) so we can talk about this. I know it has to be medicine-related because I've experienced something like this before, a sensitivity to Lexapro (1% of people taking Lexapro may experience jaw pain and tightness) which is another antidepressant. This is painfully similar.

Other than that, I've gained weight, which irritates the you-know-what out of me. I suspect that, too, is medicine-related. We'll see.

***

We took a mini-vacation this past weekend. Nothing super exciting, but it was fun and impromptu. We visited some of Hubby's family, stayed in a fancy hotel (Yay Priceline!), ate in a dive diner (which was awesome), visited the church we got married in almost 17 years (and two kiddos) ago, and took our time coming back. We stopped off in a few places, fished in a couple other places, and finally got home just before 9PM. The picture (at left) is my favorite picture from our mini-vacation; because there's just such joy in it. Go Girl-child!

***

Work has been seriously busy. Good, but busy.

***

Sandy/Mom has been unhappy, but improving in small increments. I am grateful for any improvement because even little improvements are huge steps toward recovery. She's still in a nursing home right now, rehabilitating, but she shows more progress every day.

***

My allergies are - in a word - awful. So are Boy-child's. We're both a mess. You want a classic example of seasonal allergies? Here we are!

***

That's about all I can think of right now. Have a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day! (Oh! Spell-Check didn't tag that word? Seriously? How odd. Either it's in the dictionary and I spelled it correctly, or it's so far from Spell-Check's ability to even distinguish it as a word, that it doesn't have any idea what to do. I'll take "Mary-Poppins Words" for $2000, Alex!)

TTFN
JMS

Thoughts on a personal weight loss journey

By now I'm sure most of you know, at least in a very general way, about my slow trudge toward a significant weight loss.  I'm making progress, and it is most definitely rewarding to see how far I've come from where I started, but I'm not there yet.  The progress is slowing down too, which admittedly irritates me though is not any cause for concern.  I am told slower weight loss is more conducive to success, and so I will continue to believe.  (I'll ask you, most kindly, to not shatter the illusion, please?) 

Careful!  Weight loss can sometimes have unintended consequences!

A few weeks ago, I was noticing a continuing tremor in my hands.  Putting it a little more bluntly, I was constantly shaking like a leaf.  My heart was racing to an unseen finish-line and sometimes I felt as if I were gasping for breath just to get it to settle down.  I felt wired all the time and my usual caffeine intake (which has not been any sort of issue) was suddenly too much.  Those of you who know me well understand how cutting back on coffee was…challenging…to say the least.

One sunny day, while sitting at my desk cursing silently at my violently shaking hands, telling them most cruelly how useless they were as they clumsily pounded out more typos and nonsense in one short paragraph than my poor ergonomic keyboard typically sees in a year, I had an epiphany:  No more thyroid equals daily maintenance medication carefully considered and prescribed by my doctor for a person nearly 23 pounds lighter (at the time) than the person the medication was calibrated for.  So, I made a call to the endocrinologist to schedule an appointment. 

The following week, blood-work complete, results in!  What do you know?  Just as I suspected; I was over-medicated!  After the appointment, a prescription for a lower-dose of thyroid medication, and a couple of weeks for my body to adjust, I feel human again.  I have to go back in two months for a follow-up, but so far so good.

Healthier doesn't always mean happier!

Hubby is a massage therapist.  One of the things he must do in order to keep his license in good standing is to have a certain amount of continuing education each year.  Not quite two weeks ago, he attended a seminar called What Is In Our Food.  It was a six-hour seminar for health professionals and came to a town nearby.

I knew (knew!) when he came home from this class his head would be teeming with information and he would immediately dump out everything in our refrigerator.  (Ok, not quite everything – but pretty close.)  We are now both actively trying to make better food choices, and let me tell you, it isn't easy.  Not only is it difficult, but it's expensive and lacks any kind of palatable taste.  It's boring!

As an example, I'm trying very hard to acquire a taste for plain, Greek yogurt.  I think it's going to take a lot of acquiring.  After the first couple of shudder-inducing, taste bud mishaps, a fair amount of grumbling on my part, and some well-placed advice from Hubby as to how to (healthfully) enhance the flavor of the thick, sour cream-like substance, I have discovered a tolerable level of edibility.

I don’t believe I will ever be a health-food nut.  (Another kind of nut, absolutely, but not the health-food kind.)  My love for all things pizza negates just about any possibility of my becoming someone who pours soy milk on her organic kamut flakes in the morning.  But I do think I can continue to make a conscious effort toward making better food choices.  I can just about guarantee you there will be grumbling; I’ll complain about it, a lot.  However if my own personal better choices can make a difference for me, imagine what my children might learn by proxy?

Win-win, right?

