Tag: illness

Stepping Down on Tegretol SUCKS

Bones

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It’s been almost a week since I reduced my dose of Tegretol from twice a day to once a day, and my body is still acclimatising.

The first day was excruciating.  I couldn’t think, had no balance, everything hurt (including my face).  My skin was overly sensitive and every sensation was unpleasant or painful.  My team took one look at me and said go home.  I sat down and did some work, but then gratefully took them up on their suggestion and went home to curl up on the couch and watch my latest high value distraction: Mind Hunter.

The second day was a bit better.  I no longer felt like every part of my body was on fire with fever aches.  I didn’t have much balance, and in fact I sat back from interacting directly with the horses during our practical session due to this, but I was more alive than day one.

I’m now almost a week in.  I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with a minor cold or something of that ilk, as I’ve got the heavy duty fever aches, extreme lethargy, and overall fogginess.  While this is a symptom of my fibromyalgia, it’s usually reserved for ‘coming down with something’ rather than ‘you’ve done too much’.

I will not be getting acupuncture this week, as my acupuncturist has had a family emergency.  I’ll see if I can get two acupuncture treatments in next week or the week after, whenever he’s back, to hit the trigeminal neuralgia hard.  It’s been acting up a bit on one tegretol, and I’d like to settle it back down.

As you may be able to see, my thoughts are still sluggish and somewhat disjointed.  I’m going to blame that on the plague rather than the tegretol, and have a nap.

Never Go To Bed Angry

Bones

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“Never go to bed angry” is one of the earlier pieces of advice I heard, or read, or somehow acquired.  Who knows where from, or what it was for, or why, but it’s advice I have occasionally worked quite hard to follow.

Tonight is an excellent example.  Tonight I am feeling very put upon and sorry for myself – to be honest, I have been for most of the week, because this week has been awful, and I feel like I’ve been dumped on by people who should be trying to relieve my burdens, and by people who I felt should have recognised that.

I have been sick.  Not sniffles sick, but full on fever, vomiting, delirium, the works.  This will be the fifth day.  I still have a fever.

On top of that we’ve had no power to our hot water cylinder, which I’ve been tasked with finding a resolution for (long story, no one wants it to be their fault, I JUST WANT HOT WATER).

The dog had a really bad hotspot and needed to be seen by the vet.  That same night my friend’s dearly beloved cat and companion took a very sudden turn for the worse, and when I met her in the emergency clinic, it was decided that she would not be returning home with us.

I had a nurse’s appointment, then a doctor’s appointment.  An exam.  Still no hot water.

My lovely human (who I will gently address this with) said with a stern voice “we have to do something about this food in the fridge, it’s all going to go off!  We’re going to have to give it away!”  Except his tone of voice meant that I was the one who would have to do this, along with everything else.  “I can smell the dog, you’ll have to clean the cushions after this,” while I’m lying on the couch, unable to keep more than toast and honey down or stay conscious for much longer than an hour.

I am exhausted.  Tonight I mistook the dog’s medication for the cat’s medication, so off we went to the after hours vet clinic to have vomiting induced (which didn’t happen … until we got home!).  I even had a little cry in the waiting room while everything just hit me.

So I’m feeling very sad and put upon.  And not without reason, either, it’s been a catastrophically shit week and it just doesn’t seem to want to end.  It’s taking a lot of effort not to mope and sulk and be petty.  It’s when I feel like this that I know I’m at nope point and I need to take some time to relax.

A bit of music goes a long way, so while I’m waiting for my cat to be a bit more conscious, I’m chilling.  Then I will sleep!

Workplace Bullying

Bones

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Specific words and responses in the past week have led me to understand that I am currently the target of an active bullying campaign from a colleague, and have been since I joined.

From the very beginning she made it clear through her body language, dismissive attitude, word usage and tone of voice that I am Not Welcome and she Does Not Like Me.  Which is fine, I’m quite happy to leave her be and do my own thing and not unnecessarily interact with her so she doesn’t get annoyed and I don’t get snapped at.  This is a simple solution.  I know I’m not everyone’s cuppa tea and I’m happy to leave people be.

Last week she commented in a meeting to the effect of “you’re not doing your job”, a comment she never would have made had she not been confident she would be backed up.  And, unsurprisingly, she was – three of my other colleagues jumped in with very pointed comments on the topic at hand directed solely at me, in a manner that made me feel very attacked (although I didn’t quite understand until after the fact).  She was elated after that display.  Positively beaming.  It made me realise a few things.

First, that I wasn’t going to let this slide.  Passive bullying, being an ass to me directly, not a problem.  I can just avoid that person and we’ll all go on our happy way, but this was active.  She was seeking people out and telling them I wasn’t able to do my job.  She was cultivating this belief in my incompetence among other colleagues.  No, this I will not tolerate.

Secondly, just how much the stress of bullying has affected my mental and physical health!

I’ve always had a peculiar disconnect between my mind and my body.  Prior to a few years ago, I just didn’t think, I didn’t contemplate, I didn’t look within and analyse my own thoughts, feelings, or behaviours.  I just did, and bottled it all up.  Super healthy, right?

