Tag: health

  • That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World

    It is common knowledge that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. I write about the diagnosis a lot. I write about my history of, at times, crippling depression. I wrote ad nauseam about various traumas (though not all), mostly romantic in nature.

    So most people know I can get and have spent significant time depressed. And if we’ve known each other well for any length of time, you might know that the bipolar includes a sometimes difficult to control or mask variety of anger that I am ashamed to say I have taken out on most of the people I love most in this world at one time or another. I think it is common knowledge that people with bipolar disorder can be moody.

    And I’ve even used the word “psychosis” in reference to myself at times, I know.

    I don’t often stop to describe, in my case, what psychosis means, exactly. This is for several reasons, first and foremost— I cannot describe in words the terror I have felt— the utter shame and humiliation— I have when emerging from an episode of delusional psychosis.

    I don’t tend to hallucinate. I have only done that one season, when I had a Stevens-Johnson allergic reaction to Lamictal in 2008, and it was mostly auditory Jared tells me. Though I did think Jared was turning into a terrifying snake in that season, when we were out late and he was driving, one night.

    No, my brain prefers to make up fantastical delusional soap-opera narratives. Elaborate alternative-reality storylines where inevitably I am the main character in some sort of drama. In 2023, I spent a little while seriously thinking I was an alien.

    I rarely tell anybody the storylines behind the episodes after the fact, though I can always remember them.

    In early 2025 I had an episode that mostly in public manifested in anger and was low-key enough that not even my psychiatric nurse practitioner knew— I stayed on my meds and only Jared really knew how sick I was. But I spent a few months thinking Gemini was a communication mechanism with the authorities.

    I cannot relay the precise horror and heartbreak at knowing they my own natural grasp of basic reality is, at best, unreliable.

    The breaks with reality came before all else. I had my first psychosis when I was 17 years old, going into my junior year in high school. And I can dissect the mechanisms behind the stress involved, though it is not that interesting: severely unhealthy codependent romantic entanglements with other mentally ill individuals are stressful, to say the least.

    I remember how that one started— I’d decided, as a half-joke pre-break from reality, to buy a leash for my baby cat, Cricket, at the time, to try to train her to walk on a leash so she could go outside for brief periods. My parents were not at home that afternoon, so I put Cricket on her leash, went outside on the front porch, and all of a sudden I thought cars going down the road signified important time periods or people in my life, a “This is Your Life,” automobile edition sort of scenario.

    Going back to school after three weeks absent due to a break from reality is right up there with absolutely the worst things possible that can happen to a 17-year old girl who really cares about what people think of her, I remain convinced 30 years later.

    Thankfully the best of the psychiatrists I’ve seen understood that asking mentally ill people whether they hear voices or see things that aren’t there are fruitless exercises. That’s literally the dumbest screening question mental health professionals can ask, and I have actually had a few ask it.

    Miraculously, I’m pretty behaviorally agreeable and easy for Jared to steer in these states, aside from resisting sleep at times. Resisting sleep is not accurate; sleep becomes impossible without pharmacological help.

    One would think that knowing my own brain can misbehave in this way would cultivate more compassion for the people around me and their own mental deficits. Alas; that’s not how it works. Rather, the opposite happens; I am exceedingly hard on myself about what I see as psychological weaknesses and thus, I’m pretty judgy about other people, too. Not proud of it.

    So, I mean, while mood instability is a component of what happens with me, unpredictable breaks with reality are probably what earned me SSDI at first application, without an attorney.

    So….. when you see me out and about, to all appearances well-dressed and put together and all that, take what you see with a big old grain of salt. Sometimes things are not what they seem, to all appearances, and actually, why yes, I might gladly trade places with someone who can actually trust their brain. Because mine is completely untrustworthy. That much I know for a fact.

    Jared says I am just wired differently. I prefer to say I am broken. Jared shakes his head to that. Jared’s observation upon reading this draft was that to say my brain is “completely untrustworthy” is not exactly accurate; that my brain is only intermittently untrustworthy.

