Issue #38 Breath of the Wild
Jesus, it's been a week.
Let me not bury the lede! I am cancer free! I had my appointment on April 26 to find out the status of my surgery and the polyps were neither cancerous nor pre-cancerous! Huzzah! The doc and I sat down and went through my options for the future. They really want me to use some kind of IUD (whether copper or Mirena), birth control pill, or even just progesterone to control my period before even thinking about the hysterectomy (which I declared loudly what I wanted when I found out I was cancer free) and now I'm doubting my decision to have the surgery. The possibility of death, which is always a risk when you have anesthesia, wasn't the deterrent but the finality of the removal of the organ seem so bleak. I was trying to convince myself the finality wasn't the issue: TEH and I are not planning on having kids, the history of cancer in my family, the PCOS, and everything else gives me every reason to have the surgery but apparently I'm not ready yet so we'll see. I have an appointment at the end of May to make a decision and tbh, I'm still in a flux about it.
On the brain front, it's also not been a good week. Friday when I left for Columbus to see my BFF, I was in such a panic state I pulled over 20 miles outside of Louisville because I was shaking so bad. I had not had lunch so I needed to eat but it wasn't just a sammich it was two and a fry and a diet soda. I finally calmed down when I hit Florance Y'All as that was about the time the Klonopin I imbibed before I left kicked in. The odd thing to me was even in a panic state, I was not white knuckling it at 55MPH on the highway but going with the flow and moving in and out as necessary. The rest of the weekend was fine, driving home was fine, but Monday going into Tuesday brought on a panic attack of heart palpitations at 3:40 AM which lead to a dosage of Klonopin when the square breathing technique wasn't working. Fuck! I have all these tools, so they say, at my disposal and I cannot for the life of me get them to work when I need them to work so I resort to my sweet, sweet drug stash.
Mentally, things did not improve Tuesday or Wednesday night and I prepped bedtime with dosages of Klonopin before my head hit the pillow so I would not be woken up with heart palpitations again. My shrink and I talked about triggers and I'm not sure I had one? Maybe I'm lying to myself? The closest thing I could come up with is Thursday the pug threw up all over the place Monday night and instead of thinking "Oh, she ate some mysterious crap on our walks," I'm thinking, "She's got cancer!" Wednesday night's trigger was watching a doc on Elvis and as they talked about the poverty he grew up with, I kept thinking TEH was going to kick me out on the street, I was going to be carless, penniless, and homeless. None of this would never, ever happen. TEH's the only person on the face of the planet would 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt be supportive of me. This is not to disparage my other support network but TEH is top of the charts A double plus 100%. So, knowing, KNOWING I would be clothed, fed, and taken care of should have soothed me but it didn't. I had images of me standing on the side of the road with the dog shaking her money maker out to get money to get to my brother's place in Michigan.
It was pretty bad.
So, Klonopin became my friend again. Klonopin is fast acting and short-lived but with me, that does not seem to be true. One dose is okay but once I pile up on the dosage, say every few hours, or I'm dosing on a daily basis, everything becomes aqueous and it's maddening. It takes several days after the last dosage before I feel normal again. I've been working on my square breathing and mindfulness in the midst of the panic but goddammit! It never seems to work the way it's supposed to work aka at all. I need some relief.
After all of this, I saw my therapist for my weekly Wednesday meeting and she and I went over my goals from last year and it's the same as it is now: to live a participating life and get over the past. Why do I feel like I am spinning my wheels? Am I not putting enough work into living a mindful life? What in the living ever hell is going on with my brain?
Hopefully, I pray to whatever deity exists I can get some answers and strategies.
