Stuck in the basement with dead feet and eyes...

Disconcerting dream last night in which I was downstairs in a dank basement and had fallen asleep on the floor. The basement itself was not horrific, it looked like the basement in my parent's home. I don't know why I was sleeping down there though. (In real life, when I was a kid/teenager still living in my parent's home, I would sometimes go down into the basement to be by myself. To poke around at potentially interesting stuff, mostly books that might have been considered inappropriate for my age at the time, so I'd read them downstairs in the basement. The Exorcist for example. I remember finding that book in the basement and reading it. I also sometimes used the downstairs space to walk around in circles and tell creative stories inside my head, before I had reached the point where I could extract the creative thoughts/words in my head onto paper). So I don't have many bad memories about my parent's basement, because it seemed like a place where I could do what I wanted, because nobody else was there.

But in the dream, I was an adult asleep in my parent's basement for an unknown reason and it became disturbing and disconcerting when I couldn't get up. I heard my (dead) dog whimpering from the shut door upstairs and I realized he was probably worried about me or needed to be taken outside. I tried to open my eyes and tried to stand up so I could climb back upstairs and care for him, but my feet wouldn't work. When I quickly fell back down the first time, my initial reaction was that it was just a fluke because I wasn't very awake yet and had tried to stand up too quickly.

But then I tried to stand up again and fell back down again. Several times I tried and kept falling back down on the ground. I started to panic, because it seemed like neither of my feet worked anymore. I also couldn't see very well either and at first I thought that was just because the basement was dark, but then I realized it was because I couldn't seem to open my own eyes all the way or my eyes weren't working anymore. So suddenly both feet and both eyes had lost the powers or abilities that tend to be taken for granted.

I still had to try to manage a way to get upstairs and help my dog, but I couldn't walk normally and couldn't see normally and nobody was there to help me. I tried to tell my dog I was coming, but he just kept whimpering. Last thing I remember is that even though I still couldn't walk or see normally, I somehow managed to slowly stagger my way to the staircase and start clutching the handles on each side and forcing myself up step by step. Then my alarm woke me up before I found out if I could make it all the way up the stairs.

(Maybe the vision issues in the dream were partly because I was trying to wake myself up from the dream, but couldn't until my alarm went off. But it all felt rather unsettling, depressing and doom-ish on a variety of levels...)...

Side Effects May Include

A few times in my early twenties and early thirties, I saw therapists primarily because I was having a hard time handling my own obsessive compulsive streaks, panic, and anxiety. I was never looking for a pill to fix myself or tone myself down. I didn't feel that my issues were severe enough to automatically dive in to a pill. I thought pills were too often over prescribed for the wrong reasons (such as pharmaceutical industry reasons).  I didn't want to tone down my own personality, my emotions, or other parts of the real me, especially since I thought that my strong emotions were a large intrinsic element to my natural creative process, passion, genuine communication, poetry, and art. Despite sharing those feelings with therapists, pills were recommended anyway, but I always declined that recommendation, deciding for myself that I'd only take them if I really needed them in order to live a semi-normal life.  I am grateful that I was always able to handle my own mental glitches without having to resort to a pill. I know quite a few people with more severe mental issues who have less of a choice in the matter.

Seven or eight years ago, when I unexpectedly started having seizures, I had less of a choice in the matter too, because it was either take a pill or have more seizures. I was initially very unhappy (borderline depressed) about it, because I had been an anti-pill person for years (again, primarily because of the pharmaceutical industry and pills being quickly and easily and casually over prescribed without much personal analysis of the brains they would be impacting), but the first few seizures I'd had involved suddenly passing out in a public place and peeing my pants and suddenly waking up in my own bed at home, feeling out-of-it, confused, and finding out that I had knocked down a bunch of stuff in my house with no recollection of how or when or why and I had banged the back of my head against something with enough severity that I had a welt and needed to go to the ER and get checked for a possible concussion. That's when I ended up being unexpectedly admitted to the hospital, undergoing various tests, and finding out that my brain was now prone to seizures. That's when I ended up having a seizure pill prescribed to me and feeling angry and out of control, because my choices seemed so limited and I don't remember them ever even being discussed with me.  A certain pill was just automatically prescribed to me.

Despite serious initial unhappiness about the situation, I did what I needed to do, and started taking my suddenly prescribed seizure pills. The generic pill I was prescribed had significant side effects for a month or two, the worst ones being that it toned down my energy, toned down my passion, drained my emotions, and made me care less about things that were usually important to me.  But thankfully, I acclimated myself to that pill within a few months and after that, for the most part, I had no major side effects for years.  

