Then, by Friday night, I realized that the recent re-org is potentially a really great thing. For me, anyway.
See, for the past three years, my boss has been pressuring me to do a job I don’t want to do, and I have no interest in doing. They’ve been urging me to be more socially pro-active and get out and drum up political support for the program I run. Go network. Hob-nob. Make my presence felt in the world.
I, on the other hand, really just want to get things done. Because no matter how much I politic and get people “in my corner”, if people aren’t doing the job right, none of it is going to pan out.
And, in fact, a bunch of things didn’t pan out over the past three years — partly because I was so divided in my attention that I missed things. Some things I missed so terribly, I was sure I was going to get fired. I didn’t, but the whole experience was pretty terrible.
Anyway, on Friday I was talking to a co-worker about the re-org, and it looks like that whole hob-nobbing, uber-politicking aspect of my position is going to get offloaded to other people. And that’s fine with me. I hate doing that. With a burning passion. And now it looks like I won’t have to do it, anymore.
Praise be.
So, lesson learned (yet again) : Don’t jump to conclusions about what stuff means or what’s “destined” to happen. Because it might not. And I don’t want to waste my energy, getting all freaked out about things that will never happen.
I need to save my energy.
Speaking of which, today’s a bonus day — cold and rainy and grey and quiet. A lot of people are out of town for the Memorial Day weekend. And I can move at my own pace. Tomorrow, too. Long weekend. Good thing. I’ve been needing this.
Yeah, it’s all good. It usually is, I just don’t always realize it.
Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner, and I can’t wait. Having three days off work — and tomorrow I’ll be working from home, just like everyone else who’s able to, who doesn’t want to get stuck in Friday afternoon holiday traffic.
It’s unfortunate that I feel this way. Once upon a time, I loved my work. I couldn’t wait to do it, each and every day. I didn’t like weekends, and I even worked on my skills on Saturdays and Sundays.
No more. The things I once loved to do are lost to me – ever since my TBI in 2004, the way my brain processes information changed, so I can’t do the level of coding I once did. I also get tired more quickly, so that keeps me from working long hours at it, as well.
Oh, well. I have other things in my life that brighten my day. And I’ll have three days to do them, this weekend. Work in my garden, work around the house, work in my yard. Lots of outdoor activities — providing the weather holds.
That, and catching up on reading, maybe doing some writing, and working on some projects I’ve recently revived.
I’ve got plenty to do. I’m just feeling a certain sense of loss over not counting my day-job as something I look forward to doing.
I sometimes dream of winning the lottery. But then I get depressed. So, I try not to do that, anymore.
I just keep going. Just keep going. Till I get where I’m supposed to go.
It’s going to be great, having the time to myself, this weekend. Time to think. Time to rest. Time to move at my own pace. Bliss. Sheer bliss.
But until then, it’s work-time. And I’m about to launch into that in another 25 minutes. Just enough time to get myself prepped for my first conference call.
Life has been a little too exciting for me, lately. Lots going on, lots to do, and not nearly enough time to recover from it all.
Work needs to be done on the house. So I’m doing it.
My yard needs tending. So I’m tending it.
My job is extremely demanding. So, I’m stepping up to meet the demands as best as I can.
My spouse is doing okay – one day good, the next not so good. So, I’m dealing with that.
My car has been making strange sounds. So I took it to the mechanic.
The loaner car they gave me is terrible. So, I’m driving the van instead.
It seems like each and every day, I’m presented with challenges. More of them now, than usual, it seems. Or maybe I’m just tired. Or maybe I’m just needing a break. It could be all of the above. But for now, since I have no other “escape plan” that’s possible right away, I’m dealing with everything.
The snow has all melted, and the rains have come, and now everyone’s yards are turning green.
I bought myself some grass seed and some moss killer, because my yard is getting way out of control with the mossy stuff. Grass needs to grow. So, it’s time to take action.
I’ve got some gardening to do, too. I bought flower seeds for the various flower beds around the house, and this weekend I’ll have some time to work on them. My spouse is away for four days, starting Thursday. So, as of Friday, I’ll have the place to myself (I’m helping out on Thursday, so it won’t be a day off for me).
Then I can get some work done. Make a racket. Make a mess. I’ll clean it all up, of course, but it’ll be good to just clunk around the house without worrying about bothering anyone else.
