Tag: Pain

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 480 and Responsibility

I usually have therapy on Mondays. I stack all my emotional work into the first day of the week so I can be my most present for everyone in my life. But today I just couldn’t show up for my emotional work. I’m in a lot of pain and a bunch of things are up in the air professionally and personally. I’m just not able to be here.

Thankfully I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are working on deepening their emotional practice. Someone was able to help me see that I wasn’t able to show up even though I physically showed up. They did it with one insight too.

Responsibility is having ability to respond

One insight and my mind was blown 🤯. In that moment I didn’t realize I didn’t have the ability to respond. I was abdicating responsibility. I was reactive. It wasn’t under my control. I couldn’t preserve my ability to today today. I was not preserving my response ability.

I quietly bowed out of therapy for the evening. Well not so quietly I cried a little and shared my disappointment. I needed to take responsibility for myself in that moment. So in order to preserve my capacity to respond I had to make the decision to bow out. I needed to be the adult that would take care of whatever portion of me was incapable of working through the physical pain of that moment. My inner child needed me to parent and I did. Now hopefully I can continue that streak through mealtime, bath time and bedtime so that my adult and my inner child can respond to the best of our ability to tomorrow.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 472 and Missing Out

I never had headaches in my twenties. Migraines were a cultural phenomenon I was aware of it never experienced. After I did fertility treatments about four years ago my body went though a number of changes for the worse. I developed an inflammatory condition. And I became acquainted with migraines.

My migraines are the light and sound sensitive type. They leave me nauseous enough I have a prescription just for that. I’ve tried a number of treatments for the migraines prophylactically, but only Imitrax really helps once it starts. If I’m lucky I can turn one around in 3-4 hours with medication and a cold dark room.

Today wasn’t a day where I could turn it around fast enough. And I feel sad and alone and depressed about it. I was supposed to meet friends for a nice meal to celebrate with them and I’m missing it because I couldn’t control the migraine fast enough. Alex my husband made it to dinner with our friends but but alas at home in a dark room waiting for my Imitrax to kick in.

I debated if I could force myself into showing up but it was decided the amount of pharmaceuticals required wasn’t passing a cost benefit analysis. I tried to make a case for it saying if I just tossed enough pain medicine at the migraine maybe I could do it. But the rational vote from Alex was a veto. And he’s right if it takes an opioid to get me out the door that’s not something I can justify for a social event.

The irony is I actually dislike fancy dinners out. I find them to be exhausting. Having to sit on uncomfortable chairs and socialize for two hours is very expensive energetically for me. It probably takes a day to recover from the energy expenditure and I often have to up the doses of my stabilizing medications. I tend not to say yes to them as it’s expensive for me and I don’t enjoy them.

So I don’t know why I’m so upset that I’m missing this dinner. But I am so upset. Maybe it’s because I’ve had months of stability without any issue. When I said yes let’s go I expected to be fine. The last time I recall having a major crash was in early February. Since then I’ve flown internationally, lived on my own, and made it to a crypto conference in Miami with little incident. So maybe I was due for a bit of a crash. Maybe it’s just inevitable that if you push you need to rest.

But I feel miserable, inadequate and guilty about it. Like I should have tried harder. Should have taken more drugs. Or at very least been more upfront that sometimes my body is unpredictable and I find it challenging to have be “on” and in public for social things that aren’t strictly speaking crucial. But now do you tell beloved friends that they aren’t crucial? You can’t really. I just have to hope I can do it. And mostly I can. But not today. Today I couldn’t.

I feel like maybe I owed my friends a performance. I can perform in even dire circumstances. I never miss a dinner or event or appearance at which I’m required professionally. But I don’t hold myself to that stand personally. Sometimes things happen and I just can’t do it and I have to let my body dictate my schedule.

That reality makes me feel isolated and alone. Because I can’t make the same commitments as regular people to socialize and enjoy normal things. There is always the risk that I’ll have a bad day. And I save my energy for work because I have to. So that means I don’t get to have a normal social life like other people. I don’t usually mind but today I do. Today I’m missing out.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 449 and Lost Time

I lost some time this week. I was living on someone else’s schedule and it cascaded into a wash of hours where I felt like I was completely out of sync with the wider world as I struggled to get back in my own time.

I’m not at my best when I have to push myself to live on other people’s time. Everything shrunk down to my bedroom and my body and my own myopia about righting my sense of reality. I was in a lot of physical pain which pushed me mentally as well.

I started to feel genuinely better and on track around 5pm in Frankfurt. Technically that meant I still had a half day in California to work. But I’d lost the will to push. I needed to regroup. I am telling myself that it’s ok because it’s not as if I work a standard 9-5 job. I can take the weekend to find my way back to the timeline. And if I’m honest some of my best work gets done on Saturday night.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical Travel

Day 437 and A Mood

I’ve been struggling with allergies ever since I arrived in Frankfurt last week. The stress of travel and the constant itching affect my mood more than I’d like.

It’s a weird situation if I’m honest as I’m so happy to be traveling and on my own after two years or being in the same place and with the same person. I love my husband and I love my home but I’m sure everyone can relate at the end of the pandemic for the need to be alone.

My mood has largely been buoyant except for the constant low level misery that is these damn allergies. My eyes water. The skin around them is red and raw. My skin keeps finding new intermittent patterns to express hives and eczema. And I’ve built up quite a tolerance to Benadryl.

