Wiped Right Out

Ever have one of those days/weeks/months where you just feel completely out of whack? That's me right now. I can't put my finger on why although it's likely just related to the whole chain of events. The last few weeks seem more like a soap opera then real life. So much drama. It really started at th beginning of June when I called tech support. Things had been going really well and life was on the way up. Then it rapidly went downhill with the way I was treated calling tech support. Then there was the fondue. Trying to get a replacement computer was like pulling teeth and caused a great deal of frustration. That just dragged on and took a toll on me. Last weekend I said it was like high school... yeah it only got worse from there. So still reeling from that and then to be troubleshooting the brand new computer. Turns out it really is DOA after all :( Oh yeah and now I am battling an infection. All I know is that I am tired all the time. I slept for 12 hours the other night... but that could also be stemming from the all nighter I decided to pull waiting for the computer. I'm hoping that things turn around and soon.

Long Stretch at Work

Today was day number 4 at work. Normally that would not be a bad thing but it is Monday number 4. I am on a long stretch at work.... 8 days in a row to be exact. It would've been 7 but someone else wanted Tuesday off and I figured one more day wasn't going to kill me.

With the sickness... and the workload it has been a long week. Being on days has not helped me either. Lucky for me on Sunday I switch back to nights. I never thought I would be so happy to be on nights. I love having my evenings free but I have a tough time going to bed early and am always so tired.

Next week there is also a big audit going on. Needless to say a lot of people are stressed at work at the moment. My last day of this long stretch is the first day of the audit. So I can't wait until Wednesday... the first day of my weekend.

Mac Truck

I feel like I've been run over by a Mac truck. I knew I had been pushing myself way too hard at work and now I am paying the price. I should've known it was only a matter of time. Ever had the flu? You know how you feel like you have NO energy? It takes all of your strength just to get out of bed and you make it about as far as the couch and that's it. You don't want to cook... eat... or do anything else. Really the only thing that you want to do is go back to bed because there is no pain. But it's not just a lack of energy. There is also the pain. All my muscles also hurt. They are reminding me that I need to pace myself. You can't just give 110% all the time and keep it up. Eventually you will crack and that is exactly what happened. Hopefully I can learn from this. But it usually takes me a few tries to learn something. I have a thick skull. And I don't know any other way. I don't know how not to give it my all.

Fatigue

I think everything has finally caught up with me... I am really fatigued right now. I knew the Fibromyalgia was being aggravated and now I am really feeling it. I've spent much of the afternoon crashed on the futon. Dinner became whatever I didn't have to cook. Buying a deep fryer was one of the best things I could've done. I get really frustrated like this... because I feel really weak. I'm used to being fairly active and able to get work done so it's tough to be KO'd and not able to do much. It is a reminder that I do need to pace myself and know my limits. Otherwise this is the end result.... I crash and burn... and it takes a few days to recover.

Health Woes

'Tis the season for everyone to be sick... I think I am still battling something at the moment. Now the toothache might be playing a role in the sinus congestion but I'm not sure. All I know is that I am dehydrated and congested. I'm having issues breathing. I think I go through half a box of Kleenex a day. Even at work the air seems really dry. I'm also really fatigued as a result. Right now it's midnight and I could go to bed now... if I didn't have some work to do any ways. In the morning I don't want to get up. I just want to sleep. Zzzzzz Zzzzzzz Zzzzzzzz

The heat here hasn't helped anything. They came in on Friday to fix it. They welded the controller back on. But the heat seems to be inconsistent at best. There was a cold streak so the heat had dropped below 70 degrees. It was cold to the point I needed a blanket to stay warm. No wonder I am sick at the moment. I had to crank the heat all the way to get the heat back up. Now it seems to be about 22-23 no matter where the temperature is set to. I haven't turned it completely off to test but I suspect the result will be the same.

I'm trying not to call in sick since it will affect my holiday pay and my vacation pay. But I may not have a choice. The good news is that if I do need to call in sick I am working extra hours over Christmas and will get paid for the sick days. But for now... time to drink some more water and use the saline nasal spray I have to try and get rid of this cold.