It’s been a little while since I last blogged here. I’ve actually been increasingly busy at work. No sooner do I start to think, “I’m out of here…” than I get a handful of projects handed to me that are actually really good for my resume. So, I’ll be around long enough to finish them up. Possibly longer. As long as the job is serving my purposes with keeping my skills sharp and my record clean, I’ll keep it.
No need to bolt. Not just yet. Of course, with the merger happening before year-end, anything could happen, but I’m not racing off… not quite yet.
It’s eerie, though, how the more I intended to leave, the more my boss started to “loop me in” to more projects with high visibility. Some days it seems like they’re reading my mind. How do they do that, anyway?
Well, whatever. I’ve been more busy at work, and I’ve been organizing at home. So, I’ve had less time to blog here.
The whole pace of my past six months has been a little strange. It’s either feast or famine. I’m either slammed with a million different things to do, or I’m in a lull, feeling like I’m twiddling my thumbs (sometimes I literally am). Of course, then I feel the need to jump into action and come up with more things to do, so I get myself busy again… and then when the normal incoming tide of to-do items starts to rise again, I have twice as much to handle.
Funny, how that goes.
Well, it’s better than not having anything going on, I suppose. I’m not sure I could have nothing going on, anyway.
It’s really about balance. And also doing a better job of tracking what I’m really working on. Sometimes, when I am “not busy”, I really should be — I’m just forgetting that I’ve got stuff simmering on the back-burner. Or I’ve flat-out forgotten that I’m supposed to be doing something important. Then I scramble to get it together, and I don’t always do a great job of it.
I can’t beat myself up over it, though. I just have to keep steady, and also do a better job of tracking my activities. I’ve started keeping weekly logs of what needs to be done, what I did in the past week, what I need to do next week. I’ve tried a bunch of different systems, but for some reason, they have all bugged the crap out of me. I think this one is good, though. So far, so good.
And I’m reviewing my lists with my neuropsych, which is helpful. I haven’t done this before, because I was embarrassed that I was really struggling. I didn’t feel like I should be, and my old neuropsych was very intent on making sure I didn’t get bogged down in a lot of negative self-talk. So, rather than admit when I was having trouble, I just didn’t talk about it. And I let a lot of stuff slip through the cracks.
No more, though. No more of that. I want to do well. I want to do my best. Even if that means getting over my self-consciousness and sense of impending failure.
It’s all a balancing act — an act of balance. A deliberate choice to balance things out, and a conscious act to do just that.
I didn’t feel like exercising this morning. I just lay in bed and pulled back the curtains… watched the gentle rain fall and listened to it pinging on the chimney cap outside my window. It’s a beautiful day to stay indoors and just chill out… reading, thinking, blogging… just chillin’.
If only.
But if I don’t get up and get my circulation pumping — get on that bike and ride — I’m no good for the rest of the day. I bypassed my morning ride, and I was dragging all day. And that was no good.
So, after I lay there a little while, I got myself out of bed and went for my ride. I’m not sure how long I rode. It was at least 20 minutes, I think. Nothing huge, just enough to wake me up and work up a bit of a sweat. Then I had my big glass of water and made my breakfast. I didn’t lift this morning, because I’ve been lifting and carrying heavy objects for days, now, and my body needs a rest. As much as I’d like to have that morning “pump”, common sense prevails.
I know how unproductive it is, when I overtrain and overdo it, so I’ll use my good sense and not do that today.
Yesterday, I swam again. It’s good. I only swam once last week, in the pool at work. I managed to get in a friend’s pool over the weekend and have a little bit of a swim on Sunday, but it was no workout. Just a cooling-off, really.
When I swim at work, it’s a whole different thing. I go around noontime, when everyone is either eating lunch, or they’re in the gym. I usually have the place to myself, but yesterday there was someone else there. I like to swim hard from one end of the Olympic sized pool to the other, then float on my back and relax, letting my heart rate and breathing go back to normal. It’s probably the most relaxing thing in my day, to just lie there and float… weightless, feeling myself floating free… The other person in the pool looked at me strangely, and I wonder if maybe they thought there was something wrong. But after my heart rate and breathing were back to normal, I went back to swimming… and they jumped out of the pool and went back to their work day.
I’m going to see the neurologist again today, to look at test results. I think this whole thing has been a boondoggle, quite frankly. But I had to follow up on it, because it would be remiss for me to overlook a serious problem that could impact myself and my spouse, on down the line. I’m the sole $upport for us, so I have to take care of myself and do my due diligence wherever possible. I don’t like it, but it’s gotta get done.