Unfortunately, near the end of last year, the manufacturer's version of the generic seizure pill I'd been taking for years stopped being available at my pharmacy or any other pharmacy near me.  My mom made a substantial effort to  help me by researching other manufactured versions of my generic pill and we chose the one that appeared to have the least complaints from people who were using it. I began taking it shortly before the New Year.

I had one seizure within the first week of the New Year  (which might be fairly common when someone switches from a pill with one set of fillers to a pill with another set of fillers). In addition to that, after years of being free from pill side effects, I'm experiencing side effects again and they're not very comfortable. I'll think I'm getting used to the pill and have a day or two of feeling close to normal, but then I'll have multiple days in a row that involve anxiety and/or panic and/or an entire day where I feel semi-randomly annoyed and angry.

It strikes me as uncomfortably ironic that some of the side effects I'm experiencing with this new manufactured version of my seizure pill are like more extreme variations on the mental quirks I chose NOT to take pills for in the past. My anxiety has increased.  My illogical panic has increased (various times I've semi-randomly woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, heart racing, brimming with terribly uncomfortable illogical thoughts, related to health and death - and then I have to stay up for an hour or so, so I'm not lying in bed with a pounding heart and weirdly throbbing bodily organs - and then when I do lie back down, I feel the need to keep a light on, in case the panic escalates again). I've also been feeling semi-randomly annoyed and somewhat angry more than usual. Things that usually bother me a little have been bothering me on a more irrational larger scale.  So far, it hasn't reached the point where I feel like I can't handle this, but there's been several occasions where it's gotten close.  I mean,  I feel like I can handle this TEMPORARILY, but I sure don't want to feel like this for the rest of my life - alternating between feeling like I'm on some sort of irregular speed pill then anxiety then panic then not feeling like getting out of bed (probably because my sleep keeps getting interrupted by panic), then random annoyance about life.

On the definite plus side, I'm glad my strong emotions still exist, even though they're a little too extreme - and I'm glad I still care enough to express myself, even though sometimes I don't feel like it.

I've been on this new version of the pill now for almost (but not quite) a month and even though I really wish these side effects would have stopped by now,  unless they get significantly worse, I'm planning to stick with the pill for close to another month, before I try another approach.

Because frankly, the only other approaches are to stop taking a seizure pill and be prone to having more seizures and damaging my body or snapping my neck - OR to try ANOTHER different manufacturers version of the pill and experiment with the side effects of THAT for a month or two. And what if the next one is even worse? What if it drains my energy? What if it tones down my real emotions and genuine passion? What if it causes me to feel like I don't really care about anything anymore? What if it makes me suicidal? At least this current batch, despite its unlikable side effects, isn't draining me into an unemotional zombie.  I still feel like the real me, slightly extremified.  I still have strong feelings; they're just exaggerated. My flaws and weaknesses are exaggerated. My neck feels weirder than usual. My boobs feel contorted and misshapen like they're blobbing themselves further to the side. I feel like nobody really cares. I feel like this is just the way it has to be, for no apparent reason. 

And I'll bet the pharmaceutical industry doesn't really give a fuck about any of this. I'll bet the main reason I can no longer acquire the generic manufacturer's version of the pill my brain had gotten used to and that was working reasonably well for me for years is because that generic version was overtaken by cheaper generic versions. And as for the original name brand version, I'll bet the average person can't afford it, even with their work related health insurance, because sometimes health insurance just helps with the generic pills.

The medical industry seems to just sort of automatically expect us to take the pills we're prescribed, the pharmaceutical industry seems to sell the cheapest pills they can acquire/get away with, and both industries seem to be lacking in the department of bothering to realize or care very much about how many people don't have many affordable options. For financial reasons, some people have to skip pills or cut their prescribed dosage of pills in half. Luckily for me, my health insurance covers the bulk of my pill costs and I can afford the part it doesn't cover - but that's only if I take the generics, so my options are somewhat limited - but my options aren't anywhere near as challenging or limited as some people's. I have it better off than some people I know whose pills are so expensive that even if there health insurance covers parts of it, there out of pocket expenses are still more than a hundred bucks a month. I have it better off than people who can't afford ANY pills.

I'm on one fairly low dose pill that I take twice a day.  What about people who are on multiple pills that they have to take multiple times a day? How are they able to handle the multiple costs/multiple pills, monetarily and mentally?  How are they able to handle the way the pills interact with their brain combined with the way the pills interact with each other? Especially if they're sometimes given different manufacturer's versions of their pills with no advance notice.  How is anyone just randomly expected to handle the side effects of generics that switch to different generics that switch to different generics?

