Be a stone in the river.

When you have a Chronic condition, any disability or illness or trouble that lasts longer than other people have patience for, they often talk up how great it is for you to always be fighting, always "keep fighting this". Guess what?

They mean well but that is *exhausting* and irrational to expect.

 I'm not saying give up, I am saying you do not have to fight all the time. No one can be in an aggressive mode every day, "inspirational" only when thrashing about against the current. Sit in the current. Be a stone in the river. Let the river go past. 

“Heaven is where you are standing, and that is the place to train.” Aikido founder O Sensei Morihei Ueshiba.

I’m not saying you have to be pleased to be where you are. Being sick or disabled in some way often just sucks. It isn’t sunshine and rainbows.

But it is where you are right now, and it might help to know
that you do not have to wait to be happy
until you get better.
You can be happy or at least At Peace in some ways here and now.

Once more: You do not have to wait to be happy
until some future or impossible time when you get better.

You don’t always have to be “fighting”. You deserve to have peace now. Let yourself have it.

Aikido and Recovery

 How do you manage to balance (or not) martial arts and other parts of your life?

Aikido is a big part of my mental/personal health. I learn lessons there to apply to my personal emotional challenges. It’s been instrumental in the healing and recovery I am trying to do. It shows me in a kinetic and physical way where my fears still are, and what I can do about them.
Getting personal here, TW mentions of abuse and trauma:

It’s not an official “diagnosis”, but I have a decade or two’s worth of Complex-PTSD, which in my case is the slow trauma I got from long term bullying or emotional abuse, with threats or incidents of physical abuse. I have complex trust issues and problems ever feeling safe. Besides the obvious physical empowerment of a martial art for some self defense, Aikido is teaching me to practice trust, to enforce boundaries, and to speak up when people hurt me or I am uncomfortable.

That last is very difficult as I have had a lifetime of being "trained", told repeatedly and firmly, to be silent when I am hurting or unhappy. In our Aikido Dojo, if you ask someone to stop hurting you... they stop, instead of laughing, ignoring you, dismissing your pain, or increasing it for their entertainment. That is very new and precious to me and I am learning from it.

I am learning which motions still make me uncomfortable, and then in my outside therapy I can address the reasons for those. I get severely dizzy doing a certain turn and I realized it’s because I hate moving backward when I can’t see what’s behind me... because of fear and hypervigilance. I was able to then talk to my counselor about that.

I am also learning how to move with and around things instead of fighting against them. That’s the literal principle behind Aikido but it’s also been helping me in my emotional and personal struggles. “It is far easier to roll a rock, using its own momentum, than to try to carry the same rock. Stop trying to carry the rock!” I put myself through a lot of mental anguish I do not have to actually deal with any more  if I would just stop trying to carry it. So now it’s in inner mantra- “Stop trying to carry the rock!”

Post Sinus Surgery- day 2? -Ish? Wow, pain meds are great...

I had the sinus surgery and it was successful. I will write more later. Currently quite loopy. Thank heaven for good medicine or my face would be hurting wayyy more.

Update coming soon.

Updated! 
Doctors told my parents that the Silent Sinus was indeed very small and closed up and had been full of seriously nasty gunk, which is probably what made me sick all month. They sent a sample off to be lab tested to check for anything notable. I kinda wanna hear if there are results.  So that sinus has been kind of re-carved out, they shaved down the Turbinates, and they did a Septoplasty to straighten my deviated septum so that I can breathe through regular sized nasal passages for the first time ever. I can't wait to try deep breathing once it's healed, I have always wondered what it would be like to breathe freely and deeply just through my nose.


So, Monday:
the surgery itself was about an hour or two, they say. I had a bad hour or so afterward, in the recovery room, because while I was asleep my body still felt the surgery, and my neck and shoulders had clenched tight into knots, and I was hurting and druggy and pitiful. Dad was sitting right there, and  they fed me pain pills and applesauce, and then I got home and got over the Effexor withdrawal by taking my daily dose of that, and they even gave me a lil' anti nausea drug to go with the pain pills. The surgery staff were all terribly kind to me the whole time. Lovely people, and that's not just the Percocet talking.