The drive Friday was to my BFF's house, who lives about 3.5 hours away, for a BFF weekend. The 3.5 hour drive turned into nearly five after construction and Friday afternoon traffic but I made it there a-okay. The BFF and I had a really good time which culminated in us heading to a strip club on Saturday night with my BFF's partner and her boyfriend (she's poly). BFF popped for a lap dance where I spent the majority of the time with a firm butt in my face, and then the stripper motorboated my BFF's face with her breasts, asking the stripper about how she got there, does she like it, etc. I was Margaret Mead up in that ish and I enjoyed every minute of it. Would do it again, A++
What I would not do again is drink the way I drunk as shots and beer kept appearing mysteriously before my very eyes. The next morning, while in bed I flipped from laying from my right side to my left and was immediately bombarded with head and body aches which did not seem to go away no matter how much aspirin and water was involved. The world was a hot mess and I did not want to be awake for it. I did not front-load water or aspirin when we got home Saturday night (tho' drunk Taco Bell was had) so mea-culpa. After BFF and I went out to breakfast Sunday morning, I melted onto her couch waiting for the world to stop hurting but alas, I had to drive home. The drive home was gorgeous as the weather was great and there was little traffic as I made it back to Louisville. I made it home safely but my penance for the weekend was being hungover until Monday and that was fun!
So yay strip club and nay to the hangover.
I have another project! I was so inspired by my list of gratitudes that I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a list for 2018. When I came up with the list in 2016, I compiled as a weekly-ish blog post but I didn't want to use the newsletter for that purpose (which, durr, the whole point of this newsletter is for me to wretch my guts out), so I created a blog! Effing Gratitudes! Every day I will post one thing I'm grateful for along with one thing I'm happy with. There will be a complete list so I can check along as I work to make sure I don't repeat myself. In 2016, I was able to come up with 100 gratitudes and things that made me happy so the project will last at least 100 days. I'm not going to front load the blog rather I'll just post one a day so I can be mindful of that thing. This also corresponds with May being Mental Health Awareness Month.
I'll probably just update here when I've added significant items to the list rather than link to a zillion blog posts. If I find the posting of a zillion links to blog posts in a newsletter, I'll assume you will too!
The list is also being fed into the sidebar of Effing Mindful as well as Twitter and my Facebook page. Pretty much everything these days is getting posted to my Facebook page. I had to get the Dust Buster out since it had not been updated since spring of 2017 but so far this process is working.
You can also subscribe to the EG list as well as follow me on Twitter (the posts go up 9AM every day) if you so desire.
In the sidebar of both Effing Gratitudes and Effing Mindful, I have a list of the social networks I'm active on and my growing Lisa network:
Pookie Bear Industries
With the exception of Excessively Diverting which has its own community, I have given up creating Insta/Twitter/Tumblr/FB pages for all my projects. Each blog has its' own email subscription but every post from my network gets cross-posted to my main Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts. Hell, everytime a newsletter goes out, it's automatically posted to Twitter.
I am everywhere.
Speaking of everywhere, the poem a day project has come to fruition! Huzzah! I made it through all 30 days of April without missing a day. I am totes pleased with myself. I continue to read poetry around the web and via my books and I think I've figured out how to make it rain when it comes to poetry: write a bunch of sorta okay descriptive phrases in some kind of vague form and voila! A poem! (I've read a lot of shit poetry lately that is posted on popular and highly regarded sites so eh.) This is not to say there is not good poetry available but it does give me hope that I'm not as bad as I think I am. But to surmise: the poetry project has ended but I'll keep posting poems over there just not on a regular basis.
As mentioned earlier, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Yay! Support your crazy!
Job situation: LOL. Okay.
We bought a Nintendo Switch a week or so back and I've been in Zelda heaven ever since. This version is open world and can be explored any way you damn well please. TEH will ask, "What do you want to do tonight?" And my answer is typically, "Um. Sure. Let me just go get these daku nuts and kill these things." I've gotten so engrossed to the puzzles, I've had to set a hard time limit on the evening so I could go to bed. Did you know the Switch handheld last three-four hours on battery? Yeah, me neither. I've gotten so into that damn game I have strayed away from it a day or so before I went to Columbus so I won't be up all damn night getting sucked into it. Now that I'm back home, I'm eyeing it wearily. Since the Switch is so small, I am seriously considering packing it when we go to DC in a week.
(Which means I'll either update next week before we go or after we come back since the normal week I'll be afk.)
Uterus and vagina not cancerous? Check. Anxiety attacks and triggers discussed? Check. Project updates? Check. Job status? Check. Video game update? Last check.
Until next time! Shine on my emerald and diamond crazy little goblins.
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