how long does it take to watch one documentary?

from 6:10 this morning until 9:20 tonight i watched one 3 1/2 hour pbs documentary on the great mark twain.  i had hopes that it would spur me to write today.  i've been on a long hiatus from the book i started in september and cannot seem to pick it back up.  i wanted to watch and ruminate on the prolific twain and thereby motivate myself to work a little. 

however, i was interrupted by several little "power naps" (hallelujah!), making my morning coffee, walks with winston, chasing a lizard out of the house (with the church of Christ broom) to save him from the wrath of maeve, making my afternoon coffee and finally a 3:00 phone call from my brother letting me know that our grandmother is back in the hospital. 

he picked me up and we went to see her.  it's pneumonia this time.  it seems she may be unable to go home after this.   those of you who are so inclined, please keep her in your prayers.  we had a nice visit and stopped to get dinner; i was very anxious to get home.  hospitals and loud restaurants (dalts, for those of you familiar with nashville) are among the numerous places i do not feel comfortable in these days.

i spend so much time being afraid that there is something out there, one final straw, that will finally break my back.  that there is some inevitable unknown event from which i will be unable to recover.  something i will not be able to stand.  such is life with anxiety.  it's a lot of waiting for the other shoe to drop and worrying about my ability to catch it, or ignore it, or step over it, or whether or not i still have its mate or if that, too, washed away.

grace and peace    

timeline

an interesting phenomenon in my life these days seems to be the way in which i view time itself.  instead of the age-old division of B.C. and A.D., of which i am accustomed, or "before my time" v. "in my lifetime" i have begun to think of time only in regard to pre-flood v. post-flood.  a few examples:

the other day while getting ready to cautiously venture outside the house i was looking for a t-shirt that i wanted to wear, one that i was sure i had seen and worn since the flood.  it is nowhere to be found.  i spent a long time trying to pinpoint the last place i saw it or wore it and it's impossible to do since the dresser it should be in is new, the closet shelves, where most of my t-shirt are stacked, are new.  it's as if my whole pre-flood life is non-existent. 

will there ever be a time when i can just get dressed and not think of my clothes as post-flood?  will i ever put on a t-shirt donated by a local church and not think of it as the "nazarene t-shirt" or use a broom that i don't call the "church of Christ broom" or use a clorox cleaning product without calling them the "baptist wipes?"

in my search for a book this week i ran across a john grisham that i had never heard of:  the broker.  i read all his books and couldn't believe i hadn't seen this one before.  that is until i saw the date of publication which was late march, 2010; pre-flood.  right around the time i got bronchitis, which became pneumonia, which led to my being fired, which came 2 whole days before the flood took what was left of my comfortable life.  i wonder how much i've missed.  those things that pre-flood would have been among the most important of my life:  the newest book to read, the newest album to buy, the newest movie to look forward to...

while walking winston this morning i found myself in what i call the "watch out for sinkholes" mode.  post-flood we have to be careful where we step, there are holes out there large enough to swallow the cat, the pug and even me.  regardless of the amount of dirt, grass and mulch that has been replaced and the numerous times the sinkholes have been filled in they remain a constant reminder that this is my post-flood life and that the very ground itself is not the same as it once was.  (and not as safe.) 

the water that destroyed my neighborhood flowed freely through our homes and our streets for 5 days before the river crested and finally receded.  in that time we were not allowed within a certain number of yards from the subdivision (not that i wanted to be anywhere near the place!)  from sunday (the day of the flood) until friday when i had to face the aftermath, the only information i could get about the state of things was seeing my house under water on the news.  at least 3 times i saw it on-air as canoes drifted by and reporters shot footage of the damage.  the ground itself has not recovered, though they did, just this month, finally pave the streets and grant us relief from potholes too numerous to count.

the near-constant headache this week elicited advice to put ice wrapped in a cloth over my eyes.  i remembered that i had a gel mask that is kept refrigerated for just that purpose.  i got into the kitchen with my hand on the door of the fridge before i remembered that the mask was in the door of my pre-flood fridge not the post-flood fridge.  it's gone.  as i lay on the couch, a baggie of ice wrapped in an ikea dishtowel on my eyes, i pondered how, nearly 16 months after the flood, i can still be reminded daily of what is gone, but more importantly what is different.  life is harder post-flood.  life is full of little shocks and big losses.  over and over again.

