Tag: Anxiety


Unintended Anxiety

7
January

My head hurts. Actually, the back of my neck and the very top part of my back is the part of my body that really hurts. I was hoping that by now I might have a full-fledged answer for why I was hurting. I was hoping that maybe the test results would be in, and the neurologist would know for sure what the hell is going on with my head, neck, and back.

I had the appointment last week to find out the results, which turned out to be a dud because the doctor had the hospital emergency that he had to deal with. He was supposed to call that evening. He didn’t. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn’t call the rest of last week. I even waited until halfway through this week, just in case he was out or backed up because of the holidays. But a couple of days ago, I got tired of waiting and made the call.

I got a call back this afternoon. It was his nurse. Apparently, he was looking at my chart, but hadn’t gotten my EEG results back until late this week. I thought that was strange because of the appointment from last week being scheduled and me being told that my results were in that day. The nurse today couldn’t tell me what the results were, even though they finally had them. I wasn’t really worried about the results until I talked to my mom.

My mom was able to trigger my inner health-related panic attack voice. She said that if the nurse couldn’t tell me the results, then she must not have been able to read the EEG. She then said that that would be due to the EEG being abnormal in some way, so I started getting nervous. I don’t think she meant to trigger that anxiety, but I have this tendency to think the worst when she makes that kind of suggestion (because she is generally right about it) and I was sitting at home by myself in a bit of a panic. (My parents left for the grocery store right after I got the call.)

When they got back, I mentioned how nervous I was. At this time, my mom said it was probably no big deal and that she didn’t mean to scare me. I don’t know that my mom understands just how much this kind of thing worries me. I’ve talked about it in therapy multiple times before, and my therapist has told me to tell my mom not to make the comments because of the heightened anxiety it causes, but I don’t feel that it is fair to make my mom stop saying random things because I have an inability to deal with the comments rationally. It isn’t like my mom is trying to upset me or hurt me or anything. If anything, I think she may be trying to prepare me.

So, now I am going to try to forget about the whole panic-related stuff and have a relatively relaxed weekend. I bet that won’t happen, though. The neurologist is supposed to definitely call by Tuesday, so I hope that that does happen. I’m not holding my breath on it, though.

Oh, and, in a somewhat related note, my mom made a list on the first of all of the things that the neurologist (or, in one case, a different neurologist that used to treat my headaches) has diagnosed me with. I was kind of surprised at the length of the list. After she made the list, which is below, she told me why she made it. Apparently, the next time that my aunt starts in on how horrible of a person she thinks I am, my mom wants some sort of proof that my life is a bit more difficult than my aunt seems to realize. I mean, my mom and Nana have both tried to convey the physical and mental stuff I deal with, along with the stuff I have to do and (sometimes) choose to do, even though I have very little energy and always feel like crap or hurt. I think it’s basically her version of a wake up call.

The List

  • Migraines (actually, 3 neurologists dx’d this)
  • Chronic Daily Headache (2 neurologists dx’d this, including 2 of the three that dx’d the migraines)
  • Dystonia
  • Essential Tremors
  • Myoclonus
  • Vertigo
  • Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome
  • Degenerative Arthritis of the Lower Spine
  • Absent reflexes in parts of my legs

I think that is everything, but I might have forgotten something. Anyway, my mom seemed shocked at the length of the list, even though I’d told her about each of the things when the doctors would tell me what I was “suffering” from. And some of the things, i.e. the tremors and the myoclonus, are things that I was told I had quite a while ago. I think the tremors were diagnosed in middle school; while the myoclonus was diagnosed a couple of years ago, even though it had been going on since I was a very, very small child.

So, now I wait to find out if that list is going to be edited…

Comment » | Confessions, Family, Sickness and Health

The Worst Month of the Year

28
November

I think that in the last 30 days or so, I have been seriously frustrated by some things that have gone on.  I’m not really sure why this month seems to have sucked more than usual.  Oh, wait.  I know exactly why it sucked, but I don’t really get why it all had to happen in one month.

First, there was the whole iTunes account hacked issue, leading to me getting charged for an app that I didn’t purchase.  I did get that taken care of, but I ended up having to delete my PayPal account (since it was the funding source and I felt like it might have also been compromised) and put a fraud alert on my credit report.  I had to change all of my passwords everywhere, but apparently missed a few, as I would find out a few weeks later.

After the iTunes issue, my laptop decided to take a break.  My external hard drive’s enclosure was also on a break.  The new enclosure came first, but I couldn’t see if it still worked until the laptop came back.  When it did come, I had to format the external hard drive’s drive again.  Now I’m working on getting everything back on the drive.