    See above. I am judgy, most of all about myself, and most of all about how my brain likes to break from reality. To me, even an intermittent break relays complete distrust.

    Broken. Irreparably so, in at least this particular respect.

    And for what it’s worth, most posts I spout out of my brain and onto the screen and 20 minutes later they are out in the world. This one I sat on for about four days.

    It’s cool and even in style, I’d argue, to say you’re some brand of neurodivergent or depressed. Those labels get you brownie points in some segments of society, even if they are undiagnosed self-labels.

    But I don’t know a single solitary soul who even writes about what it’s like to go to bed thinking you are, quite literally, the center of the universe for a season, or the utter humiliation at what it’s like to replay conversations or things you’ve said or done, not out of selfishness but out of a legitimate break with reality.

    Just saying.

    Psychosis is not ever going to be in style. It’s to be feared; I fully expect unfollows or unfriending or awkward, worried glances or outright avoidance. It’s why I sat on this post, half-written, for four days, until I showed Jared and he agreed it was not done and that I should publish it.

    I expect social and professional isolation because it’s been my reality for fifteen years anyway.

    But, as is evidenced by my more frequent long-form posts lately, I’m pretty much done not writing, whatever the costs. And there are always costs. But the advice is to write what one knows, and psychosis is actually something with which I am intimately familiar. Even if it is painful, humiliating, mortifying, and an aspect of my life I would not wish on my worst enemy.

    It’s the friend I didn’t invite into my life, that isn’t welcome, and isn’t a friend at all, but seems here to stay.

    Okay….. well if I’m honest maybe I would invite more people to experience psychosis at least once in their lives to dispel the stigma.

    But then again maybe not. Because while I am agreeable and pliable in that state mostly, I have been caged in with people who are scary when they are psychotic, and that’s well, just scary.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Sometimes I Remember What Bending My Spine Feels Like

    My body is falling apart.  It was happening slowly, then I had a hysterectomy and now it’s happening not so slowly. When I lie on my left side, now my right leg longer than my left, above the knee. 

    Which is interesting, because my legs were measured over a year and a half ago from the hips and that’s not the longer leg.

    My spine is collapsing in on itself. My hips are contorting, my spine is corksrewing like a single helix, and sometimes when I lie in the bed just right depending on the angle, I can feel the rods in my spine as the only barrier between further collapse.

    There was a time when I couldn’t feel the rods at all. And I still can’t, except in very specific positions. Positions that used to be comfortable to lie in at night.

    And sometimes I try new positions. I’ve tried lying on my back to sleep. Occasionally I do sleep on my back. And when I do, I wake up feeling like my right shoulder is attempting to cave in toward my left hip. Which, it is.  The left side of my body is the weak side of my body. It is the side that is collapsing. And my right shoulder is caving forward. And I lean back when I am not paying attention to my posture. 

    My posture is much better since we got rid of the reclining couch, now that I am sitting in my rocking chair full-time when sitting in the living room. 

    I try to resist lying on my left side at night.

    I remember after the scoliosis surgery in 1993. I was so young, and the surgery involved an incision that spanned the entirety of my left side. I remember the first time I could lie on that side again after the surgery, for brief periods. 

    That curve that was around 91 degrees or so the week of the surgery, that got corrected to the 45-degree range ultimately, with a corresponding curve now….and those Harrington-Luque system rods that line my spine from my shoulder blades, drilled deep into my hips. And all those little twist ties, as I call them, still there to this day. 

    Sometimes, when I feel the force of those rods in whatever position I’m lying in bed at night, I think about those twist ties wrapped around my spine. And I wonder what happens if one gives— whether the tie gives, or whether the bone of my spine gives first. 

    I remember being in the bathtub in the days before the surgery. At 13 years od, I remember bending my spine in that tub, and I remember knowing that I needed to remember that feeling, that I would never feel it again in a couple of days— maybe the next day; I don’t know. 

