Stressed, Uncomfortable, Nervous...

I don't want advice about this stuff or for anyone to tell me what to do (I feel like I've had enough of that lately and it stresses me out), although I don't mind comments. I'm not looking for any one to feel sorry for me either. I'm just putting this out here because it happened Wednesday evening and I feel like expressing it to an extent.

As some people know (and some people don't), I have occasional seizures, as a side effect of another health issue I had about 15 years ago. Hard to believe my stroke happened that long ago now, but then again, not really, because time flies faster and faster.

I'm not going to get into an elaborate amount of detail abut my seizures and related factors, but I will say I can usually tell less than a minute before one is about to happen, so I can at least sit down on the floor.

But then afterwards, I don't know exactly what happened (I mean I know I had a seizure but I don't remember the part right after that involves getting up off the floor, walking into a different room and so on). This time I think I was even more confused than the last few times. I was confused about what time it was and how long ago the seizure happened (although that's usually the case). I had trouble finding my phone (it was just on my bed which is where I often keep it). I had trouble figuring out how to use my phone, how to find the contact info on my phone, what to press to make a phone call (later I saw that I had sent Darryl two little random emojis on facebook messaging which might have been me trying to use my phone but being confused). So I felt more confused (and for a longer time) than I usually do after a seizure. I feel like it took me at least 20 minutes to figure out how to use the phone.

I had been upset, stressed and sad on Tuesday. I then felt somewhat better on Wednesday, but still sad. Even though I've been in menopause for about a year or two now, it felt somewhat similar to a variation on PMS, which I haven't had in quite a while.

Then shortly before the damned seizure happened, it suddenly got substantially worse. I started to feel guilty about my FB Wall Posts/personal blog post from Tuesday, my heart started racing a bit, I felt very unnaturally negative and off-filter and as if I was on the brink of a panic attack. I couldn't make it go away and it was getting worse. It was very uncomfortable (mentally more so than physically). I thought about lying down because I didn't know what else to do. First I was going to pee, but then while on the toilet, the sensation I have right before a seizure came over me. I quickly wiped, flushed, moved into my computer room, sat down where I usually sit down there and had the very uncomfortable out-of-control sensation as if my neck is suddenly twisting itself to one side (the right side) and in my mind, I'm randomly sitting on my computer chair (even though I'm actually sitting on the floor) and seeing some random cartoon-ish images. I remember seeing a cartoon chicken.

Next thing I know, I'm in my bedroom, looking for my phone, and after finding it, having trouble figuring out anything about it for quiet a while. I was confused with words, which happens for a while after one of my seizures. I finally managed to call my mom about a minute before midnight (I know she stays up late). But then after we got off the phone, I ended up calling her back again, because I then felt a sore lump on the right back of my head, saw two red marks on the left side of my neck (probably/hopefully just scratches?), and saw that I had bit the inside bottom of my lip. I am not sure how any of those things happened, especially the lump on the back of my head, because last I knew, I was sitting on the floor. Maybe I somehow bumped my head into a door or a wall after I got up. The lump on the back of my head and the scratches on the left side of my neck make me uncomfortable and nervous since I'm not sure exactly what caused them. It sucks not knowing how something happened. It causes me to think a bit about my damned stroke.

The seizure itself also makes me feel uncomfortable and nervous because it's only been a tiny bit more than a month since the last one I had. The last one was October 7, three days after I got my latest Covid vaccine. Normally I don't have seizures anymore near that close together. For a while, I was only having one or two a year. Not one in October and another one in November. Maybe this has something to do with the latest Covid vaccine, because I remember feeling low energy, down and oddly out of it for several days after I got that (more mentally out of it than physically out of it, which I'd not experienced to that extent after one of my previous vaccines). I'm repeating myself again here, but it's bothersome because I don't think I've ever had only about a month before the last seizure. I certainly don't want my seizures to start getting worse or more frequent.

