Category: Medical

No Ouch?

The Supermassive Black Hole of Pain I mentioned a few posts back, that was there just being all hot and weird and pulsing and squeezing and possibly emitting dark matter?

Stopped

Yesterday I woke up and it didn’t hurt and I thought “ok, it’s because I just woke up and I haven’t done anything risky like take a deep breath, or try to roll over” and then I did those things and it still didn’t hurt.

I went to the bathroom. I got dressed. I came downstairs. I made coffee.

Didn’t hurt

So I stood in the kitchen and leaned and twisted and reached and contorted in ways that are dangerous at the best of times and …

Nothin’ hurt

I’m used to pain receding. You know, how it goes away in stages, like each day it’s not as bad as the day before and eventually you realize it doesn’t hurt but you can’t specifically say what day it was when it stopped. Not this time. Went to sleep on Friday making “ooch” noises and trying to figure out the best position where the least number of things hurt, and when I woke up, it was gone.

So I’m assuming what I had was an alien probe of some sort? A little device monitoring me for the future of humanity I guess? The good news is I’m pretty much a harmless idiot, so if the aliens learned anything from me, it’s more than likely it’s things like “ouch bad, weed good, coffee best” so the good news is they’ll probably conquer us really easy, and there’ll be coffee and weed at the end.

You’re welcome

The Shrine

Killing time this morning waiting for coffee to brew and the dog to poo, I hit the Pluto TV app and the Stargate channel. The first thing I heard was Sheppard saying something about beer on the pier, and Rodney saying (in a very confused tone), “I drink beer?” and I shut that down so fast because there’s not much that absolutely upsets/terrifies/creeps me out, but that one thing is “genius loses their faculties” and the Stargate Atlantis episode “The Shrine” (streaming) is all about that.

It’s an amazing episode. It’s proof that David Hewlett is seriously underrated as an actor. But I’ve only been able to watch it twice because this really is the one thing that upsets me like nothing else.

I quit seeing a therapist when I tried to explain how terrifying the idea of losing your faculties was to me and she refused to get it. I don’t know if she thought she was leading me to some great breakthrough or she really couldn’t understand why losing my ability to think and forgetting who I am would be terrible, but if “If I can’t think or remember then who am I even?” didn’t explain it, I’m not really sure what else I could have said.

I’m also a little scared of “Locked-In” syndrome (that thing where your almost kinda in a coma, only just physically and your brain is still kicking around like normal) but not as scared as the losing thing, because most of my life has been spent not real sure how to interact in the physical world, and thinking things I couldn’t figure out how to communicate. Not being able to explain if/how I was in pain would be an issue, but again… I can’t really do that now.

Which is to say… my back really friggin hurts. It’s almost the same pain that sent me to the ER in September, but also not. It’s like a large chunk of my right abdomen was bitten by something and pulled off at the exact same time something kicked that same spot really hard and caved it in. It’s also simultaneously my ribs and not there at all. It’s nerves at the skin level and also somewhere floating inside.

Painkillers work, and I’m pretty sure a lot of it is just poor muscle tone and the fact that I did the recovery at a speed run because a) I am an idiot, b) they were never real clear about how long I shouldn’t do things, and c) I’m actually really just that much of an idiot (I wanted to drive myself home the day they discharged me). So like I’m not WORRIED about the pain, because it does get better and worse depending on how sensible I am, but it still HURTS and makes me cranky and distracted and tired and what I probably need is a few days off and someone else to deal with the dog, but what ya gonna do, right?

By the way, I’m aware of the irony of writing a blog about how I feel to complain about not being able to accurately explain how I feel. To quote Radiohead: This machine will not communicate / These thoughts and the strain I am under.

So look… I’ve been mentioning this blog more often to actual people, but I don’t know if you’re out there reading this. Mostly I don’t care, but today I’m using Edge on my backup computer to write this post and the site looks like absolute GARBAGE. If you ARE out there, drop a comment and let me know how things look for you. You can do it anonymously if you don’t want me to know who you are (because that would probably make me nervous if I knew who out there was actually reading (especially if you’re someone I might avoid eye contact with on a regular basis) — Take it up with my former therapist if you have a problem with that).

Cat in a Cone

Boycat had all of his teeth extracted on Wednesday and is wandering the house in a cone. He’s miserable and angry and pissed off at me, but he’s managing to eat and drink and use the litterbox. I haven’t given him any painkillers since I can’t tell if he’s still doing ok from the post-surgery ones or not. He’s really angry with me, which means I can pet him and hold him but he refuses to make eye contact or purr (except a little, grudging purr). He’s “hiding” but he’s not HIDING. I know he’s not comfortable, but he keeps trying to do his normal things and I’m taking that as a positive.

Girlcat still hisses and growls when she sees him, but that’s not even that unusual. The dog keeps trying to get close to him for a snuggle and that’s a little overwhelming for him, which sends him back into “hiding”.

Right now “hiding” is “under the dining room table” and “behind the bathtub” which is good because both are secure (the dining room table is in a corner so two sides are blocked by walls and the tub is a cast-iron clawfoot so it sits away from the wall but gives him a nice alley to hide in. He can go in and out from either end and turn around in the tight space.). I was worried about this yesterday, but then I watched him hop the gate between the dining room and the kitchen and now I know he’s taking things at his own speed and is doing ok. Boycat has trouble clearing the gate on his best days, so if he’s clearing it with no problem now, he’s going to be OK.

