Need I say more?

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[O.O]
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Lemonade

So, after the virus I got such a bad cough that it awakened the RSD (that's Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy to you) nerve pain in my left hand. I have been in so much pain that I am amazed I can think or talk. I keep throwing up because my body can't handle it. It's been really tough and I have been getting really depressed. I was very sad because I thought that I wasn't going to be able to work faire. And I have been stressing and pushing myself so hard towards working the past few weeks I haven't had much fun at all. Its always been weighing on my mind and influence my mood. And frankly I have been miserable. It's been so hard its been detrimental for me to constantly be working on getting my costume together and figuring things out. It's been slower going than normal, cutting fabric and drafting patterns, because I have been so sick or in some much pain that I couldn't think clearly. Just the simple act of ironing out my fabric last night almost killed me. And it was impossible for me to fold the fabric myself for cutting. The weight of the cloth was destroying my hand. So today, when I tried to drive to site and had to return home after throwing up on the side of the road, I made peace.

It was shocking, the change that came over me. I feel like its ok. I may not always feel like this and I may regret my decision at some points. But I think that making myself miserable to have some fun that has a lot of drawbacks in itself is pointless. Faire will not get me farther in life. And though it does bring me great joy it also brings me great stress. Being that actively social is so hard on me and makes me feel bad about myself. I don't think its such a great idea to put myself through that. I need to heal my mind and body. And move ahead with life. My crafts do that. They give me something I can actually do with my life. And could possibly incorporate a faire life at some point down the road too, selling my wares. But it makes me the most happy.

And I think I prepared to work faire for a reason. It got me to realize I can look "normal" meaning no piercings and covered tattoos and that that is not the end of the world. So I have decided I will try and find a nice part time job and not let my alternative appearance, and my pride of it, stop me. For heavens sake, I could work Disney.

I dyed my hair last night, a "normal" color. It's not totally normal, it's maroon. But its far more acceptable than anything I've had in a long while. And I think that was what was really stopping me from trying to find a job. Sure, my hand tattoos will probably need a lot of maintenance due to hand washing and smudging, but I think I could handle it. There are ways to deal with it. And the piercings come out. Sure, I may have some strange holes in my face, but most people won't see them....right?

Now I just need to find a job where I can be happy, not kill myself with overwork and always remember to do what makes me happy and nothing else.

If I have to refrain from doing something its not the end of the world. And I will always survive. I can live through the times when I feel like I cannot survive. My hopeless times and despair don't last and I will always find some sort of solution. I just need to not give up they way I am so inclined to do. I could even live without Collin in my life. Sitting at home alone watching T.V or knitting is not bad. And there are other people that I can talk to or hang out with when I need company. There is no need for me to panic and feel the need to maintain a friendship by being the most important person in my friends life. People will still be my friend even if we don't hang out every week. 

With that said, Becky seems to have decided not to speak to me again for reasons I can and some reasons I cannot really figure out. So there are people who will not be my friend even if I think I want them to. But life is so much more pleasant without forced fake friendships. Like how I felt when I would socialize with her. Maybe our personalities just clash, who knows? But my life is happier and less complicated when I let go and don't try to be her friend to no avail. Still, its shockingly rude that she did not thank me for letting her borrow my car. Can she really be the selfish and ungrateful? UGH!

But enough bitching. I am thankful for today. And the epiphanies I have had in the past few hours. And also for whatever has changed inside me the past few months and has given my back my will to live. I am thankful I take pleasure in cleaning up little bits around the house and that taking charge of my life brings me satisfaction and not severe stress. I am so thankful for the chance to work with Omar and hopefully bring a better quality of life to another person in need, who faces so many challenges. I am thankful that my eyes are opening to the possibility that my life is worth living in a quality way and that I really can make lemonade with all my lemons.

My crappy day and lovely ER trip

So, about 6ish days ago I got a minor virus that screwed up my lungs. I don't know if it was a strange form of cold (usually when I get a cold my nose runs and stuffs up until it is bleeding raw/tries to fall off my face) or a minor flu (usually when I get a flu, like back in February I get a true fever with chills/sweats and awful achey muscles) but this virus was just kind of  mild and made me very blah. At first I thought I was just having a bad day of asthma for I was coughing a bunch and drinking tons more liquids than is usual.

