6/22

Today is a hard day.

I got my dog Chloe when I was thirteen. She was the teeniest puppy I'd ever seen; no bigger than a soda can. I have had her for her whole life and even though she's naturally kind of a brat, she's been a fantastic dog.

She's thirteen now and her health has been deteriorating for the last couple years. It started with a cough (turned out to be tracheal collapse), then her eyes got a little clouded and she started walking like she was sore. Her hearing lasted for quite a while but now we have to yell to get her to hear us when we're just a few feet away.

Last night she had her first seizure. She cried out in a way that I'd never heard. When I picked her up she was limp. I genuinely thought she was dead for a few seconds. I snuggled her until she was able to hold her head up again.

This morning she had her second seizure, about twelve hours after the first one. She acted exactly the same as she did last night. I called the vet not long after and I got an appointment for earlier today. When I went in I was told that she has a stage 4 heart murmur, a clicking sound in her lungs, severe arthritis, and now she's having seizures. They offered me a bunch of tests but J and I decided she's old enough. She doesn't need a bunch of invasive tests just to extend her life by maybe a year. I feel like if we did do that, it would be selfish on our parts. Pets get old and die. It's something I feel like too many people refuse to accept and then they let their dog get to a point where they have no quality of life left. I want to put Chloe down when she's enjoying life as much as possible.

She's in pain and I did get a prescription for painkillers. I'm going to give her some in the morning tomorrow.

I got back from the vet and started cleaning my house. Chloe came into the living room and was contorting and falling all over even though she tried a couple times to stay upright. Her body tensed and she rolled over her back which she hates to do when she has the choice. The vet told me to call her name to see if she'd respond during the episodes to determine if it was a nervous system misfire or a seizure. She didn't look at me at all when I called her so that confirmed the seizure diagnosis.

A little bit ago I fed her her dinner and immediately after finishing it she ran outside and puked all over. She ate some of it again but I know that when your dog has a hard time keeping food down that's not a good sign that they'll be here for a lot longer.

These will be her last few weeks with us. If she keeps seizing we'll put her down sooner. J and I told L and N about her condition and what's going to happen in the near future. We told them to spend a lot of time with her while she's still here and that they can give her as many treats as they want.

She's been a fantastic companion for me through the years. When I was dealing with the bullshit my parents did when I was younger she was there for me when I was sobbing in my room, feeling incredibly lonely. I will always remember her curling up her tiny body next to mine when I went to sleep as a teenager. She's been snotty at times, she used to pretend she couldn't hear you when she didn't want to go outside to go potty in the winter. She has turned picky in her old age and she doesn't eat half the people food scraps we've given her. I just hope that we can give her a lot of love in the coming days and that she can go in peace.

6/14

Surprisingly I'm feeling pretty damn good mentally today. I spent some good quality time with J last night. My intimate relationship with him has been flourishing and I'm enjoying sex much more than I did this time last year. Maybe I have been improving in the last twelve months, I guess I may just be like a tortoise instead of a hare in terms of recovery.

I'm frustrated that my attorney still hasn't gotten back to me about my settlement. My paralegal said they were expecting to hear back from the defendant's insurance by the beginning of the week but it's Friday and we still haven't heard anything. I don't know if my legal team is just dragging their feet or if the other insurance are being assholes, but I just want this done and over with.

In better news, we invested in a purple mattress. It arrived today and I hope to write up a review about it probably in the next few weeks, after we've been able to sleep on it for a while. I have chronic neck pain and J has chronic low back and hip pain. I hope this new mattress will help us improve our sleep.

J just finished his midterm testing and we're cautiously optimistic about how he did. Calculus is kicking his butt. He's got a good math brain but the course is living up to it's reputation by being like learning a whole new language. Luckily, as with learning a new language, one day you'll wake up and all of your practicing finally pays off when you don't even have to think of what to say to communicate properly. He'll get there. It may just take a bit more time than we maybe hoped.

Shockingly I've been able to start writing. It's been nearly three years since I've been able to be creative at all, but I decided to take a leap this past week. I bought the basics to start recording my voice to make YouTube videos. I don't know if I will do original role plays, podcasts, music, or maybe recording some fiction. I think I'll play around a little bit to see which type of upload speaks to me the most. And if I can't decide, I'll just make and upload what I want to. It's my channel after all.

