Thursday, April 23, 2009

I have a home again. I moved at the end of March into a smallish basement suite. I haven't lived alone in a couple of years and I was a bit nervous about it - what happens if I get really suicidal or fall apart and there's no one sane around to notice? Or as concrete a fear - what happens if I have a bad vertigo attack in the shower (answer: I have a plastic stepstool that I can take into the shower if I'm feeling nervous so I have something to sit on while I get clean). Thanks to the Seroquel I'm also more or less remembering to eat on a regular basis (but still losing weight! I can now fit into a pair of jeans I haven't been able to wear since 2006).

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

A very long radio silence

I have spent most of the last year+ attempting to be a "normal". Well from November 07-June 08 anyways I was working full time and getting sicker by the millisecond. On my way to my job in early December I fainted on transit (something about standing up on a vehicle in motion that activated previously latent vertigo). Sadly, that became more and more prevalent and branched out to also fainting at work. I had a FULL work up of blood tests that determined my:

*cholesterol
*blood sugar+
*thyroid
*and more stuff that they took blood and I have no idea why

were are all NORMAL. No medical cause for the vertigo. As soon as I stopped working, MOST of the vertigo went away (but unfortunately it's still very present on public transit which has led to some VERY awkward moments where I've had to politely tell people with canes that I am unable to give up my seat to them...) and so did a lot of the exhaustion. At that point I was taking a 2 hour nap after work just to have the energy to socialize with my boyfriend or my then house-mate, eat dinner, have a shower and do stuff in the evening. Otherwise I was completely dead exhausted. The over-tired is partially being treated now with Wellbutrin but a lot of it did go away when I stopped working (psycho-somatic much?).

I am almost all the way through my application process for being determined a Person With Disability (PWD from now on) for my PTSD and "mood disorders". My doctor has been very cooperative with me and the disability advocate who is working on my case, and he has filled out pretty much exactly what we hoped he would (aka the stuff that would get me the most help and overall life assistance), so that is hopeful. All that is missing now is a permanent address for me. I am officially homeless as 99% of my life went into a storage locker while the laptop and I go couch surfing but I am a LOT of subsidized housing waitlists (and working with a housing advocate) so hopefully in the next month or so....

+besides being previously diagnosed as hypoglycemic