the_rck | Entries tagged with agoraphobia

I'm feeling cranky as hell today and kind of want to scream at the entire medical profession. When a doctor suggests 'lifestyle changes' and I say, "I have barriers x, y, and z. How do I address them?" that is, in fact, still me needing medical help. I wouldn't bring things up as barriers if they weren't, in actual fact, problems I don't know how to solve. I know that my problems don't fit any neat boxes and that having the usual solutions be unworkable is frustrating. I know that. I really do.

But the usual solutions being unworkable means I need more help not less. I suppose that the real answer is that my doctors aren't going to tell me that my problems could be solved by having twice the income we do, and I'm pretty sure that that's the only effective fix.

( Cut for a certain amount of bleakness )

( When I say I have anxiety about going outside, this is what I mean (31 overlapping points) )

Most of the stuff under the cut is me venting and me tracking this stuff for my own use. Somehow, I don't think any of these issues can be helped by exposure therapy.

I took Ativan at 2:30 today. I wanted it earlier, but I also want it to last through as much of the concert as possible but still be out of my system in time for me to take Halcion at bedtime. When I'm dealing with appointments, the crucial time for having Ativan is either the night before or the 2-5 hours before I need to leave home. For something like a concert or a play, however, anything where I'm going to be physically trapped by the space as well as surrounded by other people, I really need Ativan right then. (Buses are okay as long as I know that it would be physically trivial to get off at the very next stop. I try to avoid them when they're standing room only.)

I was going to wrap some presents this morning, but I ended up trying a couple of variations on dates wrapped in turkey bacon. I did one large pan with a lot of butter added and one half filled small pan with sesame oil. The butter version was much better. I don't think they're quite as good as with real bacon because the butter doesn't carry any flavor from the turkey bacon into the dates. There's less salt and smoke flavor, and it's all much sweeter because of that which makes the richness more overwhelming.

The presents are still sitting on the table. They're all for Cordelia, so I can wrap them after the cleaning lady is done in there. Cordelia's not going to be home until after her concert. Scott's presents are still tucked away. Neither he nor I will be getting much this year because of the family budget crunch. Actually, Cordelia would be getting considerably less if I hadn't bought most of the things for her in September and October. That was before we knew we'd have to pay for her new (used) laptop and before my medical expenses last month and before a couple of other things.

I have started two new fics today. Goodness knows when I'll actually finish either of those or either of the other two that are nearly done. One of the latter two needs some sort of movement in order to end, and I don't know what it's going to be. Probably a character realization, but maybe not. The other needs someone who knows the canon, isn't squicked by the content, and isn't me. I have an email out to somebody who might be able to, but I'm not sure they'll be available until some time in January or even after.

I've named all five stories in the Sky High series with Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry snippets and realized last night that none of the snippets I had saved fit the sixth story (which is the one above that doesn't have movement yet), so I cat waxed a bit by looking for her poetry online. The library only has one book, Sonnets from the Portuguese, and I've been through that from end to end. Interlibrary loan isn't currently an option and won't be for a couple of months yet (update to the library systems. Can't remember if it's hardware or software or both). I think I may have something that will work now, though, but I'm irritated by the site that I ended up using because there's an autoplay video of someone reading each poem as one opens the related page.

I ended up not going to Kroger yesterday. I just couldn't spend that long out of the house when Scott was still too sick to be able to refill his water bottle without wiping himself out. (Cordelia wasn't home until almost 5:00). I thought I'd go this morning, right after walking Cordelia to the cross walk (if you can call it that when she generally walks about twenty feet ahead of me and doesn't acknowledge I'm there. It's just that she finds the idea of me not doing it completely unacceptable), but it's pouring rain.

I'm hoping that the rain will let up a little later on. I absolutely have to get the prescription today because I've taken the last tablet and need another some time between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. I just don't want to deal with wet feet from standing in the rain. In a little bit, I'll dig up some dry socks and see if one of my other pairs of shoes is closer to waterproof. My boots are, but I'd feel silly wearing those with shorts.

I'm also trying to figure out what to get in addition to my prescriptions. The things we actually need are mostly kind of heavy-- honey, chicken noodle soup, lemon juice-- which makes things more challenging. Maybe my backpack? But I also need to get bread, and I don't want that to get smashed.