I’m tired of doing everything on hard mode though. My surgery was only about three weeks ago and things still hurt unexpectedly. I went back to work too soon, started driving too soon, been carrying heavy things too soon. Dog had to go to the vet days after I got home from my hospital stay, then I had to get boycat’s teeth taken care of because that couldn’t delay.

The neat thing about cats is his face bones look spongy right now because of the infections and tooth resorption but now that the teeth are gone and the infection is being treated, apparently the bones will repair themselves. I know bones heal, but you never think about spongy ones fixing back up.

The alarm has gone off and that means I have to go to work now. I like working from home. The commute is nice and the coffee is always good.

Out of Sorts

Since coming home from the hospital, I’ve been feeling “Not Myself”. It seems like a logical thing though, right? Like I just had my spine cut open and I was on a pretty nice muscle relaxer. I was in a new, weird pain, and I no longer had a pain that I’d gotten used to. And people had been in and out of my house a whole lot when I wasn’t there.

I’m not settling in though. Every night when I go to bed I have to remind myself how it works – how I sleep, where my arms go, where I am, and what’s going on. This has happened before after a hospital stay because I get used to the wake/sleep cycle of blood draws and medications pretty quick.

I usually adapt to sleeping in my own room pretty quick, but this time it’s not working. I get in bed and it feels foreign. Like I’m trying to fall asleep in a hotel room and I’m trying to get comfortable with a bed/blanket/pillow situation that’s not my usual.

Well now my usual feels unusual and so far no matter what configuration I try, it’s never really it.

So I’m wondering if this is a side effect of having the nerves untangled. There’s got to be parts of me that were getting bad reception that are back online now, right? Is the problem that I’m feeling parts of myself that I haven’t felt in a long time? I don’t like it. I’m restless and uncomfortable in a weird way.

I’ve started dreaming differently, too. They’re bad dreams and I’m always aware I’m dreaming but I can’t make them go away, either.

I got my nerves untangled just for my brain to get all muddled up.

The Darker Stuff

In the first post I mentioned my mom went to the vet with me as my Emotional Support Mother. Boycat has dental issues and I needed to get him checked out and prescribed antibiotics, but the last time I took a cat to the vet the cat didn’t survive. I was gunshy basically.

Like statistically I knew it wouldn’t happen again, but emotionally I wanted someone with me. Because on top of the pain I was in and the worry about the cat I was angry.

Esso should have been there. I was incandescently angry that they weren’t here to help — to drive because I was in pain, for the emotional support (although being fair, they would have been much more afraid that something bad would happen), and because that’s what a spouse is for.

Saturday, the whole time I was pacing the ER, I was worrying about the pets. The dog needed to be walked. The dog needed meds. One of the cats needed meds. They all needed feeding. My mom doesn’t drive and I don’t trust my neighbors well enough for any of them to have a key.

I’m angry again.

…

I get angry at myself for being angry that esso is dead. I think about all the time I helped them with surgeries and sicknesses and all the time I took off work for them and the hours and hours of sleep lost and I get angry because I know it’s not a contest. There is no “I owe you one” and I wasn’t keeping score. But I can’t help feeling betrayed that we went through so much together and now I have to do this on my own.

Maybe it’s not really anger and more like heartbroken.

I feel like the friends that did help me are now all judging me. My house is a mess. There are (empty) boxes everywhere because every time I think “I’ll just break down a couple” I get so overwhelmed by it all, and I know it’s not overwhelming.

That’s the fun of my brain. I know exactly when I’m being completely irrational but I can’t get around this invisible wall in the way and I can’t articulate how I can’t get around it, and I spend a lot of time standing in the middle of my kitchen sort of awkwardly flapping and yelling “JUST START” in my head.

Anyhow, my disaster of a house is set up the way I understand it, and it doesn’t make sense to other people. I have to have my doors locked/unlocked particular ways. I have to have things in specific places. And people had to come in and touch stuff.

My old roommate came one day to take care of the pets after work because I couldn’t remember if I’d arranged with the dog walker. He and his spouse came by, fed everyone, and hung out with the dog. After, I got messages from him telling me that “almost everything was unlocked and all the lights were on” and that he locked the deadbolt on the front door for me.

I don’t use it. It’s upside-down and sticks and I lost the key for it. I should replace it with one that’s set the right way (and has a key) but I haven’t. It’s so low on the list of things that HAVE to be done and it affects so little of my life that I honestly never think of it.

There was frantic texting when the dogwalker DID show up (I had scheduled it but in my defense…. neurodivergent memory AND post-surgical painkillers make it hard to keep track of things). My friends came back, unlocked the lock, and we got all the keys sorted out.

But I feel like they’re at home now, discussing the terrible state of the house and my life and judging me and probably pitying me.

But not, you know, helping.

I am feeling very alone and tired and sore and in a couple more days I’ll be back to work like nothing ever happened and have to pretend that I’m not so heartbroken, and I’m already tired of it.

It’s Thursday the 18th about 7:15 pm. I’m setting this to post tomorrow morning to spread out the activity. When this posts, I should (hopefully) be back home from having the drain removed and face down for some more sleep.