This morning, like every other day this week, I woke up and worked out. I’ve only been doing full workouts three days a week but I’m getting up every morning and doing at least ten minutes of stuff on Wii Fit Plus, which is way better than the original.
I have only missed one day of class this semester. I actually am keeping up with the work this time. I’ve been loving my poetry thesis class. I’ve been writing a lot of fiction. School is fun again. I wrote a paper about Coleridge, opium, and China. I’ve been thinking so much about game design.
This morning, Dan and I went to my doctors appointment and then to a pet store where I bought (after much deliberation) a flock of finches. I named them all after characters from the Arthur mythos: Lady of the Lake, Merlin (which was the name of the bird in Heavy Rain), Galahad, Gawain, and Mordred. I ended up spending a lot less on them than I expected.
Yesterday I went to the Wireside Chat that Lessig had. It was pretty awesome that so many people around the world could watch it. Right now I’m on my way downtown to go to the skeptic’s group on campus. Tonight Dan and I are having people over to play video games and board games.
I’m tired. I miss Dustin, that’s for sure, but being in such a better mood constantly is amazing. Woo.
I think New Year’s resolutions are a bunch of horse shit, so even though I was feeling fat and lazy, I didn’t make one. But since then, I’ve started on medication, started therapy, and school, and I’m trying to get my shit together.
Dan actually went with me to my last therapist appointment. We talked a lot about how I feel tired and lazy all the time and how I really want to work on that. It was on Monday, and I told both of them that I never start doing stuff because I start procrastinating, and because it was Monday, I’d wanna start on Monday, because it was the beginning of the week. Both Dan and Beth didn’t let that fly. She said, “What’s so special about Monday?” And Dan reminded me about how I felt about resolutions: anyone who needs an excuse to start is postponing something they don’t want to do.
Well, because of that I’ve decided I need to get a routine going and stick to it. After that meeting, Dan and I went and got Wii Fit Plus so we had something new and interesting to use the Wii Fit board for. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class all day. I get up at 8:30am. And so I can’t work out those days, but this gives me the ability to start a new routine where I get up five days a week at 8:30am and work out three of them.
I’m not going to worry about my weight or food (long time readers will know I’ve had issues with that in the past) because my problem is not my weight now. I am completely comfortable with the fact that my BMI is actually like 26 or something now, but I am not happy with how I am tired all the time because of laziness.
This morning started the work outs and I already feel a lot more energy. I actually made a nice lunch and am really excited about eating it too. It’s true I still don’t feel like actually doing work, but it’s not a miracle worker. I just need to stop needing naps and wanting to sleep all day instead of going out with friends.
I’ve seen a therapist twice, which is going well, but then she didn’t call me back for a week. She had previously told me she’d be busy, but I was getting kind of irritated. This morning I was woken up by her calling me (love that ringtone from that NES game Uninvited, heh) and she told me she had been previously out of the office, which is good.
See, the problem, as usual is money. The psychiatrist (who I was pretty irritated with because his “appointment” with me was him reading off the depression checklist) thoroughly questioned my past use of Ativan, something that really helps my panic attacks, asking if I abused it and shit. That made me really uncomfortable, but I digress. He gave me a script for something that the generic of was fifty bucks…yeah, that’s not cheap at all.
Couldn’t afford that but my mom gave me the hook up temporarily until we figure what’s going on. You know, Walgreens and CVS have prescription cards that give you a discount? That’s pretty cool.
Anyway, I’ve been taking this shit for 2 days and all it’s done so far has made me feel kind of pukey. I’ve been spending the past few weeks playing non-stop Dragon Age: Origins, which is keeping me busy, but I’d like to be a sane person soon.
Also I made a formspring account, so if you go to this page you can ask me whatever questions you want, even if you wanna be a super douche: http://www.formspring.me/imagesfromapoet. See you there!
I am sometimes jealous of people who can have caffeine just because I loved Cherry Coke so much. I drank a lot of it, before I started having chest pains and found out I had mitral valve prolapse, and now I don’t have any. But I went to Dairy Queen for lunch and got a chicken sandwich and three fingers of it, treating it much like an alcohol, having barely enough, because by the time my chest hurts, it’s too late. I start feeling buzzed, half cocked, a headache, sleepy, out of control, unconscious of my own actions. I used to drink a lot of caffeine and now I drink none.
I have been writing a book lately, non-fiction about the period of my life from March 2005 until July 2006, when I was 22 years old, and everything was awful. I’m having a hard time figuring out the order I want to put everything in or the tense to use. I’m writing it in present tense and in episodes, but I don’t know if that’s the best plan. I’m in my school’s computer lab right now and the guy next to me is putting on his contacts at his desk. That’s almost hilarious.
So because I’m writing about a horrible failed relationship where the guy was controlling and abusive, I reread this book called Killing Me Softly by Nicci French. It’s not an amazing book, but it’s tolerable and interesting and there are very scary and strange moments. But in it, the main character, Alice, is walking down the street and sees this guy. He sees her. They both stop in the street and stare at each other without speaking a word. And from that, they fall in love, they go off and sleep together without knowing each other’s names. I can see how this is possible, but it makes me look at everyone who walks by, wondering if there is someone out there who could make me feel like that.
