Well… Not that I’m on the outside or anything, but I’ve at least crawled high enough up the side of my hole to have some perspective on its depth… That’s a fucking deep hole! This summer has been… probably the worst of my life since I was a kid.  And, in some ways, it triggered a grief for the child I was, because, I realized that this summer was actually ostensibly less awful than what I was going through as a child… alone… I went through medical hell that triggered a lot of PTSD.  But I had people to tell about it.  I didn’t have to keep it secret.  I…

I had therapy today.  I’m supposed to increase my PTSD med.  Apparently I’m not doing well. But, I was supposed to increase it on my own a week ago.  I was supposed to increase it by 1 mg every week for four weeks unless I felt I was doing fine at a certain dosage, then I could elect to hold at that dosage level. I thought I was doing fine at 1 mg.  I haven’t had nightmares, I haven’t had flashbacks, particularly, here and there, but nothing like after the biopsy.  So… that’s what the PTSD drug is supposed to do… eliminate nightmares and flashbacks.  So I didn’t increase it.…

So… best laid plans and all that.  Yesterday was a shit show.  Clearly I didn’t post.  I had a family thing for half the day, and the other half the day I basically went into full eating disorder mode (Sir wouldn’t let me look up medical procedures on the internet, so… where’s my anxiety going to go??  FOOD!) I also had an anxiety attack and two panic attacks (yeah, they’re different… another post, another day.) I fell into bed last night feeling completely miserable and cried on Sir’s chest for about twenty minutes.  He thinks there was also some hormone crap going on, because, I was seriously, just weepy.  And…

So… after my surgery, I had a patch to stop nausea.  24 hours after I took off the patch, I had the worst nausea ever.  And nothing helped, not even the other nausea medicine they gave me. The doctors all shrugged and said it must still be the anesthesia (three days later…) even though it wears off in 24 hours.  They said put on another patch… I went into Google Ninja mode and found out that the drug I was on (the patch) has a very well documented history of causing severe rebound withdrawal which can last for weeks or up to months.  It’s even on the freaking drug website! …

So, I had surgery yesterday.  It’s been a long, hard couple of months and a lot of things got shelved.  Things like this blog.  Sigh. But I have survived what, at times, I didn’t know if I could, so… time to start picking up the pieces again. I went to the new women’s clinic and met a new doctor and she is wonderful.  She listened to my history, commiserated about how awful the biopsy was at Kaiser (where they refused to give me any pain medication or even a Valium before the procedure.)  She said that anything we needed to do, we could do it under general anesthesia. But she…

Sometimes life gets hard.  Sometimes in big ways, and sometimes just in small ways that… still feel so big. This was my last day with students.  It was an emotional day.  This was the sweetest class I’ve ever had. Though every class is hard to say goodbye to, this year has been a goodbye with the least mixed feelings of any in my career. I went out after work with coworkers, then came home.  Sir and SB were already home (since I stayed out until six with coworkers).  I walked in and realized that something was going on.  The guys were in the living room, SB was kneeling, which isn’t…

So… Things have been a little rough around here. I’m back on two psych meds to manage my PTSD and anxiety.  I have to have more exams and more tests and some surgery and possibly an IUD put in… This all… terrifies me. I’m working so fucking hard every day to do all the “right” things.  To do the research, to ask the right questions, to hold my boundaries, to make decisions, to manage my records, to get prescriptions filled (harder than it fucking should be sometimes!), to make phone calls… Today I called it quits with my HMO and went rogue.  I made an appointment at a women’s clinic…

Content Warning:  Graphic descriptions of a gynecological exam through the  lens of sexual assault. . . . . . . . Well, I promptly failed my renewed attempt to write every day.  But in keeping with my trying to be more compassionate, I’m going to say there were some extenuating circumstances and forcing myself to write would have been… lacking in compassion. For 8 weeks now I’ve been bleeding – like the world’s longest period, except, thankfully, without cramps or mood swings… just blood.  A lot of blood.  Day and night.  For 8 weeks. Last weekend I landed in the emergency room because I was short of breath, having rapid…