I suppose it could have something to do with hormones or stress. Despite trying not to mentally overreact too much about the election, (not that I'm ignoring it, but I didn't want to escalate my stress into some sort of toxicity) perhaps the disturbing fact that Trump won kicked in more about a week later, plus which some stressful seizure pill oriented paperwork I've been trying to deal with that has to do with health insurance suddenly telling me I might not be eligible for the pills I've been taking for years being largely covered by insurance, so I might have to switch to different generics and deal with different side effects and that's very upsetting to me, because I remember what some of my previous pills side effects were like.

Anyway, apparently it's just been one of those bothersome weeks and hopefully I feel better tomorrow. And hopefully everyone else who is overly stressed out or upset feels better too (but without ignoring real issues).

bad dream induced by memory issue/doctor appointment stress

I woke from an annoying bad dream, in which I was participating in some sort of poetry reading contest. I was the first participant and went up to the front to read my two poems. The woman who was MC-ing the event was a woman I knew, so she and I talked for a few minutes, then she introduced me to the crowd. Before we'd started talking, the poems I was going to read were bookmarked in a journal, but suddenly the bookmark was gone and I had to start flipping through the book to find my poems.

I couldn't find them and the dream consisted of me repeatedly flipping though journal after journal and notebook after notebook, while standing in front of a crowd and looking like an unorganized mess and feeling increasingly embarrassed and confused.

I told the woman she could just introduce the next reader, but she said she wanted to keep the reading order the same as it had been listed and so if I couldn't read first, then I couldn't read at all. I couldn't find my own poems, so I couldn't read first, so I couldn't read at all - but it wasn't the not being able to read part that bothered me as much as losing my own poems and having no idea what had happened to them.

***

I know what inspired this dream. In real life, I make tons of lists all the time, largely because of my mental quirks AND my aphasia-induced memory issues. I'm a very organized person or at least I think I am or at least I attempt to keep my brain organized so that I don't go mentally bonkers. But despite all the time and energy I spend organizing things onto lists, I also lose lists a lot, or I have so many lists that I don't know which is which and which is where.

I try my best, but I can't do anything fast. The more time limitations I have, the more stressed out I get.

I hate doctor appointments (way too many bad experiences) and I have one coming up this Friday. Because of my stressed out brain issues, I purposely set the appointment up months in advance. This is my first appointment with this particular doctor, and they said they would send me the paperwork to fill out in advance. Several months went by and I hadn't gotten the paperwork yet. I thought maybe they planned to send it closer to the time of my actual appointment, but just in case they had forgotten to send it, I called the office again on Friday the 15th of this month. The woman on the phone said the paperwork would be mailed the Monday after that. Well it's ten days later now and I STILL haven't received the damned paperwork and my appointment is this Friday and I'm pissed off and I feel like they just don't care.

I hate doctor appointments to begin with, I get extremely overly stressed out about them, and even if I WASN'T stressed out, my brain can't dash off medical paperwork in ten minutes (or 20 minutes or 30 minutes), because I read slow, I think slow, and I have word issues. If I'm writing something like THIS at home, I can take as long as I want and nobody needs to know how slow I am and about my annoying word issues.

But if I'm writing something somewhere else, I can't automatically process what I'm reading, I can't automatically understand what they're asking, I can't dash things out fast, I can't remember stuff like the names of my various doctors (and I sure as hell can't spell them), the name/dosage of my pill, the time frames of other health issues, or doctor appointments, etc.. Anything to do with numbers and time is hard for me to remember. The only numbers that come naturally to this brain or my birth date and my age.

So what this means is that since the doctor's office didn't bother to send me any advance paperwork, I have to spend a few hours GUESSING what their paperwork will ask me and writing notes to take with me - and hoping I don't forget something important and hoping I don't lose my own notes. The thing is, I'm sure I've written these kinds of notes before, but I don't remember where I put them, even though I probably put them somewhere that I thought was a well organized place to put them. Heck, maybe I even scanned and stored them on my computer, but I don't know, because I CAN'T REMEMBER.

