Alternative xmas gifting 2005 December 22 0:45
Posted by diamond in : Random , 3 commentsMyself and molc ordered each other’s xmas presents earlier. I’m buying him this, and he’s buying me one of these. It’s a slightly unusual setup ,-)
In other news michelle has been very kind by giving me a teddy to set on fire (virtually at least. am waiting to see if it materialises in real life). Apparently the appropriate response is “yes Michelle, you are wonderful indeed”, consider it now given.
Went to the doctors’ yesterday. I go to a practise of about 6 GP’s on charlotte’s quay. I’ve been going there for about 4 years, and usually you get assigned a random GP when you make an appointment. When i was there a month ago, i decided i’d try asking for a specific doctor, one i’d only seen once, about 3 years ago, but she’d really impressed me as someone who listened and understood. Anyway, it was her i saw yesterday, and again, she was amazing. It really helps when you find you’re talking to someone who really gets it, even if there’s nothing specifically that they can do to help. She’s told me to try 60mg instead, and gave me a prescription for said. She prescribed me hypercortisone for the eczema on my right eyelid, which scares me. A cream which shouldn’t be used more than twice a day and for no more than 14 days, because it’ll make the skin thin and brittle, scares me. She also told me i have many of the classic signs of depression -/ If that’s true (and i don’t doubt her), it’s been the case for a long time.
So, we’ll see how this goes. The current dose of 50mg isn’t working well at all. I suspect my body is even better adjusted to it than before i went on the higher dose for the month. Inappropriate yay. The one good piece of news is that i can currently drive. That makes getting home to athlone for xmas vastly easier (or even possible).
A saying for today 2005 December 17 1:24
Posted by diamond in : Random , add a commentI’ve no idea where/if i’ve heard this before, but it came into my head earlier: “If you sacrifice your values for friendship, you’ll end up with neither”. Does that ring a bell with anyone else?
Dream(s) i had last night 2005 December 12 13:35
Posted by diamond in : Random , 4 commentsI’m going to seperate these into paragraphs by section, but i’m not sure whether they were actually seperate dreams or not. Here goes.
There was a train, first ever passenger train, just built, and going to ennis on it’s first trip. All the upper class of society were going to be on it, including actors. I was such an actor. It was noted that in order to make the run economical they would have to allow some poor people on in future. There was a girl on the train (we’ll call her A. i don’t remember anything else about her other than she was also an actor), whom i was with, that had been presented with a ticket and a packed suitcase for this trip as a surprise by her family. On the train, she wanted to look into her bag to see what was in it, but i wouldn’t let her. Then myself and another girl (B) opened the bag without A seeing and removed the top item, which was a clear plastic box full of crunchy sticks, some kind of sweet. Myself and B were giggling and eating these, until they were all gone.
I’m in a bathroom. There’s a very weird kind of shower, like a cross between an operating table, a borg capsule, and a bath. All around it are various different weird types of shampoo, the labels of which scare me too much to dare using them. B is helping me wash my hair, we’re both fully clothed, and there is no water. A comes in and gives me some shampoo which is safe to use. Myself and B are giggling, A is somewhere else and is getting annoyed, but doesn’t know why. A is now a terrible angry unknowning man.
I’m a kid, about 7 or 8. I’m on my grandparents farm in kilkenny. I’m sitting on top of some kind of tank (container, not vehicle ,-). There is a puppy beside me, a young collie. It’s name is swank. He’s tethered to the tank with a piece of twine. He’s scared. I hold him gently until he accepts me, and he starts licking my face. Another puppy appears. This one is fred. He’s a young bulldog. He accepts me immediately and starts licking my face too. (Note: both swank and fred were real dogs, from that farm, though i never knew either as puppies. Swank was around before my time there, and fred afterwards. They were both border collies.) Fred somehow falls off the tank, about 6 feet high, lands on the far side of the wall in a passage way, with grass growing in it, and my father standing nearby. He’s a little scared by my father calms him.
I’m in a massive house. It’s my fathers. It’s like an old manor house, except bigger. There was a global rise in the sea level, it threatened the whole planet. My father saved the world by digging canals through to the middle of the earth, which solved the problem.
In the middle of this house, there’s an open air channel running through, with water in the bottom. There is a 25-foot seal swimming through it. I’m excited, and run to tell my father. I’m still about 7 or 8. The seal is diseased, there are chunks missing all along his flank. Where his eyes should be are hollow pits, hemispheres about the size of a large orange have been removed. This isn’t weird to me. I get a camera and open a window to take a photo of the seal. He notices and charges at me as i take a few snaps. He jumps vertically up out of the water, breaks the window, and flows through it into the hall. I run away as fast as i can, he follows. I throw various benches and tables at him to try and slow him down. Eventually, someone devises a system of gates at the top and bottom of the stairs to prevent the seal from climbing them. I run past the gates up to the next floor and i am safe.