Meanwhile, I go to log-in on likesototally.me’s WordPress and find that it has been hacked.  I figured out what was hacked–the .htaccess.  I decided to download files from it that I knew were safe and not located elsewhere before trashing everything else.  The deletion finally got done last night.  I changed the domain’s username’s password before I decided that I needed to change the username as well.  So, that was fun.

In terms of non-tech related bad things, I had thought the disintegration of my extended family on my mom’s side was the worst possible thing in the world that was going on, until we got a nice little letter from ALFA (our insurance agency) letting us know that we would be dropped from our homeowner’s policy in February.  Apparently, insuring us was “too risky” and wasn’t worth continuing the (at least) 26 years of business with my family.  Well, technically, they’ll still be doing business with us because the life insurance policies for my dad and for me are under them, but my parents are planning on moving the car insurance when they find a new insurer.

I felt like it was my fault that the insurance got dropped.  First of all, ALFA is the employer of certain members of my family that I am not really on speaking terms with and their position in the company is fairly high, so my first thought went to that ongoing crap.  Even though they don’t want to be around us, I figured out that they wouldn’t do something that petty in order to punish me for talking about them on here.

After realizing that they were probably not behind the dropping of coverage, I thought that maybe my dad had decided not to pay the (staunchly conservative) PAC  ”contribution” when he paid the membership dues for the farm bureau.  (You have to belong to the bureau in order to get insurance and it is requested that your membership payment include a “voluntary” contribution to the PAC.)   But they say that you don’t have to pay into the PAC, and I don’t know if the company would really drop people because you choose not to contribute to it.  Somehow, I’m not sure if that decision might keep us from being insured.

The other possibility is that because of the continuing issue with the grass, this house might be considered too unsightly for them to insure.  Their standards are pretty high, and my mom suggested (at one point) that they may have been doing some of the reporting to the city about the grass and the stuff on the porch.  Of course, that makes me even more paranoid.  The idea that you can lose your insurance and get threatened with jail time because of grass and because of other random crap is just something that causes me intense anxiety.

And, as per the norm for me, I have felt worse lately.  I’ve had bouts with dizziness, pain, fever, sinus crap, and (of course) the heavy period that came around for a week and a half, and is currently on hiatus again. And I got a call from my family doctor about wanting to do blood work, which is always torture for me, so that has me kind of apprehensive.  Then, of course, there was the depression, mood swings, and generally nuttiness that I usually deal with and that usually gets worse this time of year.  It’s just been the rotten cherry on top of a melted sundae.

So, yeah, this past month has really, really sucked.  I’m hoping that December will be better.  I’m guessing that it won’t, though.  That’s not me being pessimistic or anything.  I’m being completely realistic.  And realizing that the most joyous time of the year is probably going to be suck-filled is awful.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Geekery, Internet, Janet Goes AWOL, Like So Totally Me, Mental Health, Music Stuff, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is, My Sites, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

Come On Now

15
November

My mom decided to call her sister on Saturday to find out why exactly her sister’s family won’t be at Thanksgiving. It was, of course, my fault. Apparently, she is upset because she had been told that I called her an evil bitch. I didn’t remember doing this, so I decided to do a search. In the ten years that I have had this site, I have used the phrase “evil bitch” 3 times.

  • The most recent was in 2010. I referred to a psychiatrist as an evil bitch after she told me I smelled bad, even though I had showered, put on nice smelling clothes, etc. Valid use of the phrase, no?
  • The next most recent was in 2005. It was a reference to the furthest back entry where I had called a psychiatric nurse at the Mental Health Center the “Evil Bitch Monger from Hell”.

Clearly, since my aunt is not a psychiatrist or a psychiatric nurse, I didn’t call her an evil bitch.

I decided to try just evil next.

As for various forms of the word “bitch”, I said others described her decision about the separate Thanksgivings as bitchy, I described someone from the other side of the family as saying things that distressed me and led to me making bitchy responses, I mentioned an argument between my mom and me (later in the argument, my mom began talking about how awful I was vs. her sister, which led to sarcasm from me), I called myself bitchy, I called my eighth grade history teacher a bitchy person and said she was a misogynist, I described the call from my aunt’s daughter-in-law as being done to bitch me out, I described my mom’s mood swings as “incessant bitchiness” right before I first mentioned how frustrated I was about the video on the news, talking about nother bitchy psych nurse, a reference to myself, my mom calling me a bitch, saying my dad was bitchy about Farmville and Facebook, my being pissed at a former family friend, me mentioning a philosophy teacher that I felt was bitchy, and talking about the evil psychiatrist. That’s pretty much it when it comes to calling people bitchy or bitches or anything of the sort. So, technically, I didn’t call my aunt a bitch. I also didn’t call her evil.

