Jul 20

 Suffering is the word. My right foot has been painful and on the brink of rendering me immobile, but I have, perhaps stupidly, bulled through it, taken a few precautions, but stubbornly refused to go back to a crutch.

My eyes have got a lot worse. On Thurday I woke up to not being able to see properly out of my right eye. No matter what I did with it. Eye drops. Washing it out. Blinking. Wiping. Tears. It was slow to focus, blurry, off. Needless to say the impact on my mood was bad. This is my final red line. I'm not going to go blind from my bullshit. After half a day and another bout of sleep, it came back. All good. Perhaps it was just a one off. I somehow doubt it.

I've been wracked by anxiety for most of the backend of this week. It sits with me every morning now. An awful sense of impending doom and twisting of my stomach. A permanent knot down there. Invariable it starts to unwind as the afternoon crawls on, and as evening approaches it starts to release me from its grip. By midnight, I am usually feeling a good deal better, albeit, fragile, and emotionally drained, but more stable. Only to sleep and the cycle to start again.

The pains are coming and going. Flash on. Flash off. They're not sticking around typically for more than half a day or so. They are nasty when they come on, like knives stuck in me - and all my pain points flare up. And then they slink away as if not there. It's always brought on with sleep. Sleep it seems is my huge enemy. It fucks up my eyes. It brings on pains. It makes my right foot worse. My left hand ache.

It's hard for me at the moment to maintain sanity. I am largely just sleeping through it when I can, but that too, is difficult, and sleep, as above, more often than not, fucks me over. A rock and a hard place. Sleep makes the anxiety worse. Probably the cortisol nudging me to get up instead of sleeping through the day.

Naps seem to do me better than proper sleep. The serious damage seems to happen in a "serious" sleep period. Usually around the early hours of the morning. Waking from that one is often hideous. Smaller naps throughout mid morning or the afternoon tend to be better. But not always. Sometimes I can wake up with the same bullshit there.

I have tentatively tried the CPAP machine again. Made a few adjustments. Got a nose thing that fits better. And through the nose mask alone, it's a lot better to be honest. Way more tolerable. I have not slept with it yet, and mostly, that's due to me wanting to sleep without the "cold weirdness" of it on my face, not, as it was before, of me not being able to breathe with it. Which is maybe telling in and of itself. Through my mouth breathing it's very hard to breathe out against it. With it just on my nose - and breathing out through my nose - it's much easier. Perhaps there is some clue in there as to the shape of the back of my throat, windpipe whatever there, and maybe the root cause of the apnea in the first place. But who knows. I will say that with the nose only mask on there is an unusual closure in the back of my throat. I can feel it. That bit of control that directs whether you are going through your nose or mouth. The same thing that you can do to close your throat entirely ( useful in swimming ! ). The pressure makes it "stick" in one direction. I don't know.

So things are very shit at the moment. It could be worse. I could be off my feet entirely. My right foot seems, perhaps, maybe, to have avoided taking me completely out, it's sore, but, slowly, maybe, going in the right direction. It's up and down, not a smooth progression line, so it makes it hard to judge.

My mental health is shot to pieces. I am trying to do my best with it, but it's hard. And it's always whispering that I suck. And that no one likes me or has time for me. Difficult. This is the nature of the beast.