Charity drive - day 5

I woke feeling downright awful today after about 8 hours sleep. After breakfast I went back to bed and slept another 7 hours, which I must have needed. My nephew came over in the afternoon and we ate dinner and played board games. I had to excuse myself pretty early on as the activity just wiped me out. I did manage to finish up another hat while lying in bed and am only up to post a pic of it before crawling right back under the covers.

charity drive - day 4

I'm doing a little better today with the nausea, which I'm really grateful for. The weather was nice this morning so I took a short walk down the block. My pain levels have risen, but not to an unbearable level...just the usual ache in my hands and some intermittent sharp pains in my feet when I sit or lie down, which I think are the result of my walk...not too smart of me to wear flip flops. Live and learn!

Day 4 is going well...I finished 3 more hats! :D

Charity drive - day 3

Last night was pretty rough. I woke several times gasping for breath, and continued to have difficulty breathing for several minutes before feeling ok enough to go fall back to sleep. This morning I stumbled a lot, but am walking better now. Despite the constant feeling of wanting to throw up, I did manage to make two more hats today. Yay! I decided to crochet them to add a bit of variety :-) Here they are!

Charity drive

I'm feeling a little more stable now and have been able to be off the anti-anxiety meds for a few days. Whew! I am still very restless, but it is manageable as long as I keep my brain busy.
So, here's the scoop: I've decided to do a sort of one-woman charity drive/fund-raiser. Here's how it works.
I will knit and crochet as many baby hats as I can between now and August 10th for donation to Tucson Medical Center's maternity and NICU wards. My minimum goal is 35 hats, with a maximum of 50.
Here's how you can help: Sponsor my charity drive by pledging a quarter, a dime or whatever you like per hat that I complete to help me pay for my medical treatment. Easy Squeezy, huh? :-D you can even get your friends, neighbors and co-workers involved by printing out a pledge form that I can send you via email and have them mail or email it back to me. :)
I will be posting photos of the hats as I complete them and updating pledge amounts several times per week.
If you have any questions, or would like a pledge form and/or mailing address, feel free to contact me via email at amoneof8@yahoo.com

Thanks!!

Merde

I am in hell. For about the last 4 days I've been in a constant state of high anxiety. No particular thoughts or fears etc, just an intense physical sensation of panic. I shake, my heart does flip-flops and I want to run, but there is nothing to run from. I cannot remain still. Foot-tapping, rocking, or doing something repetitive with my hands takes a bit of the edge off, though my only real relief has come in the form of an anti-anxiety pill. I hate to take it because it slows me way down and makes me sleep...but without it, the desire to scream and bang my head against a wall to make the sensations go away is just too strong to cope with. I have never felt so not-sane in my entire life. :-(

Losing "Me"

How does one who is losing their mind communicate effectively how they feel about losing their mind? The most frustrating part of this disease is the way it affects my brain. It's what makes me who I am...everything stored within it is essentially "me". To see it being chipped away a little at a time, is like losing yet another piece of myself, over and over again. I imagine this is what it must feel like to go insane.
This morning, after many attempts to sleep without success I attended my psychologist appointment. By the time I arrived I was barely able to walk across the parking lot to the office. It took me about 15 minutes to catch my breath and be able to talk. My speech became more and more slurred, to where he could barely understand me. The words were there, in my head, they just became more and more difficult to speak. 20 minutes in, I could no longer form words and was in tears. Images, feelings, concepts all whirring around in a frenzy inside my skull, and I couldn't express a single bit of it. I grabbed a pen and paper to try to convey what was going on, but even communicating on paper proved too difficult a task for my exhausted brain. After about 30 minutes, between sobs and pounding my fist on the note pad I managed to get my hand and brain to cooperate a little and scrawl out a few images. With a lot of gestures and pointing, I explained what was going on to some satisfactory degree. He must be a whiz at pictionary and charades, because he caught on in seconds. I'm SO grateful for that. It made an already scary and frustrating event, that much more manageable.
I dozed in the waiting room for about half hour before getting back on the road, and crawled into bed when I got home. I did manage to sleep for a few hours on and off, but am still exhausted. I've said a total of 6 words since coming back home, all of them mangled. At least I've had enough rest to be able to put words together on the screen, even though they cannot even come close to doing justice to what I experienced today. I'm sure I'll be talking better after more sleep.

Is it June already??

My left wrist has gotten steadily worse since it began to hurt in May. I am able to use my left hand and arm less and less, as lifting and grasping is becoming increasingly painful.
My frustration levels have also been high. Family issues coupled with slow response time from doctors has brought me to levels of desperation I have not felt in a long time. The last two days have been especially hard....feeling the urge to scream and just pound something...anything. I have been allowing myself to let loose with the foul language as my psychologist suggested, as it really is my only major outlet. It's helping in some ways, though I don't really like having such a foul mouth. I think the heat has been contributing to my rotten mood as well, being in the triple digits. Yuck!
Lately I feel like I'm going insane from all this....losing my mind. I've been assured by my psychologist that I'm quite sane....though I don't feel it. Anyway, I'll try to write more when I can. Peace!