| 20 March 2008: Been a while, yes. I know, I know. I should've done this long ago, everyone's been more than patient, I know. Putting the psyche back together after a series of breakdowns--hells, admitting I've had a series of breakdowns--that's taken some from me. I'm in therapy now--that, for anyone who knows me, should tell y'all how bad things got--because honestly, I'd rather be gang-raped by process servers than be in therapy. I really, really would. Health: not great. I have an appointment coming up end of the month, and then hopefully, I'll be getting back towards well. But at present, the system is in steady decline heading for failure. I'm stubborn, I refuse to give up. I'm intractable on this. So I keep kicking the body to move and keep moving and keep breathing and I refuse to stop doing this, damn it. Though some days? It feels so much easier to just lay down and stop fighting. But I'm steadfastly refusing. Oh, and brief update on the gallbladder surgery: I now have a steadily growing keloid at one of the surgical sites, the punch-through anchor point in my belly-button. Essentially--and this is still amusing me--my 'innie' is becoming an 'outie'. It's not life-threatening; at this point it's not even visible--yet. It may become so, though, and then I might have to take care of it. And blood hunger? Again, think my system's too stressed right now to care. It's like...we're vaguely hungry for it, and we know it, but we're a bit distracted by the dizziness/falling down/legs not worky moments to care. I'm waiting for it to come back. Think that'll mean I've gotten well. Or something. 10 February 2006: Bear with me, there is brain reorganization in progress. I've actually been way busy in one of two ways: one, being stressed out of my mind and computerless; two, by actually being busy volunteering at Free Geek. Which has zero to do with this page save for when I showed my supervisor (I'm an intern there) this page (so she could see my level of HTML skill), her sole response was "Cool." We need more people like her in the world. Definitely. Anyway, I promise an update is in the works. Give me a week or two to get settled, get the new comp up and running on the new desk, get used to being out of the house again, and I should have something new, or at least improved, in this space. 28 August 2005: Man. I really need to chuck these all from the main page and reorganize. I'm plotting on exactly how to do that. Check it out, report back if you feel like giving me input. It's definitely a work in progress at this stage. 4 Aprille 2005: Briefest of updates, considering last month's felt rather frantic and suicidal: Came out of the hospital and seem to be doing fine. Gallbladder: gone. Still taking Prilosec OTC because my stomach does not like oxycodone (first two weeks) and now hydrocodone (this last week) for the pain of recovering from being stabbed in four places. Up side--the doc was right, there will be four little scars (one of them amusingly enough cross-shaped) on my belly, which will interfere with my life not at all. Down side, I now seem to have something bizarre going on with my left leg--near as I can figure, all the symptoms seem to match meralgia paresthetica, but I won't know for sure until see my neurologist on the 7th. Man. If it's not one thing, it's another freakish other thing. Go figure. 2 March 2005: There's a lot I need to update. Let's hit it point by point. First, I now have physical, empirical proof that there is something that will make vampiric hunger GO AWAY. How'ver, this is a BAD, BAD SOMETHING and I am heartily recommending to everyone reading this that you not be me. Ready? Waiting with bated bloodied breath? Here it is: Mind-numbing, soul-crushing, emotionally draining, black-hole creating, dwarf-star forming, STRESS.. Yep. Takes it away completely. I don't feel a single solitary shred of blood hunger. No haze, no rage, no desire to feel anyone's pulse under my skin...nothing. I am free of it. Completely, totally, no reservation in my voice when I tell you, it is gone. On the other hand, I really want to grab a blade, slash holes in my arms, and step in front of a bus, so you know, there are down sides. Moving on. Beyond the crushing stress, one of my doctors has discovered why the ranitidine did nothing and I've converted over to a mostly vegetarian diet. (It's now completely vegetarian, btw. I'm not eating anything made of meat. At all. The entire idea is repulsive, which in itself is worrisome, considering I was the girl who would go into the Outback Restaurant and ask if I could get a steak that still whimpered a little on the plate.) Went in for an abdominal ultrasound (ah, the joys of being on an insurance plan that actually wants their patients to get better), wherein it was discovered I have gallstones. Now, I'm not saying this has anything to do with vampirism--unless you also are overweight, female, sedentary, with hyperinsulinemia and upper abdominal pain. (If you are, GET IN TO SEE YOUR DOCTOR. NOW.) On the way from that appointment, came a new appointment with a neurologist, who put me on one of the most fun ('fun' used in the sense of, 'experience one does not usually walk away from alive') drugs I've ever been on to date, Topamax. Oh, my great gods, Topamax has been entertaining. Giving up sugar and meat has been the least of my worries--there's also been word loss, aphasia (weird words coming out instead of what I meant to say), my acne's stepping up (and it wasn't exactly gone before), my lack-o-memory's actually becoming worse if that's possible, oh, and can we bring up the scratching off strips of my own skin? Yeah. On the plus side...it's taking away the daily headaches, and the weekly migraines. Down side...pretty damn down. Up side...some head pain, some sort of mid-range, kind of throbbing, but...no constant headache, and no one to two migraines a week, two to five migraines a month. Yeah. So far, it's worth it. 23 January 2005: So, here is where we are: apparently, when I was first prescribed ranitidine, I wasn't told that it could interfere with the metabolization of food. Seriously--apparently if large doses of antihistamines are taken (and that's the category that ranitidine fits into, really), it suppresses stomach acid, but interferes with protein absorption. Unfortunately, it's also one of those drugs that you can't stop just flat, cold turkey, so I stepped down to half-dosage. I still have stomach pain, but yay, I can eat steak again. It's something. I'm still eating more vegetarian meals than everyone else, eating more side dishes than meat entrees, but I can process meat again. Down side? I--sort of--have the hunger back. (The 'sort of' is due to the amazing number of migraines I've had in the past two weeks, due to a combination of factors, so--when my head isn't throbbing--I'm hungry.) Guess it's all relative. |
Sunshine Blues, dealing with the hazards of being sun-sensitive.
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