![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feldmanIn the past couple weeks I've had a d&c, been diagnosed adhd, gotten my period, gotten meds, and today I'm experimenting on my brain chemically.
The d&c was a masterpiece of self-advocacy, as I negotiated a stirrups procedure into a humane knocked-out one with a more complete screen + therapeutic value. At my follow-up I will get a med to forestall the elevators of blood I've been losing. The idea of another "justalittlebitmorealmostdone!" experience was giving me the literal shits, and I'm like, "you guys can knock me out for thebutt dentist colonoscopy, you sure as hell can for this." So they knocked me out like a zoo animal and cleaned me out like a pumpkin. I'm annoyed to still be bleeding, as the spotting has turned into a period right on time : /
Between the problematic menstruation, and spending 2022 rewiring my brain (firmware), and getting the manual (cognitive testing) and power adapter (meds) for it, I'm feeling downright adolescent. It's not great Bob, what with all the 1980's remixing we're also doing in the news. To celebrate--or maybe reassure myself that we're not repeating, we're spiraling through spacetime and there's way more momentum on my side too these days--I'm rereading Bloom County.
So far today I've done laundry, dishes, actually cooked myself a breakfast, ate it, froze the rest for lunch this week, picked out what to watch in under 5 minutes (twice!), found the cords for both laptops, dug out my watercolors, watched enough Bob Ross episodes to get thinky about his teaching techniques, opened up Scrivener, updated my neglected laptop, restarted it, and went back into Scrivener.
I didn't even take the full dose, I took a quarter this morning, and another half at 2pm. We'll see how that affects sleepiness at bedtime, and then try a full dose on SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! [monster truck noises]. Seriously, though, I've gone from trying to push a shopping cart along train tracks to feeling like I've had a ramp installed between thought and deed.
The psychiatrist was so salty about my schooling, I felt I needed to clarify. This was the 70s/80s, I was a small quiet girl who tested well. Nearly every teacher assumed "laziness" was why I wasn't performing as well as they felt entitled to, and "procrastination" the reason I was always late. One teacher chalked it up to gifted flakiness. My parents knew I was reading at college level in 3rd grade, I was pulling a B average and devouring the nonfiction sections of 3 local libraries, so, what problem? There was ONE kid on ritalin in my whole elementary school experience through 7th grade, a white boy seething with excitement and rage who put me in a chokehold once. He often sold his meds to a classmate who probably needed them like I did, poor girl--it did stop her weekly eraser-burns, which I appreciated as a bystander.
Kids with issues tended to be swept into special ed and never seen again, because working class school district expectations and young boomer parents who didn't know any better. I still feel lucky to have missed the 'gifted program' that came in my brother's time. Though I will admit to intense satisfaction updating my mother I'm just as goddamned smart, and I did it backwards and in heels.
Though honestly, my brother should probably also be tested. I had very little notion of how selectively impacted my memory and skills were, how much I re-frame everything into spatial relations, constantly cueing myself with my environment like past me is a hobo leaving signs outside town for future me. Dude gets more migraines than I do. Kiddo is getting tested as well, hell yes.
Okay, then! Markedly verbose compared to recently, but recently I was drowning. I felt like I was slipping under bog water. Turns out I'd been swimming an icy channel all my life, and here I stand shaking on a strange new shore.
The d&c was a masterpiece of self-advocacy, as I negotiated a stirrups procedure into a humane knocked-out one with a more complete screen + therapeutic value. At my follow-up I will get a med to forestall the elevators of blood I've been losing. The idea of another "justalittlebitmorealmostdone!" experience was giving me the literal shits, and I'm like, "you guys can knock me out for the
Between the problematic menstruation, and spending 2022 rewiring my brain (firmware), and getting the manual (cognitive testing) and power adapter (meds) for it, I'm feeling downright adolescent. It's not great Bob, what with all the 1980's remixing we're also doing in the news. To celebrate--or maybe reassure myself that we're not repeating, we're spiraling through spacetime and there's way more momentum on my side too these days--I'm rereading Bloom County.
So far today I've done laundry, dishes, actually cooked myself a breakfast, ate it, froze the rest for lunch this week, picked out what to watch in under 5 minutes (twice!), found the cords for both laptops, dug out my watercolors, watched enough Bob Ross episodes to get thinky about his teaching techniques, opened up Scrivener, updated my neglected laptop, restarted it, and went back into Scrivener.
I didn't even take the full dose, I took a quarter this morning, and another half at 2pm. We'll see how that affects sleepiness at bedtime, and then try a full dose on SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! [monster truck noises]. Seriously, though, I've gone from trying to push a shopping cart along train tracks to feeling like I've had a ramp installed between thought and deed.
The psychiatrist was so salty about my schooling, I felt I needed to clarify. This was the 70s/80s, I was a small quiet girl who tested well. Nearly every teacher assumed "laziness" was why I wasn't performing as well as they felt entitled to, and "procrastination" the reason I was always late. One teacher chalked it up to gifted flakiness. My parents knew I was reading at college level in 3rd grade, I was pulling a B average and devouring the nonfiction sections of 3 local libraries, so, what problem? There was ONE kid on ritalin in my whole elementary school experience through 7th grade, a white boy seething with excitement and rage who put me in a chokehold once. He often sold his meds to a classmate who probably needed them like I did, poor girl--it did stop her weekly eraser-burns, which I appreciated as a bystander.
Kids with issues tended to be swept into special ed and never seen again, because working class school district expectations and young boomer parents who didn't know any better. I still feel lucky to have missed the 'gifted program' that came in my brother's time. Though I will admit to intense satisfaction updating my mother I'm just as goddamned smart, and I did it backwards and in heels.
Though honestly, my brother should probably also be tested. I had very little notion of how selectively impacted my memory and skills were, how much I re-frame everything into spatial relations, constantly cueing myself with my environment like past me is a hobo leaving signs outside town for future me. Dude gets more migraines than I do. Kiddo is getting tested as well, hell yes.
Okay, then! Markedly verbose compared to recently, but recently I was drowning. I felt like I was slipping under bog water. Turns out I'd been swimming an icy channel all my life, and here I stand shaking on a strange new shore.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 10:43 am (UTC)Hugs
no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-25 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-25 11:46 am (UTC)Because I was mining that community for executive function assists and seeing familiarity, and thinking "gosh, it's hard enough keeping track of things and initiating actions, I can't imagine how much harder these folks have it!"
Even full testing report in hand I've had trouble beating down the imposter syndrome, "well isn't it just so convenient you can blame your flakiness on this?"
Yeah, it's sure as hell not flakiness if the adhd meds help it!
no subject
Date: 2022-07-25 12:29 pm (UTC)*hugs*
I understand now. Thank you for explaining. <3
I'm so glad you have answers and that things are slotting into place for you.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-25 02:13 pm (UTC)Because that kind of error, where I express myself in a mental shorthand and then need to unfold it in rewrites or verbally unspool it piece by piece, is something I hadn't realized had been so impacted in the last couple years. So getting that back is reassuring! But also, I need to be aware I'm doing that again, now that words are flowing enough to get out of me in the first place.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-28 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 05:45 pm (UTC)And wow, such a different and new place to be, health-wise, in just a year. I hope that you have good explorations of the new shore and that things get easier.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 07:33 pm (UTC)