Thanks for the well wishes. It isn't just the pink eye... I have another infection, from the surgery, seemingly small... that won't go away.
The pink eye... is being regarded right now as viral, since I don't have the goop, just constant eye watering. Both eyes. No other lymph node/cold signs. No offense, but I am way beyond all the normal stuff you do with pink eye... haven't worn make up in some time. Hairdog, I actually have an eyescrub that is much like baby shampoo.
It is intensely frustrating... and you know... everyone runs out of patience, okay... but it's this other thing, combined with the pink eye, that is making me a little nervous.
Why am I having such a difficult time passing infection? And that is what they are getting ready to start exploring, if this last thing doesn't work.
I went a little skitzy, sorry. I don't get sick. Haven't had to take an anti-biotic in years, for any reason at all. I should know better than to whazz out... but, I did the same thing when they told me they were culturing my eyes for a whole host of STDs. (You're testing me for WHAT?! In my EYES?!) All tests came back negative. They sent me to the gyno to have him do the same tests as well, just to make sure. (Can't even begin to tell you how fun that was...)
I was on antibiotics after the surgery and my eyes cleared up for one day. Then, boom... it's back... and my doctor(s) are left scratching their heads.
So you know, I'm just walking around looking like I'm high all the time, with no benefits whatsoever of actually BEING high...
Fran: I'm using homeopathic eye drops. I have not heard of the Vitamin A thing... I will do that immediately. Thanks.
I pulled this from another post.....aside from the eye thing...you ok babe? Please feel free to e-mail one of us...I WANT to know you're ok. k?
I suppose you being fairly new here, you don't necessarily get what a lot of the longer posters get about me: I whazz out. Now, in my own defense, I have to say the whazzing out came on the tail end of a day where I had been back to the doctor, again, and got the head scratch... "I just don't know. If this doesn't work, you'll have to go to a specialist."
Me: "What kind of specialist? I've been to two eye doctors, my family physician, my gyno, my allergist, and even my surgeon has taken some morbid interest in this case."
Her: "Well. I'm not sure. We know that your conjunctivitis isn't allergenic, chemical or bacterial. That leaves viral, but we've tested you for everything I can imagine, and nothing is showing up. You seem to briefly or moderately respond to antibiotics, which doesn't really make sense to me. You have no other symptoms. Your blood work is normal. Everything about your eye, other than this, is normal."
So I was on the phone all day making calls to all the doctors I've seen, collecting my history related to this case so that when any one of them comes up with what kind of 'specialist' I might next see... I have all the info I need to take with me.
It was an incredibly frustrating day. No one is around to give me a hug or squeeze my hand, so you know... I whazz. I think of you and what you are going through, and it just seems so minor in comparison...
I was just... pissed. So I come here to my online friends and dump.
NHS: I'm going to look up that book. Thank you for that.
Hairdog: I think it is utterly cool you are reading articles written by Buddhist Monks.
It was an incredibly frustrating day. No one is around to give me a hug or squeeze my hand, so you know... I whazz. I think of you and what you are going through, and it just seems so minor in comparison...
Well, do you mind if I give you one? Too bad, you're getting one anyways {{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}
I'm having an episode. I get 'em. I have a run of nights when I can't sleep. I kind of get manic... kind of like panic attacks...
I spent five years of my life when I didn't sleep the whole night through... cuz of the sexual abuse. Always happened at night. So... I didn't sleep.
If I get the slightest bit anxious about anything... I whazz... get this stupid... calm thing... then I don't sleep. At all. For like three to five days. Then...
War wounds. Just gotta deal. Being single... it happens way more often. It isn't that I am a nut case. I know what is happening... when I went through the D... it got really bad...so... I'd drink myself into oblivion... at least I could sleep. And it wasn't really sleep... more like something else came along and just did what needed to be done.
Hence the anti-Ds.
This pink eye thing has me all a-tizzy... and it sets off this whole cycle. I know in my mind that there is nothing to fear... shrink says... it just is. So when it happens... I just go... get a lose dose anti-D... calm down...
And I really hate it. I feel like some freak. I'm not. I'd never tell anyone in my shoes to ever feel that way.
Just go do it. Do what you have to do. It's okay.
It just pisses me off that I ever had to be like this. I didn't do anything to anyone. <-- Poor me syndrome.
Guess that is why I am always so ready to throw gloves off. When the cycle starts... it's like... oh... you want to know? Let's dance... you know.
This whole pink eye thing is nothing I want to freak over... I just do. And it starts to happen... sometimes I can get a grip... it's like laying in a bed at night... and five nights now have passed and nothing has happened... and you are so grateful for the five nights... but you couldn't sleep anyway... cause you don't know when it's going to happen... and then you get tired on the sixth night... boom... nailed. And now you resent the five nights you took for granted.
Personally, I have a fear of insomnia. Insomnia, for me, is the first sign that I am heading into depression land. So, instead of shrugging off a bad night, like regular people do, I start freaking that the insomnia is back, and that means the depression is coming. In a way, this is a good thing: I am trying, from past experience, to head off something worse. But sometimes the alarm bells are going off when they really shouldn't, because a bad nite can just be a bad nite, and now I have turned it into something worse.
So, yeah, I hate insomnia. I hate depression. And I will have to be wary of this the rest of my life. 5 nites of insomnia for me would definitely indicate that it's AD time.
Just mentioning all this to let you know you are not the only one who is fighting cycles, and fighting with herself to stay in control. And adding a physical problem to the brew, something as seemingly minor as pink eye, well, it just emphasizes the lack of control. It's scary.
One thing about this board that is so great is that you are never alone. Long ago I decided that cyber friends are very much real.