The post-op nurse was really surprised by how coherent I was even after the pain pills kicked in. She  had to help me up to get me re-dressed, and kept saying how remarkably well I was doing. I laughed and told her I've had a LOT of experience being medically compromised. All those times I was wrung out on Effexor withdrawal and had to try to function anyway gave me a lot of training at this sort of thing. Being able to move, talk, and balance while chemically compromised is a skill you can actually practice, it turns out.

Mom and Dad are looking after me now. I have thick squishy blankets, and a nose rinse to use. Daddy bought me GF cookies but I sadly cannot taste them. I can only pick up broad basic flavors right now, like salt in my omelet, or sweet green smoothie. Trying to relax my shoulders- I won't be able to lie face down in a massage table for like a month at least, since those face rings put a lot of pressure on the sinus bones.


 I have to take pills every four hours, and rinse out my nose a lot, and sleep sitting upright, and wear a face bandage so I don't leak draining saline or blood on anything.
What I really want to do is lie down on my side like I usually sleep, and sleep for 8 hours straight.
It'll be a little while before I can do that, but SOON.

Just now my face hurts and I am tired, because I have to take 1 pill every 4 hours, and the pills give me a heinously dry mouth, but that's helping me make sure I stay hydrated, so there's that.

Percocet makes me chatty, but I am also talkative (typeative?) because I am bored and a bit lonely. It's hard to talk out loud with a hurting face so my verbal communication is limited. Besides, Mom is busy. I am excited to be on my way to healing.

Day 30- Norovirus is the flu from hell.

..and I will not be convinced otherwise. Getting that on top of my sinus sickness was
bad.
I have not been so sick in years. Uf. But the norovirus is fading off, leaving me weak, shaky, dehydrated but back to where I was before- just sinus sick. Compared to that hellish flu, this isn't too bad.

It is interfering with my work and school though. I was gonna make some very cool stuff for a production, but they're going to have to use what they have already, with a few exceptions I might be able to manage for them if I move slowly and just have them come pick things up from my house.

I am probably going to have to withdraw on medical grounds from my classes. This sinus thing is making me far too foggy in the head to cope with Academia. I am autistic and in my case that means easily overwhelmed by complex stressors of executive function, and I can't cope with being sick and school at the same time. I thought I could, but I can't.

"Sculpt this", "paint that"; these are things that use an entirely different chunk of brain from, "comprehend and analyze this in a literary fashion according to these parameters". It's that Academic level on which I cannot function right now.

And I just got word that my insurance refuses to let me get surgery on Monday. I cannot heal or become healthy until the surgery happens. There is an infection inside the bones of my face that will not respond to antibiotics and my insurance wants "Authorization" before they'll let me get surgery. Which means waiting a few more weeks probably.
So. Frustrating.

Edit, next day: Worked out a thing with insurance whereby I will pay up front for those parts of the surgery they want to "authorize" and would have delayed it for, I get the surgery, then they reimburse me after they "authorize" it.  I mean seriously it's worth it even if I had to pay out of pocket for the whole darn thing.

Day 21. still sick, venting

Still sick. Fever, exhaustion, weak.
Imageshack now thinks I deleted my account with them. dandy. Swearing.
I sent them an email
but that'd mean every pic I ever put on DoA is now gone.
Every last one. Galleries, comparisons, all those threads and tutorials.
if, as I am betting money, Imageshack mails me back and says Oops must be a glitch, sorry  nothing we can do.
I was having a passable day up til then
they don't even recognize my email as part of their system. I had to use their Help section.

also I need to break something or shoot something.

but I'm still running a fever so I can't do any of those things. Ordinarily this is when I would hit the archery range and shoot  until I can't. Or a good pell, and beat the crap out of it.
But I am flat on my back in bed.

yes other people have it worse but I am just going a little stircrazy right here and now.
I miss cleaning. Chores. I miss them.
I am living in my own mess right now because I can't clean up, this house looks like Hoarders Lite. It's all I can do to keep clean dishes in rotation so I have a way to feed myself. and I shower. That's my energy for the day.