But then it just kept going. And it got worse. My cough went from intermittent to disrupting my sleep and I plummeted from alert and active to extremely foggy and exhausted. But I really didn't feel like I was going to die, unless it was from the cough. I felt the virusy blah feeling for about 4 days and by Wednesday it felt like I had won the fight and was on the mend. Thursday seemed to confirm this theory, until evening hit that is. I started to develop the severe spinal chord pain and sciatica due to my cough. And started getting tingling and numbness in my limbs again. I felt like I was going to need some sort of medical intervention beyond my over the counter tylenol/mucinex and asthma meds cycle. But when  I woke up on Friday I had taken a huge turn for the worse. Throughout the week with the virus I had been able to go out and shop and work on my costume for faire, but Friday left me unable to do anything but sprawl on the couch with my mouth hanging wide open trying to gulp as much air as I could into my extremely tight airways.

It also made me extremely moody and even more foggy/confused than I had been while having the lupus flare just prior and during the virus. I had some awful emotional upsets that, in hindsight, I can see related almost totally directly to my improper breathing. I called my mother to ask for advice/help and ended up getting very upset because I could not be clear enough, or get a deep enough breath to make a complete sentence, and thus was very frustrated by her inability to fully grasp what I was saying. She suggested an er trip and of course I refused. I really really hate er trips. So after carrying on, crying, yelling, panic attacking and generally acting bipolar/borderline I feel asleep thinking I had tired myself out enough and the sleep would do my lungs good. 

But when I woke up I was much worse. Then pain in my lungs was burning and raw more than ever and my lungs were so tight that my cough, which hadn't been very healthy or productive earlier that day, sounded stifled from inside my body. I woke feeling very hung over and even more slow and foggy than I had felt in several MONTHS. I knew I had to do something I didn't want to do.

So I went to Hoag Hospital's ER, and dragged collin along after a little pushing. He was still pretty annoyed from my emotional stress time earlier but he came along because he really does care about me, even if he can't be around the uber emotional me sometimes. My mother wasn't answering her phone at the time and I was nervous to go to the hospital without knowing what insurance plan we were currently on. I thought it had changed several months ago, but later in the evening I learned it was the same. So, without that knowledge I was hesitant to go to the ER at all. But I plucked up my courage and went, following my intuition and not my silly "logical" mind.

The ER trip was extremely beneficial in many ways. First, the staff was so kind and friendly it's something I haven't seen at an ER before, even at hoag. It was beyond good. Also, I got a nice big shot of Intramuscular steroids which have improved my whole body, not just my lungs. Once they kicked in, and I started to sweat like a pig - my indication they are taking affect - I noticed that I was moving with more ease in all the little things I do around the house.

I always have a vague awareness that minor movements cause me pain, but I think because I deal with them so often every day and because I deal with so much more intense pain regularly that I don't really take notice of the smaller pains, but instead avoid the action entirely, put it off until beyond the last possible moment, or find strange not-as-effective replacement movements. A good example would be after finishing off a big bottle of juice I bent over at the hip to place the bottle on the floor beside the recycling container. I noticed after doing this that normally I would stand up straight and drop the bottle to the floor and then move it into position with my foot. Also my sciatica disappeared and the minor costochondritis were gone.

But with all the happy wonderful bits about the steroids the cause of my blogging at a time when I should be sleeping should be mentioned. I got insomnia, horrible, hyper, manic insomnia.

I also got a nebulizer treatment as well which instantly helped to soothe my lungs and open up my lungs so my blood oxygen levels shot right back up.

Ok well, I just threw up so I will finish my tale later. If at all.

Crazy day

Getting back into therapy is a crazy thing. It's a bit scary and very emotionally trying.

But I feel like I climed Everest today. There was a tiff with Collin tonight and he stormed out of the hosue for an hour and a half. My mothers phone was off and I was left to rely on other sources to calm down and deal with any upset feelings I had.

Instead of resorting to destructive unhappy behaviors, like I normally would, or even breaking down into a panic attack; I tried "normal people" repsonses. I tried to call my mother to no avail since her phone was off, but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. It's possible talking to my mother about all this would have set me off and made me more upset about the situation than I was.