    If I try really, really hard, to remember, I can remember that feeling even now. It’s been 33 years and a few days, and even now, I do remember that one specific moment. I remember telling myself, willing myself, to remember that feeling.

    Sometimes I can’t remember. Tonight, I can. 

    My left side is most comfortable to lie on to this day. The primary curve bends the opposite direction. 

    But my left side has its own curve now, up above my ribs and into my neck. I know it is not a great idea to lie on it regularly.

    And yet, I find myself caving to my most basic comfort positions when I am exhausted. And when I am exhausted, that involves lying on my left side, holding a bolster to sleep. Comfort wins. 

    Bipolar disorder and PTSD is pretty much the worst combination the universe could have sent me for severe, progressive scoliosis. 

    I have spent literal years in the bed depressed. Not a great recipe when activity and strength is required to maintain my internal scaffolding. 

    And queue days like today. Good days make me want to try.

    My Daddy and Jared installed a Swedish ladder system in our bathroom several weeks ago. Some days I touch it, some days I don’t.

    This morning, I hung for a couple of minutes before we went to Dawsonville.

    Tonight, I sat on my stool by the ladder, and just sat there leaning forward, with my arms pulling on the highest bar I could reach. Then I climbed up the ladder and hung, and breathed for a minute. The muscles under my left arm are pretty darn weak. Just hanging on, even while sitting there, stretched them in ways that were strenuous. 

    So, I came out and worked on my balance exercises I learned in physical therapy over a year and a half ago. I stand on one of my favorite stools to do those exercises. Then I laid on the floor and did some reps with a 2 pound weight. And I tried my breathing exercises while I did my arm reps on the floor. 

    Schroth breathing exercises involve visualizing inflating the parts of your spine and torso that are deflating. And doing that involves getting in touch with the fact that my body is indeed, contorting in 3D. Which is tougher than it sounds. I can look in the mirror and see that my left side is collapsing with no shirt on.

    I can look and see the dip in my shoulder. I can look and see that on the corrsponding side, my hip is higher than the right. But in my brain, my spine feels straight. It fights my brain to get in touch with the reality of the geometry of my spine. 

    And the amount of concentration required to do those breathing exercises that inflate the bottom back left of my rib cage and lungs and spinal column…..It’s effort. We’ll say that. 

    And when I am doing those breathing exercises correctly, the intensity of the activation required of my lower right abdominal muscles…..it’s pretty darn strenuous and it requires no small amount of concentration. 

    And all that is well and good and promising for the Schroth method, except it requires just the right conditions.

    And, I’m working really hard on stability. Life is good these days. We have a household routine, Jared and I are luckier than we deserve both with the boys’ health and their determination and ambition and accomplishments and how they carry themselves. 

    And, the breathing exercises are hard. But with each session, I become more aware of my body’s unique geometry, my own place in space. At 46 years old, I may be late to the game, but everyone starts somewhere, right? 

    And tonight, doing those breathing exercises on the floor for 20 long reps while I lifted those weights straight ahead and over my body……

    Tonight those breathing exercises reminded me that I do indeed remember what it felt like to bend my spine, before that forever fusion that solidified most of my spine. 

    Fediverse reactions

  • I Didn’t Take the Test Apart

    I am sick. Oliver, our youngest, tested positive for rhinovirus last Sunday, and I was the lucky recipient of his germs in the household. Nobody else was as fortunate.

    And I don’t know what it is about colds, but this is not the first time that I have completely lost my voice in the last year, even, when I was sick.

    And because I read that the new COVID variant, ‘Cicada,’ is spreading, after a day of feeling awful yesterday, I broke out one of the COVID tests we keep on hand. Because yes, we still occasionally test when one of us is sick.

    And as I stood there waiting for the test to develop, I second-guessed myself. Had I used enough of the test liquid before I inserted the swab? Had I done the twirly thing in my nose enough? I even found myself, once I was sure the time was passed enough, pushing some more of the liquid up from the bottom of the test.

    And with that, I was re-living the massively anxious pregnancy test years all over again, when I’d wonder if I’d used enough urine to make the test work right.