Now I take the time to figure out what my body and mind are telling me, and everything is ringing stress bells.  My gastrointestinal tract became deeply upset.  My mind couldn’t settle.  I was restless and antsy.  My heart rate was high.  I had difficulties getting to sleep, maintaining a restful sleep, and staying asleep.  I genuinely did not think I would be this affected by bullying in the workplace, and yet here I am, my anxiety still twisting in my gut.

I’ve lodged a complaint, and I’ll pursue this.  I think I’ll let the higher ups handle it – I don’t think it will be good for my health to interact with her myself in any way, especially as I am very confident she will simply gaslight me and I will end up getting nowhere.  I’m only there for a couple more months, and if I really need to, I will leave.  Although that’d have to be pretty dire for me to leave, I often have a hard time doing what’s best for myself when it comes to work.

But I’ve got to look after my health first.

The Reality of Fibromyalgia

Bones

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I’ve had a fairly packed few weeks, and I’m looking at a full schedule until … probably mid February.  My anxiety is considerably higher than normal, as there’s a lot to get done over the next few weeks.  I’m physically doing considerably more and resting less.  This has a lot of consequences for me.

First being that my fibro is flaring up.  Which, yeah, go figure.  It means random parts of my body hurt.  On Friday, the middle knuckle on my right hand hurt.  Yesterday, an old injury on my left foot started hurting (and still does).  Bits of my leg hurt, and then stop hurting at random.  My knees ache more, my right elbow started hurting … you get the picture.

Today I experienced a new symptom.  I had a shower, which was all well and good.  I was drying myself off when I felt pain running down my left arm.  I quickly turned my arm over.  It was a water droplet running down my arm.

I felt some not inconsiderable pain from a water droplet.

I briefly panicked and then bottled it up.  I didn’t have the time to panic about it, so I didn’t.  It’s only now, in the later hours, that I’m sitting down to process this new facet.

Pain from a water droplet.

I’m used to abnormal pain after an injury, or additional pain after physical exertion, but this is new.  This is normal sensory input being processed as pain.  This is something I cannot excuse away as ‘a bit rough’ or ‘a bit sharp’, it’s a water droplet.

Realistically I’ve experienced this before.  Sometimes when my amazing human rubs my head or my arm, it hurts.  I’ve had days where pillows hurt to lie on.  But I have always rationalised them away – my amazing human was being unintentionally rough, or his nails were too long, and I just had a really bad headache so I was sensitive.

This is the first experience I can’t rationalise away.  This is clear proof that I have an issue with sensory input, where either my nerves are sending the wrong signals, or my brain is interpreting the signals wrong.

Today it really hit me.  I’m still not sure what to do with this information.  I’m probably going to bury it for a while and bring it out to examine at inopportune times (such as during an exam, or when I’m trying to read).  But for now, honestly?  I’m scared.  This is scary.  And I really don’t like it.

Fibromyalgia and the Sequelae of Stress

Bones

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Two days ago I had a very stressful day.

It was an intensely busy day at work, with a very short turnaround on the preparation of some complex documentation to finalise an urgent process the next day.  This is what I’m best at.  I cut my eyeteeth in one of the busiest teams in my first firm in one of the busiest times they’ve ever seen before or since.  I excel at very quickly grasping the scope of the procedure, understanding the interconnectedness of the parties, and logically organising and processing multi-party documents.  The way I work also results in me being prompted to cross-check the information several times before the documentation goes to the person / people I’m working for and so improves accuracy while saving time.  My brain goes a mile a second, checking and cross checking, tracking progress on each party’s bundle, planning two steps ahead so the second I’ve finished one, it’s off for checking and onto the next, and constantly finding ways to optimise the process.

It’s exciting.

The next day?  Not so.  I woke up and my legs didn’t quite want to work right.  My hips and knees had poor stability – I had to walk slowly and carefully to ensure each step was solid and my hips wouldn’t suddenly go whoop out to one side and cause me to fall or slam into something.  I could have walked normally, but that would have involved a massive amount of effort, and I did not have that kind of energy.

Getting my food from my plate to my face was hard.  Every movement I made was shaky and jerky, like my muscles would do one tiny portion of the movement and then stop for a microsecond and then do the next tiny portion of the movement, and so on.

I went to work.

I struggled with putting paperclips on paper.  My arms, hands and fingers were jerky and shaking, my fine motor movements inaccurate.  My entire body trembled.  I had a tiny muscle going tick tick tick tick in my right buttcheek.  I had to walk slowly and carefully and ease myself into and out of my chair.  When I re-stocked paper, I couldn’t crouch like I normally do.  Any bending over required additional support to make sure I didn’t topple, and I relied a lot more on counter-balance rather than on my muscles to hold me stable.

And it was a busy day that day, too!  Only have of the procedure was complete, and I had to finalise the other half, as well as finalising another urgent matter, and receiving (optimistic) instructions to start and finish another the same day (we said nope, that’ll be Monday if we’re lucky), on top of the usual end of the month wrap up.  I took no breaks, half my usual lunch time, and left late.

All the while fighting an extreme muscle weakness, nausea, exhaustion and entire body instability.  By the time I got home last night I was done.

This morning I’m still pretty unstable through the hips and legs, and my movements are still a bit jerky, but nowhere near as bad as they were yesterday.  The weather is pretty crap this weekend so it’s going to be snuggle up on the couch and nap most of the weekend away.  Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough by Monday to do it all again!