Doing as I’m told

Gadget Guy says I have to write, so I’m trying to do just that. Something’s been happening with me.   I’m letting things slide again.  I haven’t done my Wii Fit in a good few days.  I didn’t keep up with my health dairy, even though I promised him I would, which makes me feel like utter crap.  Things are sliding and slipping back to a bad place and I don’t know WHY.

At this precise point in time I can’t even begin to reason why I feel God awful…  like spaced/out of it,  not in my own head, somewhat disconnected. its kind of weird. I’m hovering in this odd place where panic attack,  crying fit,  throwing up and passing out all meet…, with no idea which way I’m gonna go really. what I want to do is go and hide in bed, cuddle up with somebody and feel safe  because I don’t feel safe right now. I feel pretty out of control and quite scared.

So the deal between me and this Gadget Guy friend of mine is that I will try to do what he tells me and he won’t ask too much or tease me or push me too much because he knows I’ll just snap and either cry or scream or run away from him and his help.  I’ve done the first thing he asked me: I’ve got my health diary as up to date as I can, writing everything that’s happened to me over the last 3 days. Now I’m doing the second thing he asked: I’m here… writing… trying to make connections and put into words to my jumbled mess of thoughts.

I started feeling bad tonight about half way through my 2 hour First Aid training session (no, there were no gory pictures or recreated wounds that upset me or grossed me out .. so it’s not that). I got a sharp pain above my left eye and a stinking headache. I lost all focus and stopped really listening to what I was being told. My chest was racing.  It can’t have been too bad because I was still able to respond. I got up and practiced all my bandages and did everything I was asked, but inside I didn’t feel like all of me was present in that room. Apparently I looked miserable, so said the teacher who asked if I was ok. Yeah I’m ok; it’s just a headache and possibly a panic attack. Now when I have panic problems the last thing I need is anyone to draw attention to me, so of course i just said I was ok. I WAS ok coming home which might be due to the fact that I was chatting away to a friend on the phone and not really thinking about what I was doing. I’ve had something to eat. I’ve taken all my meds today… and I just don’t feel good.

In fact, odd things have been going on for a few days now. It kind of started on Monday… well actually early Tuesday morning for me. I was watching this weeks episode of Dancing With the Stars over the interwebs and chatting away with Gadget Guy when suddenly I was hit with the most awful cramping.  I mean bent double moaning. Total surprise. Comes out of nowhere and takes your breath away PAIN. It was intense but didn’t last long at all.  In fact it was over by the time the show finished and all I was left with was a dull ache like that part of my body had been through something. I thought nothing of it. I slept ok and woke up fine.

Woke up fine mmhumm… did not stay that way.  I was an emotional mess yesterday,  in fact I count the damage as 1 emotional meltdown to the point of tears over something stooopidly silly. I’ll tell you about it sometime but it probably merits a post all of its own.  This was before I came online and spent the afternoon getting more and more frustrated to the point of tearing my hair out and throwing a hissy fit in Gadget Guy’s face. Actually I’d say I snapped at him pretty effectively. Let me just explain… we’re those type of friends that are close enough  and know each other well enough that we bicker and tease ALOT… its just how we are. It’s not hurtful or mean. It’s just what we do.  Yeah, admittedly yesterday we spent a large amount of time talking about the few things that cause tension between us and that always makes me (needlessly) nervous and stressed. I mean, if we were gonna fall out over anything, what we were working on yesterday afternoon would probably be it… and I just don’t want to fall out with him. Somewhere in the middle of what we were doing I was hit by a wave of the most awful fatigue. I mean seriously it’s like going from fine to exhausted in less than 60 seconds. It SUCKS. Again, trouble focusing, all over body weakness and so so tired beyond tired. I get over sensitive when this happens.  Repetitive noises bother the hell out of me.  I mean like drive me demented. Must find them and make them STOP NOW  or I may start smashing things. Loud noises are bad. Music is awful… and all that playful teasing we were doing  becomes totally not fun anymore. It feels like it hurts and he’s pushing me. God damn it this guy is SOOOOOOO FRUSTRATING!!!  I had to walk away… HAD TOO. Now let me say it was not his fault. He wasn’t doing anything that is not normal behavior between us and we both were laughing about it, me through gritted teeth admittedly. He wasn’t mean or abusive (pffft Gadget Guy getting abusive LMAO that notion in itself is just so silly it makes me laugh) it was My Problem, hormonal or otherwise. I don’t know.

