Hi Folks,
Pretty uneventful week here for the most part. I've been dealing with an emotional rollercoaster in coming to terms with the fact that my mom has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I joined a great support group on Facebook so I can vent about all the crazy things my mom did to me as a kid. As I've been venting, I'm realizing it's time for a bit of healing and self help. I haven't seen a psychologist (or more accurately psycho-therapist) since I was in my early teens, but I don't count her because she sided with my mom's craziness. I decided it might be time to talk to somebody and kinda reprogram my mind so that I can stop fearing the worst from people.
So, I already had an appointment to see my family doctor, who is AMAZING, by the way. I asked her to refer me to a psychologist so I can let the healing begin. I'm starting to realize how crazy my mom really was, because as I described a smidge of my childhood to my doctor, she looked at me with shock and disbelief that a parent would ever act the way my mom did, to a child. I have to say though, it's very validating to see others react that way. Anyway, I have to call for an appointment and set things up with her. I'm partly looking forward to it and partly nervous. The therapist I saw when I was a kid had my mom's back entirely, so she didn't exactly help me deal with anything that was going on. She still sides with my mom on everything to this very day, which bothers me entirely. I wish I knew why they still talk when my mom doesn't formally see her for appointments or anything. Anyway, validating my mom and invalidating me definitely screwed up my psyche. I'm trying to relearn what is 'normal' and what isn't. Apparently my perception of normal parenting isn't even close to what it should be.. which I knew to an extent, but now even more so. It will be good to revisit those bad memories with someone who can help me figure out what to do with those memories, rather than just tucking them back inside again. I made the announcement to my friends on facebook that I was going to get some help, and the reaction was practically a roaring crowd of cheers. Everyone from new acquaintances to very old friends told me they were happy for me, as they knew I suffered much under my mom. Even my high school principal commented, saying she never had any idea because I was always so sweet. Something makes me wish I hadn't been so sweet back then, so as to draw attention to the situation to get me help. My guidance counselors chalked it all up to teen drama, but little did they know it was nothing of the sort. It makes me feel good though that people from my past who didn't know what was going on finally have a bit of an understanding of what really happened and how it was hid so well from plain sight.
I'm looking forward to starting off with a clean slate with a new counselor. Someone who's view of me hasn't been tainted by misinformation, but who will know the real me and not who I am portrayed to be. At the same time, as I begin to unpack all of this baggage I've been carrying around, I feel a sense of anger at my mom. A wish to somehow get back at her for all the Hell she's put me through. I don't mean physical harm, but to make her feel the things she made me feel. I know that would never be possible though... I read that those with a narcissistic disorder never care how others feel and thus nothing I could ever say would make her realize what she's done to me. She will always play the innocent victim of circumstance and that frustrates me to no end. I'm dying for people whom she's fooled to point the finger and tell people that she's not the person she pretends to be. I feel like I need that validation. And while a few people have come out in the open and said it, I want it to be said by people as they just meet her... not as they figure it out over the course of a year. I wish her narcissism was immediately recognizable by others, because even that brief time of them exalting her kills me.
I know I shouldn't feel this way. And like I said, I would never wish physical harm to her. This is one of the things I will definitely need to bring up to the psychologist. I need to find a way to feel closure. I hope I find it someday otherwise I think I will lose my mind.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
To Bed or not to Bed
So, here I sit. It's 4:33am and the nerve pains shooting through my back are indescribable. I also am experiencing the occasional twinge of nerve pain through my hands. That's a rather new symptom. I've been dealing with back pain of all sorts for a few years now.. but the hands worry me. I worry that the pain in my hands is the beginning of psoriatic arthritis.