Invisible Disease

I was talking to Adam earlier tonight and he was saying that he knows someone with Fibromyalgia. They seem to be using it as an excuse to be lazy and he thought of me. I am able to hold down a full time job and don't use it as an excuse. Having said that I also try to do too much and suffer in silence. Fibromyalgia is called an "invisible disease" because you don't appear to be sick. It's a struggle every day for me to get out of bed and go to work. People don't see that. I don't think that fatigue is a good enough reason to miss work but it is hard. All I want to do is get some rest.

But rest is a foreign concept. My immune system was already weak and then I had the flu. That was the end... I'm not sure I ever really recovered from that. I lost 20 pounds... as if I had 20 pounds to lose. I went back to work too soon and tried to finish the semester at school. Not a good scene. Plus I moved in with Adam around the same time. I never got away from the fatigue and it just kept getting worse. But I wouldn't let on how bad it was... as I struggled to get out of bed... never really being awake... I don't even have the energy to be social.

My life revolves around going to work and then going home... It's all I have the energy for. And even then it's debatable. I am still amazed that I can function at work and manage to keep going. It is sheer determination and willpower. That's for damn sure. But there are two things in my favour at work. For one, it's not manual labour. Second, I'm not taking calls all day now so I do get a lot of mini breaks. I find that I need that to get through the day.

I know I should go back to the doctor. But doctors don't seem to take fatigue seriously. Again it's not something that you can easily see (unlike the infection I was battling a couple of weeks ago) and it takes a lot of work to determine why it is. And for me to get to Pickering isn't exactly convenient. So I continue to suffer in silence with this invisible disease.

Three Day Weekend

I seem to be updating my blog sporadically... I am just coming off a three day weekend at the moment. It was pretty relaxing. Azrael makes a really good therapist. I wanted to get a picture of him when he was curled up on the futon beside me. I did get a couple of pictures today when he was helping me with laundry. He loves it when I do laundry... He curls up in the warm pile of clothes and will fight me as I want to put them away.

Not a whole lot to update on... That would require me having a life. I spent most of the weekend resting, much like I do every weekend. Terry and Steve came by for a visit on Friday. It was a pretty short visit. They were heading to the bar... and I have no real desire to go there. I don't mind the occasional drink with dinner.. especially daquiries but heading to the bar to get tanked isn't what I really want to spend my time off doing.

Still hoping the fatigue goes away. After the work day ends I don't have a whole lot of energy to do anything. And on my days off I seem to just crash... sleep for 12 hours. I am slowly seeing some of the energy come back but it's a long, hard road... I try and force myself to be active but in doing so I also have an increase in pain. There's a balance in there somewhere.

And tomorrow it's back to the grindstone. Wishing there were more hours in the work day so I could get done everything that I wanted to... No rest for the wicked... I can multi-task with the best of them but sometimes that's not enough. Or maybe I am too ambitious... wanting to be able to listen to the calls, do trend analyses, mentor agents, and run training sessions... Okay so it's a bit much... but I can dream.