Maybe cleaning the bread machine and setting something up there is a better option? I'm not sure if our bread flour is still good, though; I'll see how it smells.

My back was so tense and painful last night that I did end up lying on the floor. It helped those muscle spasms a lot but hurt in other ways because the floor is hard. I just think I'm going to have to do that a time or three every day. Usually, I'd try having a little alcohol (like a wine cooler amount) for this, but I'm taking Tylenol for the elbow pain, so alcohol is absolutely out.

I've promised Cordelia that I will finish my current Netflix DVD today so that I can send hers back in the same envelope. She's been waiting a couple of weeks for me to finish, so I really, really have to do it.

Because I really needed another WIP, I started a new story yesterday. I wrote about a thousand words, and I'm hoping to keep it under three thousand. It's another Weiss Kreuz story, so if I finish it in time, I can use it for

weissvsaiyuki. I started from one of the posted prompts, but I don't know that the story actually fits it now. I just have to figure out what the story's actually about.

Scott will have less than twenty four hours off to change his schedule so that he can go from working third shift to working first shift. They told him that the only other option was to give him zero time between shifts (third shift starts at 11 p.m. and is, for bookkeeping purposes, considered entirely part of the day that it started, so it wouldn't technically be a mandatory double shift). All employees are working either Saturday or Sunday this weekend.

I was going to try to go to north campus this morning, but it's raining. I really don't feel like walking around in the rain today. I do need to go downtown to buy bus tokens for Cordelia. There's no rush on it because she has a pass right now that's good for another couple of weeks. We bought it when we thought she'd be at Community and would be using it at least ten times a week. Now... three or four times a week. Tokens are cheaper at that level of usage because they don't expire.

It used to be that you had to go to the main business office for the bus company in order to get the half price tokens, but according to the company website, the half price tokens are available at Blake now. At least, the listing for Blake says 'Tokens' while other places say 'Full fare tokens'. I'm assuming that that means Blake has all types of tokens now. It never made much sense to me to have the half price tokens only at the headquarters. They're good for people who're K-12 or receiving Medicare/Medicaid or in their mid-60s.

If I go down there later today, I can pick up my interlibrary loan copy of Prince of Tennis 30, read it immediately, send it back, and request v.31. We lose MelCat requesting access on Monday the 2nd. The library's holdings for PoT pick up again with v.34. Part of me wants to request All The Things via ILL right now because I won't be able to get anything for months, but I also don't think that's a great idea. I should get the books at points when I'm sure I'll have time to read them. If I could get multiple volumes of a given manga series at once I would (the system chokes on such requests and insists that they're duplicates of requests I currently have in process).

I'm leaning strongly toward not signing up for Yuletide. I very much want to, but I don't think I have better than a 50% chance of being able to write a complete story (and the actual chance is probably lower). I'll just save off some possibilities for treats and write those if I end up having time and inspiration. If all goes well with Cordelia's recovery, next year will be better for this sort of thing.

Or I could work on one of the many, many prompts I've got squirreled away in various places... I think I need to weed those down to prompts that are very specifically things I want to write or that are from people I know. That is, if I look at the request and think, "Writing that fandom would be fun, but I don't have any ideas based on this," I shouldn't keep the prompt. If I've got fewer than 300 prompts saved right now, I'll be astonished, and that's with weeding.

I've been applying heat to my elbow. It helps more than the cold packs do, and it only takes 50 seconds in the microwave to refresh the rice pack as opposed to 4-6 hours in the freezer for the gel packs.

I'm trying to come up with ideas for things I could do to reward myself for achieving goals. I just... I'm drawing a complete blank. I don't want to buy books, music, etc. I'm trying to limit sweets. I don't collect anything and don't want to start. There isn't anything that I really want to do. I enjoy an occasional lunch out, but... I really can't use that because going out for lunch is really, really, really difficult unless I'm already out of the house for something necessary and quite near somewhere to get food or have some other adult with me. Lunch out once a week is also more money than I want to put into this (I'd like to stay under $5 a week).

In days gone by, CDs or books (saved for gradually) or a treat like baklava or a candy bar would have been easy go-tos, but they just aren't now. And the agoraphobia and physical limitations eliminate a lot of other things. There aren't any shows streaming that would make reasonable rewards, either. First, I'm pretty picky, and second, I completely forget to follow even things that I enjoy. Even without considering the agoraphobia, I can't handle movies in the theater. Plays and concerts hit the agoraphobia big time. Even with Ativan, I end up spending my time focused on escape plans.