So cramps Monday… moody, irritable and suddenly exhausted Tuesday… and now this near panic attack, moody… about to throw up/keel over thing tonight.

WHAT the HELL is going on… and HOW do I get it back under control!???

There… I’ve done what my good friend asked of me ….can I go to bed yet?  Without CRYING my eyes out and embarrassing myself if possible!

I feel so broken.

Ali xX

What a Witch.

Frustration… don’t ask me why, but I’m feeling decidedly hormonal. Everything just seems a little harder and caused more frustration. I didn’t get the job applications that I wanted to submitted.  I failed to get my registration for this year’s Race for Life completed. I seemed to have more than my usual quota of irritating, frustrating, pulling my hair out style conversations.  No matter what I do, I can not relax and let go. I’ve tried all my usual tricks. Oh, and I scored an epic fail at the “E” thing today also, managing to pack away an obscene amount of junk food and chocolate. I’m at the point now where noises are winding me up – whether it’s Kayak Man downstairs with the Wii game that’s been on since the second he got home from college, or just sound effects or webpages from my own machine. Everything seems extra loud and annoying… GAH… Shhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! I can’t think!

I did hear today that the hospital I applied to volunteer for has actually contacted my references and they will be writing back sometime over the weekend… so at least some progress was made today.

I’m totally not being pushed into a corner… I just FEEL that way… and then I spend the rest of the day biting my tongue so as not to say the wrong thing or snap and take someone’s head off. I failed once today already, and yeah I do feel sorry for the guy looking back on it, but at the time I swear I saw RED.

Hormones are the REAL bitch!

Ali xX

K.S.: Basic First Aid training tomorrow

Panic,don’t panic, PANIC PANIC PANIC !!

Today started out well. I made the trip into Chester to meet a friend from my university days I haven’t seen in years. The sun was shining in a blue sky with white cotton candy floss clouds and as I walked out of Chester train station I was feeling good and contemplating some other changes to my diet. We met, we hugged. It was just like old times and the fear that the reunion would be silent and awkward disappeared. We went to the pub for a catch up drink (wine for me please!), sat in the little court yard outside the bar. Life was good. I was enjoying the fresh air and laughter despite the cold.

I’m not what you would call a drinker. I have a drink maybe once a month, if that.  The problem is that some days I can have a few drinks, be full of giggles, and stop there. Others, the more I drink the more depressed I become until I don’t want to stop drinking. On days like that, the amounts I can drink without even realizing as well as the mixtures of things I put in my mouth are down right frightening. Anyone who’s seen me in this mess has probably seen a whole new side of me they wouldn’t like too much. Somehow it’s as if the booze is pealing away the veneer and exposing the scared damaged person I am underneath. All the things that have hurt me in the past seem to come back in some huge gang to slap me around the face and bully me.  They spin around in my head faster than the room I’m sitting in. I’m convinced that I see my troubles with double vision too. They seem so. They appear twice their usual size when I reach out to try and push them aside I always seem to miss. My brain is in its already half pickled state by this point. concludes that the only way to deal is to keep drinking until either I get knocked to my senses by the acid taste of vomit (thankfully this is very rare – only having happened twice in my life) or I pass out and sleep it off.  I don’t usually get hangovers, nor is it normal for me to forget what happened the night before. Sometimes I’m not sure if this is a blessing or a curse.