In my experience, even generic pills with the same name that are made from different manufacturers, seem to have significantly different side effects. Heck, that's what most of this piece of writing is about. What I haven't mentioned yet is that one of the worst seizures I ever experienced happened less than a year after I had started taking my pill. I had gone to my pharmacy to pick up a refill, the bottle of pills they gave me had the same pill name as usual, but the pills looked different. Since they had the same pill name and since the pharmacy gave them to me without expressing anything different than usual, I just figured the color and shape of the pill had changed.  But a few days into taking that pill, I was watching something on TV and suddenly started to see red flashing lights. My TV is near my screen door, near the back of my house, so at first I thought there was a cop car outside and I was seeing its red flashing lights from the screen door. Then I turned around and looked in the other direction and the red flashing lights were there too.  It didn't matter where I looked, it didn't matter whether I looked up or down, it didn't matter whether my eyes were opened or closed, the red strobe lights were everywhere, flashing all over the place, and I couldn't see the details of anything. I thought I was dying. I thought I was having another stroke. I could see my cell phone, but I couldn't see any of the letters or numbers on it. I started to panic and I started to scream. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't see the fine print on my own cell phone because everything was infiltrated with red strobes. Then I just tried to press things on my phone, even though I couldn't see what I was pressing, and somehow I managed to connect with one of my sisters whose first name starts with an A.

It turned out I wasn't dying; I was just having a weird visual, pre-seizure side effect from a different manufacturer's version of my generic seizure pill that had just been  automatically handed to me without the pharmacist saying a word about anything possibly being different.

I don't want to take this too much further, because even though I think I've expressed valid points, I also realize they're nothing new, at least not to most other people on pills - and also, I don't know what to do about it. But instead of just silently sucking shit up, I at least wanted to share some of my thoughts and feelings and attempt to excavate some frustration out of my system (versus THE system), so it doesn't stay stuck in some panic alert in my brain. 

For those of us who have a personal experience or semi-personal experience with prescribed pills that we're supposed to take on an ongoing basis for health reasons, whether mental health or otherwise (or for those of you who don't have such an experience at this point in your lives), one fact of the matter is that many of us who have been prescribed pills can only afford the randomly changing generics - and many  members of the pharmaceutical industry and medical industry don't seem to think that's any big deal (because it's a deal that's overridden by monetary deals and it's just part of the system). This seems to indicate that in the larger scale of things, poor people deserve to suffer and die before rich people - and poor people with health conditions and/or mental disorders beyond their own control deserve to deal with more generic side effects galore.

Semi-panic and semi-beyond...

I might delete this post of mine soon because I don't know that there's a particularly legitimate point in semi-publicly posting it - but other than the poetry/art stuff, most of what I choose to share is focused on my own thoughts/feelings - and me thinking out loud to help me clarify my own thoughts/feelings, because that's what I've done for years, because if I'm not expressing myself on a one on one basis, then I'm trying to express myself by writing out some of my thoughts/feelings.

My brain has been too frequently on the brink of panic lately.

I don't think there's any particular reason for the panic, other than my own brain glitches. Or another way to put it is that even though certain things might accidentally catalyze my panicky feelings, once I suddenly/semi-randomly get into one of my more panic prone modes, it's nobody's fault. It's nobody's fault that sometimes my brain is more prone to panic than other times. It's not even my own fault, because I don't intentionally cause my brain to get panicky and I don't want to be so panic prone and I don't purposely focus on things that might trigger panic.

But I also don't want to just ignore things just because they might trigger panic. But sometimes I have to tone down my focus on certain things. And if that causes certain people to feel as if I'm not on their side and thus think less of me, then so be it. Most of us don't know all the details of all our online friends and how their brains work and why. I think some people seem to make assumptions too easily. I don't make assumptions quickly or easily at all. Maybe that makes me some sort of a screwball.

Once the panic starts, the panic is largely illogical. When I have an actual panic attack, the logical part of my brain still exists but has to use a large amount of energy to try to convince the illogical part of my brain that this isn't entirely real, that I'm probably not going to suddenly die or be killed. That my artery is probably NOT going to explode, have another aneurysm, and make me immobile, inexpressive, borderline non-existent to the point of being an un-real variation of the real me. I want to be the real me, flaws and all.

I try my best to stay logical (or logical in my own way). But I can't always control my own brain's defaults. For over 20 years, I've had these different time frames in my life where I'm more prone to more panic/panic attacks than usual. I could theorize about the reason(s), but I don't want to focus on that right now.

I will say that even though there's not very many people in my life that I can regularly talk to in terms of genuinely expressing myself on an ongoing, in-depth, one-on-one basis, about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I want to talk about, filled with glitches, contradictions, mixed feelings, speed racing thoughts, emotional outbursts, weirdo-isms, yelling jags, crying jags, giggle-fests, and an odd personality that most people probably wouldn't be interested in handling for very long, I am very glad that I have my main man who will listen to anything I have to say, anytime I want to say it, and who actually likes it

(There WAS a legitimate reason for this post. It took a while, but I went from feeling like I was on the brink of another panic attack to feeling smiley-faced about Darryl, even though he swears too much).