TTFN
JMS

The more, more, more mentality

I talked a little bit about my recent experience with a prescription cough medicine.  And while on the surface I’ll say that typically I’m leery of that kind of medicine and, frankly, it tends to make me sick, I’m very glad I had it this time around.  It was helpful and practically stopped my cough in its tracks.

You need to understand that when I say “that kind of medicine” I mean a low-level narcotic medication or prescription narcotics in general.  It was a hydrocodone combo with an allergy medicine.  And, though I was instructed to, in no uncertain terms, take only the teaspoon prescribed to me, what the doctor didn't know – couldn't know – is that I wouldn't have taken it at all had I realized what it was.  It never occurred to me.  I just knew it was medicine to help with my cough.  I knew what it was, but didn't realize what it was…if that makes any sense.

When I took my little teaspoon of the stuff before bed, I knew it would put me out – the doctor told me it would – but didn't realize that it would be like a slow, warm, ooze into dreamland.  Syrupy and sweet and comfortable.  And while I was drifting contentedly toward the general direction of sleep, I remember distinctly thinking to myself, “A teaspoon wasn't enough.  Maybe you need more?  More…  More…  more…  more…”  And as soon as that thought ran through my mind I bolted back out of the drift and thought – lucidly – “NO!  Stick with the instructions the doctor gave you, no matter what!”  And was, quite honestly, a little surprised that the thought had crossed my mind to begin with.

Then, as I lay there recovering from my start, I thought, “What devil or whatever put that thought into my head?  ‘Cause it certainly wasn't me!”  And I wonder now, in daylight, in complete lucidity, if those kind of thoughts are what plague an addict?  “Must eat/drink/take more, more, more…!”  Whatever the situation is; whatever the chosen addiction may be.  Does more, more, more pervade every waking – and sometimes sleeping – thought?  And later I wondered if that's also the kind of thinking that causes people to fail in things like diets, for example (which I know isn't the same thing).  I don’t know, but it's something to think about.

I'm not an addict.  I used to be addicted to cigarettes, but now I'm not – and that road was tough!  But that's honestly as close as I can come to understanding the true addict's mentality.  Which is a fancy way of saying I can't understand.  Unless you count that screwy errant thought which ran through my head the other night as I was heading off to La-La-Land.  And that, frankly, scares the hell out of me; that maybe I could be easily swayed by the lure of those kinds of medications.  I now can no longer think, when I hear of others who became addicted to pain meds or whatever else, that it couldn't and/or wouldn't happen to me.  I don’t think any of us is immune.  What I DO think, though, is that it’s another notch in the plus column for a little something called Will Power, which is not the same thing as Free Will.

TTFN

JMS

Allergies are Un-fun

I've had some difficulty figuring out what to write lately.  Normally stuff just flows, but not so much the last couple of weeks.  It's annoying, really; I dislike these big gaps of nothing much in my blog.  I decided that I’d just sit down and see what happens.

***

So, Easter happened.  I spent a ton of time outdoors that day and then, conveniently, neglected to take my allergy meds (and yes, I know better…thank you for your concern) so I woke up Monday with a very irritated frog in my throat.  By Tuesday, I had no voice at all.  I actually had to forward my work phone to someone else for the day.  I felt OK – but just couldn't talk.  By Thursday, it had started moving to my chest (woo hoo!) and I was dragging, big time.  I just couldn't get outta my own way.  So, I begged forgiveness from my boss and went home and slept a good portion of the afternoon, and then all night.  By Friday, I was feeling better.  More rested.

Then, night before last, I coughed all night long.  It was so much fun.  That dry, tickly, unproductive, spasmodic cough, so as soon as I started to settle or drift off, I would cough.  Then I'd drift again.  And cough.  All. Night. Long.  I’m sure no one in my house got much sleep that night.  By yesterday morning, my chest hurt and I had circles under my eyes that looked like bruises and I was dragging again.

ENOUGH!

I took myself to the doc, who agreed with me that I was not sick, just suffering from allergies (see?  I told you!) but who also decided that I needed something to help the cough.  Enter strong cough medicine and a very early bed-time and I drifted away about 6:30 or 7:00 and slept all night!  And I didn't cough…much.  Hubby wanted to know if I was foggy in my head this morning after having taken the meds, but no, actually, I feel OK.  Still coughing, but it’s actually not so annoying today and my chest doesn't hurt as much.

It’s amazing to me what allergies can do to a body – and I live in one of the worst places imaginable for allergy-sufferers like me.  The thing is, though, I don’t want to live anywhere else.  I love where I live.  It's absolutely beautiful here.  Almost every single day I drive home and thank my lucky stars that I am able to live here, see the beauty, every day.  Lots of people have to drive a significant way to see what I see daily.  So yeah, allergies suck.  And sometimes allergies become something more – like sinus infections or upper-respiratory infections and the like.  But, I'll deal with it.  Because, truth be told, I’m happy where I am.

TTFN

JMS