 I tried to work on props stuff but it used too much energy and my hands shake. Same with crafting or sculpting.

Day 17 of the Autumn 2015 Sinus troubles.

I've been sick for 17 days now. Only about 3 of those involved leaving the house at all. I am getting bored of my bedroom. *WHINE* I'm a big baby.

 As I mentioned,  I've been diagnosed with Silent Sinus Syndrome, which is a rare condition where the sinuses in the front of one side of the face close up for as long as several years. I also have a deviated septum. This probably is part of why my allergic reactions turn into painful acute sinus infections within about 48 hours, those infections linger for a month or so, then crawl into my lungs to nest for the winter.

Fixing it requires surgery. I don't know when I get the surgery- I have a consult appointment next week. I don't know how long recovery will take either. This is only upsetting for me in that I am sick right now, and that I was going to get a dog.

 I need a dog. I am a sad piece of misery without one. My house is too quiet. No one wakes me up to go for walks.

There's the catch, though. To have a dog, I have to be healthy enough to move around. I am not, so I can't. I am so lonely without a dog. I won't be able to have one until I am healthy enough to move around again, outdoors. I wear a scarf over my nose and mouth in winter here anyway because I almost always have or am recovering form lung infections in winter, so I can't breathe icy cold air.
I wanted to get a dog and go scootering with him in the mornings. I was healthy enough to do it, too. And then this happened. Foo.

You'd think after years of winter bedrest for months at a time, I'd get used to bedrest. Nope. Still as whiny as ever. I hate not being able to at least sit up and do things, but the more I do anything other than lie down or against pillows in bed, the sicker I get the next day. I have to REST.  Well, tomorrow after I do my online test I am gonna play computer games on the couch downstairs. I can be bundled up down there just as easily as up here.


Yes, online test. Did I mention the awesome side of this?
1. They caught the SSS before my eyeball started to sag. That's right, most people only know they have this thingy when their sinus has imploded so much that the bone under the eye socket is dissolved and their eye starts to droop. NOPE NOPE NOPE. So I am very thankful my CT scan showed that I have it before anything happened to my precious eyes. I am exceedingly visual and I need my eyes.
2. In spite of my brain fog making reading hard, I have found an Audio Dramatization by the BBC of my textbook, (still chortling over that) and that's been letting me "study" for the test I need to to take which is  ONLINE. My History class is at the cutting edge, for a college course, and that means our assignments and tests are all ONLINE. I can take the test from right here in my bed! I don't have to haul my weak butt into the testing center!
This is important because to attend our school you must be healthy and mobile. If you cannot wheel or walk a quarter mile or more from parking lots to classrooms, you cannot attend classes. Elevators and a few ramps do not an Accessible Campus make, not if you're too sick to walk long distances but not actually disabled.


I miss going to Aikido. I miss how cool it was to be healthy enough to work out and work hard.
I really, really miss my dog.

David Attenborough Voice

*David Attenborough Voice*
Here we have one of nature's rarest creatures! A Raine Artista Introvertus! This solitary creature is endemic to the Chaparral regions of Southern Coastal California, and we aren't quite sure what this one is doing so far out of that range, but the northerly climate does seem to affect its usual habits.
Every Autumn, this rare animal grows sluggish and begins to build a nest of blankets and other soft materials, only emerging periodically, often at night! 

In Autumn, this subspecies of Artista uses its delicate fingers to locate Tylenol, antibiotics and other small prizes buried within nearby cupboards. It then retreats immediately to the safety of its nest! During the day, it can occasionally be enticed to sun itself briefly, in a warm place if lured by pizza, or fresh hot food it didn't have to cook.


I've been diagnosed with acute sinusitis and Silent Sinus Syndrome, for which I require surgery later. Meanwhile I subsist upon tylenol and such food as I can obtain via microwave.