Today, I am Numb…

I do have many days like this one. Days where I’ve had loads of anxiety/panic-filled days in a row, and my depression ramps up, and I just feel… “numb”. The only way I know to describe it is that I feel like I am not… me. I feel like I am just sort of like a deer frozen in the headlights. I cannot do anything productive. All I can do is mostly just lie/sit around and stare off into space. I can’t even get interested in any of my favourite television shows. I need to work on my TEFL coursework and my brain won’t engage. My executive functioning is shot. I feel drained.

I’m also experiencing problems with my short-term memory. Like constantly. I feel sure there’s likely a reasonable/logical explanation for it, but it still has me rather spooked. Like I can’t remember something for 5 minutes. Or I can’t remember if I took a medication. I’ve gotten to the point where I force myself to have my phone in my hand with my medication app open and will not swallow a pill until I enter it into the app… just to protect myself from myself. It’s nuts! I’ve never had a problem with memory before. I’ve always had… not a photographic memory, but a very sharp one, for sure. Not these days… 😔

Admittedly, this whole being alone all day, every day, and rarely having any human interaction whatsoever is REALLY wearing thin on me. My voice is weak because I hardly ever use it. I never have anyone to talk to… so I don’t. I talk a little to my birds… but yeah… maybe it’s also affecting my memory. I don’t know how that works, so I haven’t a clue.

I have several things weighing heavily on me, but I am a bit helpless as to how to do anything about them, so they don’t ever get sorted. I need a lot of “little” things around the house done. Well, they’re little to most people, but huge to me because I am not physically able to do them. Just some general tidying/cleaning stuff. The floors need cleaning. Badly. I wish I had one of those stick-like steam cleaners. I might be able to do some of it myself that way – from my wheelchair. The birds sometimes accidentally fling food onto the floor. I do sweep around their cages every night, but some food residue stays on the hardwood, I know. The only way I can clean it is by leaning over from my chair with a wet paper towel and wiping at it. I tried that several days ago and was laid up for days with pulled muscles and a hernia that popped out of place. (It’s an inoperable one from my kidney cancer surgery in 2009… I am supposed to be careful not to bend/twist in weird ways like that, but…)

The whole place needs dusting (and dust is a giant asthma trigger for me). Bathrooms need a good, thorough clean. Those sorts of things…

I am, by nature, a tidy person. I do my best to tidy up after myself as I go along throughout the day. I don’t like to leave dishes in the sink, and I like to keep the kitchen and bathroom countertops and food prep surfaces wiped down. I like to keep my dirty clothes in a basket until it’s full and then I pop it into the washer. I usually have to wait for a day/time when I have the energy to deal with them, though. I don’t like to use the tumble dryer… I prefer to hang my clothing on a drying rack instead. Clothes last longer that way and it conserves electricity. Electricity is something I struggle to afford, so I do conserve every way that I can. I only use the tumble dryer for towels and bed linens.

I also need to thoroughly clean and somehow… spider-proof (?) my back porch. I cannot do it myself, but I really need it done rather soon, as I’ll need to start cooking out there on my little charcoal grill again when the weather turns off cooler. I can’t afford to use electricity to cook in the wintertime, because I have to use electric space heaters to heat my house, and they cost a lot to run. I have to choose, and I must choose heat – not as much for me, but for my birdies. And… if it gets down super cold/below freezing (thankfully that’s rare here, but it does happen) then I have to have several space heaters on to make sure my water pipes do not burst. Anyway, I do need to be able to use my porch again… but before I can do that, I need the black mold to be off the back side of the house (mold is another one of my top asthma triggers) and I need there to be… no spiders (I am severely arachnophobic!)

I have other little things that need to be done around the house, but I have no hope of them ever getting done. One BIG thing is my garage. It needs to be completely cleaned out and items donated to charity or sold (I doubt there is anything out there that would sell, if I’m honest. It’s mostly just junk.) But… that is a project that can never ever get done because I am not able to do it and have no one who can help me. Every time I go through there though (that’s where my wheelchair ramp is) the stacks/piles of clutter just do my head in.

I’ve also been having a lot of stomach issues the last few weeks. I have IBS. It had been controlled really well when I was having filmjölk for breakfast – but… I did a stupid thing and used the last of it without saving some out to make a new batch. If I buy a new pack of cultures, it is about $15. Not covered by food stamps. So… it’s not something I can do at the moment. I was hoping it wouldn’t affect me, but my tummy has been a mess since I stopped using it. Once again… there’s not a thing I can do about it. I added it to my Amazon Wishlist, so I just have to hope some kind soul sees it and wants to help. It’s pricey though, and a lot of folks might not know what it is… so the odds are slim. My stomach has been such a mess, though, and I have had a lot of pain in my gut… so I have been severely limiting my food intake over the past few days. It just hurts too much to eat.

Another major thing that is bothering me is my eyesight. It’s horrible. I had a recent eye exam and my eyesight had drastically worsened due to the Sjogrens and the severely dry eyes it causes. I got a new prescription for glasses, but haven’t gone to get them yet. I haven’t the money at all. I do have a very dear friend who has offered to cover the cost of them, but I don’t really have a way to get anywhere to even get a quote on how much they would be. I have one friend here who helps me a lot – and he already drives me to physical therapy twice a week. He works full-time, is married, has teenage daughters, and is super busy with a play he’s doing at the moment. I just can’t ask him to do anything else – it wouldn’t be right. I don’t want to exploit our friendship to the point where he ever resents me… in other words, I cannot STAND burdening other people with my crap. So… I live in blurland. That also makes working on the computer tough, as well as being able to watch the telly (because I have to use captioning and… I can’t see it).

