The Secret Place

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…

Because several friends called/texted this weekend about the state of my body, I’m going to give some updates and appreciate them. So… my sleep quality has been very poor since T-dog died.  Simultaneously my anxiety spiraled out of control.  I got R-dog in February and my anxiety has eased off (though it’s still pushing the boundaries), but my sleep has not improved. This means that I am severely sleep deprived as I haven’t gone into deep sleep for a sustained period in over six months.  It’s starting to affect… well… everything.  This week I’ve started having visual hallucinations. Now, because Hollywood and acid trips are stupid – most people think…

I took a photography class (online) tonight… one thing the teacher said was to practice photography every day because that’s how you get good at something – if you want to play a musical instrument, you practice, you don’t just pick it up once every six months and expect to improve. Sometimes someone can say something in a certain moment that hits just the right way… even if I already know the thing they’re talking about… somehow in that moment it hits differently.  That happened for me, tonight. I get a lot of the “Write every day!” advice from the writing world… so, because I’m literal and ridiculous I set…