A king and his brother live in a house. I think it’s the same house, and i think i’m the king. A man is responsible for flooding the world, using grass written in javascript. Originally the grass worked, but then something went wrong and it caused the flooding. This man is patrolling the streets, searching for the king, giving out his own 086 mobile number to people. The man was appointed by the king’s brother. The man finds the kind in King’s Inn. There’s a fight, the king flees, the man chases. The king challenges the man’s authority, the king says he’s bought the nobility. The man replies he’s his own master. The man puts the king in a seat, on a platform built into the street, with the platform level with the street. The platform rotates the king into the ground until he is upside down, and decapitating off an underground blade. This takes some time, and a servant of the king is trying to argue with the man to stop, but it doesn’t work.
Done. I am the only one who is disturbed by most of that?
*Update*
The above is fairly normal btw, i just don’t normally make the effort to take notes as soon as i wake up so that i’ll remember it all.
So here it is. 2005 December 11 3:01
Posted by diamond in : Random , 18 commentsI have a condition called Interstitial Cystitis. This means that my bladder wall is inflamed and hyper-sensitive. I’ve had it for 4 years, though didn’t realise there was a problem till 2 years ago, and was diagnosed about a year ago. Some of ye know this, most probably are just aware of something much vaguer. I’ve always been rather reluctant to give details, but at this stage i just don’t care any more, so i thought i’d just get it over with and write it here.
This has affected my life in a number of ways. At it’s most basic, it means i have to go to the bathroom much more frequently than normal. An average person will go about 5-6 times in a day, i’ll usually be double that, sometimes up to 5 times that amount. During the day, this is annoying, but dealable with, with some planning. At night, however, it’s frequently a nightmare.
The current sleeping situation is this: i go to the bathroom, and then to bed. If i’m not asleep within 15 minutes, i have to give up and start again. On a good night, i might get to sleep after about half an hour. Usually, it’s closer to an hour. On a (frequent) bad night, it can be 3, 4 hours, sometimes even as much as 6. On those nights, it basically continues until i’m so exhausted i just pass out. If i’m stressed, it’s much worse. If i’m tired, it’s much worse. Can you say ‘vicious circle’?
So, you might be asking yourself what can modern medicine do to cure me? The answer is: nothing. The cause of IC: unknown. Cure for IC: unknown. You might see a pattern here. In fact, until the last decade or so, it was one of those lucky ailments that was discredited by doctors with “it’s all in your head”. Thankfully i had the good sense to wait until that changed. Treatment is limited to combating the symptoms, with varying success with different people.
I was in hospital for 5 days just over 4 years ago. It started out as a kidney infection, then a prostate infection, and then the whole thing went south very rapidly. At the time, they had me on insane amounts of painkillers and antibiotics (i have 2 points of datum for that: a) when i arrived in casualty they gave me 2 injections of morphine-strength analgesics, my head was floating away, and i was still in complete agony. b) after discharge, i went home to mullingar for a month to recover, and my gp told me that i had been prescribed more painkillers than she had ever seen).
The large amounts of medication at the time had a severe effect on me. My brain was completely fried from the zydol (*shakes angry fist at said horrible stuff*). I could stay awake for about 15mins at a time, could barely form sentences, memory was one big cotton ball of fluff. The antibiotics had many lovely effects too, including nausea (yay for dict and spelling ,-). I also noticed at the time that i had to go to the bathroom frequently, but put it down to being one of the many side effects i was having at the time. After a while, some of the side effects faded away, and i forgot about them as they merged into daily life. As such, it was another 2 years before i realised that this whole non-sleeping thing was becoming a real problem (see, there was a point to all this. honest.).
So, went to my gp, got referred to the urologist who had seen me in hospital. He had a chat, gave me a chart to fill out, told me to come back in 6 months. Came back, we had a chat, he gave me a chart, and came back in another 6 months. At this stage he had enough data to be able to a) diagnose me with IC, and b) tell me it was getting worse (which i had figured out at this stage). Yay for progress. By this stage, i was getting desperate. The month before i saw him, i had gotten 2 good nights sleep in a 3 week period. I’d tried herbal sleeping tablets, i’d even gotten my gp to prescribe regular sleeping tablets, but neither were effective.
Then he gave me the good news. He told me that he could put me on medication to help me sleep, and reduce the frequency at night (yay. i get to sleep, don’t spend all my days sleep deprived and zombie-like), but that the side-effects might be drowsiness during the day (yay… or not). So, we decided it was worth trying, so i started on 25mg of amitriptyline (link updated 20091025 to a better page) 1 hour before bed. Amitriptyline (apparently) is a tri-cyclic antidepressant. As i understand it, i’m on it for it’s sedative and nerve-blocking side-effects. Speaking of, have a look at the listed side-effects on that link. It’s enough to really really scare you.