I don't think Scott and Cordelia actually understand how much me being on my phone, playing Ingress, is a shield against panic when we're out of the house. It gives me something completely mindless to do.

Getting to Skyline yesterday was stressful, and getting home was worse. The bus company website doesn't actually provide accurate information about the bus line that runs out there-- The schedule I could access on my phone claimed two buses around when school starts and three around when it ends with nothing in between. I knew it was a lie, but I couldn't get the site to cough up anything else. The first bus to come by as I waited was going to go out of service at the next stop, so I had to wait another half an hour for a bus to come.

What I really wanted to do was to find somewhere to get coffee and food and to sit for a while before I dealt with the bus, but there is absolutely nothing out by Skyline. Zilch. To walk anywhere useful, I'd have to cross three traffic circles, two of them connected to highway entrances/exits, and none of them having any design considerations for possible pedestrians. By the time I was actually on the bus, the idea of getting off again was horrific. I didn't do it until I had to transfer downtown.

It wasn't quite 10:30 when I got downtown, and I didn't feel like I could walk to try to find somewhere to sit and try to calm myself, so I just walked down the block to where the bus I needed would come.

I left both my water bottle and Cordelia's somewhere along the way. I only realized that I didn't have them when I was gathering my things to get off the bus at the stop by our house. They might be at the Skyline bus stop. They might be on the bus I took into town. They might be at the transit center. I couldn't deal with calling to try to find them, so they're gone. Scott bought me a replacement that I need to wash before I start using.

I can't tell how much of how bad going back and forth to Skyline was yesterday was due to it coming at the end of a horrible, horrible week and how much was the trip being intrinsically difficult for me. It's probably a bit of both.

I got pretty angry at Scott yesterday (and a few times earlier in the week) because he wasn't bothering to give me any encouraging words or anything. He gave Cordelia a lot, and he was having an awful week, too, but it would have been nice to get a comment indicating that he had my back on anything at all. I don't think he realizes how much he left me flapping in the wind all week. If I asked for something very specific, he'd do it, but there wasn't anything at all that I didn't ask for. Not even a "I know this is hard for you, but you can do it."

I think Scott also doesn't realize that Cordelia going to Community gave me a brief feeling of intense relief that I wouldn't have to deal with a huge, huge problem that I've seen coming for literally years-- The problem of me getting her from school for appointments and then back to school after. Nothing about the trips I've made to Skyline has made the problem seem less severe or more easily addressed. I really am thinking that Scott going to third shift may be the only sustainable solution, but if he does that, him ever getting back to first shift is unlikely.

I suppose the first thing I have to do is to find out whether or not I can get Skyline to let Cordelia sign herself out for documented appointments and then back in again after. That would make things actually manageable and could be argued as an accommodation for my disability every bit as much as letting me use the elevator when I visit the building.

I'm really, really hoping that next week I can start doing something other than putting out immediate fires. I don't think writing is going to happen while Cordelia's home because she tends to turn up and sit next to me for twenty to thirty minutes at a time and express disapproval over me using my laptop at all. She also reads what's on my screen.

Today's main goal is to read some library books so I can return them tomorrow. I've got more than I like just sitting on my shelf unopened. Also, the interlibrary loan stuff needs getting through quickly. The system won't let me request multiple volumes of the same manga title at once because it considers them all the same book in spite of the numbering difference. This means that from October 1st until maybe April next year, I won't be able to move forward on Natsume's Book of Friends, Case Closed (Detective Conan), or Prince of Tennis. That last is particularly frustrating because the library is missing 29-32 and 36. It has 33-35 and 37-40 (are there volumes out beyond 40? I don't know. I haven't looked yet). I have v.29 waiting for me to pick it up. If I read it fast and return it immediately, I might be able to get v.30 by the end of the month. I just don't see managing four volumes in that time because of the time it takes to get ILL books.

I also have a movie that's due tomorrow and can't be renewed. I can probably either finish it today or reach a point in it where I'm sure I don't care about finishing.

Cordelia has a birthday party to go to later this afternoon. They're going to a Tigers game as part of it. They did the same last year for this girl's birthday. My guess is that they'll have fun again and that it will be rather more about being there as a group of friends than about the game.