Yeah, it’s been pretty painful. Just one week ago, I was so hopeful going into the procedure. They had to put a stent in my right ureter. The last time this happened, I didn’t know that I was supposed to limit activity afterwards. So I was walking three miles each way to my highly-physical job with infants and toddlers, and then literally moved, as in, changed my address and moved everything I owned to the new home. After that, I was in agony. So I figured, I had survived the worst-case scenario. This time, I would know how to recover, and hopefully it wouldn’t be as bad as last time. What I did not count on was the CIA-experiment-level bizarre trip home. It’s been a long week, so I’m going to plagiarize myself again and just share the redacted version of an email I sent today to an outpatient person.
I get emails sometimes from Bluehost letting me know that it sucks reading my blog on a mobile device. So tl;dr, I was under the influence of propofol, completely helpless, and the woman driving me home cussed at me the whole time when I was chemically unable to defend myself. Sometimes she stopped swearing and put on praise & worship music that I used to listen to in like 2005 and was really emotionally significant to me. But I appreciated the break from cussing. Then when we finally got to my place (which was a little difficult because she was shocked to learn that I wasn’t in a state to be able to navigate for her), she just kind of told me to get out of the car and drove off.
So this whole thing was “triggering” to say the least. Which meant the pain was more than it would have been. Like, I could walk from room to room sometimes if I’d taken every painkiller available to me, but after even that much exertion, I was like crying in pain for hours.
Diatribe #1
I was scared to reach out because when I needed help immediately after surgery, I just got an insane amount of verbal abuse. And like, obviously I can see her perspective because she literally articulated her perspective to me non-stop for an hour. But this left me where, somebody else’s needs are always more pressing than mine, and if I can’t do everything by myself, I’m spoiled and entitled. Which, contrary to popular opinion, I did not get PTSD by being coddled. I literally just needed 1-2 hours of compassion immediately after getting out of surgery. And this person was losing her mind that I would ask for that. In other news, the “emergencies only” on-call never called me back, and I was supposed to see the other person’s perspective that maybe they were busy and forgot they were on-call, etc etc. Again, everybody’s perspective mattered except mine. The final straw was that I live on the third floor, but there is a buzzer that was set up to let people in without my having to go downstairs. Unfortunately, when I moved in, the buzzer for my apartment only had been disabled because the previous resident had misused it. I ignored this for two years, but when I told the landlady that I desperately needed this really simple gesture to potentially save my life, it was a hard no. She changed the subject to fire safety, and pointed out that the buzzer would not help in the event of a fire. Which, is totally irrelevant but she doesn’t care. She knows she’s full of shit, she just genuinely is a sociopath.
So it had been a week of me constantly having to be the emotionally-stronger party. The landlady is just a random sociopath, but people from “DMH” were technically supposed to be more empathetic with me than I was of them. Like the person cursing at me maybe didn’t like driving in traffic. I called the on-call at 7:30 on a Monday evening, but maybe the person had gone to bed at 7:00. But it’s not fair that I have to protect these guys when I’m the client. So it’s just this whole thing of I can’t need help, I can’t expect anything from anybody because “from their perspective…”. So my thing was, it sounds like everybody else’s perspective is that they want me alive and existing in the world in theory, but if I need something from them in order to remain alive, it’s just asking way too much.
Back to the Story
So anyway, SI went through the roof. I have one heroic friend who came over twice despite the buzzer situation, which was the only reason I was able to get in enough calories to survive to the end of the week. She also chopped up an ash gourd that I had, which I was severely stressed about. Because the turtle is supposed to be eating vegetables, but I couldn’t lift the ash gourd to chop up to give to him. It’s hard to explain and maybe has to do with my pathological fear of food waste, but this was a big deal. Also, the ash gourd did turn out to be an offering pleasing unto the turtle, which is good because usually he only likes fish pellets and worms.
Despite the heroic friend, by Friday afternoon, I was freaking out. Like, I was on the phone with this amazing woman who has always been there for me. And I was so mad that she and everyone else had LIED to me for years saying that my life was important to them, when clearly my life was nothing but an imposition. She interpreted this as a response to physical pain. Which it sort of was, although most of the physical pain was psychosomatic due to the cycle described above. So she helped me get back to the ER, where they were helpful but then broke the news that I was just going to remain in agony and there was pretty much nothing they could do. So I broke down and said I’d been having really really serious SI.
Diatribe #2
Which, because of the trauma that happened last year, I still think it’s super unfair that they want me to tell them my “plan.” Because the way the system works, they might help OR they might hurt and there’s no way to know which it’s going to be until I’m locked in and have zero human rights. Like, people protest those places where they’re putting undocumented immigrants before they send them off to their deaths or whatever. Which, I 100% support protesting those things. But with mental hospitals, you can’t take pictures because they have your phone. Sometimes you can’t take notes because they won’t give you pen or paper. So nobody can document what happens in there. And when you get out (IF you get out), nobody believes you because you’re a psych patient. So while political prisoners probably have it worse, it’s at least a known problem. As opposed to these “behavioral health” facilities that have existed undetected for years right under society’s nose.
