Still not over the bronchitis.

 The z-pack did a lot of good. I'm no longer coughing up stuff that's ugly colored. But I still have a fair amount of chest congestion and my peak flow meter has me firmly in the yellow zone. I've developed a sinus infection on top of this. But, my fever is manageable. I spent most of last week with a moderate to high fever and I wasn't at the point of hearing colors but it was pretty close. That came down a lot over the weekend and last few days. Now I'm at a low to moderate fever. According to theory the antibiotics stay in my system for ten days. So, according to theory, it should resolve my sinus infection and the last lingering bit of this bronchitis by the end of the week.

Cuddle Bear caught this a few days after I did. I tested negative for Covid-19. Now the school wants him to have a test done before he can return to school. It took some digging, but Beloved found a mostly affordable rapid Covid-19 test yesterday after work at one of the local pharmacies. It was disappointing to realize that the closest pharmacy to us was engaging in price gouging on the tests because this thing was half the cost of what we paid for the last test. Same brand and everything. They're nice people but that was a dick move on their part. I have a feeling that a lot of places are selling these things at cost, because they have a sense of 'this is good for the community'.  The mark up at the other place just disappoints me because they "pride" themselves on being our community pharmacy and being there for everybody. 

It's just more evidence as to why we've taken our business elsewhere. We visit them when we have no other recourse. Their hours are such that Beloved can't stop there after work to pick up prescriptions. They apparently mark things up for profit. And their selection is limited for what kind of things you can get. Beloved found me diabetic cough syrup at the other pharmacy, which we didn't even know existed based on what this place had to offer. (Diabetic cough syrup is seriously disgusting. The only way I can manage to take it and not gag is to throw it back like a shot of high test whiskey.)

I'm going to be really annoyed if this stupid cold turns out to be some variant of the Covid-19 virus. There's been no loss of smell or taste. But, the doomsayer in me is going 'this is it, the plague has reached your house.'  The sooner we get Cuddle Bug's test done, the better. It'll shut up my anxiety. It'll make it possible for him to go back to school (which he's been asking about for the last week since he got sick). I just wish I didn't have an anxiety disorder that is constantly prophesying doom.

Damn bronchitis.

 I've had bronchitis since Sunday. It started out as a head cold and dropped into my chest Saturday. Then I was coughing up ugly stuff with my nose running like a faucet. It was awful. The doctor did a telemedicine visit Monday with me and prescribed a z-pack at the 'doc is not fucking around' dosage. I have a fever that's been bouncing up and down between 99 and 98 degrees (I typically am 96.8 deg when I'm healthy). So, I've been woozy and spaced out for the last several days. The world feels like it's spinning and my sense of balance hasn't been the best because of it. 

Now, Cuddle Bear's caught this stupid thing. I am really hoping it will just be a nasty cold and that he won't get bronchitis from it. I kept him home from school today because he's got that wicked sore throat that came at the beginning. This is the same stupid cold that he had a few weeks ago and his brother had last week. It's really exasperating to feel too fucked up because of this cold to stay on top of my chores and other shit. Just my daily tasks, not even talking about starting on yule presents or anything. (Which I need to do soon or people won't be getting anything.)

Beloved caught it and had the sniffles. I love that man and envy the hell out of his immune system. When ever I get sick, it seems, that I am flat on my back and in bed because of it, where as he basically sneezes a time or two and then is fine. I mentioned my envy last night and he said, "Hey, somebody has to stay upright and take care of you guys." I couldn't argue with that position. Not when the guy went out of his way to find me diabetic friendly cheesecake that doesn't taste too horrible in his opinion. 

This cold/bronchitis situation has been playing havoc with my blood sugar numbers. My fasting numbers have been low. I was mildly alarmed this morning when I saw that it was 77. I've never had a number that low before. I didn't feel hungry at all but I made myself eat a full breakfast before I went about my morning routine. When I checked my blood sugar an hour later it was 180. A bit high, but a lot better than 77.

I feel pretty rotten right now. I'd be writing other stuff, but I can't follow a thought to completion really. I'm really spaced out right now. Stupid bronchitis and fever screwing with my life. I've got shit to do and this is in the way on top of all the other stuff that was making it hard to get it done. As I've been spaced out and frustrated, I've got one of the people in my head very firmly telling me to rest because I'm useless if I push myself too hard. Well, more than one. But, when the voices in your head have come to a consensus that you must rest, and they don't typically agree on everything, you should probably listen to them.

