Tag: cats

Surreal

tragerstreit2 Comments

Man, what even IS my life anymore.

I got a voice mail the day after that last post from my awesome nurse. “Hi, I read your blog, and I have some ideas about the AVAPS.”

Uhhhhh..hi there. I forget that people read this, sometimes. I have the best freaking care team ever, you guys. I got contacted from three different folks to ABSOLUTELY ASSURE ME that the machine would get paid for, the rules are more bendy for folks with ALS so please don’t stress about it. And then thanks to Nurse Awesome, I was contacted yesterday by Providence Respiratory to adjust my settings remotely to ramp that sucker down.

OMG SO MUCH BETTER GUYS.

It had previously been forcing air down my throat so hard my ears were popping. Seriously. I can handle it now. I might even get compliance on my own without my awesome peeps having to argue for leeway. It’s still not exactly comfortable, but it’s so much more manageable.

Thursday was noooooooot a good day, there were a million things going wrong, including hurting myself by trying to lean over in the chair to pull something out from under my wheels. I felt and heard something go POP, and owowowowowow. Not a crack, though, and breathing was still ok, so I just rode it out and after a few days’ soreness I’m alright. Then Thursday night someone said something a bit unkind and I kinda completely lost my shit for awhile. Occasionally there’s a trigger and I mourn the person I don’t get to become. Five years ago, I had my very own house, I had just lost a lot of weight and was fitting in all my cute clothes again, I was going to school to further my career, I had all my shit sorted out and my life was pretty fucking great, actually. Thursday night I let myself grieve for her, because that future is dead, and I let myself be angry at people who say really stupid shit.

Friday I had the distinct displeasure of taking the sodding van in for repair. It cost me $919. I’m extremely grateful to Intel for their short term disability benefit easing me out of the workforce, because fortunately I HAVE that money. For now. Although now the brake light’s coming on. So that’ll be fun.

Saturday I did nothing but sleep and fuck around on the internet.

Sunday I did something SUPER COOL but is not my story to tell, so just believe me when I say it was amazing.

This morning my cat woke me up because I could hear him chewing on plastic. When I located him, he had a huge long piece of cellophane coming out of his mouth, and was choking on it a little. I could not get him to come to me for ANYTHING, and when I stood up and tried to get to him, of course he backed away. I took another step towards him and fell right on my ass. It didn’t hurt, even though I’ve kinda got no muscle in my ass to cushion the fall anymore, but it knocked a bit of breath away.

And then since I was on the floor, my fucking cat decided to come check me out and I was able to get the plastic out of his mouth.

Motherfucker.

The fall didn’t hurt, but getting off the floor did. I wound up sitting on my foot rests and using that wheelchair lift feature to get myself up off the ground, but even with the grab bar on my bed, the chair to push off of, and my walker on standby, I wasn’t able to get over up on the bed. I had to lower myself back to the floor and let myself catch my breath before I tried again, and was very, very grateful to the Depends company for their fine product and my forethought to start wearing them to bed otherwise I’d have exacerbated my situation by having to catch my breath sitting in a puddle.

Welcome to the TMI Show.

Now, I have my awesome watch, so I was never stranded. I always had options. I’m just stubborn as fuck. I texted J but he was not immediately responding, so I tried the wheelchair lift again, and used it to ALSO steer myself right up against the bed this time, and was able to get in bed. And then after catching my breath, getting up to go to the bathroom to change my disposable shorts. I cried for like half a second, but realistically I know this is definitely going to happen again. Probably not the cat part, but there will definitely be another fall, and next time I very probably will not be able to get myself up. It’s twelve hours later and even though I’ve been in bed all day I’m still exhausted from the ordeal. So that sucks. If I hadn’t had such a huge meltdown Thursday, it would have happened today.

So that’s my life, this last week. Kinda a shit show, but there were definitely some good bits in there.

