Month: July 2019

Nightmares – A Small Setback

Bones

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I’ve been having dreams, nightmares, whatever you want to call it, I’ve been having it.  It invariably involves one or the other of my past abusers.

My usual nightmare involves It, the narcissist I was with for the longest, the one who caused the most damage, and my PTSD.  It typically involves him returning, and just assuming that the relationship is back on, and I fake it.  I fake it to hide my relationship with my amazing human being – which is basically what I’m doing now, minus the being in a relationship with him part, and more with him being on the other side of the world (THANK FUCK).

My first abuser was in my dream last night.  Then, later on in the dream, I did what I have always dreaded doing.  I said Its name instead of my amazing human being’s name.

Sometimes, in the awake world, It’s name will be on the tip of my tongue instead of my amazing human’s name.  I don’t speak when that happens.  I have almost been away from him for the same length of time as I was with him, but some scars take longer to heal than others.

All of this has … done something to me.  I feel flat and anxious at the same time.  I don’t want to do anything.  I want to bundle up in a blanket and drink tea and watch Forensic Files.

And unfortunately I can’t today.  Or at least not all day.  I have adulting I must do before I can be an amorphous blob.

Doubled Up on Tegretol

Bones

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Adjusting to my first dose of tegretol was hard – read all about it here.  My trigeminal neuralgia has become too much to be contained on the 400mg dose (200mg twice daily), and so I attempted to increase only the morning dose, so effectively taking 600mg (400mg in the morning, 200mg in the evening).

This did not work.  I knew by day two that it would not work, when I experienced the delightful feeling of having a tooth pulled that evening.  It was not pleasant.

I have now fully doubled my dose of tegretol to 800mg daily – 400mg twice daily.  I am once again going through the adjustment symptoms, fortunately without the intense itching (so far!).  I have lost my balance.  I am hypersensitive to noise and touch.  My brain doesn’t quite operate right – I lose words with monotonous regularity, forget what I’ve done just moments before, and I can space out and stare at nothing real well.  I seem to have lost my grasp on time, as well, not that I had much of a grasp on it in the first instance.

Fortunately this amount of tegretol has had a considerable (positive) impact on my pain levels.  I’m not permanently at the dentist, hoorah!  I still have some aches around the angle of my jaw, across my zygomatic ridge, and from my temple up along my eyebrow.  That one is the worst at the moment, from my temple up along my eyebrow, and there’s not really much I can do about it other than use high value distractions.

The plus side is my doctor is referring me to a neurologist, hopefully the wait list isn’t tremendously long and I can get in promptly.  I have another appointment with him on Monday to see how we’re going with the tegretol and to discuss everything.  He’s quite concerned that there’s something impacting more than one cranial nerve, so every visit so far he’s checked my field of view and my retinas.  He never really comments on what he finds.  I’ll try to remember to ask next time.

Uni starts up again on Monday, but I’ve made the executive decision to do as much as I can from home while I’m sorting out this pain.  I am on surgery this week, so I’m going to try a novel idea of getting those adhesive heat packs you can get for period cramps and sticking it on my face.  I may have to create a barrier between my skin and the heat pack, so I’ll chat to the people at the pharmacy about that.  You get incredibly inventive when you have to be in sterile gowns for 5 hours in a cold room.  (I wear polyprops AND leggings under my scrub pants to stay warm!)

Oh yes, another side effect of the tegretol is that I lose my filter and I tend to blither.  Can you tell?

Fatigue and Lethargy

Bones

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So as you probably all know by now (or, if you’re a transient blog surfer, you may not know – and also, hi!) I have fibromyalgia.  I am also being treated for trigeminal neuralgia.  Jury’s out on what’s causing that, I’ve got a referral so let’s see where that takes us.

Fibromyalgia unfortunately involves chronic fatigue.  Fatigue is defined as “extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness” (thanks google dictionary), but for some reason I find that word too … lively.  It’s the ‘t’ and the shortness of the word.

I actually prefer the word lethargic, and it’s defined as “a lack of energy and enthusiasm”.  While it’s an accurate description, I do indeed have a lack of energy, it doesn’t take into account the severity of that lack.  But, still, I like that word, because you can elongate the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ and it becomes a long, slow, exhausted exhale of a word, bringing to mind a sloth on a branch moving in that incredibly slow way of theirs.  It sounds how I feel, although fatigue describes it.

I was going to do things today.  I got up, I had my cuppa coffee, I took my meds (I’ve doubled my morning tegretol, as the pain from my trigeminal nerve is increasing), and I had my brekkie.  I lay around for a bit, read a bit, and then realised I was having difficulty focusing on the words.  My eyelids drooped, so I sat up and started sorting out a mindless but fun computer game to play (shield bashy bashy, sword smashy smashy).  I was just starting up when everything slowed down.  My arms weighed down with lead, my shoulders dropped, and the fatigue hit me in the face like a two handed hammer.  Oof.  It’s hard work just typing this.

I’d been improving so much with my fibromyalgia and my balancing act that I haven’t felt like this in a wee while.  Anxious and depressed and like I don’t want to do anything, sure, but not this whole body-weight drained fatigue.  I actually suspect it’s a side effect of the tegretol – I’ve found myself less able to do things lately.  Or it could be the pain from the trigeminal neuralgia fatiguing me in a shorter length of time to what I’m used to.

Regardless, I’m now going to put my feet up, put something on Netflix, and doze for the rest of the day.  When the fatigue hits, you just gotta rest.

The ants go marching one by one …

Bones

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The other day I had an interesting new symptom:  I had the sensation of ants crawling all over my skin.  Sometimes it was one ant skittering along my ribcage.  Other times it was an army traipsing down my legs, occasionally biting the skin there.

It lasted all evening, varying in intensity.  I knew it wasn’t real, knew in my brain in a way that is unshakeable, and so I waited it out.  I did not scratch the skin, that hurt.  I rubbed it occasionally, which provided some relief and did not cause pain, but I could only access some of the skin, as I was in (vaguely) polite company.

This sensation is called formication, a form of paresthesia, which is an abnormal dermal sensation with no apparent physical cause (thanks Wikipedia!).  It’s another side effect of fibromyalgia, which makes sense.  Nerves misfiring and all that.

But holy shit it was an unpleasant feeling!  The occasional biting fortunately stopped after a little while, and I had some relief about two hours into the sensation where it all settled down.  It came back but at a much reduced intensity after about thirty minutes, and eased up enough that I could sleep that night.

I haven’t experienced it before, nor since (admittedly, it’s only been a few days since, so who knows if this is a one off or a new thing?), and I hope never to.  Although if I had to pick between ants and pain … actually, I don’t know which one I’d pick!  They’re both awful!

I’ll enjoy my itching reprieve while I can.  Who knows if it’s going to come back!