She also said that I said that she made my life a living hell. I did accuse her of that as part of a meme I was participating in April. I spelled out my reasons for it, too, which I think she should read since apparently she has never read the actual entry. Other than that, my comments about her have been relatively mild. They have all been based on the same things that were discussed in the other post, which makes sense because we, as a family, have not dealt with the cause behind the feelings. Until we do that, the words will continue to be something that probably comes up. That isn’t a threat. It’s just part of what goes on until some kind of resolution happens.

It’s weird how she is upset over the 5 or 6 that had any negative content about her in the past year, but doesn’t realize I’ve also posted 1 where I was genuinely concerned about her after she had eye surgery, quite a few posts after Thanksgiving last year gushing about her cooking the meal, the 3 or so in the last year where I talk about missing her in some way, etc. That’s out of around 100 posts total that I’ve made on fuzzypinkslippers.com in the Family category and the 152 on the site overall the beginning of 2011. Most of the posts in the Family category refer to my mom or my dad or both. There are  probably more posts from the last year about going to court over my grass than there are about my aunt. So, I think a littler perspective might be helpful.

Now, if she wants to claim that I’ve been more harsh about her daughter in law, then that might be a legitimate issue, but…I haven’t even called her a bitch or evil.  I did accuse her of being a catalyst in tearing apart our family and of having a double standard about medications, but I didn’t even get all that vicious on her.  So really,  they need to get over it.  If what I say is causing them so much anxiety, stress or anger, then they are old enough to know how to click the little x in the corner of the browser.  They are also old enough to not have surrogate blog monitors check out the site for them.  I think that if they would lay off on the familial pressure (via the monitoring and the accusations they make to my mom and grandmother) then things might get better.  I keep posting things related to them because their anxiety heightens my anxiety and my paranoia.  I really wouldn’t think that people who are related to me would want to cause me to either get so angry that I have severe headaches or so depressed that I cry for hours on end because I’ve heard yet again how horrible (in terms of actions) yet insignificant (in terms of importance to them) I am.  Honestly, the best way to end all of this drama is for them to back off.  They want to prove that I’m immature or wild or needing to be controlled by my parents*…that’s fine, but this all seems like a way to bait me, which doesn’t make them come off as being much more mature than me.

*Yes, my aunt actually told my mother that my mom should be able to exert some kind of parental control on me about what I blog about because she is my parent.  Yes, my aunt knows that in less than four months, I will be 28.  She also knows that I am a lot better behaved at 27 than my mom was during her teens and twenties.  So, again…perspective.

3 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Holidays, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is

When You Say Nothing At All

10
October

Well, in less than 48 hours, I may get to find out if I am going to go to jail or pay some hefty fine. I really am not looking forward to this. I shouldn’t be too nervous, since this is the third hearing that I’ve been scheduled for with this and, aside from my outburst last time and being made to feel like I was about 2 inches tall the time before, nothing has really happened this time around. I don’t want to quit worrying altogether, though. I have this feeling that if I don’t go in at least slightly anxious, then I will end up feeling completely overwhelmed or unprepared by whatever ends up happening.

Other than my inevitable meeting hearing with fate the judge and the city attorney, I don’t think I have anything else going on this week or anytime soon. Molly is going back to the vet this week, I think, to get her stitches taken out from her surgery. My mom will probably have lots of fun chores for me to do for her.

Oh, my mom is supposed to try pool therapy. I have a feeling her trying it won’t last long. I think that she truly has given up on getting around by herself and that she doesn’t feel that she needs to work toward getting better. If I suggested that to her, as I have tried to do in the past, then she would freak out and act like I’m just not understanding her pain or her weakness. I understand the issues that she has. I understand them quite well. What I don’t understand is how she thinks that that pain or that weakness means that she is excused from ever even trying to do anything at all. (Yeah, I know that sounds weird coming from me.)

Ugh. I’ve had (what feels like) a migraine brewing for a few hours now. I know that getting off the computer, shunning all electricity, etc. might help it get better, but it also might do nothing and will leave me in pain and bored.