i am in awe of those trauma specialist who tell me that recovering from a trauma like this takes years and years because i don't see how one can survive the daily onslaught of grief and uncertainty for that long without going insane.  though i suppose the purpose is to survive it, to not let it break you.  i'm still here.  surviving...barely, it seems.

grace and peace 

    

sounds of my day

i have always been sensitive to loud noises.  the family story is that my parents and older brother could never stay out for 4th of july fireworks because i would place my hands over my ears and scream until they whisked me into the car and took me home.  now, with PTSD in full swing, i am more aware and more surprised at the sounds that frighten me.

today i have, on numerous occasions, gotten up to turn down the stereo because i feel that everyone from david bowie to jack white to levon helm to johnny cash has been screaming at me! 

while out walking winston today a man slowed to a near stop to compliment me on my dallas mavericks t-shirt and instead of, what would have been my normal "go mavs!" reply, i stopped dead in my tracks and thought, "why is this man yelling at me!?" all the while feeling light-headed and sure that i was white as a ghost.  he wasn't yelling and i didn't feel afraid of him i just felt afraid.  i finally processed what he said and managed to raise my hand in a half-wave which he may or may not have seen in his rearview mirror.  a motorcycle passed by (of course!) and i felt sure that my heart would jump out of my chest.

the saddest incident is how badly i scared myself with the sound of my own laughter.  i am on day 4 now of the latest prescription sleeping pill and am still adjusting (if you can call 5 hours of sleep, 19 hours of exhaustion and a constant severe headache "adjusting") and i just sit and sit and sit.  sometimes i read, sometimes i try to watch a little tv but most of the time i lie on the couch and zone out.  finally winston had enough and wanted to go out for his evening walk so he jumped onto the back of the couch and proceeded to roll off on top of me and start to chew, snort, sneeze and lick on me.  while he is the world's worst dog, this is not his normal behavior though not totally without precedent.  i burst out laughing only to scare myself silly.  laughter is so achingly rare now that it shocks me.  how sad is that?!        

grace and peace and quiet

lockjaw is fatal!

"let's go get you a tetanus shot or you'll get lockjaw and die."  this was the inevitable response from my mother to every cut i got as a child.  though you are only supposed to have the shot every ten years i lived in fear of both dying of lockjaw or dying from too many tetanus shots!  naturally, i have been afraid of lockjaw my whole life (a fact which my brothers and sister love to make fun of!)  i got the last shot of my childhood at age 8 when i stepped on a rusty needle hidden in the carpet of my grandparents' living room carpet.  i lied about getting one before i started college and "accidentally" skipped that question on every medical history form i've filled out since i was 18. 

 

last year after the flood we were all "strongly encouraged" by the health department to get the shots.  i resisted for 2 weeks until i got my first cut, one of many cuts, scrapes, bruises and puncture wounds received during the 6 months it took to rebuild the house.  and at age 36 i made daddy go with me and hold my hand while the nurse gave me the free shot at the health clinic.  it was scary but painless, until an hour or so later (and for the next 4 days) as my arm swelled and turned fire engine red. 

all of the above mentioned injuries went relatively unnoticed as i was too tired and/or numb to feel most of them, but when i cut myself yesterday while washing out the blender i thought, "here it is, lockjaw!"  after a few panicky minutes i talked myself down with memories of the tetanus shot and the fact that there was absolutely no rust on the blades of the blender. 

that brings me to this mornings panic attack...as i was watching ken burns' documentary on the brooklyn bridge i learned that the engineer that designed the bridge got injured at the work site and died of LOCKJAW.  that did it.  my heart took off, my breathing became shallow and my face began to tingle (a common symptom of a panic attack) but in my mind it was definitely the final stage of lockjaw.  i would, no doubt, die within hours.  once again, i reminded myself of the tetanus shot last may and waited for the anxiety to pass.  it left me spent.

fyi:  other notable lockjaw fatalities include herny david thoreau's brother, who cut himself shaving and robert e. lee's favorite horse, traveller, who stepped on a rusty nail.  and NO i didn't have to look those up!  as a southerner and lover of literature i learned those facts years ago and they stuck with me.

grace and peace

  

unbroken

the book i picked out the other night was "unbroken" by laura hillenbrand.  please read this book!  for those of you who read "seabiscuit" you already know what a great writer she is.  "unbroken" is written with the same thought and care for its hero, louie, a man as strong and unwavering as seabiscuit himself.  an inspiring story about what man can accomplish, endure and overcome.  (see "unbroken" info in my amazon picks to the right of this post.) 