Back to the Story
Anyway, I’m still severely not back to my old self after the incident last year at HBM in Worcester. So obviously I wasn’t gonna just tell the people in the ER exactly what was going on. But, surprisingly, they believed me that I was struggling and they were kind. I didn’t even know if I was there for physical pain or mental health. I couldn’t think straight, and I didn’t know what to do. So they kept me comfortable from Friday night until Sunday. Which, by Sunday, I was feeling better just simply due to having been in a place where it was okay to need help and people felt like my life was worth preserving.
Diatribe #3
It was an immense help that nobody in the ER was hitting me with “the other person’s perspective,” as though the only reason I was sick and needed help was because I was a sociopath with no concept of empathy. Like, obviously, I’ve considered everybody’s perspectives. I can’t be responsible for them when I’m really really sick. Technically, if there’s never a point when my perspective enters the equation, then I cannot remain alive. I tried that. I originally signed up for therapy in 2013 so I could get rid of my emotions so I could do and be everything my family wanted from me. Through that therapist was the first time I found out that my life mattered, too. So don’t tell me it’s okay for So-and-So to verbally abuse me for an hour because she was stressed in city traffic. I used to drive in the same city’s traffic every single day, and I never took it out on someone who I was supposed to be caring for. If the tables had been turned, I would have been in huge trouble. So why is it okay for her because of “from her perspective”? Even if it was morally okay for her to do that, that has zero effect on the fact that I was harmed. Like it’s not like I was traumatized on purpose just to spite her. So I’m freaking out, begging people to tell me that it’s okay for me to be alive, and they can’t lift a finger to fix the buzzer, and I’m supposed to be okay with it due to the other person’s perspective. So can you blame me that by the end of the week, I pretty much felt like everyone wanted me dead? This is the exact thing my mother used to do every time something bad happened to me. I could have been alone in the wilderness and fallen and gotten hurt and told my mom about it, and she would find another person, no matter how tangential they were to the situation, and try to tell me their perspective. And it’s like, that’s hard and that sucks for them, but it’s also unfair that I can’t have any subjective reality whatsoever without it being inconsiderate for someone whose needs outranked mine. One time I reached out to my mother when I desperately needed her, and she was mad because she’d been talking to someone she met online who had cancer. Somebody’s need always came first. Which is fine, but if that’s the reality, then I pretty much have to die because 1) I can’t survive completely all by myself without support from anyone else, and 2) I’m always going to be inadequate at solving everyone else’s perspectives. Like when I got drafted to live with Meemaw and she had dementia. People were extremely angry that I couldn’t make that go away by seeing from her perspective. So it’s like, if I’m already having a hard time, that is not a good opportunity to suggest that I’m a piece of shit with no empathy. I don’t just have needs on purpose because I don’t care about other people’s needs.
So, anyway, it was a tough five days and I really think that if my ride had canceled and I’d been able to get someone else to do it, that would have solved a ton of emotional and also physical pain. I think sometimes people want to be helpful, so they just calmly say that things aren’t worthy of emotion. Which has never been helpful to me at any point in my life, because I don’t bring up problems until they’re way past the point where that could possibly work. So if I’m freaking out and you’re telling me that the landlady isn’t going to fix the buzzer in a matter-of-fact way like I’m not supposed to have an emotional reaction, that’s not going to make me less emotional. It’s just going to make me feel like you think my needs don’t matter and I’m selfish for having them.
Conclusion of the Story
So I got home early Sunday afternoon. I’m glad I avoided having to go inpatient, despite the fact that I mainly avoided it by having it offered to me. I was worried to leave the cat because my neighbors have been patriotically launching illegal fireworks at all hours of the night for weeks. This all-American gesture is extremely effective at retraumatizing countless veterans who don’t have the practical or financial means to escape to Canada while we celebrate them and the PTSD the acquired while keeping our country on the map. It turns out, fireworks also scare my cat. So I didn’t want him to be alone. He’s also started showing undeniable signs of asthma, so he’s going to the vet tomorrow. As I said to someone, “I was successful today at running a couple of errands, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t be successful at entrapping a flailing, terrified murder machine into a bag and hauling him down a million stairs. You know how it is, things you never thought you’d be able to do before you had kids.”
So, I’ll keep you guys posted. The cat’s appointment is tomorrow, then on Wednesday I have an intake with the cardiologist, and on Thursday I have an intake with Dr V (the psychiatrist)’s replacement, since I guess he got another job. Fortunately the pain has been a lot better since the ER trip despite really minimal changes to meds. I hope the cat is okay. Money is crap. My mental health isn’t exactly baseline. It’s just currently better than it was a few days ago. So, wish us luck. We’ll need it!