Fractured.

 I'm typing this up as I wait for dinner to cool off. I am having a hard time staying in the present. Some of it is recurring flashbacks. The anti-anxiety medication is helping with that to some extent. Some of it is I keep losing time. I have suspected for a very long time that I have dissociative identity disorder. It's creepy and disturbing when people talk to me about conversations we've had that I have absolutely no recollection of. It's equally disturbing when I'm told how I acted in situations that I don't remember. These are not people recounting trauma situations but just common occurrences that I happened to have been entertaining or said something memorable. 

I don't know what to do about this. I have felt like there's more than one person in my head since I was a child. I've been journaling about it off and on for the last three years. It's really hard and rather distressing. There's at least six 'others' in my head, probably more lurking in the dark. Some come out when I am handling distressing situations. Some come out when I am overwhelmed and just barely holding it together. When I go from distressed to suddenly calm, I've switched. I don't know 'who' is in the driver's seat. Sometimes, I have the impression of watching what is going on. Other times, I just am not there. Ask me later about any element of the situation and I may have a vague recollection of the beginning and then nothing after that.

I had a therapist laugh off my concerns and telling me it was impossible because I didn't change my clothing or mannerisms around them. I stopped seeing that therapist not too long after that incident. Another therapist took what I said and encouraged me to write about it. I would have continued working with them but they moved to another practice. There's a reason why I am not obvious about my fractured psyche. 

As a kid, if I didn't act what my parents viewed as 'normal' I got punished, severely. I was verbally, psychologically, and physically abused by them for a very long time. It wasn't safe to let the 'others' be known. They stole out when things got to be too much and carried the weight of the situation. It didn't happen all the time, I've got plenty of trauma that I remember clearly, but it happened enough that I don't remember almost a solid decade of my life. Some people tell me "Oh, that happens to everyone." It doesn't happen to everyone. You don't have a blank slate where your memories are supposed to be and a gaping sense of dread and terror.

There are bits and pieces of my life before I turned 20 that stand out clearly. There's bits and pieces of my life after I turned 20 that don't stand out clearly with this foggy sense that it happened to somebody else. People have laughed at me and said 'You're so random.' with out knowing that different parts of me come out to handle situations that are high stress or hit certain emotional buttons. People have laughed and said that I was the 'craziest' person they knew in high school but they didn't know that I was struggling with undiagnosed bipolar II and this other horseshit of having a brain that doesn't function right because of repeated trauma. They just figured that I was 'random' and 'eccentric'. 

Here I am in my early 40s and I'm trying real hard to figure out why I can't remember things. I'm trying to process trauma. I'm trying to figure out why in hell I can't sleep at night with out some heavy hitting sedation. I don't have a therapist. No one in my area takes my insurance. I tried to switch to the one that everybody takes around here but I got denied because I have diabetes. It's bullshit, but it's the way it is. So, I take what the one therapist who said "Ok, let's explore this concept and see what we find." and I give it all an effort to make it work.

It's scary as fuck. It seems like the more I work on this, the more there is to do and the more I find myself in weird situations that my brain just doesn't work right in. I don't wander off. I never have. I wasn't allowed to leave. There was no where I could have gone anyways because we lived in the boonies. (Farther out in the boonies than where I live right now.) So, I built interior worlds and hid there while things went down.

But now those interior worlds are bleeding into the real world. My brain is desperately trying to process something and I don't know what it is. All I know is that the last three and a half months have been difficult. And that I'm hearing them in my head again. I'm not hallucinating. But, the 'others' are getting vocal again. I don't know if it's because I finally feel safe enough to let this happen. I don't know if it's a symptom of some kind of major traumatic memory about to surface. I have no idea. And that scares the fuck out of me.

Ramblings about life.

So, after spending the last three months having sleep problems and trying different solutions, the doctor has brought me to an ironic solution. This doctor is honest. He tells me that the medication is an antipsychotic that I have been on previously (Seroquel) and he's putting me on the lowest dosage for it's heavily sedating side-effects. It won't interact poorly with the Vraylar or my other medications. I'm temporarily off of the Temazepam because it would negatively interact with that and it's taking over the job that the Temazepam was failing to do (getting me to sleep).

