No Shit, Sherlock

     I had an appointment with my doctor today to discuss pain management. Since this is the one and only treatment option he's willing to provide, this should be easy.

     Who am I kidding though? Pain management is never an easy conversation with doctors. 

     He wanted me to get more spine X-rays. I pointed out that I had spine X-rays done on April 1. Apparently they were only lower spine.

     That seemed short-sighted. And apparently we're doubling down on being short-sighted because he sent me for X-rays of my middle spine. Not my entire spine. Just the middle.

     Results? L4, L5, L6 are also affected by the DDD. They're bone-on-bone. No padding in between.

     Yes, it's painful.

     So the conversation was me asking him to increase my pain meds. Currently they take the top level of the pain down a notch - usually but not always. And I'd like him to increase the dosage so I can get a bit more relief. 

     His response? "Well, you'll always have some pain."

     1. No shit.

     2. If you accept that your patient is in pain and will always be in pain and you haven't looked at what can be done to help them, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. 

     Oh and then I got a lecture about the dangers of opioids. About how they work but only for a brief period of time, and then you're addicted and you can't ever stop taking them.

     I told him that's interesting since after an accident I'd been in back in 2008, I did take them for a while. And then I didn't take them for a long time until he prescribed them to me.

     But I guess it could be worse. After all, he could've also told me to lose weight (again) as treatment for my DDD. Nevermind that I did that last year and it unsurprisingly did not help my back pain.

Shame: Make Mine a Double

     We're listening to "The Body Keeps the Score". When he was talking about what survivors deal with, what we put up with, and the shame surrounding it all, my husband asked me if I think that's why I reconciled with him.

     I don't know. Sometimes I think it's something worse. That I just couldn't stand the thought of him giving someone else the love he refused to give me for so long.

     And shame? Yeah. For getting into this to begin with. How did I not see that this was abuse?

     For reconciling? Yes there's shame. Honestly though, my daughters have made it worse. They have shamed me and shunned me. 

     One thing that isn't discussed enough is the effects it has on your children to see you mistreated. 

     The disrespect they show me. The accusations of dishonesty are especially hurtful. I grew up with a mother who lied and lied and lied. I swore I wouldn't do that to my kids and it's a vow I kept. 

     And you know what? I'm goddamned proud of myself for that.

     My oldest saw how my husband treated me and she took issue ... not with him. With me. Because in response to a particularly awful thing he did, I keyed his car. 

     That was done in the moment, when I felt powerless. Because when you're with an abuser, you do not have power. And sometimes the victims lash out.

     It's not something I'm proud of. And that's the thing about reactive abuse: Besides the fact that it's not abuse, it's also something that the victim doing it feels shameful about.

     So do I feel shame? Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, you have no idea.

What is Even the Point?

     It's not like I had some secret bit of hope that my kids would talk to me again someday. I knew they wouldn't. But today it hit me hard. 

     I have family shared storage online that everyone in my family can use. To use it, you have to be in the same google family group. 

     My youngest left that family group today.

     I felt like I'd been punched. 

     What kind of pathetic loser is shunned by her kids? 

The Saga of the Downpour, continued

Continuation of "Spoon Theory".

     When I was disconnected from my call to benefits, I had to use our employee app. The app sucks. It's so bad that I find myself fondly recalling AOL c. 1998. The app is seriously that bad. 

     It took me 20 minutes to realize that the benefits folks did not provide their phone number. Not anywhere. And that feels like a big middle finger to the employee. So I used their web chat option. And hit another dead end. They also could not provide me with anything until 7-10 days after their systems update. 

     I gave up. I talked to my former supervisor, who suggested I call HR one more time and ask for a copy of my resignation letter. It's better than nothing. I said I would, but not that day. I could no longer use my nice-person-customer-service-voice. 