At first, it knocked me straight out at night, with minimal drowsiness the next day (after the first hellish day when i thought that life on this was going to be completely disabling). After a couple of weeks, my body adjusted, and it’s effectiveness lessened, so i upped the dose to 50mg as advised. At this stage i also took a month off work as i needed time to adjust, and i was getting majorly stressed about being unproductive at work. For a while, things were good. I’d say the next 3-4 months i was sleeping pretty regularly. Not perfect, but at least frequently enough that i could cope.
It didn’t last. At the start i’d be waking maybe 1-2 times during the night to go to the bathroom, down from 5-6 (normally – many many more on bad nights) before going on medication. By the time i saw the consultant again in november, it was back up to 4-5 times a night. Not good. You might think that waking 5-6 times during the night isn’t that big a deal, and on it’s own, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. Unfortunately, before i actually wake up, i probably spend an hour or two in very light sleep or half sleep. I’d get 10 hours in bed, but wake up feeling like i’d only slept for maybe 4-5. And that piles up very quickly if you don’t get a chance to recooperate.
So. The consultant decided we’d try upping the dose to 75mg, an hour before bed. That’s where the last month disappeared. I’ll list the side-effects i’ve noticed: blurry vision, dry mouth, heart palpitations, drowsiness, insomnia, dizziness, confusion, mania. Happy stuff. I consulted with my gp, she said to give it a month to see how my body adjusts to it. That month ends on the 15th, another 5 days to go. As it stands, i really don’t see it happening. As such, i’ll almost certainly be going back to 50mg, which isn’t enough.
The condition is getting worse. And rapidly. I was off the medication for 3 days between prescriptions and it was hell. At this stage i’m completely dependant on it. And it’s not enough. And i’m not coping very well with all this. When i was at the consultant, he asked how i’d been. I told him about the nervous breakdown, he asked had i seen anyone about that. I replied no, and had the stunningly obvious idea that it might be a good idea if i did. I asked his opinion, he highly recommended it.
I had my first session with a psychotherapist last week. I gave her all the background, and explained why i was there. I need help dealing with having this condition, and i need help dealing with the stress i put myself under because i’m not productive enough in work. She has suggested that we do 8 sessions, one per week, and then review. I’m a bit nervous about this, but i have some hope it’ll help.
In general, when i look into the future, i see this getting worse, and no way out. If i say this causes me to be depressed sometimes, i don’t think any of ye are going to be surprised. When things get really bad sleep-wise, and i spend every day extremely sleep-deprived, unable to concentrate enough to work, or even do the things i enjoy in my spare time, i begin to question the point of life.
My gp, and the therapist, asked me had i ever considered suicide, to which i replied yes. I haven’t been hung up on the idea, and haven’t considered it seriously, but there have been at least 2 points when it’s seemed like it would just be better to end it all (yes, i know now, at this moment, that that’s stupid. but the whole issue is that when i’m in these situations i can’t think clearly). In response, my therapist made me write the following on a piece of paper and sign it for her:
“I promise that if i feel suicidal i will talk to/ring one of the following people: Diane, Maeve, Dan, Niall, my Dad.”
The above is not a definitive list btw, as far as i’m concerned.
You may wonder why i’m writing any/all of this. To be honest, i probably couldn’t tell you for sure. As i said earlier to niall, i’m sick of just alluding to crap. I just want to say it, say it all, and be done with it. Mostly, i just need to write this for me, for my sanity. This is it. This is what most/all of my life revolves around. This is me. Do with it as you will.
Steve
Life goes on, ish 2005 December 8 0:46
Posted by diamond in : Cycling, Random, Work , 4 commentsMyself and dan did an 81km cycle on sunday (@ 22.25kmph), from limerick to the far side of nenagh and back. It took about 4 hours, and was getting rather cold and dark by the time we returned, but we managed it, and thus have reached our goal to make it to nenagh and back before christmas. Other than that, the last few days have been very… well… non-descript. I can’t remember what’s happened this week, the whole exhausted+medication lark is competely screwing with my memory.
I did some work for the irish chamber orchestra back in july, and they’ve been looking for an invoice ever since. I (finally) got around to doing one up last night, and handed it in today. Thirty minutes later, they handed me a cheque. As i said on irc, i suspect they were being extra efficient in order to contrast with my terrible inefficiency with getting them an invoice ,-) Still, between the money from that and the money from the work i did today for them, i reckon i have enough to do the storage upgrade on my server here that i had been thinking about. Yay for stuff.
And now, back to my habitiual daze.