Health Diary ...

I keep a health diary – normally a set of bullet points describing me that day.  I’ve kept it for over a year, and so don’t fill it in every day now because it gets a bit repetitive, but the other day (22^nd) I felt the need to.  This is it, no editing, spellchecking, or anything.

“went back to bed after the kids went to school, and only just got up (13.30).  Stillwobbly, slow, ears bunged, head horrible and aches and pains bad  to the point I've now taken all doses of pain meds since last night.  I actually used the stick around the house from about 2pm yeaterday, something i've never had to do before and the furniture/walls are normally enough.  I also couldn't prepare food, wash up or anything else.  Still nto sure if I can tongiht either.”

I stopped there, as I realised it was almost a blog in its own right, so I started typing on a word doc instead, where I could edit and spellcheck and the such – believe me when I say, despite once having been an exceptionally proficient touch typist, my accuracy wouldn’t get me an office junior job these days, my docs always look very colourful in their original form.  Anyway, this is the result …

All the above stems from that fibro fog induced extra walking and stress the other day.  Neither my body nor my mind liked it in the slightest, and weren’t too impressed when they were expected to walk out the door yesterday morning either.   

I was wobbly from the get go.  On that trip to the docs and bus journey back, I had several near misses on the fall front, only catching myself with walls, lampposts or my stick.  Its days like this I seriously consider a Zimmer frame, or wish for a scooter.

But by lunchtime yesterday, I also couldn’t concentrate.  More fog.  My headaches are of the pressure kind, where it feels like your skull is in a vice that’s being slowly tightened.  My ears always have a pressurised cotton wool feeling to them at that point, and so my balance, which is already wobbly, goes absolutely to pot. 

By 2pm, I was using the stick even just to cross the living room.  Preparing food was most definitely not happening - even if I could have physically stood there, or concentrated long enough to work out what I was doing, I wouldn’t have been safe.  I’ve burnt myself in the past when I’ve tried whilst feeling not as bad as this. 

But even ordering the food online was a task once the kids came home.  Concentrating on more than one meal, making sure all were right before I hit ‘pay’, almost had me on a shut down.  Thank goodness for online ordering, there’s no way I could handle phone ordering.

My statement in my diary about the pain meds is an important one too.  I have a very high pain tolerance.  I’ve never been one for taking meds unnecessarily.  So when I say I’ve taken more than one dose in, for example, a two day stretch, then it’s bad … it’s very bad … it’s tears streaming, curl up and whimper bad. 

Now, when I said it all stemmed from the other day, I wasn’t quite honest.  It was yesterday evening that I also realised my frame of mind wasn’t right again.  You see, I’d actually managed to come off my antidepressants a while back.  It hadn’t been intentional, all the stress of my ex leaving and then my mum dying had literally meant I forgot, or couldn’t be bothered with, a lot of things, including non-pain meds, for a while.  But when I came out of that, I realised that actually, I didn’t feel that bad without the antidepressants.  I’ll be honest, I’d been wondering for a while if they were doing anything, had even mentioned it to the doc before everything happened, though at that point we’d decided to give it a little longer just in case.

But these last few days, I’d found myself easily teary.  It’s often a sign for me that things are off, when I well up at the smallest, stupidest, things.  I also wasn’t responding to things quite ‘right’.  It’s hard to describe, but I just knew I was slipping away from me.  My sleep has also been broken for a week or two now, never getting more than about 4 hours in one go, but feeling unable to actually go to bed at night.

So, my ‘not that bad’ appears to have been another of those mood ebbs and flows I’ve always suffered from, timed just right to let me convince myself I was ok again, when I wasn’t.  It looks like I’m going back on the pills again. 

So right now, I’ve got a double whammy happening to me, body and mind, and all this frustrates me. 

Yesterday, there was meat in the fridge that needed using.  This evening, I was supposed to be baking with the kids for their school fair tomorrow.  At the weekend, both seemed perfectly doable, in fact, I was even considering a new recipe for the meat and more than one baking session.  But now we’re here, between mind-set and the fact that I haven’t been able to wash up at all for two days, neither did/will happen.  Oh, I’ll still try the baking, I enjoy doing it, and it’s only packet mixes these days, but past experience says by the time I’ve washed up and fed them, that will be the limit of my abilities.

I also realised that alongside the grippy tap heads, second handrail on the stairs and grab rails in the shower I’ve already realised I need, I’m also going to need grab rails at the back door too, just to get up the low step and over the door frame.  And the other day, we took the washing line down – I can’t stand with my arms up like that to hang things, haven’t been able to for a few years now, but was stubbornly hoping that ability would come back.  It’s not, so it’s tumble dryer and indoor airer all year here.

And I know this isn’t a good finish, more a hang in the air, but my mind has gone again. 

Now read my Big Changes blog