Crawling my way out of a ten day trigeminal neuralgia flare up. Seriously, I always feel like a sleep-drunk bear trying to somehow climb a steep well out of hibernation. It takes effort and determination to bust out of the tegrafog. It just wants to swirl and whip around me and pull me back under, and sometimes it is so, so easy to just give in to the spell and sleep another day away.
I have basically slept away the month of October. Even in my waking hours, I might as well have been asleep. I can't tell you anything that really happened the last couple of weeks.
Up until a couple weeks ago, my longest flare up was six or seven days, so obviously realizing they can last longer than that is so extremely exciting to me. I just can't tell you how thrilled this makes me. I knew I was in for a doozy when I woke up one morning and had to immediately puke.
Hello, friend! Did you miss me?
In the beginning of these flare ups, I try EV-ER-Y-THING. I try all my tricks. I pull everything out of my arsenal, hoping that something, anything will help. And nothing does, but then by day six at least I can say to myself, "Maybe it's almost over."
This last Wednesday I was getting ready to go to the food bank and there was this little thought buzzing around in my mind, "You need to wake Peppy up and get him to drive you." I didn't necessarily feel like I couldn't drive, so I just pushed this thought away and later on found myself turning a corner not quiet sharply enough, hitting a curb and completely blowing out my front tire.
That's not the first time I have felt compelled not to drive over the last few years, but it was the first time I brushed away that inner knowing. I always listen to that voice in my mind, but due to the mass consumption of tegretol, I clearly wasn't in the right frame of mind to even banter with my higher consciousness. So I pushed it aside, and wasn't shocked in the slightest when I ended up doing something careless. I'm glad I didn't hurt anyone and this was a major lesson for me.
Tegretol has been a humbling medication. I've always had a high tolerance for any meds and can't really think of anything that affects me the way this medicine does. Yes, it works, but it works by taking away EVERY mental sensation. I generally take 1/4 of what is prescribed, and when I take it as prescribed, I can literally stare at a wall for hours and it feels like minutes. Who needs a padded room when you have tegretol? If I take too much it brings me to some dark and incredibly lonely mental places. Especially since things are so 'out of sight, out of mind' for me. If I take long naps in the bedroom some days it can feel like I am the only person that exists. Oh, and lets not forget about the confusion and how it makes my brain feel like it is static and stuck in between channels. No one understands just how confusing communication becomes to me. And then add imitrex on top of that? Well, you might as well just forget about it.
Ok, I will. I will forget literally everything. There is no other option available. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Straight to jail. Doing anything during a flare up is like trying to solve a difficult puzzle before you can even begin to do whatever it is you were going to do. It seems morbidly providential that I've gone to dark places most of my life, like I've been preparing for the suicide disease my entire life. Real life training for the actual event.
I know we've had some crazy space weather lately, and even though I don't necessarily understand it, I do know it affects many of us physically....and my head has been no exception. Speaking of space weather, has anyone seen the odd things that have been seen in the sky along with the northern lights? I don't even know what you would call it, like chunks of plasma or something. I saw a bunch of different ones on Reddit yesterday, but only showed Peppy and didn't save it or anything. Maybe these are also going around on other social media too.
So after ten days of only being awake for a few hours a day, and even during those waking hours feeling like a zombie with a machete sticking out of their eyeball, while someone is simultaneously vice griping the back of my head and stabbing me repeatedly in the side of my face all while making me nauseous and it feeling absolutely painful just to have hair, well, it is nice to go back to just my regularly scheduled daily pain that I can usually ignore.
If you have stumbled upon my blog because you also have trigeminal neuralgia, I am so sorry. If the wheel of karma did happen to be real, man, we must have been horrible people in past lives to get TN in this one. I am just thankful that my life circumstances haven't really changed, other than being in constant facial pain every day. There's definitely people worse off than I am.
On a positive note, my flare ups usually happen every few months and we are planning on going to Kings Island November 1-4th, so Lord willing if that works out I won't have to worry about a bad flare up happening during that time. (Unless some freak thing happens, and we all know that is possible.) After how much fun we had at Cedar Point, I am so excited for this Kings Island trip. Unfortunately they don't have resort type hotels on site like Cedar Point, but I have been having fun looking at Airbnb's. We have learned that with Peppy staying up really late, and me automatically waking up at 4 am every day, a traditional hotel room just doesn't work for us anymore. Well, not if everyone wants to feel rested in the morning. Sometimes even with fees, the Airbnb option is cheaper than a studio type hotel room.
New favorite Bible verse unlocked, Ecclesiastes 7:4: A wise person thinks a lot about death, but a fool only thinks about having a good time.
This was long, and who knows if anyone read it. And honestly, who cares? Not me. I couldn't care even if I wanted to.
You might think I'm a little insane, but I'm actually a wizard. If you will excuse me I need to go finish up some negotiations I was making with some squirrels. You know how they can be when it comes to compromising.
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