So, I’m doing it. I’m not sure what’s going to come out of this. I’m tempted to just bag it and say, “Okay, I have these issues, and you’ve been unable to medically find anything significant to address. I know they’re issues for me, and I need to manage them, so since you’ve got nothing to offer me, I’ll take it from here.”
The medical establishment doesn’t have the nuance and sophistication for people like me, so I’m not going to waste any more of their (and my time) with requests for help that they’re unprepared and unable to give.
Time to just take things into my own hands, and be done with it. I’ve given it my best shot, but it’s time to call an end to this search.
It’s taking up way too much time and energy, and I just don’t have the time and resources to keep chasing this the way I have. Anyway, I’m really just following this up because of advice from my neuropsych(s). I would have just left it alone and dealt with it, myself, but they’ve been so keen on me figuring out the medical piece of this, so I don’t fall.
The crazy thing is, months ago (and before I spent lots of time and a bit of money on this), I could have predicted this outcome. But then, I’m the brain-injured one, so what do I know?
Well, maybe today will see the end to this. If I ever get concussed or brain-injured again, I know where to find these people. But until then (and hopefully that never happens), I’m just going to get back to my life. It’s been interesting, but it hasn’t been that productive.
And frankly, exercise and a good diet, getting rest, keeping active in my life, and really diving into my life experience to learn as much as I can, is turning out to be the ticket to my ongoing recovery.
I had a busy weekend, doing a lot of work around the house while my spouse was out of town. Lots of lifting and moving and hammering and drilling and lugging things around. And in the end, I’ve finished some of the biggest items on my to-do list — which were also the ones that I couldn’t seem to do for months and months.
And it’s all good.
I’m really foggy today. I was really foggy yesterday. I’ve been feeling really “draggy” and dull, lately, and it’s not fun. But I keep to my schedule and I keep doing the right thing(s) for myself, and it all seems to work out okay. I haven’t been getting to bed at a decent hour, lately, so that’s probably a determining factor.
But at least I’m functional on average. And I can rally to get a bunch of stuff done when the opportunity arises.
Now it’s quiet. The sun is shining, and the kids have all gone to school. Time to get ready for work and see what the day has to offer.
This week, my goal is to get myself back on track with my sleeping. I see the neuro one last time this week, to see about possible neuropathy in my feet and legs. I’m guessing there’s none, but I’m going to follow through with it. Then I will probably just drop the whole neuro thing and look into having my ears checked.
Not every day starts out with 9.5 hours of sleep, unfortunately. In fact, precious few do. And after days of sleeping long past 8 hours, I’m up early this morning with barely 7 hours under my belt. I was too warm, overnight, and I probably need to put the air conditioner back in the window, because when I get too warm, I can’t sleep.
Also, I was having bad dreams last night, having to do with my spouse. I was so angry with them about doing something wrong, and I was trying to get back at them and teach them a lesson, but when they tried to step up and do what I needed them to do, they couldn’t, because their mind was gone. It was mean-spirited and cruel, and it also brought home to me, yet again, just how much it sucks to have your beloved decline right before your very eyes.
So, no, I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
I got up anyway and started in on my day. I rode the exercise bike for 20 minutes, then I did some heavier lifting than I usually do. I didn’t do a ton of it, because I don’t want to injure myself. But I did lift heavier weights that took more concentration and effort than usual. And that felt pretty good. It felt good to push, even if it was just a slight bit more than usual.
I need to shake things up and break up my routine, so it doesn’t get boring and I don’t lose interest and motivation. I mean, having a “master routine” of doing the same activities each morning and evening (getting to bed at the same time, exercising and eating a nutritious breakfast in the morning, and keeping myself on a schedule). But doing the exact same thing(s) over and over can be mind-numbing, so I need to find other ways to work and stay active.
And that’s what I’m doing. I had my “magic potion” of electrolytes and fruit juice this morning. And I also mixed up a big batch of deviled eggs. I actually love them. And over the last holiday season, my sister-in-law showed me some secrets of making really tasty ones. So, I whipped up a batch and sealed them up in plastic containers for later (so the refrigerator doesn’t smell like egg sulphur). I used to watch Jacques Pepin on a food channel, and he showed how you can poke a hole in the end of an egg to let the sulphur release, so your eggs don’t have that rotten smell, but I could never get it to work. It just got egg all over the inside of the pan I was cooking them in.
Oh, well. The smell isn’t awful, and it doesn’t mean the eggs are bad, so I’ll live with it. At least I have my deviled eggs.
