Aaaaaand I’m done

You know when you know you’re over-doing it and you know the end is close but there’s “just one more thing” to attend to and you need to do it NOW otherwise once you sit down, it won’t happen?

Yeah, that.

I flagged it with my psychologist on Monday that I knew I was getting busier and I needed to keep up my resting and other good habits in order to maintain the good track I’ve been on. I mean, it’s great, I went out and socialised for the first time in FOREVER at the Newcastle Greens federal campaign launch. A good few hours socialising, meeting new people, networking. Oh and all sober. Got a diet coke when I go there and ran off nervous energy the rest of the night. I was brain dead by the time I got home, unable to answer questions without a delay. Lol. Those spoons were long gone.

In other good news, I’m so close to having my Disability Support Pension approved after asking for the review when it was rejected last year. an Yvette from Centrelink called while I had covid to let me know that looking over it she wasn’t sure why I couldn’t have been marked as fully diagnosed and stabilised on what she was reading and sent it to be more thoroughly reviewed. I’m told they got in touch with my case worker at the substance use service and also the Occupational Therapist I started DBT with while I was on the waitlist for the public program and have come to the conclusion that I do meet the criteria for treated and diagnosed and then also that I meet the 20 points necessary on the impairment tables which freaks me out a little when I read it but year, I need to admit that I need a lot of support and structure to do more than the bare minimum, whatever you think that is.

So the next step is a telehealth appointment with an external psychologist to confirm I meet the criteria, which will be next Friday at midday. So I’m nervous about that, and worried about presenting well but not TOO well, if you know what I mean! Need to not mask, be honest and open.

How’s everyone going in the weather? It’s just one added thing to my mental load, even though it’s not REALLY affecting me, it stops me from doing the washing, or taking the dog for a walk if I could even motivate myself to do that. I watch the creek, assuming it won’t get much higher. I make sure I have food and medicine and have my phone charged in case. Water bottle filled. Little things that will make a difference if that storm cell does hit. Bruce is working today, for the first time this week, the weather being awful doesn’t make boat detailing an easy doable job. Oh and Maxi needed the vet yesterday another thing on my mental load – I’d finished a telehealth group, there were three new patients, so there was nine of us in total, it was full on, hard mental work even without trying to do therapy. Then i had to adult and take the dog to the vet. That’s why I splurged on chocolate at the service station on the way home and self soothed with m&ms :p

One thing I’ve also come to realise, and to accept and embrace, is that I rely on the meal prep boxes we get each week in order to be able to have the mental capacity to make dinner each night. Having the meals planned and the instructions there means my weary brain can pick up the recipe each night and follow the steps and come up with something nice, something different, something I’m proud to present as dinner for me and my partner. the nights I’ve been too zonked after taking on extra stuff without allowing for the energy, or when I’ve been sick since the Covid hangover is still niggling with a night cough and occasional headache and I can’t bring myself to cook, there’s only so many times I feel okay about Bruce getting us pizza, or us getting whatever is on special on the Maccas app. Though we DID have a lovely “date night” walking up to the local Maccas for cheap meals :p

So, it’s the weekend. My plans for this afternoon are dishes, dinner and relax. Might fire up the Sims or go fruit picking in Animal Crossing. But nothing too braining. My brain is done.

I just want to write

I want to just write and feel like my words are meaningful. I feel stuck in a little hole, looking out, but I’m not even that profound. I listen to the lyrics of K.Flay, I know I won’t have the articulatory skills to rap like her, but her words call to me, they make sense, I want to make words and sentences and rhymes and phrases like her. Call on my life and experience and knowledge and contribute something. But I see it as selfish and futile, or maybe not maybe I’m just talking shit.