I'm stressed out, part of me would rather cancel the appointment then try to handle this stress, and when I get all stressed out and somebody tells me to relax, I feel like punching them.

The other issue about being stressed out at a doctor's appointment and having to spend a lot of my time and mental energy transferring paperwork I wrote at home onto paperwork they hand me in the office, shortly before the appointment, is that my brain will get so stress-focused on that stuff, I won't even be able to focus on the details of the actual appointment.

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.

they couldn't hear me unless I screamed

Awoke last morning after ongoing odd dreams and even though I wasn’t sure exactly how/why/if this derived from my dreams, I immediately felt the need to write down a note about how I dislike and get really stressed out by some of my family dynamics – not just my immediate family so much as extended family issues that strike me as less love-based and more judgment based, along the lines of telling other people what they should or shouldn’t do (and what they’re doing wrong and how they need to do this or else…).

It’s  probably because I’ve felt such impressions throughout much of my life that I don’t usually like ANYONE (not even a good friend) phrasing things to me as if this is what I need to do unless I want something bad to happen. How does another individual know what I need to do? They don’t live inside my brain, do they? So how can they be experts on what does live in there?  Shouldn’t they focus on what they need to do?  They can offer me their thoughts/feelings/opinions (indeed I like that kind of in depth exchange), but I don’t think they should state their point of view as though if I don’t follow it, something bad or unhealthy is bound to befall me.

*

The dream recollections involve a seen in which I was driving with a group of family members and suddenly I knew that my dog was about to jump out the window on the other side.  In the dream, my dog looked like a white cat.  I kept saying stop the car, stop the car, stop the car, but nobody stopped. It wasn’t because they were purposely ignoring me, but they couldn’t hear me. They could only hear themselves. Until I screamed. 

I screamed, “WE NEED TO STOP!’, which finally got them  to stop, but by then my dog had jumped out the window.  I told them where to drive back to, but couldn’t remember exactly, and we couldn’t find him. He was gone.  I made myself wake up before I saw him dead on the road.

*

I often feel like I don’t matter much to anyone - and sometimes that makes it hard hanging out with people who feel like/act like they matter a great deal. People who even say things about themselves like, “I’m awesome”. I don’t relate to friends thinking/acting like they’re awesome, popular, very attractive, and so many people are attracted to them.

Aside from poetry readings and planned events, I’m not a fan when people think a space full of unknown other people (such as a restaurant or a bus ride) should hear their loud conversation, like it or not.  What if someone is trying to think their own thoughts and you suddenly jump into the space and start forcing yours upon them? I don’t think that’s particularly creatively enlightening or positive or caring towards others; in fact I think it can be invasive and stress inducing.  At least it is for me. 

Why should I want my brain forced to hear someone else’s conversation rather than being able to focus on my own or hear/speak with the person I’m sitting next to, who I’m having trouble hearing/concentrating on because I’m being loudly intersected by someone else’s expression and I don’t want to talk that loud or have a performance style conversation?

I could be wrong; I’m no expert; but I don’t think being stressed to the point of a bad headache by that sort of thing is a result of my brain’s negativity. I think it’s more like that is not my style – and when surrounded by it in excess for an extended time period, it stresses me out.  I don’t want to scream to be heard.

But then I have a dream where if I don’t scream, nobody can hear me.

*

“(I was never a cheerleader in real life.  I was never popular in real life.

What is real?  Why am I sinking down under these misshapen rafters?)”

from my poem, “Vintage Pom Pom Underwater”, which you can read in its entirety here –

http://www.counterexamplepoetics.com/2009/02/giggle-or-gurgle-her-voice-sounds-like.html

It’s one of 11 poems I read this past Saturday, during a poetry reading at the East End Book Exchange in Pittsburgh, PA. The weekend included time with very creative friends (poetry reading time, interesting conversation time, and more), bands, The Oakmont Bakery, and the Polish Hill Arts Festival.