     So then I did some laundry. My husband and I both do laundry but that day, he tweaked his back. I know that kind of pain all too well so I said I would handle the one load he needed. In the process of doing this, I discovered that, due to my spine issues, I can no longer reach up as well as usual. So wen I reached up to remove a hanger from the bar, I couldn't lift it enough to remove it and ended up pulling the entire bar down. With all of the clean clothes that had been hanging on it.

     I just stood there and sobbed. I was completely out of spoons. I had nothing left. 

     Husband came to the garage, told me it was okay, that he loved me, and he cleaned up my mess. I appreciated the help, the gesture, the love, and the reassurance. But it's not okay. I hate the changes in my body and my abilities. And I was beginning to think that the entire day could just be thrown in a dumpster and lit on fire. 

     But the day wasn't over. 

     The one other thing that went very wrong was our computers. I had ordered us 2 reasonably decent laptops. They were supposed to be delivered by 9 pm that night. By about 7 pm, I was pretty sure we weren't going to get them. But I also knew I was feeling discouraged and my outlook was negative, so maybe I was wrong. 

     I bought the laptops from Best Buy. They contract with Roadie for delivery. Roadie is akin to services like Door Dash. People sign up to deliver for them. They use the app to delivery gigs, sign up on them, and do the deliveries. 

     The guy who signed up for our delivery had "something come up". So he didn't do the delivery. But he also didn't open the app and press a button to detach himself from the delivery so that someone else could deliver it. 

     And Best Buy didn't notice or care that an order that was supposed to be picked up was not. Which is why I  just cancelled the order the next day. 

     SO THEN I bought a reasonable desktop that was cheap. I get it home, hook it up, and it was a straight up nightmare. I have never run into the issues that I experienced with this system. The WiFi on it was so bad that I was getting download speeds of 4 mbps - as a comparison, the WiFi on my laptop will get 160 mbps download. I made sure to run the speed test on both systems at the same exact time to ensure I wasn't just experiencing a hiccup.

     But then I ran a game that isn't massive and the desktop's GPU was at 100% usage, constantly. There is no way it should have been 100% usage. But the scary part is that the core temperature was 69 degrees celsius. That's nearly 160 degrees farhenheit. So yeah, that is also being returned. 

     Back to the drawing board on computers!

Spoon Theory

     Spoon Theory: A way of explaining a couple of things to non-disabled folks. One, that all of us have different amounts of energy. Two, that all of our daily tasks - easy and complex - require different amounts of energy for each of us. 

     An example for #2: I love computers. I enjoy working on them. I'm the one who will be setting up our new computers, everything from updating and adding the software essentials to managing our security. When working on computers, I am 100% energized and at peace. 

     But that is not how computer work affects everyone. While I walk away from hours working on computers, others are completely exhausted after 30 minutes. Computers are stressful and frustrating for some. 

     So if units of energy are represented by spoons, then not only do I have to use fewer spoons than my comparison person, but it's likely that I will walk away from computer work with more spoons than I started out with. My comparison person will walk away from a computer with zero spoons. 

     One of the consequences of being subjected to long-term emotional abuse is that, as time goes by, we have fewer and fewer spoons. I've been married for over 20 years. The emotional abuse wasn't addressed until just over a year ago. It wasn't taken seriously until last summer. 

     As a consequence, my supply of spoons is frightenedly low. I have little to no coping skills. Yes, I've been in therapy. For a long while. I'm on hiatus right now because of gaps in my health insurance this year. 

     Something you should know about me: I have the worst luck. Like, seriously bad luck. And with my bad luck, sometimes when it rains, it pours. Today was a non-stop, torrential downpour. 

     It started with my former supervisor asking me if I could log into my work laptop. I had been sent an email from HR regarding my resignation and it needed to be addressed. So I did.

     I was not prepared for how emotional that was going to be. I talked to the women who went through training with me when we were all hired nearly two years ago. I said my goodbyes. And I checked my damned email. 

     One of the things I needed to do was follow a link in the email to a digital copy of my resignation and save that file for myself. But, hysterically, when I clicked the link, I received the message that I did not have authorization to view that file. So now I'm crying but also laughing hysterically. 