This week in therapy we’re meant to be looking at looking after ourselves, setting up for a good time through diet and exercise and rest, and taking your meds and not mind altering substances. I can see where they’re coming from, but I hate focusing on those things, I get stubborn, I get wilful as they say. Eat right, and then I decide that icecream is my next meal. I’m still scared of focussing on weight loss, on exercise on diet, scared I’ll be successful and get back to that slim frame but be too obsessive about it, be to hyper focussed. I should probably raise that with my psych. Probably.

https://rainbowsandfairies.com.au/product/day-at-the-fair-jumpsuit/

I’m doing another shoot with Rainbows and fairies this week, I’ll try to be more relaxed and more confident lol. I need to get my eyebrows and other face waxing done, and I need to buy a beige bra, like a proper bra with structure and not the crop tops I usually wear and am wearing now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw5R06zel-E

Watching snippets of Kflay and Gflip’s gigs in the states, wishing I was there. Wishing I was out dancing and sweating and singing and being alive. I tried to not get covid, I really did. It didn’t work. I want to go out and play, but I’m stuck here. Stuck home trying to get myself to do the basics, put out the washing, clean the dishes, shave my legs. Looking forward to the cooler weather of autumn, to starting the interpersonal effectiveness DBT module, hoping I can do some of that therapy in person soon. Before another few months pass of being at home. I want to catch the train into therapy, I want to buy coffee and look at the beach. I want to arrange to see people for one off coffees, I doubt a regular thing, but just a one off, dumplings, coffee, something.

Feb 22

What’s on this week?

individual therapy Monday morning, should raise the PLESAE stuff, the eating, the taking care of health, the hard conversation I had with Bruce where I remember how hard being around a drunk me is. How that puts everything through another lens.

Do the beauty stuff, the waxing, the bra buying.

Tuesday night I’m starting an online things with Ausgrid. a panel that runs for months and they give me $1000 for at the end. Watch me shape the future or soemthing.

Wednesday is the Rainbows and Fairies shoot, Thursday group again, the last with one of the other women who I’m going to miss, the group is going to more than double to 8 patients the week after, which will be hard on teams. It would be better in person for sure.

Friday apparently Centrelink is calling again, even though they did last Friday, and my next appointment was supposed to be months away. Oh well.. Just answer, don’t get cut off. Go to my antabuse group online. Arrange to speak with my care coordinator next week, I need to start planning with her for the future.

it feels like a lot and I realise when I’m allowed the exemption from Centrelink and why they’re considering giving me DSP. That’s in a review stage. So maybe.

I’m tired.

So, I had covid

As I emerge from my Covid haze, let’s jot a few notes on the experience.

How did I get it? Well I definitely caught it from my partner Bruce, I’ve had so little contact with the outside world and he definitely had symptoms before me. Where he got it though exactly we haven’t pinpointed, but contact with the general public up in the boat yard, but again, no one person stood out so who knows.

I knew I was feeling off on Tuesday the 1st, I said so in my therapy session. But then I picked up a little. Bruce tested positive with a faint positive on the RAT he did Thursday morning. Mine was negative, as was the PCR I did that day, I tested positive on the PCR I took Saturday morning. I took to dog for some isolated exercise Friday afternoon and was wiped out by that.

I was down with body aches on the Saturday. Panadol and laying flat in bed wishing to sleep. Had various fever dreams. Headaches were a thing on and off. Slight sore throat but then not hugely so, and a nose running like a tap.

Did our first Woolies online grocery order, things are soooooo expensive! Still had my EveryPlate orders coming. Lost my tastebuds for a few days which made me so sad :p The food I made looked good but it was all textured water to me.

I cancelled my Monday therapy appointment, and didn’t do the Greens meeting Tuesday 8th. I did my group on Thursday just gone but was soooo wiped by the end of it and basically slept for two days once it finished!

I’m trying to get back into a routine. I did therapy this morning and groceries now so I can be back on task. Did some washing, the dishes are still soaking and I bought a premade lasagne for the oven tonight. Thankfully Bruce’s covid payment of $750 came through within a few hours of applying for it after he got the positive RAT so he could take the week off without too much of a financial kick. No allowances for the rest of us though, so thank you for those who bought me shiny purple coffee things on here because it made me more comfortable buying to extras for me in the grocery order like the delish $1 chobanis. When they’re $1 I go nuts hah! Though I’ve just bought a tasty lemon meringue ice cream dessert from Aldi. Yes, food is important to me. Yes, I’m overweight. What of it :p

Also bad timing on the Covid boosters! We were due to get them on the 10th as that was 3 months since the second AZ in November. So glad I was immunised though! We’ll get them later this month / early march and be super immune.

