3

So in the past week, three actually good, pretty queer, TV shows have completed their first seasons.  I had forgotten in the years since the actual play just how gay The Mighty Nein was, but am glad not only that the adaptation is very well done but that they kept it up.  Pluribus was just a very good bit of speculative fiction.  And I think that Heated Rivalry managed to improve on the book by editing out the unnecessary.

 

Otherwise, meds change is kicking my arse.  It has been a bit over a week now and is still completely taking me out.  I have never done recreational drugs, but this is what I assume being stoned is like - though I assume being stoned must be a more fun version of it or no-one would do it.

 

I spent Christmas day with Midget and her family.  Her daughter, my goddaughter, is 11.  I am so used to seeing her in public where she is fairly proper and so well behaved she makes me feel like I am not up to standard.  An afternoon of her in her home environment reminded me just how 11 she is.

 

Back to dozing and achieving nothing.  Stupid med change being awful. 

Bah and also humbug and some other miscellaneous antifestive sentiment

When I saw my GP a couple of my meds dosages got UPed.  One because I was on the wean-up dose so the next step was just what does prescribed so that was what I started pretty much straight away.  After fifteen days of that without any problems I started that first stage of the other.

 

The one I was supposed to do a long time ago.  Finally going to the dose the specialist had originally set that I was supposed to get to of the replacement painkillers from when I changed them a couple of years back.  I remembered I would get electric pins and needs when changing temperature so had put it off until summer (and summer last year I got distracted by the whole realising I still had cancer and the hospital knew but wasn't telling me thing).  I had forgotten until a couple of hours after taken the first of the higher doses how much it leaves me feeling completely exhausted and sleepy while I adjust.

 So for the last few days I have done almost nothing but doze.

I did have to leave the house on Sunday night though for my family doing family Christmas early with dinner at China Palace in South D and then present and dessert at my mother's.  It was all a bit much.  So glad I get the actual day without my family.

Why wasn't I an only child? (no further context needed)

I think I forgot to mention the seven weeks of trauma informed yoga classes I was doing that finished Monday before last.  It was mostly weird and uncomfortable because groups.  I am not about group settings.

While I am not sure I learned much yoga, I learned a bit about my trauma triggers - more by having an irrational fear response to someone else in the group rather than by learning to listen to my body - so I guess it counts as a win of some sort.

And completely inappropriately, once the guy who spooked me stopped turning up, I started noticing one of the other guy was distractingly attractive.  He looked like a less fit cross between Cassim from the Aladdin sequel and Instagram's Plant slant guy.  And I was possibly using a greying hair distraction to avoid putting the mental effort that I was supposed to into 'listening to my body'.

The whole opening myself up to my trauma part of therapy doesn’t agree with me.  It may be why I get therapy hangover but no sign at all of any positive effects.

 

On Thursday I had dinner with David, Simon and Joe to celebrate Simon and Joe having returned from foreignistan.  They were pretty out of it with timezone hopping and lack of sleep, but it was mostly pretty nice.

 

Otherwise, what with getting older and the approach of Christmas I have seen too much of my family so my sister is grating my nerves.  Her utter lack of self awareness while constantly criticising people for imagined faults is exhausting.  That and her self-righteousness about things she knows nothing about and arguing inane points from a position of complete ignorance but still being completely convinced that she is beyond correction.

Advanced decrepitude (TW: medical body horror)

Embarrassing health issue of foreskin dermatitis healed up pretty quickly, confirming my self diagnosis had indeed been correct.  But after the discussion with my doctor I think it may be the more embarrassing outcome than it if had been a UTI.  I mean technically the cause is probably the same either way.  The meds I had started the quarter before had a bunch of warnings about both metabolites in the urine and general changes to the chemistry of what is going out and made it clear I was to try and avoid any contact between my urine and my skin, even my foreskin.  I guess at some point I had slightly failed at that.  Thus contact dermatitis so bad that the healing process lead to scales of skin so dry it cracked and bled.   Winning.  So much winning.

 

Otherwise my life has mostly been trying to sleep off an ongoing therapy hangover that doesn't want to move on.  Last weeks therapy session ended up just being about how completely emotional exhausted  I still was the small amount of talking the 'the thing' we had done at the session before.

Too broken for therapy.  Go me!  I'm a fucking champion. 

 

What else is up.

I got older.  I spent the day of my official getting older at my goddaughter's ballet recital.  Many hours of children doing ballet.  I am not a fan of amateur ballet.  I am possibly not a fan of ballet at all.  It was not fun.  But what a good godparent I am.

I have done late night venting my crazy at a close friend while he is in Switzerland and thus awake when I am being extra crazy in the tin y hours of the morning.  To "make it up to him" I am choosing to believe he has somehow bumped into the one Swiss camwhore I know of in the street so has at least had impressive eye candy.  Have I mentioned that I am a crazy person?

 

And the sort of dating situation I stumbling into is... ummm....

I can't tell if it is fizzled or in holding pattern.  He turns up to use me for my TV and food but, probably because of my not sleeping with him, he has been pretty actively hunting hookups on the apps.  So I assume it isn't just me who doesn't think we click.  Though he will occasionally come on very strong with is uncomfortable and doesn't fit with his behaviour the rest of the time, and I am too conflict avoidant to call him out on it.

That'll make ACC happy, except that don't actually care and I just get anxious about it for nothing.

After more than a year of weekly sessions, I briefly got onto the topic with my therapist of the topic for which he is actually funded by ACC for me to talk about for the first time this week.

It has left me feeling physically sick and exhausted.  Because brains are stupid. 

 

I am kind of glads my plans for today cancelled on me, even though they meant I hadn't ordered groceries as they had clashed with the only available delivery slot when I looked two days ago.  So my flat is low of food, especially the sort of food I would really like today while feeling both unwell and unsettled.

Not sure if my possible UTI is actually healing up.  I am being impatient about it regardless.

Awkwardnesses stacked

Yesterday was three medical appointments.

 

The first was at Te Kāika, a medical clinic I only vaguely knew existed.  Seeing it in action and realising how much it was stolen from the Maori health autority when the Nats shut it down and repurposed it (very awkwardly) to both take some over flow from the hospital and also be a Ministry of Social Development centre.  The building really wasn't designed for the way it is being used.

Appointment went fine though, if longer than it should have been as the machine was having issues with me.  So a robot voice kept saying "No eye located" while flashing a green light straight in my eye. And thus the technician had to prod at the eyelids a bunch (without warning).

 

The latter two appointments were at least both at my GP's office.  A nurse going through lifestyle stuff with me and congratulating me on my vastly improved HbA1c, and also poking my feet.

Then for the expected awkward awkwardness with the GP.  Who mostly agreed that what I had self diagnoses as dermatitis healing badly did indeed look like that, and showed no signs of any sort of infection - but as my meds have fungal balanitis pretty high on the side effects list I have been given antifungal hydrocortisone cream to use just to be sure.  The examination was not only awkward in itself, but there had to be a health improvement practitioner in the room (though, fortunately, on the other side of the curtain).

 

That is probably enough medical oversharing.