I fought with this drinking issue much too early in my teens than I care to admit and eventually I won. Well in truth, I didn’t so much win as walk away. I was just about teetotaler for my early twenties. Now I’m older and I love to enjoy a nice drink on a good day, particularly if that drink is a cocktail somewhere sunny and the company is good. I’ve learned to recognize which way my mind is going so that 98% of the time I know when it’s not a good idea for me to drink or carry on drinking.

As we were sipping the vodka and coke back at my mates place, (I was rationalizing in my head that my ban of fizzy pop could start tomorrow for the sake of a nice reunion with an old friend) I was quickly coming to realize today… NOT a good day. I stopped drinking. Now you’ll have to trust me that I had not consumed a large amount at this point and was by no means what my friends and I would call “wasted”. In fact, I wasn’t even feeling tipsy (even though telling you this means admitting that I sang along to Cher loudly and very badly even when I was sober) but still I was too late to stop the panic that followed.

As panic attacks go, I consider this one to be mild. My assessment of this is not based on how I was actually feeling but more on what others around me were able to see. I didn’t hyperventilate, I didn’t pass out, I never cried – I just got… quiet. The thin sheet of eerie calm though barely covers the chaos going on in my head. At any moment the panic could punch through and I’d be a shaking mess probably doing more than one of the things mentioned above. If you look really closely you could probably see my hands shaking – that’s if I haven’t shoved then in my pockets in an attempt to conceal the crisis. I’ve said before I HATE admitting I need help, so I sit almost silent trying to control the shaking, get hold of my breathing and loosen the vice that seems to have clamped itself tight around my chest, willing the racing heartbeat that’s tapping out a rhythm on the inside of my skull to just SHUT UP a minute so I can think. I can’t tell you what I’m scared of.  I don’t know what frightens me.  There must be a trigger of some sort, I would think and sometimes I can identify it and tell you. Others like today I have no frikkin’ clue. I just know that I can’t move for fear.. Why is it that when I have a panic attack I want to grab hold of someone I trust and press myself right into them till I actually  disappear?  Why is it there are so few people on my list of possible victims? (If you find yourself on this list please take it as a compliment. It just means I trust you with my life and somehow you make me feel safe from whatever it is that has wormed its way into my head and scared the living daylight out of me. Also note that while I really really want to grab hold of you this way you probably have more chance of winning the lottery than me actually acting on my wish) and why oh why are all of these chosen few MALE ?! When I have just as many female friends I trust just as much – in some cases more (answers on a postcard please ).

I had to call for help to get home. I needed back up. The rational part of my brain needed reinforcement before it could face the 10 minute walk to the train station, let alone the 40 minute train trip that seemed to stretch out in front of me further than the eye could see.

To the person that answered that call: Thank you for saving my ass once again… you help more than you know.

For the person I left behind: even though he offered me his bed and asked me to stay, I’m sorry I had to go for my own mental health. I don’t want to give into this anymore. I’ll be back soon. I promise.

To the ones of you that know panic understand what I’m talking about I’m talking about. Find people to call, keep fighting don’t give up try to remember the sun always comes back after the rain. 

And for those of you who think it can’t be THAT bad, pull yourself together, what a lot of fuss over nothing or that somehow I am a weak person…  all I can say is I truly hope you never come to understand.

Today ended up a bad day. I’ve moved into damage limitation mode. I will not give in. I’m going out tomorrow and it WILL be better. 

Ali xX

K.S.: I got home and someone was there to open the front door.

Pain free grilling.

I have two words for you: PAIN FREE!  I have no pain today… none.  Admittedly I feel a little shaky. Still, I’m tired and I felt like I was over heating most of the day, but I did not HURT! This is amazing. It’s like day 2 and I’m a functioning like a normal human being. Wooohoooooo!  And the PMS still hasn’t caught up with me I’m so calm its almost creepy. I keep waiting for it to show up unexpected and offend, but really even my inability to get someone at the job center to ANSWER THE PHONE in the past three days didn’t provoke my hormonal rage. So far still no success at getting an appointment there, though. no progress on the job front :S

You’ll be glad to know I ate my oats this morning. In fact, I had three normal – dare I say it – healthy meals. Whilst I was swallowing the various supplements that I take with my main meal, it suddenly dawned on me I have taken NO pain killers over the past two days.  This is completely unheard of. I say it again – YAAAY!! (Long may things continue this way).