Broken Springs

It was a gorgeous springy day today weather-wise, but…

I seemed to be having a broken springs/tainted strings mish mash associated with my brain.

I’ve recently gotten on a friend of mine’s case a few times about too frequently using the word “broken” to describe himself/his brain, but my brain sure felt broken earlier today.

It was a tough morning for me in terms of a number of easy little things being overly difficult. I used to be detail oriented and good at remembering things in advance, but now I’m not good at remembering details – so if anyone expects me to quickly get something done at the last minute (without finding out about it, remembering it, and planning for it in advance), chances are I might have a stressed out little explosion – and unfortunately, they’ll be stuck in the middle of my explosive devises too. Not that those explosive devises will be lashing out at THEM, mind you – but they’ll sure hear me lashing out at myself and calling my brain inept and screwed up and disappointing.

Trying to quickly get something done at the last minute (without advance notice and planning in advance time) stresses my brain into shredded threads that don’t like themselves, don’t appreciate themselves, and focus too much on their weaknesses instead of their strengths.

This morning, I got all stressed out because at the last minute I was attempting to fill out a piece of paperwork that should have been easy, but wasn’t – because I can’t remember my dog’s age, his date or month of birth, what vet appointments/treatments he might need, nor where the heck I put the past paperwork that might offer me such information. I used to be good at all of that stuff (as well as other forms of organization); now I am not. I certainly don’t want my dog to suffer from a too-early demise due to my disabled brain strands.

Then from their I got to thinking about how frequently I seem to lose things ‘cuz I can’t remember where the heck I put them when I was attempting to organize them (from my calculator to my assortment of googly eyes that I wanted to use for making some homemade Valentine cards to much more). Then I got upset (not at HER; at ME) when my little niece stepped into my art room and blurted out that it was the messiest room she’s ever seen – which is probably because I’m frequently having to unpack boxes in order to try to find things AND some boxes I don’t even bother unpacking/organizing into a particular space in the first place, ‘cuz then I’ll soon forget where I put those.

It seems like every time I make a substantial and time-consuming effort to organize my space, I then forget the details of my organization by the next day – and I don’t want to have a messy, unorganized space – but I also don’t want to have a neat, organized space that involves unpacking multiple boxes and searching for things on a frequent basis. Both ways cause me to feel bothered and troubled by my seemingly inept brain.

In case you think I’m exaggerating about my broke strings and mutilated brain waves, consider this. I’ve now been living in my newish space for more than seven months and I still haven’t memorized my address. I have it written down and have to look at that piece of writing every time I need to write it down somewhere else.

I know I need to focus on the positive not the negative, but sometimes (like this morning), I have an episode where it really bothers me that I used to have strong memorization skills and be a fast-moving individual; but now I’m more of a slow-moving, unorganized mess, whose brain sometimes can’t remember easy things yet is frequently popping out all kinds of random things and weird things and big bizarre words.

On the plus side, at least I can use some of those big bizarre words as part of my poetry content – and that’s definitely a pretty awesome plus side, as far as I’m concerned. In fact, in mere minutes, I shall post a positive, poetry-oriented blog entry above this negative little spurt.

Seizure Horror Fest

At the moment, I don’t really feel like writing about this or doing much of anything, but if I don’t write/do things, then what is the point of existing, so I guess I will give this a try.

This past week was an unexpectedly unfortunate, bad week for me. It was supposed to be a uniquely creative week, involving my first time being a part of the extra-special Kerouac Fest at the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber PA. Part of the festivities were going to involve me & Margaret Bashaar introducing Margaret’s new poetry chapbook, ‘LETTERS FROM ROOM 27 OF THE GRAND MIDWAY HOTEL’ , which was inspired by the haunted hotel and published by my Blood Pudding Press. Unfortunately, I did not get to go and participate in that.