So, instead of disolving into unstable chaotic goo, I took a shower and allowed myself a bit of a cry in bed. I took a few minutes to call a friend and vomit up a bit of my feelings. But spent most of the time dealing with my emotions by myself. This is totally foreign to me and I cannot believe that I went through it. It's something so far beyond my comprehension. I do not know how to function in emotional territory without some outside source. So good for me.

Maybe I am not a lost cause.

Also in life my car needs some expensive repairs so there is a possibility I may get a new, albeit used, car. I want to get something cute with good gas mileage and it has to be approved by the blokes on Top Gear. I wonder what is going to happen.

Almost human

I have bouncing back and forth between being super stressed and feeling overwhelmed and being quite content.

I feel like I am improving as a person and in the realms of my mental health, but I still feel like there is so much I can do. Very minor things seem insurmountable and I get so upset. And it truly does always seems as if right when I acknowledge my happiness something happens that sends me into depression.

But with all that said I am doing so much to push my life forward and not backward.

Even the simple act of baking brownies, which I am now patiently waiting for to be done, seems far more proactive than anything I have done in recent years. I get the dishwasher going when I make a meal and do the laundry when I know I will be home. I have things more organized and feel like I depend less on other people.

Without all the meds weighing me down, slowing my mind and upsetting my body I feel almost human again. My lupus has improved and unless I have a bug I feel like I am a dependable person. I can see into my future some and predict what I will be doing. Next week, every day around 3:30, I will be tutoring Omar. maybe hanging out with a friend after, or playing on the computer.

And walking! it is amazing that I have learned I can walk long distances without my arthritis killing me or the fatigue causing me to stop. i feel free and so much more confident about myself.

If only I could remember the confidence I feel now when stress tries to knock me down a peg. Perhaps slowly but surely I will retrain my brain to be a competent and healthy, fully functioning mind.

Bonus: Geo challenge and who's got the biggest brain on face book are wondrous fun and hopefully will kick my brains butt into thinking intelligently again. Who knows? I may actually, someday, perform at a level which my IQ dictates.

The battle for Supremacy

Right now I am running two new browsers. And they are fighting for my affections.

I got annoyed and bored witht he same old same old from firefox and looked around IE for a bit before deciding to take a chance on Safari and Google Chrome. This blog is being written through chrome, which I think has a more appealing user interface than safari. So I am not sure how much more of Safari I will use.

I do love apple for its clean look of things and ease of use. But google has always had a more appealing feel. If that makes any sense. It may not be as clean as Safari, but it has more colors. And the icons in my bookmark bar are a real plus.

When hopping back and forth between the two browsers everything seems more appealing about Chrome. You can simply type in whatever you want into the url bar. Not just a URL! Search terms also go here and it gives you the option to search the term or suggests a few links based off your bookmarks/history. And bookmarking is a breeze! There is a little star icon next to the url window. And moving things from the bookmarks bar to the other bookmarks section or vice versa is crazy simple. I am totally in love.

But I will continue to give safari a try, but with the unobtrusive tabs at the top, and promises that if one tab crashes the rest won't die along with it I think I am already pretty hooked.

Also today I signed up for mobile me throgh apple. I was promised in Itunes that I had a 60 day free trial. But after signing up and syncing what I could. I found that there were a lot of my apps and programs that it just wouldn't talk to. So that's when I synced through Google. And that seems to be working extra peachy. And it's free, rather than 100 bucks a year. And it works with my google calender and my gmail contacts. Why pay all that money for something that wont provide me with all the things I use and love? Why should I switch to new programs that are expensive, and I hear, troublesome?

Along with Zombie Crafts

So along with the seperate blog i have for Zombie Crafts, where i can just blah blog about my crafty life. I have made a blog where you can look up the different things I am actually doing.

If you have put in an order I will make a post where I jot down all the info that both you and I come up with. Feel free to leave comments there along with speaking to me directly. I just thought it would be a cleaner and more organized way to let everyone keep track of their goodies! It will reduce clutter on the actual Zombie Craft blog page and if you don't feel like reading my textual vomit about crafts, you don't have to! This way you can go right to the good stuff.

So click here.