I've been debating how to name my channel. I don't know if I should choose a pseudonym or use an ordinary word(s). I struggle so much in this aspect. I thought I knew what I wanted to use as my pen name for my novels but I can't decide on that either.

If I narrow down a list I'll list it.

6/1

I may have had a breakthrough in what's wrong with me. A guy in one of my groups on Facebook chimed in about my post explaining my health struggles lately. He said that he was diagnosed with something called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). It would explain literally all of my seemingly unrelated symptoms. It would explain why my heart has been so stupid since I was a teenager. And it's often misdiagnosed as anxiety and depression. So it fits the bill pretty well. I'm going to be off my parent's insurance in a month and once I'm on J's, I'll look for a GP that I like better. The lady I went to seemed so annoyed that I was coming in for treatment, so she can fuck off.

POTS is also known for getting worse around your menstrual cycle. I wonder if that heavy feeling in my chest and legs is just a POTS flare up? Hopefully I'll be able to see someone to either confirm/refute my idea of having this condition.

I've done a lot of reading up about it and a lot of people say that using mobility aids helps conserve their energy a lot. I don't know if J would be okay with it, but if I get the diagnosis, I'm going to invest in one or two aids. I'd probably start with a cane and then possibly invest in a rollator for doing work around the house. I wonder if it would help me not feel so shitty all the time.

Since having this realization my mood has surprisingly been a lot better. I don't feel a surge of joy which I'm assuming is because my period is on its way any day but I think this diagnosis fits so so well.

My OCD has been running rampant lately. I keep looking at houses online that are for sale in my nearby area over and over even though we aren't planning on moving for 4-5 more years. OCD can be a real bitch sometimes.

I posted on Reddit today about my mom. I've been focusing so much about what's shes been doing in the present which annoy me (but don't directly effect me) that I haven't been addressing the things she did when I was a kid that effected me so negatively.

My mom yelled for practically my whole childhood. And if you yelled back you were punished. Yes, I mean punished, not dealt appropriate consequences. I can't handle the noise of people yelling. It stresses me out so fucking much. I remember being so upset at her multiple times that she wasn't willing to hear me out or compromise that I would scream my lungs out over and over and over again until it hurt to even whisper. I would make my own throat raw and tender because of my anger of not being heard.

I remember being thirteen or fourteen and my mom was in her bedroom on her computer. She never shut that thing when I was talking to her. She didn't seem to want to spend time with me. I explained this and the first thing she does is snap at me. She said "I'm not always on my computer, I'm entitled to some alone time!" What she didn't ever explain to me until I was about to leave home was how she had hypothyroidism which zapped all her energy by about 2 PM. I felt sad inside for all those times I asked her to go out and do things with me, but after that I felt so angry that she didn't feel like I deserved to know. If she'd just told me what was going on with her maybe I would have been able to be more considerate and expect less of her.

Another thing she did was lie about why we moved so much. I counted fifteen different homes in between my birth and leaving home. When I was 8 or so I asked her why we move so much and she told me it was because she prayed about it and God told her to move. Well about five years ago I sat down and asked her frankly if that really was the reason. She said no, she just got bored with the house and it's layout so she wanted something new. Fuck that excuse. I was robbed of having any long term friends because of moving so much. I never developed close relationships with anybody in my neighborhood because I wasn't allowed to put roots down anywhere. I attribute her behavior as a huge trigger in my house-hunting OCD behavior.

Another thing was that she favored my sister all growing up. Whatever M wanted she got. My parents bought her a new dress for every school dance, guess how many I got to pick out? ZERO. My sister got a 9k budget for her wedding. My budget? 1.5k. And then in the weeks leading up to the wedding, my parents did a shit ton of updating around the house. That's when I realized that I wasn't a priority. Something my parents told me was that they would only pay for one wedding. If I got a divorce I'd have to foot the bill for my second set of nuptials. My sister got a divorce and found a better man to be with. Guess what happened? They paid for a top of the line venue, the meal was catered, and she got to design a custom dress. My wedding gown was on sale at the bridal shop. My mom convinced me to not to a veil or headpiece, to do my hair myself, and my makeup too. My sister got all of these things in addition to real hair extensions, a limo rental, and my parents footed the bill for their honeymoon. I'm convinced that my mom only didn't want me to get those things because they wanted to put in new can lights and granite counter tops. Fuck that. Also, my sister wrecked two cars and they were replaced with one of the same value. One that was a few years old with maybe a hundred miles on it. What did I get? I turned sixteen in 2009 and I got a shitty Honda Accord that had paint chipping, the seats were all stained from my brothers using it, and then my oldest brother took the radio and subwoofers out of it (that my dad paid for, BTW) and my parents did nothing about it.