Creepy but it’s not something new for me: I tend to have these unexplainable and impossible fantasies that I don’t know if I really want to have come true.
When I finally realized I wasn’t just a high strung person, that I had a serious anxiety problem, I was twenty two. I was having serious problems with chest pains, a racing pulse, and irregular heart beats. My doctor told me I had mitral valve prolapse, meaning the mitral valve in my heart was not opening and closing properly, and that I needed to stop drinking products with caffeine in them. She gave me a beta blocker and an anti anxiety medicine that she said I should take them until the stress died down in my life (my grandfather was dying, slowly, from lung cancer). After a few weeks of being on the anti anxiety medicine, I realized something. I wasn’t afraid to go out of the house anymore.
Sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse. I stopped taking my prescriptions a few years ago and I’ve worked in therapy in the past on reducing my stress level, but it’s not all cognitive. Sometimes I know I am being weird or paranoid but I can’t control it. I guess it’s why it’s a disorder, durrrrr. But I am at another stage in my life where I’m paralyzed with fear when it comes to leaving the house. Part of it is money, to be honest with myself. I literally have none of that to the point where I’m strapped for cash to get to and from work. It’s why I don’t leave much anyway.
I need to get to a therapist or a doctor that will prescribe medicine for me, but I can’t afford it. I’m not sure where to go for free help, and even so, my anxiety makes it hard to leave the house to go to a new place. Today I decided I needed to do something about it so I started taking the leftover Lexapro that I still have. There’s enough there that it should start to make a dent and I can hope that I have my school money by the time that happens. Either way, I still need to go back to the doctor because my hands haven’t completely cleared up. They get almost normal and then a few blisters pop up the moment I stop using the hydrocortisone. I think it might be allergies also.
On the continuing story of my shitty health (the most recent two posts being the most relevant), the antifungal pills I’ve been taking for the past three weeks haven’t done shit. The infection has continued to spread.
I cannot get my hands wet. This means I can’t shower, use a mouse, or hold a controller (which causes my hands to sweat). It means I can’t work because of the blisters all over my palms and fingers. Dustin’s been here, so it’s been nice since he can do things to amuse me like play video games and shit. I can still type, but I really don’t have the urge to write anything while this is going on.
Dan and I have started using other methods of trying to kill this obviously hearty fungus. For a few days, I did apple cider vinegar baths on my hands, twice a day. I took pictures before and after, if you’re curious to see. It really seemed to help (it almost completely nullifies the itch) but it hurts almost unbearably and we used up a huge bottle already, so I need to take a break from that. Yesterday, I started using Lotrimin cream on my left hand only to see if it’s going to work. I’m paranoid that it’s gonna make things worse because it’s a cream.
Either way, it’s prevented me from working, which is bad because I’m already extremely low on funds and it doesn’t help when I can’t work and will probably need to go to the doctor again.
It makes me despondent and anxious. I can’t do my normal stress relievers like play video games; I can’t shower, though Dan is awesome and washed my hair for me the other day; and I can’t enjoy Dustin’s time here, which is pretty short. It’s just frustrating all around.
I mentioned not too long ago that I had a sinus infection that I couldn’t go to the doctor for. Well, when the rash on my hands started to spread drastically, I decided it was really time to go anyway.
Backstory: a few years ago, I got horrendous athlete’s foot that actually spread to my hands, and a year afterwards ended up with ringworm down my neck and chest. I had no idea what was causing this stuff, just that fungi seemed to have a natural affinity for my skin.
I tried treating the rash with athlete’s foot medicine, thinking it was some form of fungus. It wasn’t doing anything, so I was thinking the doctor just had to prescribe something stronger like what happened with the athlete’s foot I had on my hands. (That shit woke me up in the middle of the night because the itch was so bad. I spent so much time meditating on not scratching until I would break and scratch until my feet bled. It was not a good time and I was determined to not let it get that bad.)
The doctor confirmed that it is fungus (after calling in two of her colleagues, one to help and one to just gawk) and gave me some oral stuff to take for two weeks to kill it. When my friend Rob heard about it, he laughed and told me I was all moldy.
And then it finally clicked. As a child, I was taken to an allergist because I was pretty allergic to cats and they wanted to know what else made me sick. The things that broke me out the most on the skin test were cats, pollen, and mold. I had just not equated mold with fungus! So this must be why the fungus that doesn’t effect Dan causes me to break out in blisters and rashes everywhere.
It’s good to know.
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About As a poet, I feel like any photography I do will always be a reflection of the words I use. When I think, I think in words, not images, unlike visual artists. This site houses a minimalist dream log, my poetry including poems from You May Waltz To Your Doom In Sanguine Stained Shoes, my photography, and a blog with Let's Play related entries.
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