would that i were as willing and able to persevere.  after the last 16 months of my life i feel beaten and bruised just by taking care of winston, maeve and (rather poorly) myself.  i cannot imagine the physical suffering of men like louie but identify, in a very limited way, with his post-war meltdown.  though, gratefully, i do not suffer from nightmares i am plagued by anxiety and the inability to forget:  the flood, the fear, the weariness. 

for those of you in the D.C. area, i hope you are doing well after the scare today.  i got a text about the earthquake from my best friend who lives in northern virginia, as do her sister, brother-in-law and their sweet kids.  she works in D.C. proper and said they feared a bomb when they first felt it.  how scary!  i will admit that i retroactively worried about it being a bomb and suffered quite a panic attack at the thought of anything happening to my best friend of almost 20 years.  i looked at the story on cnn.com and tried to ease my mind by saying, "she's okay, she said herself that she's OKAY!"

grace and peace and solid ground

blog etiquette?

i wanted to quickly say that i appreciate all the comments i'm getting but i have no idea if blog etiquette dictates that i reply (nor do i know how to reply.)  you see, my best friend teaches me all those things and she's 700 miles away.  i welcome any advice...

today i have just 2 things to fret over so far (it's 1:00 p.m.!) but here they are:  throughout the house in the last 12 hours i've found 4 rubberbands of various size and strength and i don't know from whence they came.  speaking of my best friend, since she was in town 4th of july weekend, no one else has been in this house but me.  no one.  where would i acquire rubberbands?  i don't go anywhere, i don't order things on-line, i don't have a clue how they got here.  i'm perplexed.  that is not a good state for an anxious person!

my second concern is that i ate an egg-white omelet today (my first egg in more than 15 years since becoming a vegetarian.)  though i do eat things with egg as an ingredient:  bread, pasta, etc., i haven't bought an egg or scrambled an egg in forever.  though i bought organic, cage-free, egg whites in a carton from trader joe's then added onion, green pepper, tomato and cheese i still struggled with the whole episode.  i'm hoping that adding much-needed protein to my diet will make me feel better, give me a little more energy and perhaps even help me exercise and maybe even SLEEP!  it was a hard choice for me and i'm laboring over it to no end!

i'm about to finish the first book in the "percy jackson" series "the lightning thief" then will begin my ritual of finding the next book to read which is both comforting and obsessive.  it includes going up to the loft, scanning the 60+ feet of bookshelves plus the hundreds of overflow books in stacks 15 or 20 books high.  i grab 5 or 6, come back downstairs, read the backs or the inner flap and try desperately to assess my mood (which is harder to do these days when the only thing i feel is anxious.)  i will narrow it down to 2 and read the first page or so of each.  if i'm satisfied that one will work i start in, if not, i go though the whole ritual again and again until something fits.  it is one of my favorite activities of all time! 

below is a picture of just a few of my books (before the shelves were full) maybe a third of my total collection.

(much needed) grace and peace

and the hits just keep on coming!

winston made it through the vet visit okay.  they had to extract some teeth but he's doing well.  i, however, was in a near catatonic state away from him from 7:30-3:00.  it felt like an eternity.

my grandmother had an episode today and there is a real chance (not the 'in my head' kind) that she may have suffered another stroke.  we don't have official news yet but it gave us all a scare and sent me into a full-on panic attack.  i just don't seem to be able to get through a full day without one and everyday seems to bring with it another thing to focus on, worry about or outright fear. 

I'M SO EXHAUSTED! 

PTSD is being stuck in the "fight or flight" response 24 hours a day.  i don't feel like i have the energy to do either but my heart keeps racing, my adrenaline keeps pumping and my mind keeps planning escape routes.  a body isn't made to constantly be under this kind of stress.

my only goal tonight is to sleep.  the rest will have to wait.  

grace and peace   

dogs and cats and snakes, oh my!

dogs:  one of my irrational fears for weeks now has been that all my teeth are going to fall out.  one night the thought just popped into my head, "what would i do if all my teeth fell out?"  i've been worried about it off and on since then so imagine my shock and dismay when i found a tooth on the floor on sunday morning.  amazingly i never thought about it being mine, i knew it belonged to winston or maeve.  i found that it was winston's and that he has another couple of loose ones so we are off to the vet in the morning.  the thought has crossed my mind that my tooth fixation in some way caused this to happen but i'm not totally sold on that idea. he chews on everything and jumps off the bed and couch into and onto everything with pug abandon (never looking to see if he will land on the cat, the coffee table, my feet or the ever-present stacks of books piled all around this place.)  who knows what caused it but i'm trying very hard to accept that my mind didn't cause it.