I’m tired today. And not just from not getting sleep. Yesterday was a very emotional day for me — much moreso than I expected. I had a neuro appointment, where they did an EMG on my legs to check for neuropathy. They wanted to check how the nerves in my legs and feet are behaving — if my balance issues might be related to degeneration in my nerves there, or if the impulses are not traveling properly from my spine to brain to legs to feet… and so on.
I had to lie still and relax completely, while they did little electric shocks on my legs, and then tested the nerves in the muscles with little needles that the doctor inserted into the muscle. It wasn’t terrible. I could do without the shocks. It reminded me a lot of when I was a kid running around at dairy farms, bumping into the electric fence. It was like that, but the place where they pressed the electric conductor against my skin was very sensitive. The doctor told me that if I relaxed and got my autonomic nervous system to calm down, I’d have less of a pain response.
I found it interesting that they talked about the ANS that way — and that they seemed to assume that I knew about it and understood what they were talking about. The thing that bothered me about it, was that they went really fast, and I felt like I couldn’t prepare or keep up or get my head around what they were saying, until they’d started. And that sense of no control was stressful. I mean, not necessarily control, but just not feeling like I was actually a part of the process — that they were just doing all this on my body as though I wasn’t even there — I didn’t care for that at all.
It took about 30 minutes to do the testing, and the needles weren’t bad at all. They said it would hurt a little bit, but it didn’t hurt very much at all. The anticipation was much worse. And the needles were actually less painful than the electric shocks. The shocks were the worst, really, now that I think about it. Having your legs jumping around, and feeling that burning roughness from the electric conductor… it was worse than I thought it would be.
I got through it in good spirits, had a pleasant chat with the receptionists, and then headed back to the office where I could just get some work done. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. But then when I was going to sleep, I suddenly burst into tears and wept like a small child. I guess it did bother me — a lot. And the thing that got to me the most was that I was all alone in the process. I’ve stopped discussing the neuro appointments with my spouse — I don’t even tell them that I’m going — because it sets off their anxiety so intensely, to think there might be something “wrong” with me. And then my life gets even more complicated, because they shut down in their anxiety, and they just “drop out” of live, leaving me even more alone — and burdened — than before. So, I stopped telling my spouse about my appointments.
After all, there could be nothing at all wrong with me. Maybe I’m just a very sensitive individual who has a unique combination of traits that make me dizzy at unexpected moments. Who knows? So, why worry my spouse, if that’s the case?
But not having anyone to talk to afterwards, not having anyone to debrief and decompress with… that’s tough. And I really felt it last night.
These times when I have to push through an unpleasant experience is a little like lifting heavier weights on occasion. It forces me to pay attention. It makes me feel vulnerable and out of my element. And it reminds me of how much farther I have to go, to really feel as though my life is on solid footing.
It also makes me more sensitive to the situations of others who are even worse off than I am, who are struggling with serious health issues in the face of a medical system that doesn’t serve them, but only confuses and alienates them… and then blames them for not taking proper care of themselves. That’s especially true for folks with cognitive issues. I had a really hard time, inside the silence of my own skull, keeping up with what was going on around me. So, I just went along with it. But if the doctor had made a bad choice or wanted to do something more serious to me, would I have had the wherewithal to stop them? To question them? To defend myself?
Maybe I could have. Or maybe not. I just don’t know. But I do know that for many, many others, they can’t. They just can’t. They’re at the mercy of the medical system, unable to follow along, unable to figure out what the doctor is saying in the 15 (whopping) minutes they have to spend with them.
And that can be deadly. We can’t speak up for ourselves, we can’t advocate for ourselves. We just end up being guinea pigs, and that’s such a bothersome situation, it alone keeps me up at night, sometimes. I wish to high heaven there were something I could do to change this, but all I can do is offer my own experiences, and hope that somewhere, somehow, someone reads these words and gets something from them.
I’m feeling a little better this morning, but my dream bothers me. It all bothers me. But it’s a new day, a beautiful day, and life is waiting. I’ve got a whole bunch of deviled eggs in the fridge, and that’s pretty cool. Life is good. Regardless.
The countdown to my business trip is T-minus-4-days. And in the meantime, I’m taking care of my everyday life as best I can.
I’m seeing the neuro nurse practitioner tomorrow, and I’ll be reporting in about my sleep.