I was going to call my family doctor to find out the results from the tests related to my last appointment, since I haven’t heard back on the ultrasound and the urine culture shouldn’t take too long to do. I didn’t call since it was Columbus Day and I figured that their office would close up shop for a holiday. I just need to remember to call tomorrow.

Comment » | Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Sickness and Health

I Blame Lily Allen

28
September

I finally understood what causes some people to act out in an irrational and improper way. I know that you would think that I would have learned this after 27 years of having a mother who is prone to acting out on impulse or having a father who has been diagnosed with an explosive anger problem or having relatives who, for all intents and purposes, were sociopaths when they were in their prime. Oh, no. I finally got it today in court, when the city attorney pulled me and my dad into a corridor to tell us that we had two more weeks to get our backyard mowed. My father and I kept trying to express to this man that we’d had the lawn mowed many times over the past few months, and he said that if that were true then we clearly were not getting what we were paying for. (I just love how it is an “if” when we say it or when I show images [on my camera] that were taken this morning and show a cut lawn, but the city just has to have 2 images on regular printer paper with dates scribbled on the paper in ink. That doesn’t prove the pictures were legit. I would like to see the Exif information on them.) So, after much frustration and belittling from him, I uttered two words that I should feel remorse for saying. I muttered, under my breath, “Fuck you.” I didn’t say them to the judge, but since I said them to a “court officer” and was showing him such disrespect, my outburst will be taken into account when they decide how much to fine me and if I get jail time. (This is what he told my father, after I’d walked away.)

First of all, I would like to state that the attorney got very lucky that all I said was, “Fuck you.” I had this urge to shove him into a wall or otherwise inflict physical harm on him. Muttering the “f-bomb” near him was immature and disrespectful, but it was a hell of a lot better than physically accosting him. I think if they’re going to take into account that I said 1 profane word to a court officer, then they should also take into account that my mental illness worsens under stress, which is well-documented throughout my 20 year history of seeing mental health professionals, and that I was also feeling physically unwell after experiencing two absence spells. (There were flickering fluorescent lights in the court, which I didn’t notice until I’d gone through 2 of these spells.) Of course, these things wouldn’t be taken into account because that would mean showing some level of compassion or understanding, which is clearly not a concern for this particular court officer.

Secondly, I think it is weird that the images that were used were of the backyard. The images were from an angle and showed certain things that could only be spotted from a particular spot in our yard. This means that yesterday sometime there was a person from the community development part of the city in my yard. They were trespassing to even get the photos. They claimed that this was what my neighbors see from their backyards, which is utter bullshit. I can truly call bullshit on this one because:

  1. In my lifetime, only two houses have had a good view of my backyard. One of these is the next-door neighbor’s house, which is the house where the person who mows are lawn lives. The other is on a different street. The latter homeowner hasn’t been able to see our yard for more than 10 years. though. The former, though, has only been kept from seeing the yard for 6 or 7 years.
  2. I know that it isn’t visible to either of those houses because on that side of the backyard, there are cypress trees that are about as tall as a two-story house.
  3. There is only one other family that may have, at any time in history, seen our backyard from theirs. Our neighbors directly behind us (though we have the same street in our address) cannot see our yard from their backyard because they’ve had a “popsicle fence” for at least 27 years.
  4. Even if those neighbors didn’t have the fence, we have cedar trees along that property line that are about as tall as the cypress trees. That means that they would have to be in the backyard to see the backyard.
  5. Even though we live on a corner, we have lots of trees between the part in violation and the street. These trees would make it almost impossible to see any of the bad part of the yard from the street. In fact, it is so difficult that I haven’t seen that part of the yard from the street since I was a little kid.

Okay, so basically, this whole premise is ludicrous because, in order for someone to be offended by the height of the grass, the someone would have to be standing in our yard. Also, the idea that neighbors are complaining about it is crazy. The only neighbors that we would continuously bicker with moved to Florida a while ago. (And they were such upstanding people that we used to get anonymous hate [snail] mail and threats from them…yes, you can tell who anonymous hate mail is from.) The rest of the neighbors get along with us now. And those that we don’t know wouldn’t want to complain to the city about our yard because they generally have bad yards or some other city violations that they wouldn’t want to be discovered. So, this whole convoluted idea that the neighbors are complaining is just a bit disturbing.