Vacation

I think this vacaton is exactly what I needed. When I came back to work after my LOA I thought I should be at 100%. After all I had just had 7 weeks off. But I was really only fooling myself. Sure, things were a lot better. I am much more relaxed at work now. But my LOA wasn't exactly a vacation. Throughout my time off there were a great deal of mixed emotions. It's not like it was my choice. At first it was one thing.. I thought it was only going to be a few days off and then life would go back to normal. Then it really started to unravel... I was ambushed at the doctor's office. They sent me to a doctor that doesn't even believe Fibromyalgia is real so my reality was marginalized, something I thought I had finally gotten away from. It took 17 years to get the diagnosis and now I had a doctor telling me, once again, tht it's all in my head. He thought it was depression and every behaviour just reinforced that opinion. On any given day I meet some of the symptoms for depression since I do suffer from insomnia and have for almost a decade. The fatigue stems from the insomnia, the Fibromyalgia, and just from stress. Fatigue can also be responsible for some of the other symptoms... like difficulty processing information and not being as involved in activities. What the doctor attributed to a loss of interest in life activities wasn't entirely accurate. It's not that the interest wasn't there... it was that I didn't have the energy to follow through. Depression also involves a change from previous functioning... Fatigue was about the only real change and it impacted a number of other areas. But because of the mention of self-injury the doctor believed that I must be depressed and it was a cry for help. So the underlying issues weren't going to be treated. I was sent for a crisis evaluation at the hospital and the doctor outright said he wanted me on strong anti-depressants before he would allow me to return to work. Now we can add blackmail to the list of things that went wrong with the LOA. It was supposed to be time to relieve that stress and have a mini vacation but it was anything but. When I went back to work I was more relaxed... but I had also been sleeping in while I was off so I wasn't quite as fatigued. I was also moved to another team which helped tremendously. It allowed me to be much more relaxed. I was away from Chris... and from Steve... hidden in my little corner. Plus Christie and I have been friends for 3 years now.

So that was the LOA... the "stress break" that wasn't. I wasn't expecting much of the vacation. But since I got rid of the unwanted guest... it has really allowed me to just be. I don't have to talk to anyone and can just relax. During my LOA Steve was around which didn't help. Now there is no one... just me. Well me and Azrael but he's pretty quiet... except at 2:00 in the morning when he has his bear. I really needed this time to unwind and while I don't expect the fatigue to just magically disappear (would be nice if it did) I can filter out all the noise and just rest. And since it's just me that also means that I don't have to listen to certain people, faking their concern, while really just manipulating me. I call this week my stress free diet.

Drum Roll Please...

So Thursday night I got home just after 10:00. Steve didn't get here until 10:40. All I want to do is get to Scarborough at this point. On the way out of town he decides to stop at Sobey's to look for flowers for his ex-wife since it was their anniversary. Then he had to drop them off. Could it not have waited? It's not like Scarborough is only 10 minutes away. Fortunately it was late enough that traffic was light so we got there just after midnight.

Then there was the motel... Talk about a dive. Maybe it's just because I like my own space and am not crazy staying elsewhere. No that's not it... it really was a dive. It was really hot in there too. I suspect that was more related to the fact that Steve seems to like a sauna and prefers it to be 90 degrees. But it made the room smell musty... this coming from the person with almost no sense of smell. It also made it really difficult to breathe and I ended up pretty dehydrated. Then there was the fact Steve was there. That always makes me cringe. In told I think I I got a little over 3 hours and then was awake for the rest of the night. As bad as it was I am still glad I went up the night before. Sure I was exhausted when I got to work but it meant not having to deal with rush hour and not being as stressed. Plus Mapquest and I had a few issues. We ended up having to ask someone how to get there.

And since I know you're reading this to find out how it actually went with the doctor.... In told the trip cost about $100 and I spent 5 minutes with the doctor before he redid the tests that had been done 3 times now. Needless to say that was kind of annoying. But he did give me good news. My platelet count is now back to where it should be. :o) My white blood cell count is still low but the hematologist said it wasn't low enough to really be concerned about. So that is definitely good news!!! No bone marrow biopsy. The downside is that they still don't know why I am so fatigued. I know that can happen for a number of reasons... but I hate it. It controls my life and I'd really like some of my energy back.

My Brain Hurts

I think my brain actually hurts right now from too much thinking... Don't worry I am not starting another philosophical debate at the moment... I have a few topics I could delve into but tonight I am just going to relax. Maybe I am just tired from having to actually be up this morning. I couldn't sleep in until 11. I had to actually be awake and somewhat functioning at 9:00 a.m. I must admit though that it is nice to be off at 5:30 and be able to enjoy the evening. But at the same time I do end up really tired. And at the moment I need to go to the post office before work... and I really do not want to be up that early. Maybe on Wednesday... maybe. But for now... time to watch a movie... get away from the computer and get to bed around midnight.