So now to get back on track. I feel like I’ve had another false start to the the year and it’ll really only start this week! So, let’s work with that assumption and start 2022 again on Valentines day!

Oh also, my DSP application is being reviewed and went to the Health Professionals Advisory Unit, so we’ll see how that treats me. Fingers crossed.

The year begins proper

https://youtu.be/SZNsvUT0DQQ

January is just a warm up for the rest of the year. People and the services they provide are still off on leave at the start, the come back in over time about a week in, taking days off to share child care for the long summer holidays, and more and more working from home due to covid precautions and generally increasing flexibility for the office worker after two years of realising a lot of things and the busywork of offices really isn’t essential.

I remember working over the summer holidays as a school-age speech pathologist. Planning and photocopying for the year ahead, booking up term one with appointments and workshops and meetings and training days. Seeing the older kids, the high schoolers, the ones that don’t do well being pulled out of school or class for appointments, finalising formal language assessments and reports for the next round of funding.

This month, January 2022, has had some planning for me. Goal setting, remembering where everything was working up to before Xmas and this new Covid rush.

So what are my plans for early 2022, now that I’ve taken most of January to re-establish a routine (yes, down to plotting it out on my calendar) and catch up with my therapists and co-conspirators?

Well, I’ve booked in for Japanese night classes for May and June thanks to a semi-anonymous benefactor named Eric who, after me posting about it on Twitter, sent the $310 needed to my PayPal bright and early one Monday morning, making my day, making my week and month! I was seriously buzzing after that, and it really helped me to focus on getting my other plans in place for this six months in order to get the most out of Eric’s gift. I’d already signed up for a trial of Duolingo as suggested by my psych, which is going along well, my hiragana and katakana is still functional but you should see me make the stupidest mistakes on there. The little broken hearts for mistakes do me in! I need to decide now whether to continue with a paid account so I can “clear” and practice my mistakes (and of course use any other feature on there) or just suck it up or you know, just get it right the first time!

I’ll need to start practicing speaking a writing too, speaking I can apparently do on there since I have a mic, but I’ll have to push myself to do writing, particularly so I can actually recognise and use the more complex kanji. I might get a workbook, or printable worksheets. Not sure yet.

Next up, I’m going to be taking part in a series of focus groups for Ausgrid over the next few months. I get paid $1000 at the end which is pretty sweet, so I’ve popped them into my diary and hope we do get to do some of the sessions down in Sydney as planned, cos I quite like a day out down there on the train and a catered lunch :p

Third thing for the coming months is the Federal Election and being involved in the local Greens campaigns how I can. I might be getting involved in the social media role and the advertising stuff. There’s training tomorrow which will give me more skills and information and also includes anti-bulling and “don’t get sued for defo by Dutton” training, so I’ll figure out if I’m up for the role after that! The election could be up to May 24th, and that time will fly once it’s called.

Fourth, but of course the most important, is continuing with my therapy and other appointments and homework. I might need to see if we can change my individual therapy session so I’m available for more or of the lunchtime campaign meetings, but my psych has already said that would be quite alright given it’s a part of working towards my goals. The group sessions are still 2.5 hours on Thursday afternoons. I really hope they go back to face to face in a month or so when we’re maybe past the worst of Omicron, but no one has any timelines, and we were just about to go back to f2f after Xmas, but then the surge hit and threw all that into disarray. The telehealth format isn’t ideal and I feel like brings up more communication problems. I really hope we’re in f2f by the time we’re doing the interpersonal effectiveness module at least!

We’re doing the Emotion Regulation module of the DBT program at the moment, and I’m struggling a little with whether my pushing through is actually opposite action and thus good, or I’m just sucking it up and masking even more and that’s working against me. I’ve more or less concluded that I’m probably autistic, and people I know and respect agree with my reasoning, so I’m trying to respect that part of me, and incorporate the strategies from DBT for borderline personality disorder into my life while learning more about how I inherently function and building on my sensory toolkit and being compassionate to myself and the little girl that struggled for so long.