So, now we have two weeks to fix this problem and then I apparently will be sentenced in some way, shape, or form. It seems ridiculous that I will be the one who gets convicted of a “crime”, even though they have trespassed, lied, withheld evidence (by not specifying who complained, they are denying me the right to confront my accuser), and violated who knows what other laws and amendments that are supposed to protect people from being treated unjustly by their government. I think this whole thing sucks, and I don’t see how any of this does the city any good. Putting a person on trial because their backyard, which you can only see from the backyard, isn’t in tip-top shape is just petty. I mean, it is outright petty. If the city is so hard up for money, then maybe they should come up with a better system of punishing actual criminals. I see people who go into the court who have been cruel to animals or who have violated various laws created to keep people safe and they get no more than a slap on the wrist, but months of court dates, accusations, etc. are going on with me over overgrown grass. This whole this is just ridiculous and infuriating and causes all kinds of stress and anxiety that I really don’t enjoy going through.

Honestly, at this point, I would almost want to be in jail. Being in jail might actually give the city a good idea of what it is like to deal with me, my psychological crap, my physical crap, and my tendency to be a whiny, spoiled brat. I think that they might really appreciate my effort about the lawn if they learned what it was like to deal with an even more stressed out version of me on daily basis. A simple “fuck you” would seem almost like a compliment to them after that. If they don’t think so, then they should check out what was probably written down about me while I was in Decatur General West when I was 17. If a psych hospital found me tiresome, annoying, and rude, then I don’t think a city jail would really like having me around for any length of time.

2 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Geekery, General, How I Met Your Neighbors (aka An Overactive Imagination), Rants

Be Sure To Visit Me in the Pokey

28
September

My court date is finally upon us. In about 6 hours, I will have to be in court. Of course, my “trial” won’t be until after they go through all of the other municipal court business. I never did get a lawyer or any legal help of of any type, so I could be screwed. I kinda felt that it wouldn’t do any good. I could be wrong, and if I am, then I guess I’m even more screwed than I should be.

I don’t want to be pessimistic about what will happen, but let’s face it, there’s just one way this will all end up. I’ll be guilty, even if I’m not. The municipal court is set up to make money for the city, so it won’t matter that my yard has been mowed multiple times since the letter that said I was in violation. It won’t matter that there are pictures to prove this. In fact, any pictures that I show will probably be challenged by the city because the employees of the city must be more honest than a citizen who repeatedly violates the grass ordinance.

So, I guess the only hope that I can have is for the fine (plus court costs) not to be too hefty and to not get a jail sentence, which I could technically get. Ugh. I hate this whole situation.

I have a feeling that I am probably the most pessimistic member of my family when it comes to this case, but I don’t see any reason to be really optimistic about it. The way that the last few appearances have gone down has proven to me that my fate has already been set in stone. So, I guess I just have to take my lumps.

On the off chance that I do actually get jailed, I thought I’d mention that Molly has to go in on Thursday for surgery to remove the tumor on her hip. I hope that she’ll be okay. I’m probably more worried about her than I am about myself, which is good. As long as I can focus my anxiety and tears on her, then I won’t feel so self-centered or entrenched in this whole situation. Send some positive thoughts her way, please.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, General

All My Life, I’ve Been Good, But Now…

15
September

My appointment with Debbie, the therapist, was supposed to be today. I say “was” since it obviously didn’t happen. I got there and after almost freaking out when I was mistakenly told I had a $50 copay, I found out that my appointment had been cancelled because my therapist had emergency surgery on her foot or her feet. Apparently, they had called me about this. I don’t think they did. In fact, I’m fairly certain that they didn’t. Not only because the Caller ID only has the calls from the Mental Health Center that were made to my dad, but also because they still had the appointment scheduled in their own computers. (According to one of the secretaries, they had only gotten through some of the appointments that the therapist had had on Monday. I guess they were too busy to do the rest of the week.)

When I went outside, I was thinking how great the weather felt. A cold front went through last night, so it was cooler than it had been since the temperatures went up after Lee was over. I was being a little careless and stepped in a pile of bright red dirt. Normally, I would have paid attention and not stepped in anything that could possibly be an ant bed. Today, like I said, I was careless. I stepped in a fire ant bed, and within a few seconds began to receive the horribly painful bites all over my feet. I had to take my shoes off in the parking lot to keep them from continuing to bite me. I also had to try to kill every single ant that was on me, to make sure that I didn’t get multiple bites from the darn things. So my feet are burning and hurting like crazy right now.

I’m also having some aching feelings in my chest and kind of a numb feeling in my mouth. I think it is just anxiety. I’m hoping it is, at least. It started after the bites, but I don’t think that it is caused by them. Probably just stress or something.

Comment » | Confessions, Mental Health, Sickness and Health

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