cats:  i thought the tooth was maeve's at first because i found a growth, a knot, a "something" on her neck last week.  i almost hoped for a minute that she'd had an infected tooth and that it had fallen out and would now heal.  alas, the tooth is not hers and the knot is still there so i'm watching it to see if it changes and will face the vet with her next if need be.  it's probably a spider bite.  i have 2 new ones this week and stay covered in them this time of year (yet another hazard of living on a river!)

snakes:  noises are really bothering me these days, part of the hypervigilance that come with PTSD.  yesterday while i was reading on the couch with winston i heard an unidentifiable noise, a rattle, in the kitchen.  immediately i feared the worst.  A RATTLESNAKE.  in my kitchen!  i just knew it.  my heart nearly jumped out of my chest and i thought, "i'm glad maeve's outside, but how are winston and i going to escape?!"  i refused to look into the kitchen.  i was shivering and terrified.  i heard it again!  a minute later it clicked...ice melting in the sick.  i had poured out my ice water several minutes before and the ice was melting and moving around in the empty sink.  i couldn't make myself get up and go look but i calmed down a bit and convinced myself that we were okay.

still no luck sleeping and still waiting for my next doctors appointment on monday.  the "frequent cancellations" they guaranteed did not come to fruition so it looks like i'm not going to be able to move up my appointment.  typical!

grace and peace (and hopefully sleep)          

who likes purple?

today's 99% irrational (and 100% hilarious) fear is that someone snuck into my house yesterday and painted my toenails purple. 

see here's what happened...

a friend and i were on our way to a bookstore in her car.   we had already made several stops, this being our 4th or 5th exit from the car, when i said "my toenails are painted and i have no memory of doing it!"  i was concerned but quickly moved on to feeling flabbergasted that *i*, who love books more than anything, had NO interest in browsing and just followed her to look at books for her kids.  we usually split up and i spend too much time looking in the "history," "literature" and "current events/politics" sections.  instead i found myself bypassing all those to look at books on llamas and lions (my personal favorite) and sticking closely to her side. 

after coffee we parted ways.  as i looked down to unlock my car door there were those purple toenails again, mocking me!  i tried and tried to remember painting them.  other than the knowledge that the polish was, in fact, mine, i could not claim ownership of the decision to paint them, pick the color or do the deed itself.

this morning i wondered for the first time if it weren't someone else who painted them (though even to me that seems unlikely) or if maybe i am sleepwalking, which happens to be one of the side effects of the ineffective sleeping pill.  

i've spent most of today on my brother's couch watching movies and listening to music while he, my niece and nephew got up to speed on the new "angry birds" on my iPad.  the rest of the day i've spent worried about these purple toenails!  things like the following conversation i had with myself...

CRAZY AMY:  "whoever painted these did a nice job."

SANE AMY:  "snap out of it, amy, YOU painted them!"

CA:  "sure, but you know my right hand visibly shakes now and they're so perfect!  I can't have done it! 

SA:  "maybe you were sleepwalking, your eyes would have been opened but maybe you don't shake in your sleep"

CA:  "sleep?  WHAT SLEEP?"

SA:  "sleep?  WHAT SLEEP?!"

yes, my friends, THIS is a typical day.

grace and peace and purple toenails

       

therapy day

today i instituted a moratorium on "the larry sanders show" after what i'm calling "the chris farley incident" of yesterday. 

i'm in a funk over what has become a desperate lack of sleep and frustrating lack of cooperation from my nurse practitioner and the latest prescribed sleep-aid (in the form of a popular drug that works for everyone but me!)  i've been an insomniac all my life but it's harder to function with it now coupled with the anxiety.  i'm stuck in the vicious cycle of the insomnia making the anxiety worse and the anxiety making the insomnia worse.    

it's a pleasant morning weather-wise, not yet hot and humid, so i've been outside reading, winston and maeve vying for my attention.  came in after i saw the 5th damn pick-up truck filled with building materials.  it's 15 months since the flood and there are still houses in the beginning stages of re-build.  it's too hard to watch.  there are still piles of drywall, kitchen cabinets, bathroom sinks, etc. lining the streets.  most of these are houses that were simply abandoned, foreclosed and auctioned off at a fraction of their pre-flood value.  all of our houses are worth very little now.