Also I wanna restate that my care team is amazing, especially my nurse. <3

Further conversations with my stupid body, 3AM edition

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A combination of Fall weather finally arriving and making things colder, depression, lethargy, vacation recovery, and a grab bag of other things have seen to it that I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. Saturday was for sleeping. I was in bed Friday at 6PM, screwing around on my laptop and doing my nails, asleep probably around 10, awake and panicky at midnight, medicated and back to sleep until around 11AM. I stayed in bed and played with my phone until about 1:30, took a nap until 6. I wore myself out cleaning the cat box area (THE LITTER ROBOT IS STILL SERIOUSLY THE MOST AMAZING THING YOU GUYS) and vacuuming; emptying the litter tray and refreshing the puppy pads, then running the vacuum cleaner in a couple of spaces was the most energy I was able to put forth, and even that had me dripping in sweat and tired, I’ve been feeling very…fally? lately. Like, any minute I’m going to crash to the ground, because I’m tired and my legs aren’t holding up and my knees keep buckling and there have been a few close calls, so I’ve been very cautious and conserving my energy as much as I can. There were a few times when running the vacuum that I was leaning on the machine for support and nearly dropped a couple of times.

Yesterday though, yesterday was a normal day for the first time in foreeeever. I woke up at 10, and was actually rested. This has not happened in recent memory. I still took a nap from like 2 – 5, but it was a leisure thing and not a necessity and Sunday was otherwise a really normal energy level, productive day. It felt AMAZING. Did loads of laundry, put said laundry away, organized some stuff, put things away, was treated to a short visit by dear friends with a Hello Kitty Cafe delivery (HELLO KITTY MACARONS!), more Skyrim, showered, played with my phone some more and chatted online with friends, and was trying to sleep by 10PM.

Which is when my brain and body decided hey, fuck you. Which was exacerbated by my cat Parmesan, who is old and skinny and the room was cold, and so he insists on sleeping on my face because that’s where the warm air comes out. Which is not conducive to breathing. AT ALL. I have a fuzzy blanket that I usually wrap over him, but it had just come out of the dryer and was still a little damp, turns out, so I shoved it aside and tried to just sleep with this cat on my face and my other cat Ianto trying to nuzzle me too and scratching at the covers to come under but he doesn’t really want to come under the blankets, he wants to stand there half covered while I skritch his head and the moment I stop he will go away. So while I have one cat pawing at me, another dancing on my face with his icy little paws, one blanket short in a cold room, the noise of my upstairs neighbors doing laundry, I somehow managed to fall asleep around 11.

At midnight, I woke suddenly out of a dead sleep. Which is a thing I’ve been doing lately, and it sucks a lot. Like, solid peaceful sleep and then an hour later OH HEY YOU ARE SUDDENLY AWAKE AND YOUR HEART RATE IS OUT OF CONTROL AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHY! WHEEEEE! WAS IT A DREAM? WAS THERE A NOISE? WE WILL NEVER KNOW! HAVE FUN CALMING DOWN AND GETTING BACK TO SLEEP!

My heart is pounding and I’m cold. I want another blanket.

good luck getting up loser

Getting out of bed is becoming a Herculean task, and not because I just don’t wanna. Physically pulling myself out of bed is an effort, which is made worse because I sleep with body pillows and cats. I mean, really, my bed is ridiculous. And comfortable as hell. There’s half of it covered with a ginormous stuffed squid and a cat bed with a heating pad under it, and then a body pillow dividing my side from the squid side, and then a reverse moat of pillows shoring up the other side, so I’m in a sort of delightful pillowy trench when I sleep, with a weighted blanket over my legs. So if I want to get up, not only do I have to dislodge a cat who WILL NOT GET OFF OF ME, I have to wiggle away from the weighted blanket, toss the covers off of me while Parmesan keeps trying to get back on me, and remove the barrier pillow like some velvet rope allowing me exclusive access to Out Of Bed, swinging my legs over the side and lifting my body up by gripping the side of the mattress and pulling. It’s ridiculous, and I’m getting a new bed in January that is awesome and adjustable. But yeah, it’s a Whole Thing, getting out of bed.

don’t fall down LOL

Well that’s kind of up to Body, now. It’s been a jerk lately what with the knee buckling and not being able to vacuum one stupid room without leaning on walls. OK. Mission accomplished, blanket retrieved (mmmm fuzzy) and OK GOD PARM GIVE ME A MINUTE TO SETTLE IN. Ok. Sleeps now.