The day before I was to leave, I was working on packing my attire and took a quick break online. A few minutes after 3:00, I wrote a comment to Margaret on facebook. The next thing I knew, I woke up, was lying on my bed, and was gazing upon my new manikin with confusion, not remembering where it had come from. Even my older headless manikin seemed confusing. Even all the clothes lying on my bedroom floor and the passage of time seemed confusing.

As soon as I got up, it got worse. I felt nauseated, dizzy, faint, and as though I was about to pass out. I immediately become afraid that I was dying. About a year and a half ago, I had suffered from a sudden, unexpected carotid artery dissection which led to a couple aneurysms which led to a stroke. Was I having another stroke? Was I about to die? I felt like I was going to faint and collapse. I called my mom. As I glanced at my cell phone, I saw that it wasn’t quite 4:00 yet, so it’s not as though a lot of time had elapsed since I was online, but what had happened since then?

My sister and parents arrived to my house shortly. I was still feeling disoriented and dizzy – and we soon found out that I must have fallen down hard, because the back of my head was terribly bruised and painful. I later found out that the bottom of each elbow was also bruised. Within about an hour, most of my memory came back to me, except for the memory of when/how/why/where I had fallen down. I figured I had suddenly passed out but why? That is not something that often happens to me. I had been feeling fine that day, eating healthy, drinking plenty of water. I wasn’t drinking any alcohol or doing any drugs. What the heck had happened?

We decided I should go to the emergency room just to make sure I did not have a concussion. I wasn’t lucking forward to doing that; I was worried it would take several hours, when I still had packing and other last minute preparation for my trip, for which I was scheduled to depart via Megabus the next morning. Unfortunately, I did not end up departing. Even though my CAT scan did not indicate a concussion, they suggested the fact I couldn’t remember what had happened made them feel as if I could have had a seizure, so they wanted to send me to the hospital for more testing.

Next thing I know I’m inside an ambulance, talking with the man behind me. I wasn’t in a terrible mood because I was thinking that my hospital testing would last a few hours, then I’d be home and even though I would be rushed, I’d still have time to prepare for leaving the next morning. Well instead, I ended up being in the hospital from Tuesday night until Friday night, receiving multiple tests and lying around on a hospital bed with an IV inserted and a heart monitor plugged in. Instead of being part of an artsy extravaganza with poet and photo artist friends, I was a hospitalized, disabled, out of control old lady.

And then even though none of my testing indicated that I’d had a seizure, they still decided that I should take seizure pills, twice daily, just to be on the safe side. Well I have always been an anti-pill person; the last thing I want is some pill changing my personality, my passion, my sex drive, my interest in life, and/or making me fat. Blah blah BLAH.

I've not had a seizure before in my life; I don't have epilepsy. BUT sometimes people who suffer from a stroke then start having seizures, due to how the stroke affected their brain. BUT my stroke happened more than a year and a half ago, so why would seizures suddenly start overtaking me after all that time? After a rather crappy (sad, depressing, difficult) year or so, things were finally becoming so much happier and better - and now I'm going to start having seizures? I'm hoping it was just a weird fluke.

But even if it was a fluke, the pill I've been given is a seizure related pill – and research indicates that some people have bad side effects from it. I'm really quite nervous about it. Again, I don't want a pill to change my personality, my energy, my poeticism, or anything like that.

I don’t want it to zone me out or make me unemotional. I don’t want it to make me uninterested in poetry, uninterested in art, uninterested in knee highs, uninterested in almost everything.

I don't want a pill to change me. I don't want to be lacking in passion.

I’ve started taking the darn pill but have also started taking notes and will share some of those soon.

I could go into more detail and perhaps I shall later, but being in the hospital for four days and then feeling out of it and depressed my first few days home have put me behind, so for now I need to get to work on publishing and promoting the chapbook that I was supposed to have available live at a haunted hotel while hanging out with its scrumptious poet lady, but alas. Instead I’m all worried about seizure medicine. Blech.

A Round Thing that Starts With the Wrong Letter

(A year that started with the wrong kind of bang has ended; what comes next?)

