the_rck

I'm going to try to do a bunch of smaller updates because, each time I look at trying to sum up what's going on and what's happened, I stall out without starting or start and don't finish.

So, summer of 2019 has sucked and has gotten worse as the weeks passed. I think that the combination of anxiety and pain with the meds I'm taking to deal with both (propranolol, wellbutrin, Tylenol, CBD (both oral and topical), and naproxen) is making it hard for me to focus enough to get anything done. Not that I'd likely get anything done without the meds. I just might feel less as if this instant in time is unconnected to anything else.

Basically, it's really hard to get myself to start anything or to keep going after I do. It doesn't feel like depression so much as it feels like a very pleasant mental disconnection. I'm kind of wondering if the CBD oil that I bought at Plum Market still contains some residual THC. The disconnection is much pleasanter than the physical pain, though, and that's bad enough that I can't do things because I can't get my hands to cooperate.

I have an appointment with orthopedics about my hands tomorrow. I don't think the appointment will do anything except get me another appointment. From what they said three years ago, the only remaining intervention is surgery which might help pain but also might decrease function. I might get decreased function with no relief from the pain.

I'm also not sure that surgery will be an option given the likelihood that I have EDS-h. I healed okay from gallbladder surgery and from the lumpectomy, but this is a joint. If surgery is a viable option, I would go for my left hand (I'm right handed) and see how that healed. My definition of decreased function might be different from that being used by the medical folks. If I simply stop getting spikes of pain in the middle of doing things like brushing my teeth, I would consider that increased function even if my grip is weaker.

Monday's appointment actually went pretty well. I ended up taking the bus into town but leaving early enough that, if I got too tired halfway to the stop, I could still call a cab. I spent most of my waiting time between getting to central campus and my appointment at Totoro, having lunch. The League has more comfortable chairs and is nearer to UHS and the bus stop, but I've only been there once in the last several years. Totoro feels safer/more familiar, and the staff there know me.

I got done at UHS late enough that Scott picking me up after made sense. I only had to wait about five minutes for him to arrive.

My appointment was kind of wedged in, and my doctor wasn't available until about 20 minutes after the scheduled time. I'd expected that because I'm pretty sure I was double booked. She referred me for a breast ultrasound (which will happen today) and suggested that we do an x-ray of my neck rather than waiting to do that in May. We aren't going to attempt to treat the elbow/shoulder/neck stuff, but I was there, and the x-ray people had time.

It appears that I have arthritis in the vertebrae of my neck. The x-ray techs asked if I'd ever been in a car accident. I haven't. My mother tells me that she was diagnosed with the same thing at around my age. Which would actually have been nice to know ahead of time.

I mentioned the Ehlers-Danlos possibility to my doctor, and she looked extremely thoughtful, especially after (at her prompting) I showed her how my elbow hyperextends and explained that many of my joints used to do that before my muscles got quite so tight. We tabled the topic until May, but she said that I might not have fibromyalgia with a strongly implied follow up that Ehlers-Danlos would explain a lot.

I'm generally wary about Mom and my sister suggesting diagnoses because they still have the all time record winner of wanting me tested for Asperger's in my thirties based on my mother feeling guilty about not having gotten me help for my anxiety in the 70s/early 80s and my sister saying (I kid you not), "None of your friends talk about things I'm interested in. I'm pretty sure all of you have Asperger's." My mother's idea seems to have been that, if I got an Asperger's diagnosis, she'd be off the hook because no reasonable person could have expected her to know it was a possible thing in the late 70s.

I don't think that my mother understands that, for me, agoraphobia does not equal social anxiety. I'm not particularly worried about how people will react to me or about doing something embarrassing. I'm more stressing out over the fact that more people means more variable and more angles to track for threat assessment.

I have some social anxiety issues around making phone calls and asking friends for favors, but those also are kind of more Schrodinger's cat anxieties. Until I try, the good outcome remains possible. Once I ask (or make the call), the cat could be dead. It usually isn't, but that's the moment that might kill it.

I know that Mom feels that she should have done some things differently when I was a child and a teen because she keeps making suggestions for ways to approach Cordelia's issues that are entirely in line with what I probably needed then and utterly wrong for Cordelia since she's a not-me person. I have some fighting-the-previous-war issues in that direction but not to that extent.

Yesterday was mostly me being groggy. I think that the walking and the stress on Monday was more than I should have undertaken. Sadly, I need to do pretty much the same thing again today. It's a shorter bus trip, but the cancer center and breast exam are always going to be vastly stressful. I think I'm stuck getting a mammogram today, too. The woman who helped me make the appointment said that they don't do breast ultrasounds without a same day mammogram. I don't know what that does to my scheduling for a mammogram in June.

The ultrasound appointment was set for Monday, but they called me this morning to say that they could fit me in today in the early afternoon. They got me just out of the shower (I was still drying off) which made some thing easier. My hair likely won't quite be dry when I need to leave in another hour and a half, but I'll survive.

I need to call the bus company to appeal their decision about my A-Ride pass. That arrived in the mail on Monday They renewed it, but they changed the terms under which I can use it so that they no longer take my anxiety issues into account, just my pain/mobility issues which are intermittent. My previous conditions were centered on the anxiety aspect and ignored the pain/mobility issues. I'm kind of freaking out about this because it affects things like me being able to get to Skyline for parent-teacher conferences next week.