This post isn’t poetry, it’s partially derived from an overly personal panic attack, if you don’t want to hear about that sort of stuff then don’t read it

Been in bed for hours but can't sleep. Tired but can't relax my body or brain. I feel like I'm on the brink of paranoid induced tears because my body is all tingly like I'm on some drugs. Is this some sort of panic attack - or are these brain tingles and body tingles some sort of pre-seizure mode? My body feels tingly and weirdly tense, but it's not like I was working out; I was lying down. After hours of feeling on the brink of panicking, I finally decided to get up and start typing - to make sure I could move and do something - to try to avert the paranoia. I want this tingling to go away. My neck is tingling, my stomach, my thighs and not in any kind of fun sexual way that's for sure.

My arms and my fingers slightly tingling but slightly numb. I can still type though right?

I'm saying some of the words out loud to make sure I can still talk.

I had thought I was finally feeling more mentally reasonable again after my most recent seizure several weeks ago but now I am suddenly experiencing another random tingling paranoid unable to sleep state for no apparent reason - not wanting to overreact or under-react - but sick of laying there and tingling and consistently moving my hands/fingers to make sure they can move - and consistently having weird random words and images pop out my head. I'm sick of the pop pop popping when I haven't done drugs in years (other than my seizure pill), yet I feel like I'm on some weird mix of multiple drugs that my body/brain is overreacting to. What sense does that make?

My tingling sensations are usually not in quite as many different areas (it's usually just my lower left hand and fingers), so perhaps the fact that this time it is more of my body plus my brain is popping out all this stuff made me paranoid. Typing it out seems to be helping. I didn't need to be laying there with my brain randomly popping out one random word after another and then repeating two random words over and over and stuff like that. Stuff like “Scooby Dooby Doo where are you we’ve got some work to do now Scooby dooby doo where are you we’ve got some work to do now Scooby dooby doo where are you we’ve got some work to do now WTF?!?” I needed to type other words instead of feeling like random words were randomly controlling me in a random style alternating between too slow and too fast.

I was starting to feel paranoid that my recent cold and its hacking cough had possibly caused me to hack my neck into smithereens.

I had been lying there despite the tingling and lack of falling asleep, with my eyes closed, just trying to relax my brain and not think too much - finally I felt like i was falling asleep - but then all of the sudden out of nowhere, my mind started singing those parts of the Scooby Doo song over & over, for no apparent reason, until I bolted into a sitting up position, feeling like I was on some drug and tingling even more.

Yes the Scooby Doo song sounds funny now; but it's not so funny when my brain starts repeating some goofball thing over & over for no apparent reason, making me feel like i chugged a bunch of mushrooms or something.

Then I try to stop my brain from singing the Scooby Doo song, then my brain suddenly forgets the WORD Scooby Doo and starts spitting out The Muppets, The Smurfs, Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your long hair.

My mind spurting out random cartoonish thoughts and images and songs. Maybe i'm turning into extreme randomisty.

***

Finally laid back down last night/this morning after 8:00 A.M – still didn’t fall asleep right away, but was no longer freaking out. I woke up after 1:00 P.M. after being in bed way too long (on  & off, due to getting up for close to an hour during the freak out), but still getting less than 5 hours of sleep. I woke up crying and feeling like as far as real live conversation in my life recently, nobody wants to listen; they just want to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do – or since they know I don’t like hearing that, they just don’t want to talk to me at all. 

In terms of one on one non-online conversation. I can’t remember the last time I talked on the phone to anyone other than my mom (and a few texts).  Well I can REMEMBER some conversations but they weren’t very recent. This doesn’t mean I want someone to call me right now. I’m just saying what was going through my head.

I know it’s my ex-husbands birthday today; I thought about calling him to say happy birthday; but why should I?  I can’t remember the last time we talked.  I don’t even know where he lives.  For all I know, his phone number might have changed or his whole life and I could be the last thing he’d like to be reminded of.  Last night’s brain spurts included random thoughts of the men I’ve been involved with in recent years and how none of them even talk to me anymore, so why should I think about talking to them or think about them period?  At least I guess that makes more sense than randomly thinking about Scooby Doo.

Maybe it has something to do with receiving an unexpected ‘I love you’ yesterday. Thanks for not really caring all that much when I felt really strongly about us and suddenly loving me now that it’s too late for that– because I’m never again going to deeply love someone who doesn’t love me more than drinking every single day.

I guess I’m usually too fast or too slow - or too in between, but rarely the right sort of in between. 

Too fast or slow ACTING; too in-between FEELING.