I few days ago, I had a little after-dinner issue that made me feel like crying. These feelings are nothing new throughout a year that began with me suffering from an unexpected Stroke, but I have been continually recovering and improving, to the point that I think most people who briefly interact with me might not even receive an inkling that anything has affected my brain powers at all. A big part of me really likes that, but it also has its challenging aspects.

Although my reading and writing skills continue to get better and better thank goodness, they are still significantly slower than they used to me. Although every month, I seem to remember details better, I still do not think I could work a regular job, because after I initially came across as pretty intelligent and productive, how could I explain my inability to memorize new things with quickness or efficiency?

And how the heck would I explain my ongoing trouble associated with handling easy little words? Food stuff is one example of those easy little words and my ongoing issue with food stuff words is what made me feel like crying the other night. Even my poetry used to be brimming with strange and specific food-oriented words, to the extent that a few people thought I had made up my last name, COOK, to fit into my own poetry-fest.

A few nights ago after dinner, my mom handed me a yummy piece of homemade gingerbread (I had to concentrate while typing this to get the word gingerbread) and she put something on it; some white stuff that I cannot remember the word of. I asked her what that white stuff was called and she told me, but I have already forgotten that word again. When she told me the word, I started to tell her what it reminded me of, which was another white thing atop another dessert thing and...

See what I mean? I couldn't think of the word of a dessert product that I have partaken of many times in my life. And I couldn't think of the word of the white stuff on top of that dessert product. Oftentimes, I can think of the first letter of a word even if I can’t think of the whole word. So I said something like "that round thing that starts with a g" and then I began to feel like some sort of an idiot, because here I was seated at the kitchen table with a group of people and the best descriptive phrase I could muster was “that round thing that starts with a g".

As it turned out, I didn't even get the first letter right this time. As I tried to describe the dessert product a little better, my mom finally asked if I was talking about Cinnamon Rolls and YES that is what I was talking about. And the main reason I had even brought up Cinnamon Rolls was due to an attempt to talk about the white product that sometimes appears on top of them, but it took me so long to make it to the word Cinnamon Roll, that after that, I felt overly stressed out and dumb and pretty much just gave up.

Here I was among a group of people and could not even manage to describe certain things as well as their little kids would have been able to describe it. I felt like they most likely would rather play with the kids, rather than spend half an hour trying to concentrate on a disabled adult attempting to figure out easy little words in order to say what I was trying to say, when what I was trying to say was simply a very small description of a white dessert product atop my mom's gingerbread that tasted like a different white dessert product atop some Cinnamon Rolls. I could hardly think of any of the words for a small description that should have lasted about one minute long.

Unfortunately, that is nothing new when I am trying to talk about food (or names or other brief descriptions), so sometimes I just don’t even try to talk about those things, especially in the midst of group settings as opposed to one on one. Sometimes I find myself worrying about not being able to think of some easy little word in a public setting (which has happened before) and then how the heck should I explain that? I don’t really feel like telling semi-random people who I barely know that I suffered from a Stroke almost a year ago.

It's so frustrating and upsetting to me sometimes, being someone who used to be able to describe things interestingly, uniquely, and EASILY and now I often can't. In addition to the little words, there's the fact that I can't write significant book reviews anymore; I can no longer specifically describe my own viewpoints on stuff like poetry, art, feminism, and much more (and since I would have to concentrate long and hard in order to think of more specific words, I just typed 'and much more').

Overall, I have been feeling less depressed, less negative, and more willing to interestingly shift my own verbiage around. But every once in a while, an exchange that ought to consist of a simple, easy, quick little conversation goes awfully wrong and really upsets me. Sometimes I worry that I am NEVER going to be able to communicate as well as I used to. Sometimes that makes me feel like crying.

***

(This is a short version of a small article I am currently working on. I hope to complete and publish a slightly longer version on my Associated Content site soon. If you are interested, stay tuned.)