Below is a chart of the numbers I’ve collected for every night over the past month. It shows how many hours I’ve slept, as well as how many hours I napped. And it shows how I stack up, relative to my target time of 8.5 hours.
I’ve been falling short consistently, apparently. I’ve been thinking I’ve been doing well, but when I see a chart, it’s clear I have a ways to go. A couple of weeks ago, I was really behind on my sleep, due to work stress and a conflict I had with a friend of mine that really got me bent out of shape. I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it did.
I am human, after all.
So, this is all stuff to work on. Things to stay mindful of, and not let it all get to me. And to find ways to calm myself down and chill out, rather than getting wound up and bent out of shape. Maybe I’ll put a printout of the chart beside my bed. Yeah – that’s a great idea for a reminder.
I’ve been prepping for my business trip next week, doing some shopping and also some checklists, as well as practicing my talks for the trade show booth. I’m not feeling a huge amount of pressure, though. If I do a good job, then fine. If not, I’m not sweating it. In a way, I don’t really care about the event. I care about the customers I’m going to meet, and I care about the people I work with, but I’m not personally invested in the company. Not anymore. Not since they’re selling out, lining the pockets of the people in charge, while laying off a lot of people.
So, I’m treating it like a free trip to a part of the country I’d never normally go to. Resorts in warm climates are fine, but I hate amusement parks and places where large crowds gather, so yeah, this will likely be the one and only time I ever go to this place.
One good thing is that I’ll get to see a relative I haven’t seen in over 30 years. They’re living in the area, and I’ll get a chance to catch up with them, which will be nice. That will get me off the hook of hanging out with my workmates, who just want to run wild and party while they’re away from their spouses.
I have no interest in joining them. I see them every day, as it is. I’m just going to do my job, and then come home. I wouldn’t even go to the place, if it weren’t for work. I need my sleep (see above). I need to eat right and take care of myself. I can’t get drawn into their version of fun.
So, I’m hoping my relative can provide some welcome respite from their company. It’s a plan, anyway.
In the end, I’m just looking forward to everything being over. Flying there, doing the job, flying home… and getting back to normal again.
But that all feels like a distraction from what my real focus is — getting enough sleep, so I can keep my health in balance… and also not have to use the sleep medication that was prescribed to me. My old neuropsych warned me away from it, because although it supposedly metabolizes quickly, that’s not true for everyone. And I’m so sensitive to meds, as it is, I can’t imagine my body is going to behave like everyone else’s.
The neuro visit this week is really just a way for me to check in — and check out. They don’t seem very interested in addressing the reason I actually went to see them – my balance. So, I’ll handle that myself. And never mind the pills. Or the procedures. They’re not that helpful, anyway.
I think my biggest frustration is that I go to these specialists in good faith, believing that they are willing and able to assist me. And then they just don’t deliver. Or show much interest in delivering. There are a million possible reasons, but figuring it out is not the best use of my time.
I’ve just got to keep the focus on myself, on keeping my own balance in every way possible, and keeping myself fit and capable as best I can. It’s really the only way my life is going to be as great as it can be.
And that’s my intention, really. To just have a great life — and enjoy it to the fullest.
I’ve been concerned about falling, for some time, now. I get lightheaded and dizzy, and I sometimes lose my balance when I’m tired or I’m distracted (which is often how I feel). I’ve seen a neurologist about possible neurological bases for this, but the MRI didn’t come back with anything meaningful that they could do anything with. Also, I don’t have a condition they can diagnose, so they can’t bill the insurance company, which means I can’t get much in-depth help from them. They need to pay their bills, and if the insurance won’t cover what they’re doing for me – and I certainly can’t cover it all – then nothing’s going to get done.
Which kind of sucks.
But frankly, it doesn’t surprise me. I have been steering clear of neurologists for some time. Only after my neuropsych encouraged me to dig deeper, did I agree to try again. And the one they referred me to moved out of state, so that’s that. This one was another good prospect, they thought, but my experience is turning out different from their expectation. No surprises there.
I’m going back in another week to follow up and put this whole thing to rest. All they can tell me is that I’m probably not sleeping enough, which my old neuropsych thought was “preposterous” – but I can kind of see their point. When I’m tired, my brain doesn’t work as well. And balance is very much handled in the brain. So, fatigue could conceivably be a source of imbalance.
Still, there’s no guarantee that I’m going to ever actually catch up on my sleep and feel fully rested. I wear out easily, and I don’t have a life that allows me to get naps when I need them. Not yet, anyway. I’m working on that.
