Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Miss Me?

Yeesh, it's been two weeks since I last wrote.  Sorry.

I also totally dropped the ball on my "30 days of Thanks" project too.  I stopped that on the 22nd... so I missed 8 days of stating something I'm thankful for.

A couple days ago, I acknowledged to myself that it has been a long time since I blogged, and I asked myself why.  The answer is complicated, and I will try to explain, but I think my lack of writing is symptomatic of an over-arching depression... stress... disappointment ... bad-ish mood.

Last I checked in, I had gone back to work, and then taken Wednesday off to recover from going back to work.  I'm still back at work, and it's going... fine? I guess.  Here's the thing, getting back in the swing of working is really good.  It's a step in the right direction.  And, as I've mentioned before, I really like my job.  And this week I'm doing really well - I might even be able to work my full 30 hours.

But

It's really really really hard.

I don't mean work itself, really, it's just the routine.  Or lack there of.  When the time came to go back to work, I was just really getting to a good place at home - I had enough energy to be somewhat productive, and enough time to organize and plan what I could do.  I might have taken me all day to clean the kitchen, but I could do it and then I would have a clean kitchen.

I went back to work with the idea that, for the first couple weeks anyway, my goal each day, my entire to-do list, would be Work 6 hours.  Anything else would be a bonus.  That has been an accomplishable goal, but I would really like to do the anything else as well because I like being able to take care of my house and my stuff  (I'm getting there, yesterday, I did dishes after work. Like a person who is not exhausted).

I would also really like to do something about the prednisone weight, and the extra weight I had before prednisone.  Before I went back to work, I was doing a little bit of exercise every day - it was usually 10 minutes of Yoga or a short walk.  I wasn't on my way to running a marathon or anything, but I felt like I was proactively working toward fixing something I was unhappy with.  I definitely don't have the energy to exercise and work.  Also, feeding myself is something really hard so there have been some not so great dietary choices made since I went back.

Basically, in some ways, going back to work has affected me in almost the same way being really, really sick did; I can't do anything and it's really frustrating!  There are also things for me to stress about that I don't really want to write about right now.

I think there was a part of me that irrationally thought going back to work = getting back to normal.  It's kind of funny how I can know that this process is going to be super long, but also be so disappointed that this process is taking so long.  Disappointment.  That's the darkness that has tinged my last few weeks.

There's also this thing that makes me say "what the hell, self?"  Before I had a doctor tell me "You definitely are having a relapse"  I was fine.  Well, I mean, I couldn't breathe a lot of the time, but I was fine.  I had energy and focus like a normal person.  I just couldn't breathe, which is surprisingly easy to work around.  It wasn't until I was officially sick that I really felt sick.  Part of that was side effects from the prednisone.  I can't help but wonder how much my brain had to do with it though.  Do I feel sick because I know I am sick?  Did I actually feel sick all along and was actually just really good at ignoring my symptoms?  If that's the case, why can't I ignore my symptoms now?  Ok, I know the answer to the last question: because it would be counterproductive and probably slow down the healing process.

The truth is, things really are getting better.  It's slow progress, but we knew it was going to be.

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