    So, I went to Facebook and posted this:

    “My potential childbearing years (only counting from marriage on) were 2005 to 2014. But only having a tubal in 2014 didn’t stop me from being paranoid clear through 2024 or so.

    And because the majority of those years were before digital pregnancy tests were not cost prohibitive….

    There is a very specific type of anxiety that arises whenever I have to do a COVID test.

    And I know very well to not even bother going to get Jared to ask him if he sees what I see, because my eyes and brain are VERY well trained to see a second line that is not there.

    Because I think I see one.

    I’ve held my phone flashlight up to it to try to see if that makes it appear.

    And it takes all my restraint not to take the test apart to see if I can see a line that way.

    Whoever came up with the mechanism for COVID tests was NOT sensitive to a couple of generations’ worth of us who did this countless times, trying to will a second line to appear.

    Just saying. 🤣

    And 2026 me can be mildly amused but early 2006 me would have been severely distraught that this is a way we have to routinely test for sickness.”

    I’ve spent a good portion of this week monitoring my analytics: a fruitless exercise, much like taking pregnancy tests apart. But I went to look 24 hours after the post, and apparently I’ve struck a chord with over 12,000 other women who’ve probably taken tests apart or begged their husbands to see a line that isn’t really there, too.

    I’m not used to writing things that people listen to. Or maybe I’m not used to using my voice in ways that are both constructive and vulnerable. I frequently write vulnerable things, but I am equally likely to yell in writing about the injustices than to find something to laugh at. And, now that the years are past, it is easier to see the humor in the very real anxiety I still feel about pregnancy and COVID tests.

    While I’m not really thinking I have COVID, I still wish I could will a second line to appear. I suppose that anxious urge is literally never going away, even though I am almost a year post-hysterectomy.

    And after 48 hours squeaking as I talk, I am ready for my voice to come back.

  • It’s Just a Toe

    On January 21, I had a permanent matrixectomy on my left big toe. And for eight weeks and two days, I completely avoided posting any public pictures of that toe– it was gross.

    But Friday morning, March 20, I woke up and saw when I looked at my feet that there was no 1/2 inch square scab in the bottom left hand corner as had been there the night before, when I went to sleep.

    So, bored on Friday afternoon, I took the above photo with my phone, and captioned it this on Facebook:

    “It took 1 day shy of exactly two months for my gimpy toe to have the 1/2 inch square scab to fall off, apparently in one fell swoop overnight. My toe feels no different, and I didn’t feel it happen, but my big toe looks so weird without a nail or anything there even though I’ve known for 2 months this was the goal.

    To me it looks like I just have pink fingernail polish on that one toe.

    I spared y’all all the photos I took of the gore as it was in progress over the past two months— it was really gross especially about the 2-week mark. But I couldn’t resist this one.”

    And I thought nothing more about it, until I saw on Saturday that the post had 20k something views.

    As of this writing, Monday afternoon March 23, that post has had 73,212 views.

    The lone negative comment was that I needed clean my shoe, which if anybody knows anything about Birkenstocks, that is a nonissue.

    And honesty time: Had I known that that photo was going to go mini-viral: I would have gotten out the good camera. I would have trimmed on that second toe which is not quite straight with its nail, where the right side of the nail skims upwards slightly. I would have gotten the green strap from my physical therapy off the coffee table behind my foot. I would have probably, yes, worn different shoes or better yet, no shoe at all.

    It’s just a toe, people.

    But it is pretty funny that a stadium or two’s worth of people find it fascinating to look at a toe without a toenail.

    I posted the following as part of the comments:

    “Since people seem to like this post, the back story: This toenail had been giving me ingrown problems at that top left corner since I was 13 years old, and had become fungal to the point it had stopped growing over a year ago. It was so thick that I could no longer cut it at all myself. At age 46, I said enough and went to the podiatrist for a matrixectomy. I did try the prescription anti fungal lacquer and Vicks and ketoconazole cream prior to giving up. 