In further stressors… I went to the dermatologist today. Wasn’t anything major (thankfully)… I just had a few skin tags on my neck that needed to be removed because they were being rubbed by my clothing and becoming sore. I also had a small growth under my eye that I wanted to have looked at. Turns out it’s a wait-and-see on that one – too small to really do anything about at the moment. The good news is that the doctor didn’t think it looked like anything sinister. Maybe just another skin tag. I’ve never had them under the eye before though – that’s new. Weird. They were able to snip the neck ones off without any fuss though, so that was taken care of, at least.

I had SO much panic and anxiety with just getting myself TO that appointment though. I stress any time I have to use the free county wheelchair transit bus because I had an experience with them once that sort of left me a bit traumatised. They have limited hours that they run, and I was at a doctor’s appointment that ran super late. The service had stopped running by then and I was essentially left stranded in downtown Chattanooga at the hospital in my power wheelchair. I wasn’t exactly able to call for an Uber because you can’t just throw a 300-pound power wheelchair in someone’s trunk. I was stuck there for hours trying to figure out how to get home. And it was all during when my Dad was very ill and I could not leave him home alone – so I had hired a carer for him for the supposedly SHORT while I would be gone (whoops) because this was a very important appointment with my rheumatologist. She ended up sending me to the main hospital (downstairs in the building she’s located in) for several tests, and… because it was where the emergency department is, it took FOREVER! I wasn’t finished until about 5:30 p.m. The county service stops around 3ish. Then the people in the emergency told me I couldn’t hang out in the waiting room all night and the security guards were going to turn me out into the parking lot. I was panicked trying to sort out further care for my Dad AND trying to come to terms with the fact that I might have to sleep in my wheelchair in a hospital parking lot in a very sketchy part of town. Finally, I was able to get a truck out (which I had to pay for) to get my wheelchair and a person to pick ME up in a regular car (since I am unable to get myself up into a truck) – and had to pay for their gas/time. Plus the extra overtime hours I had to pay the attendant I’d hired to go with me to the appointment (because I was new to trying to go places in my wheelchair and there were things I needed help with – like doors, etc….). By the time all was said and done, I managed to get home that night – but it cost me over $500 total. That really hurt us, financially. But… if something like that were to happen to me NOW? I do not have any way to access that kind of money – so I WOULD have been stuck sleeping outdoors in a parking lot in my wheelchair until the next day when I could (hopefully) get the county to come back for me. So… you can see where I might have a bit of trauma from that experience. I get super squirrely every time I have to use them now – but the fact is… I DO have to use them sometimes. *sigh*

All of these things are weighing heavily on me, and on top of it all, my financial situation is eating me alive inside. After paying my housing/utilities/bills each month, I have 76 cents left. That’s before factoring in food, household supplies (toiletries, trash bags, toilet paper, etc….), OTC meds… and CBD oil (which I use to manage pain, and which is not covered by insurance at all). I am drowning. Every month I have to go online and BEG BEG BEG for people to help me… to donate to my “cause”… which decidedly looks like a LOST cause, and… if I’m honest, I feel like a lost cause a lot of the time. It’s demoralizing, depressing, and incredibly stressful to have to live this way.

I’ve been working so hard this year. SO HARD. I’ve stuck to the Wahls Protocol and have seen some lovely improvements to my health. My inflammation levels are down, I’m no longer completely bed-bound, and I am in physical therapy twice a week. I also work on my PT exercises at home (albeit, not when I am feeling really rough as I have been for the past several days). I’ve lost 45 pounds (a direct result of being on the protocol). I have several different things I am attempting to do online to earn a few dollars here and there. So far, none of them have panned out, but I have been trying. I’ve also been working towards earning my TEFL certification. I am a bit “stuck” at the moment, with not being able to focus/concentrate enough to do this one big assignment I have to do before I can move on to the next unit in the course. So yeah… my mental health is now sabotaging my efforts there, too.

Ironically, I asked my GP/Primary Care doctor to prescribe something for me to HELP with the anxiety/depression. He did. I asked if it would play nicely with my lupus meds. He said it would. I got the meds and went to enter them into the app I use to keep track of my meds and… it came up with a huge red flag telling me NOT to take it because of SEVERE interactions with my lupus meds. Not just one of those “there MIGHT be a problem here” warnings but a genuine red alert one. *insert facepalm here* I sent them a message in their portal/app last week asking for guidance. As of today I still have not heard back from them so I sent another message. The nurse said she would ask him. So… I am still in limbo. But the reality is, my lupus meds do NOT play nicely with others as a general rule. There MAY NOT be a medication that’s safe for me to take to help with my mental health.

But…

I. Am. Drowning. And I am numb. And I am frozen… unable to do anything right now. My brain feels so tired. And out of it. Like I am not really “me” and I am someone else watching this awful 24/7/365 reality show that’s a total nightmare. I feel like I am a prisoner inside of myself. Yet I also feel as though I am floating… an outsider looking in… it’s so weird. I feel… disconnected. And I hate it.

😢