The irony of this is the doctor who first put me on Seroquel lied to me about what it was. He said it was a sedative and that I needed it to resolve my sleep problems that I was having during my postpartum depression. That doctor went on vacation at a time that I needed a new script written. The nurse at the clinic "wasn't comfortable" writing the script, well aware that going off it was going to do bad things to me. I had to wait two weeks for the doctor to come back from vacation. The Friday before the doctor was back in office at the clinic, I had my major crisis with suicidal ideation and psychosis, which were all aggravated by the side effects of going cold turkey off of an antipsychotic medication. Because the side effects of going cold turkey off of an antipsychotic medication are suicidal ideation, depression, and psychosis. 

I was uneasy going back on the Seroquel. I found myself concerned that I was going to be a zombie again and unable to function. When I got to Dr. M.'s office, I was on 800 mg of Seroquel. I have memory problems because of it. The going theory is the fact that I was on that and Geodon (another antipsychotic medication) for about seven years by then that majorly contributed to my developing diabetes. Basically, my pancreas is shot on top of the insulin resistance that I have caused by my psych medications and my PCOS. I'm playing a hard game of manage my condition with meds, diet, and exercise to forestall being on insulin as long as I can manage it.

I was handled real badly by the county mental health clinic. Theoretically I could sue them. I don't have the energy, money, or the time to pursue that. The people who made life hell for a year, screwed over my career in education, and put me on medication that's resulted in my developing a life long medical condition are getting away with it. I'm angry. I'm angry at the people who tried to make political hay off of my suffering. I'm angry at the people who were too damn lazy to do their jobs and put me into that position to begin with. And I'm angry that there's no justice here. They get to keep their jobs. They get to live their lives with zero repercussions for their actions. I'm a bit bitter on that point and still traumatized.

But, back to the Seroquel. I've been on this super low dose now for about a week. I'm actually sleeping through the night. Dr. M. thinks that if we do this for a few weeks, it should be enough to reset my sleep cycle back to what it should be and then I can come off of the Seroquel again. Because he doesn't think it's good for me, which is why he took me off it in the first place. In the meantime, I'm doing journal work trying to process whatever hellish thing my subconscious mind is trying to disgorge. It's ugly and kinda scary writing this stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

The 'noise' in my head, which is entirely different from psychosis, is back again. I've been feeling fractured in my brain for a long time, like ever since I was a kid. Now the different parts of me are making noise again. I need to process something and at the same time, I need to figure out just how fractured I am. It is seriously making me think I have a mild case of dissociative identity disorder with how I lose time, have conversations that I don't remember, and do stuff that I don't remember. That's been the last three months.

I don't have it happen that I go somewhere and not remember how I got there. I'm afraid to leave the apartment on some level most of the time right now. Which is why I'm on a higher dose of antianxiety medication at the moment. Again, Dr. M. thinks this is something that will resolve as I continue doing my work and we'll be able to step me back down to a lower dosage. He figures that both problems will resolve (the high anxiety/increased PTSD flashbacks and the sleep problem) around the same time. The estimate he gave me, given how aggressive I am about trying to stay on top of my mental health issues and take care of the problems as they pop up, is a few months. So, theoretically, by the time the holidays hit, I should be doing better.

I am just getting to the point where I can start doing stuff a bit more normally again. I'm just getting back into my writing. Of course, this is where I have someone calling me out for being 'aloof' and 'ignoring their efforts to communicate.' So, I have to explain, yet again for my readership, I am disabled and a social-phobe. It's really frustrating because there's some serious discussions that need to happen in the religious community that I've found myself in and there's been push back against it. And there are people in my readership community who expect me to be neurotypical and that I'm just being a contentious and aloof by raising questions and then going radio silent for three months.

Covid-19 has really fucked up my life. I didn't get it. No one in my household has gotten it. But, it's brought up a laundry list of trauma memories because of the isolation. It's made it harder to go out because the air is now lava and people are running around maskless as if there's no pandemic now. There's the looming specter of remote learning with two kids who have very different academic needs and very different learning styles. We did this before, it sucked. It went beyond sucking and into a realm that I lack adequate words to describe. It psychologically fucked with me on multiple levels. I don't have the capacity I used to for rapid switching between student needs because of how fucked my brain is. And there's just a lot of fucked up shit flying around, barely missing us.