1AM: twitch! twitch! your arm is twitchy! ha ha ha! and your hand! twitch! Twitch! Isn’t this fun! It’s like being poked with a stick from the inside!

2AM: hey. hey. hey.

What?

Your foot itches. Like, REALLY BAD.

Goddammit. Who cares. Sleep.

Itchy! We’re SUPER ITCHY! itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy!

OH MY GOD. FINE. *scratch*

Itchy! itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy!

*scratches forever*

OW OW OW OW OW YOU ARE BLEEDING WHAT THE HELL!! STOP! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Oh my god, body, shut up. Stop itching. Sleep!

maybe you should get that checked out by a doctor cause your foot’s been itchy a lot

It is WINTER. My skin is DRY. WHATEVER. SHUT UP. SLEEP.

2:45: dry skin doesn’t come with little bitty blisters, just sayin’

I do not want a doctor visit. I have had enough of the doctor visits for all time. Shut up.

itchy itchy

3:30AM: cramps! crampy crampy cramps! All down your arm! NO DON’T STRETCH YOUR HAND BACK LIKE THAT the OT said you’ll get claw hands if you overextend your hands like that, make a fist!

But that doesn’t stop the cramping at all and it just hurts more!

oh my god we’re going to have claw hands forever in no time you can’t even open a packet of chips anymore, you have to make a claw hand and tear it with your knuckles i wonder how long we have left of opening cat food cans our cats are gonna starve oh no

Fuck off, brain, it’s fine, they make automatic can openers you know. OK. Hands stopped cramping. *yaaaaawwwn*OWQOWOWOWOWOW WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WHY DO I GET CRAMPS IN MY SHOULDERS WHEN I YAWN WITH MY HEAD TURNED. WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT. OW OW OW OW WHY IS THIS HAPPENING.

I dunno. Fucking ALS, man.

your muscles are dying and it hurts because you’re dying

SLEEP. OH MY GOD.

4AM: hey remember when we didn’t have to lean our head against the bathroom stall to pull our pants up that was pretty weird huh how you could just stand up without even thinking about it

Go to sleep, brain.

no but seriously we can’t even stand up in the braces anymore we have to balance on something that is some fucked up shit i wonder when the chair will happen

4:15AM: we are going to have to get some help cleaning the apartment because that is ridiculous and out of control i mean do we even need to live in a space bigger than this because we can’t even manage this space as it is

FUCKING SLEEP. JUST LET ME SLEEP.

Let’s take some Ambien!

One, that’s a stupid idea because it’s way too late. Two, we don’t have any more.

shit. ok. Well we can fall asleep without it. This bed is comfy, and Parm has stopped dancing around.

I can’t wait for the new bed.

we don’t need a king sized new bed because no one is going to sleep with us ever again

MOTHERFUCKER.

haha you should post about all of that and call it tmi train to traumatown or something

My love life or lack thereof is not something I want to talk about on the blog.

why not people want to know what kind of sex lives dying people have i’m sure

THERE IS NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT.

and that’s the title right there

4:45AM: hey the inside of your leg itches now. scratch it. A lot. HEY OW THAT IS TOO MUCH.

5AM: *Molly decides it’s Time For Love. She does this thing where she reaches out and just puts her paw on my mouth. And then ducks out of the way when I try to pet her. It’s cute as hell but I hate this game*

5:30AM: Hey guys would now be a bad time to have a really nasty headache?

YES.

yes

TOO BAD BECAUSE HERE WE GO!

we’ve been having a lot of these i wonder if it’s a tumor

NO IT IS JUST BECAUSE YOU WON’T SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME SLEEP. SLEEP IS A THING WE SHOULD BE DOING.

6AM: *Parmesan decides to tell me he’s hungry, leaves to potty, and then comes back with more Dance of the Icy Toes on Your Face*

6:45: Well I am awake. And I do not want to be. I wonder if my alarm is going to go off soon. Let’s see…Yep. 5 minutes. FUCK.

*Ianto finds a plastic bag and starts playing with it*

I HATE EVERYTHING.