Bork Slowly Borking

 Today has not been a good day. I woke up with super anxiety. A scrunched up wincing pain in my stomach. The pain you get when you are very upset. That woke me up. It.. kinda.. makes sense. When you wake up you get a cortisol kick to wake you up. Which also has a side effect of raising stress. So if you're already anxious, stressed etc, it kicks it into overdrive. Uh huh. Today was sketchy. Anxiety. Jumpy. On a knifes edge. Exhausted. I did my best to just noodle around today, and, I managed to do that without triggering anything else. But it's a very shit way to exist. Permanent high anxiety. Misery. And my mind is flirting with going crazy. On the edge. Dancing. Where your thoughts spin out. Every stimuli is weird. I can suddenly feel my thumb clenching. I can't relate to anything. Disassociating. Everyone else feels like a story. Life is weird. Observing it for 10 feet above. Turning over how horrible it is. Oof. Today was also about competing tortures. Athena was back o...

 Ok. So. Yesterday was horrible. I skated dangerously around and in, and out and in of full on mental. I was having panic blips in the kitchen. Holy fucking shit. As it turns out, whether I liked it or not, I have developed a major fucking aversion to the CPAP machine in very short order. And. Most of yesterday I sat around in some form of really fucky state, at times panicky. Yikes. This has entirely blind sided me. How fast and how hard my mental state has slipped out of my hands, and how much of a shit and - surprise - panicky reaction I had to the thing. At this point I think I'd rather set the thing on fire and kick it out the window than ever touch it again. And it's not a rational thing. It's an animal thing. Can't breathe. Machine bad. Fuck machine. I said to my brother later in the day. I think I'd rather not breathe. Than put it on and feel like I'm drowning. I'd rather suffer a shit descent into apnea related health issues than do the CPAP. Hmm. I...

 Today I feel absolutely awful. My sleep has been wrecked by the CPAP. After getting a few hours sleep and my nose clearing up - I would guess it stayed blocked up for around 4 hours or so - I gave the CPAP another go. This time it was even worse. Breathing out against it was hard - felt like I was suffocating. Not good. After two minutes of using it I couldn't do it. My breathing was getting faster and worse. I started getting panic blips where I can't breathe properly. Oh boy. Ok. Now the unforeseen knock on effects. My mood has gone through the floor. My anxiety has gone through the ceiling. I am now struggling to keep a lid on it and not go fully nuts. I am sketchy. I would guess this is a few things. 1. I feel even worse. My mood has gone down because of how shit I feel. 2. I got very little sleep and am tired as all hell. Which means my mood is wobbly. 3. Far from being a thing that might help, so far the CPAP is a thing that is just adding to the problems. I did not expe...

 So. I've tried the CPAP. After I hooked it up to the main unit it very quickly became clear the mask was just fine. Not leaking. And after a few small adjustments and getting used to it, it seemed ok. So. I gave it a go. A few blips. Breathing out is hard against it. Far from making my breathing easier, it seemed to make my breathing harder. Ok. Well. I guess I just have to get used to it. But it seemed alright. Not as bad as I had thought. This is ok. It was gonna make me breathe easier. And slowly. The weirdness trickled in. It started to feel like I was french kissing a vacuum cleaner in reverse. Cheeks subtly puffed out. Inflated.Mouth drying out.  I don't know. Maybe I'm super sensitive or something. But it felt pretty janky. I can see what it's trying to do. But it felt inelegant. A sledgehammer to crack a nut. But. Ok. Keep on going. It's going to be weird at first until you get properly used to it. As time went on, I shifted from sleepy, to less sleepy, to...

 A reminder note. Anticipating the usual post eating slump, today I prepped the blood sugar testing gear. Made sure it was correctly setup and freshly initialised on sample. Exhaustion kicked in hardcore after an hour. Blood sugar tested at 6.5 mmol/L 1 hour after eating. Tested at 5.5 mmol/L 3 hours after eating. Absolutely bang on the nose normal. The exhaustion et al is not a blood sugar problem. I will do some daily tests for a while pre and post eating. I will take some bp readings as well. I will take these results to the GP to rule out the usual first responses.

 I've been getting some very hardcore dips in the last few days whenever I eat something during the day. This is not exactly new territory. I frequently get this, sometimes, with absolutely awful results ( ie that Sunday lunch with the most horrible and weird waves of heat ). I am not clear what it is. But this is part of the whole, Hey Something Is Fucked With My Gastro Since December 2020. I've been crashing out hard and feeling suddenly tired and awful with my eyes bruising up nicely. Uh huh. I've been eating smaller and smaller amounts, but it seems, the problem is triggering on smaller and smaller amounts too. So. Uh huh. Pretty sure it isn't a blood sugar thing, though I haven't tested my blood sugars in forever. I can eat something like an apple - no problem. I can even eat something like a cheeky Kit Kat - no problem. I eat lunch. And boom.  Ho hum. Weirdly, it has less of an impact the later I eat. Ish. Ho hum. Docs appointment in 5 or so weeks. I will br...

 Invalidation. Sometimes this gets passed around as one of the on trend, pop psych buzz words used from everything from a genuine problem, to someone just not getting their own way with a tantrum. As is the way with pop psych buzz words. But. This has come up a few times over the last couple of weeks. Invalidation of how you feel, your emotions. Lack of support. The perpetual glossing over and minimising of issues for, at best, a misplaced attempt at making someone feel better. I commented recently in the blog about the fact that any sentence that started with "At least it's not..." was never useful. A friend of mine who is going through numerous serious problems all at once had complaints about her spouse and his continual waving away of how she felt. The upshot being. She would demonstrate anxiety. Fear. And he would tell her she was stupid. Over reacting. Go away. Leave him alone. Poster child of invalidation right there. How you feel is how you feel. It doesn't me...