I never had things that were just mine. I would go to school and come home and find out my bed had been swapped with my brother. One time I remember that I left my bedroom messy and came back to a spotless room, with a catch. She'd gone through my things and threw out at least half of it. Without consulting me about it first she would announce that we were switching bedrooms. I switched a bedroom with my sister and not long after my dad took her out to pick out what color paint she wanted for her new bedroom.

My brothers scared me on purpose every chance they got and I can only remember a handful of times where my parents defended me. Most of the time they'd just say that I needed to lighten up and learn to take a joke. Now as an adult it doesn't surprise me that I have intense generalized anxiety.

Another fucked up thing that happened is that my dad got a memory foam king sized mattress from a mattress store when they were going to throw it out. He came home, cut it in half, and put one half in the guest room and gave my sister the other half.  I was promised that once my sister left home I would get the coveted mattress. I was sleeping on a decades old twin mattress so I looked forward to getting a decent mattress. Well my sister moved out just before my brother got married and I was pumped. I stripped my bed and moved the frame to a different spot in my bedroom. I went downstairs to grab the mattress my sister left behind only to see my parents storing it in the garage with the other half. I asked what was going on and they said they were giving both halves to my brother and his bride. I reminded them of their promise to give it to me and they merely shrugged and said sorry, too bad. They gave me a 'new' mattress but this one was thin and it had spaceships all over it. It didn't dig into me like the old one did but it was uncomfortable nonetheless because of how little spring back it had. It was like sleeping on a sad rectangle of concrete.

One of the most fucked up things my parents did was they would buy us kids a pet and then get rid of it a short while later without asking us or explaining why. I counted twenty one pets they did this to. The most notable was when I turned 9. I had been begging my parents for my own dog for months and months and on the morning of my birthday they gifted me a white poodle. I was thrilled and I became attached to him within minutes. Four weeks go by and Radar is nowhere to be seen when I got home. I asked my mom where he was, wondering if he'd run away. She sat me down on the sofa and told me that she'd taken him to the animal shelter to be put down. Apparently this dog was fifteen years old with three paws in the grave when we took him home. My parents gave me a dog and then killed it a month later.

I know I didn't ever have to wonder if we would have food or clothes or shelter. But I'm still extremely bitter about it.

6/10

I returned my holter monitor a few days ago. I kept looking for it and wondering if I'd left it somewhere, but at least my hives are healing up nicely. Right now I'm worried about how long it'll take for my doctor to review my test results. I would love to go see a cardiologist about my results but I'm 99% sure you need a referral which fucking sucks. My doctor is dumb because she has too many patients right now (as admitted by the receptionist) so it takes her 2-3 times longer to go over any information she's given. Once July 1st comes I'll be on J's insurance so I'll be able to look for a different GP.

I'm very worried that nobody will take my arrythmia seriously. When I was in high school I had the exact same problem as I have now (the heart problems at least) and they said it's just anxiety. Bullshit. That's the excuse I'm expecting from my hack of a doctor and I can almost guarantee that I'll be seeking a second opinion about this. I'm not just going to sit on my hands and wait like a good little idiot while she doesn't do her fucking job.

Another thing that's been on my mind is the return from my accident last year. They notified the other insurance that I was finished with treatment six weeks ago and we still haven't heard back from them. I just want to finish this up so I don't need to think about it anymore.

My period is a day late so I took a pregnancy test. Thank goodness it was a clear negative. My heart was racing while it was developing. That would literally be the worst thing to happen right now since my health isn't great and my mental health is iffy too. It's still frustrating though because my exhaustion is super high and my OCD has been out of control. I never thought when I was younger that I'd be looking forward to bleeding every month, but here I am at 26 anxiously awaiting the visit from Aunt Flo.

Depression has been a real bitch lately. I'll be in the middle of having a decent day and then all of a sudden depression Falcon Punch's my mood right into the gutter with Pennywise. FML