Is No News Always Good News?

I got to thinking yesterday that there might be a reason the doctor's office hasn't called. When I called them they said "No news is good news" but that may not be true. There are three possibilities at this point.

1. The test results came back and everything is fine
2. The test results have not come back
3. The test results came back but since they are referring me to a hematologist they are just not telling me the results were low

Since it's been 3 weeks now I am pretty sure the test results are back. If the blood work did come back fine then I would really like to know why I am so tired all the time. I would put my money on the last answer. When I was at the doctors he said he would likely be referring me to a hematologist and he assumed the results were going to show the same thing this time around as well. They had already repeated the blood work and both times showed the white blood cell count and the platelet count to be low. So yes it is entirely possible that as far as blood work goes I am normal (since we all know I am not actually normal) but I am thinking I'll be hearing from the hematologist.

Weekend of Nothingness

Sometimes nothing is a good word. That would about sum up my weekend. No commitments... no responsibilities.... just nothingness. It's been great so far and I still have another day to go. Okay so I have laundry to do but that really doesn't require much. Just sleep and R&R. Azrael is also getting plenty of attention. I really needed the 3 days off to unwind. I've had a lot of one day weekends recently. I've also had a lot of stress with work and trying to meet the mandate. And with another performance coach that refuses to accept help. Then there is my health. Fatigue... and then the nerve damage from the doctor. So I am very happy to have time off. Next week I am also on nights so I should be a little more rested. It is such a change for me. I am so used to being busy all the time. I don't do so well at relaxing. I always want to be doing something. But it's nice to be able to just watch tv and curl up with Azrael. On Tuesday I can see me not wanting to go into work... but since I am not a millionaire I will be heading back. Since Pat is back and the aces are under control work is relaxing for the most part. Sure it's not always like that... that's why it's called work but I am enjoying it a lot more then I was in the past. Now back to the TV.... and maybe even some more time with Azrael before I head off to bed. It's all about the nothingness.

Trial by Fire

I think that calling it a "trial by fire" is the best way to describe the beginning of 2006. As much as I was at peace with being off work and looked at the benefits (getting a family doctor, treating the fibromyalgia, working on getting healthy, chronotherapy to change my sleep patterns) right now I am starting to feel anger again. A lot of that could be the stress from finances as I mentioned already. It has cost me a great deal to be off work.

I don't agree with the way it was handled by work... or by the doctors. Yes, I was having some performance issues at work. One of them was my sales. Sales have always been a weak point for me, that's nothing new. Been there for over 3 years and I've never been able to consistently make the sales quota. As for my tone on calls I can think of a few reasons for that. The biggest one is the fatigue. I was tired all of the time and was having difficulty with thought process. I got a verbal warning after my team leader listened to the end of a call... she didn't even hear the beginning of it. Whatever... When they forced me to take a leave of absence from work I was told that since I had given away a knife to a coworker so I wouldn't be tempted to go back to the self-injury I was considered a "threat to myself or others" and would need to be cleared by a doctor to return to work. I found out later I had the right to refuse the LOA but they did not tell me that. It wasn't until I went to the doctor that he said it was because of "my performance issues at work, numerous physical complaints, and the fact I brought a knife to work." Nothing like stacking the deck against me. I have fibromyalgia so, of course, there are going to be a number of physical complaints. Aside from when I was forced to go home on account of pain I didn't use it as an excuse not to do my job. Giving the knife to a coworker was a bad call, no argument from me there. But that does not mean I am a threat to anyone... and if I was considered to be such a threat to myself why did it take so long to act on it? And why did they allow me to just go home? Obviously, I wasn't really a threat to myself then. See also my post on the Bill of Rights for Those Who Self-Harm.

