Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." Genesis 9:13

Friday, May 21, 2010

So many things

I can't believe I've barely written here all week. I seem to be needing some quiet thought time. I'm trying to start working on things that I need to function, and I'm also preparing myself for resuming my PTSD-invoking discussion with Dr. Mind. I think next week I'm going to start talking about what we need to do to keep me from getting so overwhelmed going back to that topic. He's going away for a week soon so I don't want to start it yet, but this last time I sprung this on him, and while I did decide carefully to do it, going into it more cautiously might not be so bad. On the other hand I needed to do what I did the last time, because if he'd had warning I wouldn't have gotten to see his involuntary reactions to what I'd experienced, and I needed that. I don't know why, but it helped.

On some many levels things are better. I am going to really like home health. The autonomy is awesome and perfect for me. There are going to be scheduling issues with the fact that now that there is an OT for the first time everyone wants to sign people up for OT. Which is great, but I'm the entire OT department, so we have to prioritize and pace things as I have to do evals and treatments.

My insurance has out of the blue started paying for my visits again. There is an appeal in but they started paying before that was totally written. There is no way to know if they'll pay for any more visits since they are kind of rude like that, but at least this group was paid for, despite the denial of the visits the week before. Whatever. I'm very curious what they will do with this claim coming up. I'm having MRIs of both my feet and ankles. This is one MRI but is scheduled as 2. I expect this to blow their minds.

My courage in handling the pelvic/straight cath paid off. Urine obtained that way has no blood. The only thing not perfect was the thing the diabetes insipidus affects, and that simply was at the last possible end of normal, which is great for me and means my meds for that are working. This means no cystoscopy. I have to get in touch for a referral for someone to figure out what is going on with my kidney cyst that now is more than likely the source, and while I don't love that idea as non-invasive measures haven't done so much for figuring out what it is, I also fully expect it to turn out to be a vascular anomaly, quite common when you have my kind of birthmark, and part of a syndrome that I could have since the birthmark is on an extremity.

I'm working very hard on listening to my body about fatigue. It's hard because there is just so much I want to do that I'm too tired to handle right now. But if I get the rest caught up I'll be fine again. Dr. Mind had me doing this very well for a long time and I let it go the last few months. I think I felt so good I got cocky and thought things like that no longer were so important. One huge lesson learned. Tonight my body is telling me it's about bedtime. I have to put away some groceries and then I'm going to take pills and try to get to sleep very early.

I'm also pushing the eating thing. I waited for months for my body to get used to the patch and the taste aversions to go away. They have not. And I've realized that much of it isn't TASTE so much as I don't want textures in my mouth and have gotten so touchy about this that I have started not wanting tastes either. But I can't stand going on with only eating a few foods and I really want to eat fruits and vegetables again. And fish. I love it so much and haven't even tried it since the hospital. Yesterday one of my co-workers finally figured out who I was. We used to work together, back when I was so overweight. She didn't recognize me. I want to lose the last 20 lbs, but I have to eat more variety than I do. I also decided that some of this is because of all the bad things that happened with food in the hospital (the dietician put me on the strictest MAOI diet there is, even though at the dose I was on I didn't need a restriction at all and Emsam has fewer restrictions. Even my dr. couldn't get her to let up. So I ate very few foods for days after my appetite even vaguely was present after a month of eating nothing because of the severe depression, and it kind of turned into some ind of war in my mind. Plus there are many bad associations. So I'm starting at the beginning. If smooth textures are all I can stand then purees it is until I get used to tastes. And as icky as it looks (I'm making some and the others are made by mixing up baby foods (a meat, a veggie or two) and spices I actually at a whole bowl of it last night. I'm also eating baby food fruits as a segue into eating fruit again. And I am eating whole bananas already so it is working at least some. I've had meat 3 days in a row. So this is also good, although odd.

Otherwise, not sure what else. I've been spending time reading through old entries and am gaining so much appreciation for being able to think clearly and not being so sick all the time. The me of spring 2008 sounds so sure that she's doing well and is trying to force herself to be positive about a job that you can see is awful if she'd just listen to what she is saying, and the cycling is also there. The clear thinking of today is not. Dr. Mind would be mad at me for looking back at this stuff, but I'm looking for some answers he can't provide.

Speaking of listening to myself, it's time to go to sleep. Not sure I even need meds.......But i'll take them anyway.

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