As I sit here, I'm contemplating whether to continue to sit here scrolling through my fibromyalgia support group pages on Facebook or to go lie in bed next to my husband for the next 6 hours, waiting for sleep to come. Normally when I go to bed, I don't fall asleep within 20 minutes as most people do. My routine begins where I go into our room and begin taking my regimen of medications. Then I try to kick my cat out of the room before she hides under our bed, otherwise she will start climbing all over me, inevitably standing on my trigger points. Next, I warm up the heating pad and lay down, repositioning it a few times until it's just in the right spot. It takes a few tries usually, as my back pain travels once I'm horizontal. Sometimes I need to throw a couple of tennis balls underneath the heating pad to intensify the heat on my trigger points as well as work the knots out of them. Strange? Yes. But it works. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, admire how cute my husband is while he talks in his sleep about military things and then decide that I may as well scroll through Pinterest while I'm awake. An hour later, I look at the clock and muse at the fact that I'm still not sleepy yet, even though I've taken an arsenal of medications that would easily put a horse into a coma. I continue surfing Pinterest, pinning delicious meals I'll probably never bother trying and oogling at gorgeous gowns from renaissance England. My interests are rather scattered, but hey... I'm a dreamer.
I look over at the clock again... It's almost 7am and my husband is waking up and checking his phone before he heads off to shower. After he gets out of bed and opens the door, the cat runs in and jumps on top of me like an excited child on Saturday morning. I spread out across the bed, grabbing every pillow in sight and stuffing them behind my back, under my belly, between my knees and then one to hug. After I'm comfortable I close my eyes for a bit and begin to drift off to sleep. Normally I might sleep about 3 hours before waking up, using the bathroom, grabbing a snack to keep my sugar up, then crawling back into bed for a few more hours.
Thus, I'm trying to decide whether to bother going to bed or not. I have plans to go to a friend's house for dinner with my husband later. I love my friend and getting to spend time with her, but anymore I dread leaving the house. Whenever I have plans of any sort the next day... I find it impossible to drift off to sleep and eventually when I do... I get two hours of sleep and wake up twitching, my nerves feeling frayed. Because of this, I dread going places when I plan it in advance. I get anxious that I won't get enough rest or will be in pain when I wake up, thus robbing me of the joy and excitement of doing things I like. Sometimes I suck it up and force myself to get up, despite the twitching, get ready and go out. Other times, I just mentally and physically can't do it. I wish I could explain it in a way that would make others understand. When I wake up feeling twitchy, all I want is to medicate and go back to sleep until I'm better. If I just get up and push through the pain and twitching, I pay for it 10 fold later on. It's almost a guaranteed way to send myself into a pain flare.
I guess I may as well start my bedtime routine... hopefully I'll get enough rest to be able to visit my friend today.
Bye for now.
Chrissy
As I sit here, I'm contemplating whether to continue to sit here scrolling through my fibromyalgia support group pages on Facebook or to go lie in bed next to my husband for the next 6 hours, waiting for sleep to come. Normally when I go to bed, I don't fall asleep within 20 minutes as most people do. My routine begins where I go into our room and begin taking my regimen of medications. Then I try to kick my cat out of the room before she hides under our bed, otherwise she will start climbing all over me, inevitably standing on my trigger points. Next, I warm up the heating pad and lay down, repositioning it a few times until it's just in the right spot. It takes a few tries usually, as my back pain travels once I'm horizontal. Sometimes I need to throw a couple of tennis balls underneath the heating pad to intensify the heat on my trigger points as well as work the knots out of them. Strange? Yes. But it works. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, admire how cute my husband is while he talks in his sleep about military things and then decide that I may as well scroll through Pinterest while I'm awake. An hour later, I look at the clock and muse at the fact that I'm still not sleepy yet, even though I've taken an arsenal of medications that would easily put a horse into a coma. I continue surfing Pinterest, pinning delicious meals I'll probably never bother trying and oogling at gorgeous gowns from renaissance England. My interests are rather scattered, but hey... I'm a dreamer.