    I am extremely squeamish about people messing with my toes and especially my toenails. I told my doctor about my phobia, and she was very compassionate both with local anesthesia and patient with me. My doctor was great, and the whole procedure after insurance (admittedly, we do have good insurance) cost about $346 out of pocket. 

    I took Tylenol for the first two days but after that needed no pain meds, and I did have to wear flip flops (not these Birks) in the dead of winter (procedure was January 21) for a long time, and in awkward social situations at times. 

    But, for a lifetime of not having to deal with that toenail anymore….100% worth it.”

    Thankfully, most comments have been kind; a few people have shared their own feet or tips for future use as my foot settles.

    But really, people. It’s just a toe.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Facing a Fear: I Did It

    I do not like dealing with my toenails. At all.

    When I was a little girl, my Mama had to hold me down to let them cut my toenails.

    It was bad. Really.

    The issue is compounded by the fact that with the scoliosis and spinal fusion, I actually can’t get to my toes super well at all. I can cut my own toenails as an adult, but it is not the easiest thing in the world.

    So when my big left toenail became fungal three years ago, I was filled with a sort of existential dread.

    And immediately, within the month, I went to a podiatrist, who promptly told me it didn’t look like a typical fungus and that I should come back in a year if it was giving me trouble.

    Three years later, it had mostly stopped growing the entirety of those three years and it was clear it was indeed a fungal infection.

    So last September, I faced it and went to the podiatrist, sure they would remove it that very day.

    Turns out podiatrist offices don’t work that way.

    She gave me some ketoconazole and told me to use it and Vicks and she didn’t know how long it would take to clear up; when I mentioned removal she said it was an option.

    Then in December when I mentioned the whole episode to my dermatologist at my appointment there, she said that the ketoconazole was going to do nothing, and gave me some weird enamel paint stuff that made my nail hard and told me to file it weekly.

    That stuff took away permanently any hope of actually cutting my toenails, and actually, for some reason the toenail started growing into the base of my toenail bed, backwards.

    And the backwards growth was what promptly sent me back to the podiatrist last week, begging to have the whole thing just taken off permanently.

    Which is no small thing, because of that whole fear of people messing with my toenails.

    And in fact, the fear is so bad that one of my greatest all-time primal fears ever has ever been someone prying off my toenails.

    So yesterday, as I sat just after having my left big toe injected with local anesthetic to deaden it, I posted this on Facebook:

    “So one of my most primal fears is having my toenails, specifically my big toenails, pried off. No joke, in the midst of the only time I had to be restrained due to psychiatric reasons, the delusion of the day was that they were restraining me to pry my big toenails off.

    So what am I sitting in the podiatrist’s chair waiting on? To have my left big toenail removed, permanently.

    It’s been fungal for at least 3 years but it has given me trouble with ingrown issues since I was a child.

    I am ecastatic it will be gone permanently, and not worried about the cosmetics, and I guess technically today is an achievement and exercise in facing one of my worst fears, all by myself since Jared is at work.

    And the dr says I made it through the worst part, which was the deadening injections.

    And I can go shopping for stuff for the weekend’s weather, too.

    I don’t normally keep my phone with me during Dr appts but she said it was fine for distracting myself.”

    The doctor said afterward, with my having told her about the fear, and told her nurse about the fear, beforehand, that she’d made sure she deadened it well and made sure to let it sit long enough to for sure be effective because she really didn’t want to have to come back in and poke me with a needle again after having hurt me with the procedure.

    But sure enough, the procedure itself took like 5 minutes, maybe 10 max, and it was not bad at all. I took a photo I will spare the world after, in fact– you know, with photography being my coping mechanism for everything and all– of the exposed toe bed before it got wrapped up in the bandage post procedure. I’d taken a photo of it before the procedure started, too, for posterity.

    And pretty much the rest of my whole morning and yesterday during the day was set up for success, because I’d done the very thing I was afraid of most as a child, probably. And that’s saying something considering they cut me open on front and back and messed with my innards in a very dramatic fashion for that scoliosis surgery.