Lessons from Lauraland

I promised myself that this week I would spend time each day cleaning something, writing something, and exercising. Even if I have to do it from bed, which I currently am. I'm so tired of being in pain. So tired of missing out on things. So tired of worrying about making ends meet when I can do nothing. I'm just tired. But I have to keep living somehow so this is a start.

One thing about depression and anxiety that so many people just do not get is this: Sometimes there is something that makes me anxious or depressed, but more often than not, there isn't. Life doesn't have to be striking me down with all it's might for me to want to hide under the covers and never come out. I don't have to be wondering if God is smiting me for me to remember everything I've ever done or said that I regret, and believe me that list is long and the guilt hits as hard as it did in the moment. The world doesn't have to seem on the verge of falling apart or falling into World War III for me to feel it falling into me, crushing me until I can barely breathe. I don't have to watch a sad movie in order to cry my eyes out in the shower. I handed in my keys and badge last week. It has been nearly ten months since I first developed upper right quadrant pain and swelling and I haven't worked more than a few hours in all of 2016. All in all, HR was ...

My physical therapist told me yesterday that I have a high pain tolerance. Monday marked 4 weeks since my hip surgery and I'm off pain medications almost entirely. It's only when I'm up enough to make my side really hurt and swell that I take one. But I have been on opioids for months, maybe a year at this point. Maybe longer. That makes me an addict in the eyes of many, probably including the surgeon general. Really I'm a person who had a doctor who gave the wrong diagnosis and then gave up. I'm a person who had/has complex issues happening all at once which took a while to sort out. I'm a person that as in a lot of pain. I'm a person. Period. I get so frustrated listening to current obsession with opioid addicts. There are people addicted to cigarettes and there are people who have one every few months. There are people addicted to alcohol and people who drink on occasion without issue. There are gambling addicts and those that go to a casino a coup...

 I was just out with the dog, bundled up against the ridiculous 35* F weather. (It was in the 80s last week. Thank you, Mr. Jet Stream.) I was thinking that this is romance for us. Seeing my husband with his lap full of bills, trying to figure out which doctors are going to get paid what this month, and taking the dog out, despite the cold and my hip/bladder/side pain, because it was the only thing I could do to help at the moment. Just like it was romance that my husband came out -in his tshirt and jeans, crazy man- to take the leash from me and make sure I was okay as soon as he realized what I had done. Our weekend has been full of laundry, dishes, dinner with old friends, pulling a tick off the dog, watching a favorite movie (Death to Smoochy) because I was in too much pain to go to the drive in, clearance shopping, and plenty of time resting on my extra long heating pad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a good weekend, but I was thinking about a quote I read earlier. “You ...

Friendships are difficult for me. I'm very good at putting on a happy face and I am truly interested in getting to know people. The problem is once those initial meetings are through, my social anxiety kicks in and I struggle to reach out. I doubt people who know me casually are even aware how crippling my social anxiety gets. I am lucky to have people in my life who have known me for many years, but that adds its own layer of issues. My memory is bad, like ridiculously bad. I struggle to remember things I have done with my friends. Inside jokes we may have shared years ago mean absolutely nothing to me now. I freeze, then try to play along while I desperately search the recesses of my mind for the reference. And I know I should just tell them and sometimes I do, but it is so embarrassing. I'm not an easy person to maintain friendship with. I spend enough time on self care that I don't really have time for anything else. I lock myself away and forget to reach outside of m...

I am sure I have ranted about this in the past, but people who do not use punctuation DRIVE ME CRAZY. I'm not even asking for semi-colons or commas. Periods would be a great start! I am part of couponing groups on Facebook (that's for another post) and just tried to read a lady's post. I honestly have no clue what she was trying to say. After trying to read through a second time, I just gave up. I get that I may use more complete sentences and less abbreviations than your average person, but simple capitalization and sentences ending punctuation cannot be too much to ask for, right? /rant

I love dandelions. I remember blowing on their seeds and making a wish as a kid. As an adult, they are a touch of sunshine in a ridiculously difficult day. I know they and other "weeds" (as opposed to the flowers we so carefully cultivate) annoy some people and destroy their perfect American Dream lawns, but for me they mean summer. They make me smile. I love seeing our lawn and the park behind our house full of them. The bees are happily buzzing about getting their fill of the early pollen, the birds watching the bees, the squirrels and rabbits running around. Eight months out of twelve, they are a reminder of life and for the other four, I keep one as the wallpaper on my phone. My favorite is one of a slightly closed bloom, sheltered in fallen autumn leaves from the slight covering of snow. If the dandelion can still show its face to the sun, can't i? I also love violets, another "weed." They also remind me of childhood, but specifically of my mom and he...

I have a headache. It's a lot better than when I woke up this morning, but it's still there. Lingering in the edges of my mind there is a bit of an ache, a bit of nausea when I close my eyes. Pain is a funny thing. Each time I go to my pain management doctor, they prompt me with descriptive terms for my pain. This headache is slight, but achy and definitely sick. My hip is raw and deep, both words I came up with, not prompted. The description makes sense now that I know I have a tear inside of my hip. It also explains why that pain is constant. I can move when it gets stiff or heat it so I'm a bit more comfortable, but it's always there. My abdomen is sometimes sharp, sometimes achy, sometimes both. It's better than it was before the medication and the trigger point injections, but it's still there. My bladder is more of a burning ache. It can be sharp and sudden. It's always something different. Pain affects more than just the part of the body it is ...

I take pain medication. I have been taking prescription pain medication for probably two years. For most of that time, I was taking the medication maybe once or twice a week, as needed for pain in my hip. Usually I would take it when I got home from work, but mostly I tried to deal with the pain by changing my activities and spending a lot of time laying on my good friend, the heating pad. I still spend a lot of quality time with my heating pads, three heating pads. At times I use all three to cover all the areas of my body that ache. About 6 months ago, I had a bit of a cold. On Sunday, October 18th, I noticed that my sternum, just the right side, hurt. I thought I had pulled a muscle sneezing or coughing or something. That Monday I still had sinus drainage and my sternum hurt though the pain was starting to expand a little farther under my chest, so I called off work. Tuesday, I got up, got ready, and went to work. By 11, I knew I was in trouble. I was having extreme pain basically e...

"There are two kinds of people in the world..." It's a phrase you often hear repeated followed by a silly joke or an offensive division, or perhaps something in between. But, I am beginning to learn there are not two types of people or four or six in the world. There are as many kinds of people in the world as there are people in the world.  That sounds lonely and it can be. But there are things you and I share in common that draw us together. Whether it is the love of a place or television show, or perhaps a craft or professional experience, we are brought into community by the ties between us, the ties that bind us. It is important to remember that even those bound together through their own free will are still distinctive types. That does not go away, but sometimes we forget to treasure the things that make us unique in a world that strives toward a mediocrity of sameness. I am unique. No one is, was, or will ever be just like me in every way. No one else can pl...

So what happens now? I feel this song so deeply at times. Not about my love life, which has been happily consistent for half of my life, but about my health. Since I woke up one day in January 2011 in horrific pain, I have had periods where I felt better, but overall, I have felt awful. Now it is excruciating pain in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen. It's been going on since October 18th, 2015. That feels like forever ago, which I suppose is fair since it has been over 15 weeks with little relief. They have no idea what is wrong with me and I am beginning to wonder if they ever will. I'm so tired of feeling this way. It feels like it is never going to end. WBH keeps talking about things getting better once I am better and can go back to work. What happens if I can't? At this point I have been laying flat 20-22 hours every day for weeks and am only to the point that most days don't have me crying. It's so difficult to put into words what this feels like. Xand...