I look over at the clock again... It's almost 7am and my husband is waking up and checking his phone before he heads off to shower. After he gets out of bed and opens the door, the cat runs in and jumps on top of me like an excited child on Saturday morning. I spread out across the bed, grabbing every pillow in sight and stuffing them behind my back, under my belly, between my knees and then one to hug. After I'm comfortable I close my eyes for a bit and begin to drift off to sleep. Normally I might sleep about 3 hours before waking up, using the bathroom, grabbing a snack to keep my sugar up, then crawling back into bed for a few more hours.
Thus, I'm trying to decide whether to bother going to bed or not. I have plans to go to a friend's house for dinner with my husband later. I love my friend and getting to spend time with her, but anymore I dread leaving the house. Whenever I have plans of any sort the next day... I find it impossible to drift off to sleep and eventually when I do... I get two hours of sleep and wake up twitching, my nerves feeling frayed. Because of this, I dread going places when I plan it in advance. I get anxious that I won't get enough rest or will be in pain when I wake up, thus robbing me of the joy and excitement of doing things I like. Sometimes I suck it up and force myself to get up, despite the twitching, get ready and go out. Other times, I just mentally and physically can't do it. I wish I could explain it in a way that would make others understand. When I wake up feeling twitchy, all I want is to medicate and go back to sleep until I'm better. If I just get up and push through the pain and twitching, I pay for it 10 fold later on. It's almost a guaranteed way to send myself into a pain flare.
I guess I may as well start my bedtime routine... hopefully I'll get enough rest to be able to visit my friend today.
Bye for now.
Chrissy
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Introduction: My background
Hello Everyone!
I wanted to start out by going into more detail as to what conditions I deal with and how they've come about to give my readers a better idea as to what I'm talking about in future posts. My health situation has always been interesting but has become so complicated in the past few years that it's not an easy task to explain it.
When I was a child, I had a condition called "Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis" (health professionals call it a SCFE "skiffy"). In this phenomenon, the growth plate just below the ball joint on the top of the femur destabilizes and in some cases like mine, completely detaches from the ball joint. In order to fix it, my orthopedic surgeon had to place pins the size of bed screws through the lower part of the break and into the ball joint to reconnect them. A few months later, my other hip showed signs of weakening and was pinned before further damage could occur. It took me over a year and a half to fully recover to the point where I no longer needed physical therapy or a walking aid such as a cane or walker. At the time, I was 11 years old and spent much of my 5th grade year in a wheelchair.
Although I've dealt with sometimes moderate hip pain since that time through my high school years, it did not stop me from doing most things normally. I wasn't allowed to participate in gym class and my doctors treated me like a porcelain doll. Looking back on this, apparently it would have been better to be more active and rejoin sports/physical education rather than let my leg muscles become weak, but that's water under the bridge. I even worked as a cook in a concession stand when I was 16 and while standing all day was a little bit painful, the pain was easily controlled with Ibuprofen.
When I entered college in 2007, I was always busy doing something... I worked at least two jobs at a time, plus took classes full time while living in a dorm. I have always been overweight but I was relatively healthy and enjoyed working to give myself a better future.
I got pregnant while I was in my 3rd semester in college and finished that year in college before giving birth to a beautiful baby girl named Chloe. After she was born, my back began giving me a whole lot of trouble. I continued college a few months later and found myself with backpain almost every night. During the summer of 2010, I was working in an office setting and within 3 days of beginning my job, I began to experience shooting pain in my lower back, traveling down my hips, knees and to my ankles. I worked for another year at various jobs and then found myself in too much pain to make it to work on a regular basis. I lifted something heavy at work one day and couldn't get out of bed for three days afterward. This began my epic journey of seeing many different doctors, specialists, physical therapists and having x-rays and CT scans. I was unable to continue working at this point because the pain was present all day, every day and not well controlled with any medicines or therapies. I applied for disability and was granted it in 2013.