Let me tell you about my shopping.  Yes, I was OUT all day today shopping. I’m feeling smug and very proud of myself for resisting the urge to buy yet another pair of heels. Instead I made it home having only purchased things that are somehow part of my plan. I treated my left knee to a good quality wrap-around knee support thus removing one of my many excuses for not doing the “E” thing. I also bought myself a quality set of baking tins so that when I *DO* start excersising I can then undo some of my good work making all things yummy! Hay – cooking more was part of the plan too! 

 There was a meeting. Memos were exchanged, pro’s and cons discussed.  Jon and I decided to invest in the lean mean grilling machine that’s known as a George Foreman Grill and Griddle to the rest of the world. It’s been part of our household less than a day and I think I’m falling in love! The whole idea is to get me into the kitchen. Should also be a bit healthier too having the fatty drippings drip off.  We both agreed there’s only one thing that would be appropriate to break in a new grill – STEAK! I’m so happy to finally be able to get a great tasting piece of medium rare meat at home with – lets face it – very little effort on my part (I don’t order steak out in the UK because I never get it cooked how I like and its always so disappointing ).  Thank you George!

I’ve decided to look for a good food/diet magazine I can subscribe to. I’ll use the cash I’ll be saving NOT buying MAOAMS (I’ve been clean now for 7 whole days!) not really sure which mag yet, so I’m shopping around for ideas.

On the healthy eating front: it’s time for another little exchange. Seen as I’ve now mastered eating breakfast, small changes should hopefully lead me to succeed. For this second exchange I’m giving up fizzy drinks. Uh huh, you heard me right.  No more Coke, Pepsi , Sprite or the like for me  (in fairness, actually, I’m just giving up having them in the house – out at the pub is allowed for now. better that than drinking straight shots. Trust me, Ali doing shots only ever ends UGLY). Originally I had planed just to switch my pop choices to the diet equivalent but recently I’ve read that the aspartame in these artificially sweetened drinks can interfere with the receptors for certain hormones connected to PCOS so there would be little benefit in switching to diet. Sadly for people with insulin resistance apparently it’s when the sweet taste hits your tongue it makes your body think that you’re consuming sugar and therefore insulin is produced, but there is no sugar to be processed.  The advice I read was if you must have artificially sweetened drinks, drink them with food because then the insulin that is produced will have something to work with. Makes sense to me, so I’m going to try and kick this habit too – replacing these drinks with water as much as possible (I find water really hard to drink. I’m looking for simple ways to give it just a hint of flavor to make it easier on me to begin with) I’ve also started drinking a small glass of cranberry juice each day because seemingly it’s full of Vitamin C, and antioxidants. It tastes great too!  I can already see the change to water is going to be a personal battle, but I am determined to make it. In the end, it will be so good for me.  

Lastly, I want to share a piece of possible glimmer of hope with you.  My friend Caty E-mailed me a link to this article in the New Scientist.  Here’s a quote:

As women with polycystic ovarian syndrome get older, the chance of getting pregnant may be higher. There may be an explanation for this. As women age, fewer follicles are produced each month, and in most this reduces fertility. With PCOS, however, fewer follicles may have the opposite effect: it may stop the hormonal interference and cause follicles to release eggs normally.

The hypothesis is backed up by other studies that have shown that the menstrual cycles of women with PCOS tend to become more regular as they age (Human Reproduction, vol 15, p 24). Marcelle Cedars, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, points out that it also chimes with a recent finding that hormone treatments can coax immature follicles to produce eggs.