     I told my supervisor and logged off. My problem is that I needed two pieces of specific documentation so that my husband could add me to his insurance*. One piece was documentation that I am no longer employed there. The other is to document when my health insurance coverage will end as a result of my resignation. 

     My supervisor told me to contact my health insurance - which is another branch of my former employer - and request that they send me a letter called a Certificate of Coverage. 

     Since I was so emotional, I elected to send them a message. Usually they respond right away. This time it took hours. They told me that they could not provide the letter. They could see that I was no longer employed there but their system hadn't updated yet. They could send me the letter 7-10 days after their system updates. 

     How long will it take for their system to update? Really, who tf knows. Anyone who watches the news has probably figured out that my employer does not excel with computer systems. 

     They suggested I contact HR and ask them for a copy of my resignation information to show that I am no longer employed there. With a big, exaggerated sigh, I called them. These calls tend to be so unproductive that the image I use with HR's contact info is a big, fat middle finger.  

     True story: I lost my health insurance at the end of last year because I wasn't working enough hours. But then my hours increased so I became eligible in February. It took HR 29 days to actually get me signed up for said benefit. During those 29 days, I had to open multiple tickets - because they kept closing them without resolving the issue - and received 0 of 7 promised return calls. 

     And then I had to go without any pay on a couple of paychecks because I was eligible on February 1, even though I didn't actually get my coverage until March. That means that not only was I paying my health insurance premium with a deduction from my paycheck but also they took double amounts for a few checks because I had to pay for the February coverage. Coverage I did not get to use.

     Anyway. HR told me that I would need to talk to the benefits center. They transferred me. And then the benefits center picked up the phone and, oopsie, hung up on me. 

This is getting long so I'll continue the saga of the downpour later.

*Health insurance in the US commonly has one sign-up period, usually near the end of the calendar year. Generally, you can add a dependent to your health insurance at any other time only if there is a change in circumstance. And then you have to be able to provide documentation to prove it. 

The Pissy Grumpies

I resigned from my job today. I know it's the right thing to do. I also hate doing it. 

I love working. It provides me with a sense of value. This is probably 30% insight into my mind and 70% insight into how our society works. 

In our society, we value the money that people make. From that, we impute their value. Who do we look down on the most? The poor, the wounded, and disabled.

Yes, it's more than just those categories, work with me, I'm pointing something out.

These groups of people are looked down on because they are viewed as unable to provide value and therefore of less value. In other words, they are "less than". 

So there's that aspect to not working. 

And when I'm working, do you know what I am doing less of? Thinking. Thinking about the problems, the heartaches, the sadness. The angst of life. 

And then my husband came home in a bad mood. He's pissy and whiny and everything stresses him out. I shouldn't complain: There was a time - not that long ago - when being in this mood meant that he'd also be cruel. Which he wasn't. 

For that I am thankful, although his bad moods still put me on edge. Which is telling. 

Anyway, my last act as someone who has a few bucks to her name was to buy new laptops for myself and my husband. Nothing terribly fancy but nicer than what we have. 

See, video games are our entertainment. We very rarely go out, go to movies, etc. But a good video game? Oh, heck yeah. 

We used to play games separately. Now we game together. And I love that. I used to feel like I didn't know him at all. Now we talk. And have gotten to know each other so much better. I find I rather like him. 

Except the pissy grumpies.

It's the Little Things

 One of the things I hate about DDD is that I have to put a lot of thought into doing little things that I used to take for granted. Something as simple as dusting or cleaning a toilet has become a big deal. 

I'm glad my husband isn't the type who thinks that cleaning isn't his job. I do have to consider, though, how much time there is in a day and how much energy he has. He does a lot and I don't want to overwhelm him. 

Doctors are Useless

 I had a post planned out for today. And then I went to my doctor's appointment. 