Since 2011 I have seen 3 rheumatologists, 2 physical therapists, a dermatologist, a pain management specialist and my general practitioner. All have had differing opinions as to what is causing the back pain. Some doctors think I have fibromyalgia. Some think some form of arthritis such as psoriatic arthritis due to the fact that I also have psoriasis. It has been concluded that I have some sort of auto immune disorder, but nobody can conclude exactly which one as my symptoms mimic so many different ones. At this time, doctors have concluded that I definitely have fibromyalgia and spinal stenosis with the beginnings of psoriatic arthritis.
All of my health problems seem to be connected in some way or another and just when I think I have all the symptoms a person can think of... another one magically appears. It's extremely frustrating, but thanks to my dad always teaching me to be resourceful and creative, I've come up with a lot of interesting ways to deal with these issues. I hope to share some of my wisdom with my readers that maybe they can benefit from my trials, errors and successes.
I wanted to start out by going into more detail as to what conditions I deal with and how they've come about to give my readers a better idea as to what I'm talking about in future posts. My health situation has always been interesting but has become so complicated in the past few years that it's not an easy task to explain it.
When I was a child, I had a condition called "Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis" (health professionals call it a SCFE "skiffy"). In this phenomenon, the growth plate just below the ball joint on the top of the femur destabilizes and in some cases like mine, completely detaches from the ball joint. In order to fix it, my orthopedic surgeon had to place pins the size of bed screws through the lower part of the break and into the ball joint to reconnect them. A few months later, my other hip showed signs of weakening and was pinned before further damage could occur. It took me over a year and a half to fully recover to the point where I no longer needed physical therapy or a walking aid such as a cane or walker. At the time, I was 11 years old and spent much of my 5th grade year in a wheelchair.
Although I've dealt with sometimes moderate hip pain since that time through my high school years, it did not stop me from doing most things normally. I wasn't allowed to participate in gym class and my doctors treated me like a porcelain doll. Looking back on this, apparently it would have been better to be more active and rejoin sports/physical education rather than let my leg muscles become weak, but that's water under the bridge. I even worked as a cook in a concession stand when I was 16 and while standing all day was a little bit painful, the pain was easily controlled with Ibuprofen.
When I entered college in 2007, I was always busy doing something... I worked at least two jobs at a time, plus took classes full time while living in a dorm. I have always been overweight but I was relatively healthy and enjoyed working to give myself a better future.
I got pregnant while I was in my 3rd semester in college and finished that year in college before giving birth to a beautiful baby girl named Chloe. After she was born, my back began giving me a whole lot of trouble. I continued college a few months later and found myself with backpain almost every night. During the summer of 2010, I was working in an office setting and within 3 days of beginning my job, I began to experience shooting pain in my lower back, traveling down my hips, knees and to my ankles. I worked for another year at various jobs and then found myself in too much pain to make it to work on a regular basis. I lifted something heavy at work one day and couldn't get out of bed for three days afterward. This began my epic journey of seeing many different doctors, specialists, physical therapists and having x-rays and CT scans. I was unable to continue working at this point because the pain was present all day, every day and not well controlled with any medicines or therapies. I applied for disability and was granted it in 2013.
Since 2011 I have seen 3 rheumatologists, 2 physical therapists, a dermatologist, a pain management specialist and my general practitioner. All have had differing opinions as to what is causing the back pain. Some doctors think I have fibromyalgia. Some think some form of arthritis such as psoriatic arthritis due to the fact that I also have psoriasis. It has been concluded that I have some sort of auto immune disorder, but nobody can conclude exactly which one as my symptoms mimic so many different ones. At this time, doctors have concluded that I definitely have fibromyalgia and spinal stenosis with the beginnings of psoriatic arthritis.
All of my health problems seem to be connected in some way or another and just when I think I have all the symptoms a person can think of... another one magically appears. It's extremely frustrating, but thanks to my dad always teaching me to be resourceful and creative, I've come up with a lot of interesting ways to deal with these issues. I hope to share some of my wisdom with my readers that maybe they can benefit from my trials, errors and successes.
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