We don't get a weekend off. Beloved and I are constantly 'on duty' and it's burning us out. Then I see other people doing shit like going on vacations and acting like the pandemic is no big deal. I get angry. I see other people with diabetes loading up on sugary snacks and I get angry. Some of it is envy. I want that vacation. I want to eat 'normal' food. Some of it is just pure frustration because I can't see away that we're going to get a break or improve the situation. We're just treading water and trying to get by. Covid-19 really brought that out into high relief. I tell myself that I should be thankful because we're better off than some others. I tell myself that I should be thankful because we're healthy (for the most part). I am bitter and angry with the fact that we're just hanging in like kittens on a window screen.

My brain and heart hurts.

 Raising kids isn't easy to begin with. We've officially hit puberty and Cuddle Bear has gone from ... well, a cuddle bear to an angry young man half the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I haven't slept well in about three months. That makes me a bit hair-trigger with my c-ptsd. Throw in on top of that the fact that we've had a few screaming arguments that set it off, it's been rough.

Beloved spoke with him. I don't know what their conversation was like, I wasn't in the room. Cuddle Bear is not quite as angry, just moody. I know that puberty is rough. Hormones swinging like a pendulum is bullshit no matter why it's happening. He's chafing at the bit to get the privileges and freedom that he sees his older peers have. It leads to some friction, to put it lightly.

Snuggle Bug is looking at the way Cuddle Bear and I have clashed over the last few months and NOPED out of even trying to be involved by either defending his brother or trying to calm him down (which they've both done in the past). It's very confusing. Where Cuddle Bear has gotten angrier and more aggressive, Snuggle Bug has slowed down and become more deliberate in what he's doing. There's still maturing happening and there's still stuff that has to be sorted out, but it's like they switched brains right now. It's bewildering.

I've been struggling with my c-ptsd for about a month now. My doctor has increased my dosage on one of my meds to help me regain control over the flashbacks. I've been attempting to force myself to do my therapy writing but I just get real upset when I try. I've been catching myself struggling to stay present in the moment. It is hard because the age difference between my sons is exactly the same as the age difference between my brothers. And the boys, if you look at the right angle, look like their uncles did at those ages. 

So, I swing between being in the present and being Mom and being in the past and being the terrified older sister desperately attempting to keep her brothers 'in line' so that all three of us didn't get some sort of awful punishment. And I was punished for this behavior. I couldn't win for losing. On top of that, I had untreated bipolar which lead to being accused regularly of drug use when I was actually depressed. Hypomania just meant that I got loaded down with more chores and told to shut up more often. My parent's approach to kids was "children should be seen and not heard" and "spare the rod, spoil the child." They didn't believe in mental illness or chronic illness.

The whole business of my mangled upbringing makes living in the present hard. I have to take a lot of medicine between the diabetes, pcos, c-ptsd, and bipolar II. Having my parents criticize me for taking cough syrup when I had a cold and insisting that I was using drugs when I wasn't left a mental scar that leaves me feeling guilty and like the world's going to judge me as a bad person for all of the medication that I have to take to function and be alive. It's so upsetting that Beloved has taken over the management of filling up my pill sorter for the week. (I am eternally thankful to him for that. I could do it, but then I wind up just about crying afterwards every time.)

I'm rambling and I don't really know what to say. I am struggling to function. It seems like every time I turn around, there's a 'new' trigger that I wasn't aware of until now. And the old triggers that I had thought I had under control are bringing back up anxiety again. Seeing a pile of dishes in the sink shouldn't make you panic, but it does because when I was small I got beat for not doing the dishes properly and then made to wash them all over again in nearly scalding hot water. Seeing that something needs dusting shouldn't make you shake with fear, but it happens because my insane mother used the white glove treatment after we cleaned. If there was a speck of dust on her glove, you got hit and made to do it all over again. In some cases, it went on for a few iterations because we simply weren't tall enough to dust the entire area (like the top of the upright piano) and weren't allowed to stand on anything to get to it.

It's a whole bunch of stuff like that coming back up. It is painful. It is disorienting. I try to hide it from the kids because they get scared when I am not my usual self. Especially if I am crying for some reason. I think it's because they expect me to vanish for a few weeks off to the hospital. It's a heavy load to carry. It hurts.