I have severe Degenerative Disc Disorder. Basically, there's no cushion between my vertebrae. Any of my vertebrae. This means that my vertebrae rub together. This means my vertebrae grind against my nerves. 

This means I am in almost constant pain.

It also means I've been dicked around by doctors for years. 

I was diagnosed in 2019, however, my doctor at that time told me that everyone has DDD, it's a non-issue and oh yeah, lose weight. 

What she did not say is that I was diagnosed with moderate DDD, I have bone spurs on my spine, and significant scoliosis. Who knows what things I've done in the past five years that have made it worse. 

A few weeks ago I woke up in more pain than I have ever been in during my entire lifetime. I gave birth to a child who was the size of a 3-month-old. I've been a pedestrian hit by a Ford F-350. This was worse. I was struggling to walk. 

A couple of hours later, in Urgent Care, I sat with a doctor who quite obviously was shocked that I did not seem to know that I had DDD. He wanted me to see a surgeon. I chose to see my PCP first. 

My PCP wanted an MRI but didn't think the insurance company would approve it without first doing an intensive steroid regimen. He was wrong, because my insurance doesn't require a prior approval for MRIs. But we did the steroids. They took me out of crises level pain but that's all. 

The plan, as my doctor stated it two weeks ago, was to do the steroid regimen and, if that did not help enough, to order an MRI. 

But guess what?!? When I saw him today, he acted as though the issue of an MRI has never before come up. His plan of action for my DDD is to do nothing. Drugs and thoughts and prayers, basically. Oh, and lose weight. 

Of course, he also told my husband it was nice to meet him. 

My husband has been his patient for 8 years.

Emotional Abuse

Trigger Warning: Abuse, Domestic Violence, Self-Harm, Suicide.

My husband is emotionally abusive. He is also working on it. Finally. There is a lot of work to do.

He has never hit me. Emotional abusers do not need their fists. Their words do all the damage. And it does a lot of damage. 

Emotional abuse is domestic violence. 

And the effects of emotional abuse are serious, severe, life altering, and life threatening. 

Short-term effects of emotional abuse can include isolation and loneliness, self-doubt, shame, confusion, low self-esteem, and feeling powerless. 

Long-term effects can include PTSD/C-PTSD, depression, self-harm, suicide attempts, loss of your sense of self, low self-esteem, anxiety, eating disorders, heart palpitations, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, IBS. This is not an exhaustive list.

Victims of emotional abuse have a much higher rate of self-harm and suicide attempts. I self harm. There have been times when I have been unable to leave the house due to the bruises I've left on my face. 

Emotional abuse is insidious. Often I find myself thinking ... how in the hell did I get here? Because it starts out so subtly. And I can look back at my relationship and see where I think it did start. 

But you see, I was the person who knew and understood domestic violence. I grew up with it. I spent years in therapy. I read and I learned and I understood. I was aware. And yet here I am. 

In the last couple of days I've begun to see just how far reaching the effects of the abuse have been. I am seeing how exposure to it has effected my daughters and, subsequently, affected our relationship. And now, heartbreakingly, is ending those relationships. 

Shattered

 I am shattered. My brain is fracturing. I close my eyes and can picture harming myself. Don't worry: I'm a coward. 

Twenty years of emotional abuse. Being judged for the effects of that abuse. Lack of support. Constant crises. It has taken it's toll.

It's interesting to look back at how this year started. On January 1, I was sick. I had a cold. Or thought I did. I was wrong. I had COVID for the first time. 

I went through the entire pandemic in a 1,000 square foot house with 3 other people. Each of the others got sick with COVID at least once. I did not. I told them "I love you but I do not want to see your face for a while." And so I survived. 

The first time I went somewhere - not just since COVID but in a long time - and I got sick. It figures. 

Fast forward four months. There is no area of my life that is without strife and pain. I have lost or am in severe danger of losing everything. Every. Little. Thing. Every person. I keep checking to ensure my ancient dog hasn't died in his sleep because that's how my life is going.