friday is what has become known to all as "therapy day."  it's my weekly trauma counseling appointment and the one day i force myself to go out with friends or visit family or attempt some sort of "normal" activity that on other days i avoid like the plague.  oh no, now maybe i have the plague!!!!!  okay, probably not.  such is the mind of the anxious!

grace and peace

  

errands and ice cream trucks

today has been fraught with anxiety. 

i strategically planned a much needed trip to the grocery store on the phone with daddy last night.  i called to see if he could go with me since i am incapable of going into most places by myself these days.  i have been trying to get to trader joe's since last friday, to no avail.  once the time was agreed upon, 10:00 a.m., i began to dread it with a fierce passion. 

i made it to daddy's house, which is on the way, without much drama (just the inevitable car in my rear-view mirror with his blinker on for an entire 8 miles.)  i passed every gas station, even though my "low fuel" light was on.  i was afraid that if i got sidetracked i would never get where i was headed and face another day living on the only remaining food in the house:  kiwi and tortilla chips.  fine foods, indeed, but hardly nutritious when eaten for 3 straight days.

i made it through the shopping unscathed while daddy pushed the buggy and wondered at my vegetarian/organic diet.  we both laughed(which is something i do all too infrequently now) when the cashier declared that i had "a nice looking buggy full of groceries" and that he had been bagging groceries "since jimmy carter was in the white house."

i got daddy home, went in to kiss my grandmother, put the flowers i bought for her in a vase and wondered if she remembers that today is the anniversary of my grandfather's death.  she's 94 and he's been gone for 15 years.

got to the gas station on fumes and only had to push in my pin # twice due to my shaky hands and drug-saturated brain.  the real struggle came when i decided to go inside ("oh, the humanity!") and buy a diet dr. pepper.  i gave up keeping cokes in the house a while back and now i consume them only when i can bear to go get them.  today i wanted one.  so i went in.  i was very uneasy.  i, with shaking hands and pounding heart, handed the lady behind the counter my dollar and 8 cents.  i sat in the car several minutes before i could put it in gear and make my way home, by now light-headed and teary-eyed.

had just gotten everything in and closed the door when i heard the ice cream truck.  now, it's still summer vacation here, for a few more days anyway.  you would think that the ice cream truck would raise no alarm bells but you'd be wrong.  the first time i heard it i thought, "haven't heard him in a while."  the second time i heard it i thought, "good, he's leaving?"  the third time i thought, "i wonder if anyone else can hear him?" then i sat down to write this.  i've heard him twice more.  i never go anywhere anymore so i know all the sounds of this place and i have never heard the ice cream truck 5 times in 2 hours.  not to mention that, while hot, it's much more temperate than it has been so the high-80 degree temps don't warrant around the clock ice cream delivery!    

this anxiety makes everything feel like a threat.

grace and peace

  

    

death comes in threes

this is my first blog post and virtually my first blog anything.  i'm not the most technically savvy person, nor am i terribly social, so i'm not a facebook/twitter, always connected, text while driving, sleep with my smart phone beside my bed type 21st century gal.  i'm starting this blog because of advice given me by several people i trust who have my best interests at heart.

the long and short of it is that i have recently undergone a very traumatic year and am facing debilitating anxiety and PTSD (hence the name of this blog).  i will no doubt get to recent events in future posts but today i thought i would start by sharing how my anxiety has manifested today in both a strange and comical manner.  (at least i can laugh at a lot of my irrational thinking.)

while having chosen not to replace my television after the flood (see, there is a story to be told here) i am exposed only to what passes for television in the form of hulu for current series and netflix for mostly long since cancelled or older series.  lately my sitcom of choice is "the larry sanders show" and today i watched an episode on which appeared john ritter, gene siskel and warren zevon.  one by one as they filled my 17" laptop screen i realized, and said out loud to my pug winston (AKA:  "the world's worst dog"), "oh no, he's dead!" and with each new walk-on i said this louder and with rising alarm.  my anxiety makes me spend a lot of time worried about those around me dying and i, of course, feel like i'm dying most of the time.  seeing these men, all of whom i watched and listened to for years, in living color, as they say, sent me into a panic about death and dying that was heart-breaking.  all the while i kept thinking, "how in the hell is it possible that all 3 were on this one episode and that all 3 would die much too early?!"  what are the chances of something like that?

that's been several hours ago now and i feel a little better.  took winston for a walk and maeve, my cat, followed like she always does.  

grace and peace