Decision Made

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So the vet said the cat really shouldn't be boarded right now because it is so stressful.  And so I am staying home.  My mom pushed me really hard to admit that I don't feel up to going which she says is absolutely fine and she agrees with much of my logic.  She does feel bad that I could feel better and regret not going but with Noah we'd have to find someone to come and check on him daily.  The person who used to do that never saw him because he hides, so the person would have to search for him and then search for vomits and try to guess who vomited since both cats do often and they would also have the risk of coming in and finding him in shock or dead. And I can't imagine doing that to a pet sitter.  Nor is it what I want; I do not want to be 10 hours away from home and get a call that he is dying.  The vet today told me he very nearly died last week.  He is doing very well now; the jaundice I saw the other day is gone and he appears healthy although not happy to be at the vet's. 

We had this happen a few years ago.  We were on vacation and had one day left and planned to go to the beach and souvenir shopping.  The petsitter called to say that she was taking the dog in for an emergency visit and that he was very ill.  I think he'd had a prior episode of the same thing because we knew it was probable he was dying.  We managed to pack everything and clean the rental house in 2 hours and get onto the ferry boat back to the mainland and just took off and drove.  We got here and brought the dog home after the vet said that he would breathe heavily but not suffer and he'd just drift off.  Instead I had to go get pain meds for him because he was uncomfortable and couldn't rest and then he had to be euthanized the next morning.  If we'd been home I think he would have been saved 3 days of suffering.  I don't want that for Noah nor do I want to make a decision about ending his life when I can't say good-bye.  It looks good right now that he'll be fine although he'll probably have episodes of this throughout his life (not that severe though).  But for a few weeks he needs to rest and have things calm and just recover.

And I'm truly not in the right place to go somewhere with people who don't know what this illness is like for me and who will be living on a schedule that would leave me out of everything anyway.   My sister's family and cousin's family both have small children who nap so they'll want to do things in in the morning.  I currently am not functional in the morning.  I'm often awake but not functional.   It will be loud and I am needing a lot of quiet.  I just can't explain exactly how I feel right now but it is not good.  I contacted Dr Brain about a med change but I don't know that there are any options unless things are worse than they are now.  I just don't feel like this is the best time for me.  This sucks, I would love to be able to go but right now I need to take care of my bipolar and myself and that means staying home and trying to control this episode. Another thing is that going out with a bunch of people not used to me can mean that all kinds of things get messed up.  My sister and her husband try to make foods I can eat but at one of the girls' birthdays I had American cheese on a hotdog bun because they made something MAOI unfriendly.  Usually at the beach our family eats a lot of seafood, which is generally pretty safe anyway and people make sure to at the very least set aside things to have portions I can eat.  But for this trip my cousin is "planning menus" and that means that it is likely that a decent number of meals would be things I can't eat.  She has no idea what all you have to avoid when cooking for me.   And since some of it is migraine restrictions as well as the MAOI you can't even look it up if you think that far which is asking people to do more than is reasonable anyway.  Plus why go to the beach and not eat seafood?

There are just a lot of reasons I don't think this is a good idea and then this episode is the last straw.  It theoretically could be fine in a week but it has been building for months and I tend to doubt we'll get it controlled that quickly.  It's been a year since I had a bad one so I'm also just due.  I wish it didn't work that way but it does; there is not at this point in my life going to be a continual period with no episodes and the bad ones are going to come sometimes.  It's funny, I can almost diagnose a bad one now because when they get bad I immediately have dreams about the hospital.  Last night I dreamed about the nurse I (and every patient I've known but one) dislike (last time she was my nurse for nearly 2 weeks and had a maximum of 5 patients.  On the 12th night or so she asked "Lisa" to do something.  When I didn't respond she kept staring at me and I was looking behind me for "lisa" until I finally realized she'd never learned my name.  3 hospitalizations, 2 times she was my 2nd shift nurse throughout and she didn't learn my name.  Plus she pulled me aside to grill me on suicidal stuff one night, implying she cared but if she cared she'd have learned my name.  Anyway, the first time I was in there they had a 8 pm group that she usually led that was deadly boring.  She'd hand out 10 page handouts and read them to us.  And they were not ever that helpful and were often kind of condescending.  One night I was anxious at 7 pm so she gave me my Seroquel.  Like I've been trained to do I took it and then went to bed because if I missed it working I wouldn't sleep.  She woke me up and forced me to come to group then tried to force me to say why I was crying.  I was humiliated is why.  The next day I told the dr about it and at first he said that I should know I was required to go to group but when I pointed out that I've been strictly taught Seroquel means bedtime, that I had said "well that will make me sleep anyway" and that I was not informed that my choice was to take it and stay awake for group or not take it and suffer anxiety for another couple of hours he changed his mind and she got really snotty with PRNs after that for everyone because he said something to her.  So she mostly hates me.  So I was dreaming about all that and that I was in the hospital again and that she was insisting that she have that awful 8 pm group because "everyone used to benefit so much from it".  Which is a huge lie, we all made fun of it.  Truly terrible group.  One night she was off and someone else ran it and just asked everyone to say something about their day and that was good but oh those handouts....awful.  I'm not headed there but I think it's always lurking when things get bad mostly because of that time when I was on the edge of landing there pretty much every day for about 9 months. 

I'm so anxious about telling my sister I'm not going. I was supposed to ride with them to be an extra adult.  They'll manage without me but she also needed me to watch the kids in the morning while she went to work and my BIL got home from a conference in another state.   I'm going to offer to spend the night, keep the kids in the morning and then come home.  It means a night of little to no sleep but at least it doesn't screw everything up.  my mom texted her to call me and she never did so I've had an anxious evening waiting for her to get around to me and she didn't.  She gets mad about such weird things that I have no idea what her reaction will be.  I wish that part were over.  My mom was surprisingly supportive and ok with it; I think she saw it coming because I look like I have been beaten up I'm so tired.  But my sister is a whole other entity.

Oh well, time to work on sleep for tonight.

Goodnight



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