“They might hit their reproductive peak a little bit later than other women,” says Richard Legro, a gynecologist at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “When we see more data to that effect we’ll revise what we tell them.”
Now, Caty summed this up best: “I know it’s only the findings from a couple of studies, and the doctors aren’t yet going to be changing their advice to people with PCOS on the back of it – but you never know. Might be a piece of good news.”

I’m not gonna be pinning my hopes on it or anything, but its nice to know that there are people looking into this! I hope they keep up the good work – which in reality means I hope they continue to get the funding to keep up the good work  

Ali xX

K.S.: Got train tickets, will travel! Scotland here I come.

Making progress period.

I have to take a post here for girl talk. If you’re not up for open discussion of intimate “women’s problems”, walk away now. Guys, in case you didn’t get that, I’m going to talk about periods – definitely TMI for 99.5 % of the male population, I would guess. Feel free to run away … Now.

OK… don’t say I didn’t warn you. Most girls have their first period story, an all of them that I’ve heard involve a dash of freak out, a huge spoonful of embarrassment, liberal helpings of discomfort and in some cases added panic.  Here’s mine:

Summer 1994. Age: 12. I’d just spent a week or more on holiday in Denmark with my mum, brother and our crazy dope of a Gordon Setter Sonic. Here we were in Hamburg Germany. We we’re staying at the Hotel Ibis, making a necessary overnight stop in the long drive from Denmark back to our home just outside Liege in Belgium. We’d been in the car for hours and as we went down to dinner, I was not feeling bad, just overall uncomfortable with what I of course put down to a stomach ache. I remember I fought with my mum that night over the restaurant table. I’d asked for the room key so I could – ahem – go upstairs and use the bathroom. She was refusing, claiming I was a drama queen and I should just use the toilets in the lobby – toilets that at the time I couldn’t see. My head was spinning a little.  In the end she gave in, but was rolling her eyes at me for the rest of the meal when I returned.

The next morning I woke up feeling worse and got the shock of my life. I mean it’s not like I didn’t know it was gonna happen.  We’d had the talk, I’d been given the book, but somehow I was still shocked speechless by the site of my own blood. I remember screaming for my mum. She said “well at least I know you weren’t making it up last night”.  I burst into tears. Real mature, eh?

I have no idea why we didn’t buy any products to make me more comfortable but for some reason we didn’t.  I had to make do with scrunched up toilet tissue, just adding to the vast piles of embarrassment I was already feeling (something I quickly forgot, I might add, as the pain took over). We left the hotel and continued our journey to Belgium. Period cramps are bad. I have more experience now. These things are never anything but awful, but *sheeks* my 12 year old self was in agony – like someone was reaching inside me, grabbing hold of parts of me I didn’t even know I had, twisting them round their fist and trying to rip them out through my abdomen.  It was all I could do not to scream. I couldn’t believe I was actually expected to deal with this monthly for YEARS! I mean what the hell – someone has got to be kidding me. Ok laughs are over – make it STOP! Finally, after about 3 hours on the road, we did stop. As I came out of the ladies room all the colors in the world started running into each other, sound seemed to slow down. I was so dizzy panicking because I couldn’t see the car. I passed out and spent the next several hours of the drive home sitting on a towel… trying to keep the over excited dog beside me from licking my face, my eye’s closed praying to fall asleep so I wouldn’t have to feel this anymore. I totally ruined my dress and have seldom felt so humiliated since.
It was a pretty bad experience as far as I’m concerned, and for several years my period continued to be the pain in the ass thing that I got to bitch about each month with my girl friends who all understood that men have it so gawd dam easy!  I hated the bleeding  just like everybody else I knew

I missed my first period when I was 16. I waited and waited… nothing. I took a pregnancy test alone without telling anyone and if I tell you that I didn’t actually have consenting sex till years later you might begin to grasp how mind numbingly terrifying that experience was. It was a false alarm, thank heaven, and I honestly thought that with that my nightmares with this monthly happening would be over. I mean it’s perfectly normal and possible to skip a period, right? Nothing to worry over… until one turns into two… three… four… you get used to life without. If you’re young and naive like me you actually think you’ve struck it lucky for a little while. I mean you get a break from the cramps something most girls around you are wishing for oh about every four weeks.

