The nerve factor...

Remember what I wrote about the motivational speaker from college, Harry Wong (I believe) about how if you take care of the minutes the hours will take care of themselves?  Well, I neglected my minutes and found renewed appreciation for his adage.

I disremember how it happened. I think it was shopping.  And then one night I was out on the airing porch until 1:30 AM because I lost track of the time as I was cloud watching and holding Amos.  All that is to say I have been neglecting my 15-minute clean-up (which is usually closer to 5-10 minutes) before going to bed.  I did not straighten the living room. I did not clean up the remnants of the day in the Kitchen. I did not put any papers away.  All I did was put my headset back on the charger.

So, last night, I spent almost an hour (which surprised me) straightening up the living room and putting things away, doing the same in the dining room, ferrying things back to their place, including the basement, and cleaning the kitchen.  Staying on top of your "stuff" is far, far, far easier than letting the mess of your quotidian existence accumulate.  SIGH.

I worked on pruning the silver dogwood some more. It is now about 85-90% done.  While I have the top, front, and sides done, it is still overgrown in the back against the corner of my fence.  It is very hard work dealing with the orthostatic hypotension when trying to prune a bush that is approximately 7-8 feet in diameter.

Feeling a bit guilty about not filing in what seems like forever, I tackled that, too.  Filing is more difficult than it used to be because I have to be more assiduous about staying on top of what is in the filing cabinet.  Remember, in order to have the freezer in the basement, I sold my 4-drawer legal filing cabinet and put six drawers of filing into just two.  So, in order to file the large pile that had accumulated, I had to reduce what was in the drawers, primarily tax, banking, and medical expense paperwork that was older.

I also had to make some new folders, such as one for the secured Social Security website account I created and had to file warranty information in the binder.  The binder, too, was overly full, so I took the opportunity to review all the information in there and weed out the paperwork for warranties that are expired.  After shredding, I had an entire garbage bag of paperwork.

There is something so satisfying about having an empty filing tray.

I needed that.  I needed some productivity and sense of accomplishment.  Somewhere around 4:00 AM, I awoke with one of those unbelievable bouts of pain near the end of my lower intestines. It is one thing to vomit and pass out because stool is pressing on your vagus nerve, but it is a whole other kind of misery when you have pain radiating out from your innards and there is absolutely nothing that you can do but wait for the stool to move along.  For nearly two hours, I was writhing and weeping and despairing and longing for the world to come to an end.  It does not happen often, but the pain is from nerves and/or damage from childhood abuse, so the sense memories add another dimension to the battle I face when it does.

During those bouts of pain, I have the most destructive thoughts patterns and the absolute bleakest outlook on my life.  As poorly as I handle migraines, I would trade a dozen migraines to be spared just one bout of this pain.  The worst part is that even after I relieve myself, the pain lingers for a long while, as if the nerve or scar tissue or both need to recover themselves.  This is also why I scream these days during female exams.  There is nothing my surgeon can do other than sedate me, and sedation is not safe for me.  And this is the primary reason why we both vacillate on her doing the repair work I need ... the nerve factor.

Dysautonomia is a failure of the autonomic nervous system.  You have disproportionate reactions to all sorts of processes in your body, such as how I start to react/decompensate once my blood sugar drops below 90, when I should be fine well into the 70s.  It is why my bloody vagus nerve is so sensitive.  Why I get cold spells akin to hypothermia.  Why my heart rate and blood pressure are so reactive and unstable.  And why thing that should only be a discomfort can be pure and utter agony.

It is very difficult for me to fall back asleep ... afterward.  It is hard to turn my mind away from what just happened and that which took place years ago.  I am frightened and lonely and feel like that helpless little girl.

And, thus, wanting to make something of this day, when mostly I am weary from lack of sleep and yesterday's labors in the kitchen.

Amos has spent the evening cowering in my lap beneath the weighted blanket.  He is fighting his own battle of fear because of the rather insane amount of fireworks going off in our neighborhood.  Seriously, it sounds like a war zone.  Even my neighbor agrees this is unusual despite Fort Wayne being firework crazy.  There is little I can do to console him, other than to be there with him, to let him know that he is not alone in his fear.

Fireworks were a trigger for me the first three years after the pit bull attack.  However, this New Year's Day, I did not feel the panic or battle fear.  Mostly, I was distressed.  Today, with the battle I faced earlier and the battle Amos is fighting now, I did not really have time to think about how I feel about the fireworks.  I think, oddly, that having them so very close to my house and being able to see the lights and colors out my windows, I feel less like an attack is imminent and more simply annoyed at how insensitive folk are to be setting off rather huge displays in a neighborhood full of old folk, one wallflower hermit, and one beleagured fluff-ball.

Grace, mercy, and peace to all the veterans out there suffering from PTSD, for whom this day (weeks) is another battle in their on-going war.