Anyway, I’m not going to get all bent out of shape about it. I’m meeting with a wellness coach/personal trainer at work today. That’s one of our employee benefits – an on-site wellness consultant – so I’m going to take advantage of it. I’m going to see if they can tell me some things I can do to strengthen my overall system, to give me better balance, physically speaking.
Think about it — the body moves as a result of muscles coordinating their movement. And keeping your balance really involves a lot of muscles. I sit and stand — stationary — for most of the day, every single day, so I don’t use those muscles as much. And that’s no good. So, I’m hoping they can show me ways to strengthen, as well as get more flexible — that’s another piece of keeping your balance.
I’m also working on really improving my sense of my own body and where I am in space. I get pretty banged-up from doing yardwork and chores around the house, because I run into things (but don’t realize it), and then I end up with bruises from impacts I can’t recall. I’m so focused on what I’m doing, that I don’t even notice the impacts. So, yeah, there are two things going on there, but I’m thinking that if I can at least improve my sense of where I am, relative to sharp objects and hard surfaces, I can possibly look a little less like I got in a bar brawl, after I’m done cleaning up the yard 😉
The way I’m working on that, is by really paying attention to my body during the day – noticing where I’m tense, and focusing on relaxing it. I’ve been watching videos of Systema — a Russian martial arts practice that centers around breathing, relaxation, and body awareness. Some of the things that they do in the videos are amazing — and the folks doing it aren’t these monster-ripped superheroes who overpower their opponents with sheer force. They’re average-looking folks who you’d never expect to be able to do the things they do. Because they know their bodies, and they relax and let themselves just respond to the situation.
I don’t think I’d ever do Systema training, because of all the hits and the falls. I’ve had enough of them in my life, already, and I don’t want to push my brain’s luck. But I did get a book from them a while back about breathing and improving your body sense, and I’ve been reading that on and off, over the past year. I’m getting back to it, now, and it feels pretty good. Just getting a better sense of my body, how it moves, how it feels when it moves… when it’s tense… when I need to breathe… it’s good.
It’s also helping me sleep. I get so caught up in my head, that my body can’t catch a break. So, focusing in my breath and also trying to feel each and every bone and muscle in my body, and relax as much as possible… that gets me into a relaxed state that gets me “down” before I can get halfway through. I’ll start at my toes, and by the time I’m at my knees, I’m out.
And that’s great. I used to do this all the time, then I stopped… and I forgot about doing it. That’s one thing I’m working on, these days — trying to follow through and not drop things before I finish them. Or, if I do get interrupted, make a note of what I’ve been doing, and keep that note where I can see it and remember it. I just remembered another project that I was making amazing progress on… then I got interrupted, and I forgot about it… and I ended up heading in a completely different direction.
Months later, I suddenly remembered it last night, and sure enough — there it is, waiting for me to continue working on it.
The breathing and relaxation stuff is just the same. I’m making great progress, then I get distracted, and I head off in a different direction. And I forget about what I’d been doing — and it ceases to exist for me.
So, I lose the benefits I’ve been getting from it. And I lose that part of my life. I slowly drift back to my old ways. I start having the same problems that I had before, and I wonder why I keep ending up back where I started… all over again… when I was making so much great progress.
It’s discouraging. So, I need to do something about that.
Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner, and I can’t wait. Having three days off work — and tomorrow I’ll be working from home, just like everyone else who’s able to, who doesn’t want to get stuck in Friday afternoon holiday traffic.
Life has been a little too exciting for me, lately. Lots going on, lots to do, and not nearly enough time to recover from it all.
I had a busy weekend, doing a lot of work around the house while my spouse was out of town. Lots of lifting and moving and hammering and drilling and lugging things around. And in the end, I’ve finished some of the biggest items on my to-do list — which were also the ones that I couldn’t seem to do for months and months.
The countdown to my business trip is T-minus-4-days. And in the meantime, I’m taking care of my everyday life as best I can.
I’ve been concerned about falling, for some time, now. I get lightheaded and dizzy, and I sometimes lose my balance when I’m tired or I’m distracted (which is often how I feel). I’ve seen a neurologist about possible neurological bases for this, but the MRI didn’t come back with anything meaningful that they could do anything with. Also, I don’t have a condition they can diagnose, so they can’t bill the insurance company, which means I can’t get much in-depth help from them. They need to pay their bills, and if the insurance won’t cover what they’re doing for me – and I certainly can’t cover it all – then nothing’s going to get done.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 