I lost my period totally for over a year in late teens and from then on I was lucky if I got 2 or 3 annually. I am AWFUL asking for help. If sticking your head in the sand was an Olympic sport I’m sure I’d be at Britain’s team try outs. It took me a long time to admit to my mum that something was wrong. Now I was longing to feel that familiar ache to be normal… somehow the fact that this was missing made me feel less feminine, a paranoia that was not helped by the fact that I now spend a considerable amount of my time and money trying to cover up the fact that I had more facial hair than my teenage brother. I tried and even succeeded to laugh about it, but I also cried myself to sleep at night

If you’re reading and this is at all familiar to you … your NOT alone pleeeease talk to somebody anybody… please… there’s help out there

That was then… prediagnosis and now…?

Well, now I have a name for my problem:  Polycystic Ovary Syndrome – PCOS. Actually in the past year I’ve had increasingly regular periods (cross fingers touch wood). This is GREAT news. I’m happy about it… really. The things are more painful now than they were before. There are days when I can barely get out of bed. I’ve been doubled over crying, more than once I’ve gotten to the stage of thinking I can’t take it anymore. Thankfully now I have a couple of people that I trust I know I can talk to about this and they get me through it

I’ve mentioned before that I do have a problem with mood swings. I’m a pro at PMSing too, only I never know when it’s going to show up. It’s not like I can even give you warning. I feel tense, angry and frustrated. My hormones are quite capable of taking down a fully grown man. I know I’m doing it but God I just can’t help myself. It’s stressful for me and everyone around me. I don’t like snapping at people, so I usually try to avoid them for the day.

I’m noticing that my cycle seems to be making an attempt at a come back. I have more little irritating symptoms now … more lower back pain,  my thighs feel shaky like jelly, sometimes my skin just feels all creepy crawly. God help you if you try to touch me when I’m going though this.  Don’t you dare give me that supportive hug – what’s wrong with you!  As for my tits, I honestly think they have a mind of their own. I mean how is it fair that this is the time my tits actually look better? My nipples seem to be permanently hard which at any other time would be most wonderfully amusing. This Tingling Tits thing (my TT problem) has become a frustration. The world is mocking me because now the only thing I can think about is how come the fabric of my bra feels more like a cheese grater.  My brain could not be further from letting anybody have fun with them.

I woke up bleeding today. I hurt A LOT. It took a considerable effort of will on my part, I admit, just to get out of bed and this feat was accomplished much later in the day than I had intended. I failed to eat breakfast today. On day one I usually can’t face food at all and end up throwing up. I’m ecstatic to report that I ate a full dinner. I didn’t make any of the calls I was meant to today, didn’t run any of the errands I had planned. I was just not feeling up to it. I would beat myself up about it but instead I’m gonna be proud of what I did do. I STILL went out for my walk today – in fact walked for around an hour… and I even took a few pictures too!

I mentioned in a prior post that I was going to start taking evening primrose oil to see if it would help with my mood swings.  I’ve only been taking it for about a week so I don’t know if this is fluke or placebo effect or if the oil really works magic because I have to report I am feeling unusually calm. I am not having the same tense frustration today. I did not snap at any of the men in my life – not even once – and I feel no need to go into hiding. This is FANTASTIC progress. I’m crossing everything, touching wood and invoking the power of the lucky penny to ensure that hopefully this is not a one-off and will be a positive trend in the future.

I achieved a few things on my machine that I’ve been wanting to do for ages – little things that just hang around your to do list and don’t get done. Finally set up iTunes again so I can reconnect with the podcasts I used to follow. YAY!

And I even get to check something off my plan as of today – I’ve started tracking my cycle using mycycle.com

So, still being positive despite feeling decidedly YUCK. I’d say I was still on track my friends

Ali xX

K.S.: Found out I’m going out to dinner on Saturday evening!