Corri, I am hoping you got some rest last nite. Huggles to u.
I don't think anything untoward ever happened to me, but the freaking out at night is definitely something I'm familiar with. All the anxieties that you (mostly) have under control during the day are much harder to control when it's dark and everyone else is sleeping and you're supposed to be still and let your guard down and let eight hours pass without even being aware of what happens, much less able to defend yourself against it.
In the middle of the night, I've managed to convince myself at various times that I have rabies, cancer, anthrax, and heart disease. I've lain awake wondering if this is the night my gas furnace or water heater is going to leak carbon monoxide and kill me and my entire family in our sleep, and gotten up more than once each night to check on the infernal devices. In college I slept on top of a bunk bed in my dorm for years, until one night I took it down because I was sure I was going to roll off of it in the middle of the night and bash my brains out on the floor, and never slept on a top bunk again. I moved away from a large city with a heavy military presence because I couldn't sleep at night thinking it was going to be hit by a terrorist with a nuclear weapon or a crop duster with anthrax - this was years before 9/11 - and seriously messed up our finances doing so.
So I definitely know what you're going through. All I can say is:
1. (((Corri))) 2. Classical music sometimes helps, especially if you're alone and no one else will be kept awake with it. And the TV's sometimes good for helping you switch off your brain. (Sometimes a little too good, as we all know, but that's what you need here...) 3. If it hasn't gotten worse lately, it's probably not going to kill you anytime soon. That's actually gotten me through some nights sometimes. 4. I can't recall if you're on ADs, but they work. I've been sleeping pretty well for the past year or so.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
I just wanted to chime in with RJ to say that everybody has their own kind of dysfunctional cycles. I joke that I have the opposite of an anxiety disorder and call it a passivity disorder but it's not really a joke. Instead of "whazzing" out about things that might be relatively minor, I don't "whazz" out about things that might make most people rationally concerned. My second sister who suffers from anxiety was once caught in a car with me in a pour-down rainstorm and we had to pull off the road. She turned to me and asked if I didn't think I ought to call my S19 to make sure he was okay since he had driven off at the same time and she thought it was really odd that I hadn't even thought to worry about him. Perhaps this is unrelated but I very rarely suffer from insomnia. I pop out of bed in the morning and I pretty much fall down asleep wherever I am 16 hours later (even if I'm in tbe passenger seat of my current swain's car -lol) I generally sleep so hard that I rarely remember my dreams. But being the way I am isn't necessarily a good thing because I can so easily lose myself in a book and a bowl of rice pudding and not wake up until the house is on fire and the baby is screaming and the waistband of my jeans is getting painfully tight.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
It has always taken me FOREVER to fall asleep... often an hour or more. I also wake up several times during the night. But I never thought to define it as insomnia. I just thought people who fell asleep as soon as their head hit the pillow (like all the men I've ever spent the night with) were weird!
Usually I have things that I'm thinking about and working through, and that is my special private time. Or if I do want to try to get to sleep, I recite things over and over again to myself like "no words no words" or just count to eight and back over and over.
I like lying in bed whether I'm asleep or awake... that's the slacker in me. Especially in my new sheets.
Corri, how about fixing up your bed with new sheets, some sweet-scented flowers, as CE said classical music like Bach or Debussy (fewer emotional associations). Take a long warm bath before bed. Drink some chamomile tea. Make this a ritual of putting Little and Big Corri to bed at night with comforting surroundings. You might get a fabulous book called "Poem Crazy" and sit in bed at night and write poetry.
I think of my bed as my private island, my spaceship, my safe haven... especially now that I don't share it with anyone except dogs.
I have awakened in the middle of the night with panic attacks. When that happens, I take a xanax. I don't fight it or try to talk myself out of it. A panic attack is a physiological phenomenon that happens when an anxious though produces an adrenaline flow that then spirals out of control. Once that spiral starts, the thoughts are out of control, too. The middle of the night is prime time for this sort of thing.
I have a girlfriend who lost her husband a few years ago under very shocking circumstances. She was in bed and he was downstairs watching TV. He came up to bed, said he wasn't feeling well, and literally fell down. Needless to say, she's had trouble sleeping ever since. She loves to read and keeps a big fat novel next to the bed and when she wakes, she reads until she's sleepy, then the sleeps until she wakes, and reads some more, etc. She spends most nights that way and considers it a very kind and nurturing way to treat herself. She reads stuff like Trollope and Jane Austen. Whatever floats your boat, kwim.
You don't have to be at the mercy of this... create some safe, nurturing, caring strategies for yourself. You know, one of the blessings of this ankle thing has been that it has forced me to focus on myself and taking care of myself. I literally have to think about every time I stand up, every step I take, every thing that's on the floor, every curb.
Please stop cursing this condition and cursing yourself. Start nurturing, treating yourself with EXTREME sweetness, kindness, and understanding.
This is the VERY REASON I love this board, and all of you so very much.
CE, I didn't mean to laugh at you, but I started laughing because I've done very similar things... I'm like, so weirdly relieved to have said everything out loud (in BB terms), and have you all relay your own stories. Wow.. I'm not crazy.
Classical music, a warm bath and a good book. The tea sounds good, too. I'll do that, especially since I've gone all organic because of all the chemical sensitivities I found out I had from the allergist... and the only things I'm drinking nowadays is organic tea. I've been doing brewed Green Tea, and have become quite found of it, actually... no reason why I can't expand my tea horizons...
I recently started sleeping in the nude... which for some stupid reason, makes me sleep much, much better.
I did just recently get new sheets, Lil. I LOVE them. Okay... got my game plan for tonight...
{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}