I’m also still taking Antabuse tablets daily to assist me in staying sober so I can do all the things. At the moment that involves fortnightly visits to the Mater to get the medications and touch base individually, and fortnightly group sessions online using Teams. The group was only two patients, a nurse and the psychiatrist today, and I’m starting to dread the smaller groups to an extent and hope it’s much bigger next fortnight! Group for DBT last week at one point was me, two psychologists and a psych student, so it was a bit intense. At least they run it like we’re all participants when it’s like that otherwise I’d surely run away!

As far as working goes, I have my mutual obligations exemption til the end of June, so I’ll be working on my goals towards being more articulate and able to participate through my therapy, election work and Japanese classes, and look to pick up with a disability employment service in July. I don’t really know what I want to be doing work wise, I have ideas, but we’ll see. My partner is still running his business, and I’m helping out with that by being available, putting out the washing and feeding him. I still claim to be in Facebook social media manager, though there’s not much going on over there at the moment!

I think that’s plenty for me to be committing to for now!

Bring on the election!

Pre-existing conditions, let us count the ways our deaths would be ‘splained away

How good are distractions like the child forklift drivers or the tennis, or Sam Kerr? How good is it not to have to think about the ways the government is happy to put us in danger to maintain their relationships with their donors (how IS Gerry Harvey anyway?) or their so-called principles. I say so-called, because they WILL change on a donors whim (oh who’s laughing now about Djokovic? Certainly not Rio Tinto!)

We sit here looking on in wonder, while Daddy Domicron tells us he’ll have a plan for back to school in the coming days, Labor refuses to call for a suspension on Mutual Obligations (except a lone voice from the ACT, don’t tell me having the Greens sharing the power doesn’t help Labor fulfil their progressive promise!), and I wonder if it’s worth asking my chemist to send me the RATs I get under a concession card out with my Webster Pak’ed mads, even though technically I’m supposed to go in in person to collect them, wouldn’t want us welfare recipients getting something without jumping through unnecessarily dangerous hoops!

Back to those pre-existing conditions, though. The ones that get listed alongside the ages of the dead and whether they’ve had first, second, third or more vaccinations, in order to make the voters feel safe to go about their day, to keep the economy ticking along, because she’s the most important creature in the room and we must be willing to pay tribute to her.

Personally, if I die of Covid, they’ll take one look at my weight and that’ll be the first things listed, more important than my young age (39) or the fact that I’m 2x AZ vaccinated, and can’t get a booster til the 10th Feb, though that will also play a role in their one-sentence obituary. Surely, my mental health will get a line. “Severe mental illness” is not a well-defined term, but data from the last two years is repeatedly showing that people with mental illnesses that have led to hospitalisation are much more susceptible to Covid, even when other factors like a higher smoking rate and socio economics are taken into account. Just be thankful you don’t have schizophrenia and thus be at higher risk of infection at home or in the hospital, but also readily triaged as a lower priority for high level care if I do many to access it.

Doctors and ethicists consider the role of triage and the roll of the Do Not Resuscitate order in a health system in crisis here and abroad (Fury at ‘do not resuscitate’ notices given to Covid patients with learning disabilities), while I see friends on Twitter getting their affairs in order as Omicron circles around them, worried that their disability will not be the thing that led them to getting covid, but the detail that means they are second in line for the ICU bed.

Myself? I’m doing all I can to stay Covid-free. I do my groceries at the quiet times, I see my therapists on Telehealth, I count down the days til my booster is available. I live in my small little world, coddling my mental health, knowing that an admission due to suicidal behaviours would be more dangerous than just letting my attempts to push myself to having a more interesting and varied life sit back for another few months while the world sorts itself out and we hopefully don’t create yet another variant just as I’m wanting to step out to play.

So, for those of you reassured that only those with pre-existing conditions are dying, take a moment to think about why they have been allowed to catch Covid in the first place, and why, in a highly stressed system, their ambulance might be ramped longer or they’ve been prioritised lower for a call from healthcare in the home.