Then there was the treating physician, Dr. Caskey. First, he told me that fibromyalgia is typically a symptom of a psychiatric disorder. I guess we're back to the idea that it's all in your head... despite what the research has shown. He felt I must be depressed and that giving the knife away was a "cry for help." No... now if I had gone back to the cutting that might be true but I hadn't. I got rid of it to remove the temptation. Then he wanted me to go to the hospital to get a diganosis of depression and put on medication so that I could return to work. He blackmailed me into it by making psychiatric treatment a condition of clearing me to return to work. Then turned around and did not allow me to return to work... and now seems to be stalling with the medical certificate. I feel like having a little chat with him right about now. But I did what i was told... played up every negative aspect of my life and got the script for Zoloft. Since he didn't clear me to return to work any ways that was a mistake. Put my health in jeopardy and then my mental health.

While I was off I went to the walk-in clinic to try and get a referral to a rheumatologist. Since I was still under the assumption that Dr. Caskey was going to allow me to return to work, now that I was medicated (or so they thought any ways), I didn't ask about going back to work. In hindsight I probably should've. He told me that no one in Peterborough would treat fibromyalgia cases. Ever feel like you're fighting a losing war? By this point I sure did.

Then work told me that I had not been cleared to return to work and would not be coming back until the follow-up visit with the psychiatrist... more blackmail. Since I wasn't on any medication it was time for my third trip to the hospital... and time to be honest about my motivations for saying what I did the first time around. I get the impression they thought I was lying or in denial. They refused to allow me to return to work but did change the medication... to a Benzodiazapine that I became addicted to.

Getting an idea of how much of a nightmare the last 5 weeks have been? They weren't even treating the right thing the entire time. At this point I finally decided to locate a family doctor and seek treatment outside of Peterborough. Ended up with a doctor in Pickering. It was the first time I was validated by someone in the medical community. He acknowledged that fibromyalgia was real and that he would refer me to a rheumatologist so that it could be treated properly. Finally getting somewhere... I saw him earlier this week. He took me off the Oxazapam and put me on Trazadone for the sleep. Now that I am on my third medication in 5 weeks... but it's a step in the right direction.

Interestingly enough, the best medical advice has come from my chiropractor. She mentioned that I may not be getting enough iron and even though I was taking a supplement the medication may be counteracting it. So I went and talked to a pharmacist. She recommended increasing the level of iron, as well as the dosage. As soon as I did that I noticed quite a difference. I have a LOT more energy now and am not sleeping for 12 hours a day and still feeling exhausted. So what they needed to do from the start was actually do some tests which would've revealed the anemia (I am a walking medical textbook case *lol*) and had they treated that, along with the sleep I would've been better off.

The last step came from me when I went through the chronotherapy. It was undoubtedly one of the most brutal things I've gone through. I didn't think it was going to be so rough. I also didn't think it would be so bad that I would hit the point where I was so tired I would start hallucinating. But any ways... that is now over and I am actually on a better sleep schedule. I am still tired but in time that should improve.

To recap: the high points have come from a doctor in Pickering, my chiropractor, and my decision to go through chronotherapy while I was off. But if you ask Dr. Caskey it's all just depression. As Adam said, "If they want to diagnose you with depression then they can diagnose us all at one point or another." We all go through bad times... it's part of life. The low points are the way work treated the self-injury, followed by the treatment from the physician and the psychiatrists. What did I learn? Don't say anything to anyone at work... it just comes back to bite you in the ass.... and if you need treatment seek it outside of Peterborough.

Favazza (1998) states, quite definitively, that

. . . self-mutilation is distinct from suicide. Major reviews have upheld this distinction. . . A basic understanding is that a person who truly attempts suicide seeks to end all feelings whereas a person who self-mutilates seeks to feel better. p. 262.

If you follow that... I was not a threat to myself and should not have been forced to take time off work on account of the self-injury. They never even asked me about it or got my opinion on the situation. Then to be blackmailed into psychiatric treatment. I feel violated by that fact. My parents can't even force treatment on me and I should have had the right to refuse treatment. But since I do want to return to work I did not have a choice but to go along with it. I guess it's no wonder I feel angry, betrayed.