Relapse

Tuesday afternoon ….

This past week has been horrid. My time with Beth has been fantastic and being with Crystal’s family and Chris and Frani was too, but here at home and on the street has been as bad as it was at the onset of my breakdown.

Lately, in mid-conversation, suddenly I stop and cannot go on. Then I start weaving around — not too badly and just above the waist — and my breathing becomes impaired and my arms will jerk. Plus I get staccato breathing.

It goes like this all day, whenever I change locations and I go out to see someone or someone comes to visit me. It exhausts me and embarrasses me. Bruce heard me explode: I just suddenly screamed like I was going to die because the phone rang. It exploded out of me and I couldn’t help it.

Once I thought my only problem was stuttering. Stuttering seems so minor now compared to the back pain and all the other symptoms.

I asked Dr. Shoja about increasing the Cipralex. She said not to. Instead she is going to send me to a hospital physical therapist; (s)he will treat my back and give me a compensatory exercise program. (She said massage was useless.)

Why have I relapsed? Our working theory is that the acceptance and understanding of my symptoms by my friends is triggering a fear in me that “this” is the new norm. The “new norm” is not acceptable; it comes with too much pain, loss of control and embarrassment.

Okay … It’s time to nap and then have some chocolate cake.

Three Seizures

Three seizures Monday and the back pain they (and stuttering) cause is staggering. I’ve decided to go back to massage therapy again and to talk to Dr. Shoja about another increase in my medication. I need to suppress these symptoms.

Being outside in the world feels like being in a hostile jungle. Air brakes, bus breaks, truck backing-up signals and asshole bikers with no muffler scrape the skin off my soul; loud sound crushes me. I try to stick to on side streets but the stores I want to go to are all on the high street. Doing everything involves a strategy … except being at home. The word sanctuary has real meaning for me here.

Beth leaves Vancouver today for three days in Tofino. Today I see Dr. Shoja and I may walk home because it is so beautiful outside today. This afternoon I may start on dress number ten.

Freud and Me

Every disease I’ve ever had has ended; even HIV has evolved into nothing more for me than taking a daily pill. And like HIV, asthma has, for me, evolved to nothing more than two deep inhales on my puffer each day; I never have asthma attacks any more. But this PTSD is relentless.

I became a mini-festival of symptoms when I arrived at Crystal’s on Sunday. I went early to be with the family and left when the birthday party guests arrived. I settled down after about ten or fifteen minutes but it’s a relentless condition.

Perhaps I’m in the “fed up with it” stage; I’m tired of stuttering, jerking and explaining what I can barely explain.

Back home, in sunshine and with Leon, with good food and chocolate cake … I returned to feeling myself. I love people but Beth was right to anticipate going to Crystal’s would drain me. Beth stayed home too last night, resting in the same sunset on Bruce’s couch and fighting a cold.

We postponed the dinner we were to have together to tonight and I’m having lunch with Chris and Frani, my friends from Whistler. Tomorrow, Beth goes to Tofino for a couple of days and I go back to working on my script and dresses.

There’s no sun today but the week doesn’t look bad at all. The endless rain seems to be over and we are in an alternating pattern now.

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I watched a documentary about Sigmund Freud that had a scene in it that rocked me. After he set up his practice in Vienna, when he was still unknown and his theories were not being accepted, he established his reputation by recognizing shell shock for what it was. It was Freud who determined that the origins of the physical disabilities afflicting so many surviving soldiers were in their brains. It was Freud who recognized that they had psychological damage and the symptoms that convinced him were speech “interruptions and distortions” and myoclonic movements — exactly my symptoms.