The allergies stress me out and then my spinal pain worsens and then suddenly I’ll find myself in just a miserable sad mood. I’m grateful I can write it all down so I can get the mood out. I just want to be comfortable in my own skin and smiling again.

Categories
Internet Culture Medical Startups

Day 415 and Accessibility

I don’t think of myself as disabled or requiring special accommodations, though I have a well controlled medical condition that swells my spinal cord called ankylosing spondylitis. But for the first time since my diagnosis I really felt like I was handicapped. And I am feeling so much sadness over the idea that I might genuinely be disabled.

I’m attending ETHDenver and it’s wildly over capacity. No consideration has been given to any kind of basic accessibility. I didn’t think it would effect me though till I got here. I can walk without a mobility aid and if you met me you’d never know I have an issue. But I can’t stand in line on cold concrete for two hours. It turns out I would need a wheelchair for that kind of activity. And even if I had a wheelchair the first two days were in the cold and snow so I couldn’t have wheeled over or around the slush and water.

So I have only attended private parties and small events and group outings. This is great for me as I’m a well networked established member of the startup ecosystem. I’ve got a popular Twitter handle and can easily reach out to people. But I’m noticing just how much a bit of inaccessibility will gatekeep the crypto and web3 community. If you don’t have my heaps of privilege there is no way you could navigate this conference.

And we really need web3 to be welcoming and accessible. To build a better future with infrastructure and economies we all collectively own and benefit from we need an order of magnitude more people participating. But if no one can get in and experience things first hand than web3 will just be a repeat of the oligarchy of web2. It’s honestly my worst fear for crypto. We will accidentally exclude the people who will benefit the most from our innovations.

Categories
Background

Day 411 and Good Day

I’m flat on my back in bed waiting for my Advil to kick in. I’m the kind of satisfied tired that only comes from a good day. But I’m also in pain as I did so much today that eking out this blog post is a bit intimidating. As with all good things they become bad when you over do it.

I am that stage of tired where I can’t even work myself up to go wash my face. I’m in bed texting and scrolling Twitter and hoping I’ll get a surge of energy to do what needs to be done. Alas it’s been an hour so I think I’ll need to go with sheer force of will.

I packed a lot in today as I’m headed for my first in person event since the pandemic started. I’ll be at Ethereum Denver through Saturday. And in March I’ll be in Europe for the whole month which is another whole thing. Having travel plans means more errands and more preparations than I’m used to incorporating. Which is just such a foreign feeling. Remember when we all traveled a ton?

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 396 and Drowning

I’m a big fan of the show Bojack Horseman. It’s got all the emotional depth of Ted Lasso but with all the trauma of remembering your never felt loved by your father. Yeah it’s not really a comedy.

For whatever reason it’s a show I typically watch after therapy. I’ll watch an episode or two when integrating all the feelings from paying attention to my inner child for an hour and a half. I know it’s kind of a weird choice but it’s a really straight shot of feelings.

When the star goes on an epic bender, his ex-girlfriend recounts a story about being a life guard.

“The first rule of being a lifeguard is knowing when you cannot save someone. Some people they will splash and thrash. And try to take you down with them.”

I’ve got someone in my life that is drowning. I know it. I knew it before they did. My instincts were like the lifeguard trainee. I wanted to help. But they are splashing and thrashing and all that would happen if I tried to help is that I will drown along with them. I know this to be true. But I am so willing to be cruel to myself and ignore it. I’d let myself drown. And what good would that do anyone?

Categories
Biohacking

Day 374 and Intolerable

I’ve always been prone to extremes. I don’t like to do things half way. Half-assing things is pointless when you’ve got a whole ass. But sometimes this tendency to pull a “Peaches” and go full on even if it physically harms me.

I’ll look for any excuse to push myself. If a diet app tells me to eat whole foods I’ll stress myself on the perfect blend of clean eating. If it’s good to walk 7,000 steps a day I’ll set a goal for 12,000. If I want to write more I’ll commit myself to writing every single fucking day for a whole year. Commitment isn’t my problem. Excess is my issue.

On Friday I had physical therapy for my ligament tear. The therapist was working on evening out the tension points I had from overcompensating. She told me to work a lacrosse ball into my muscles until the pain wasn’t tolerable.

Now for most people this would be good advice. You’ve got to release the tension and work out the tenderness in the fascia. For me it ended up being terrible advice. I pushed so hard I have enormous bruises up and down my leg. But the poor therapist had no idea I’m so dedicated to extremes I’m willing to hurt myself to follow advice. The average person probably shies away from the necessary pressure. Me on the other hand? I’ll push till my body gives up on me.

Categories
Medical

Day 361 and Once More For The Cheap Seats

I was starting to feel pretty good on Saturday and Sunday. I thought maybe I’d kicked the worst of my breakthrough Omicron Covid case. I went down a crypto rabbit hole with the SOS token airdrop and it’s implications. Then on Sunday I was getting excited to launch a fun new project my bff Phil and I have been working on called Vibrations on Solana.

But I had a difficult night. I got woken up multiple times with tachycardia. I tried meditating at 1am. An hour later I was back at 140bpm while asleep. The heart rate alert woke me up. I tried some Wim Hoff breathing. Still couldn’t get it down. I took an Ativan I was getting so concerned. That knocked me out but it didn’t do much for my heart rate. I woke up to these readings on my Whoop.

Whoop capturing 125bpm heart rate at rest. Elevated respiratory rate. Elevated RHR

It seemed clear that all the fun and games I had planned for the day were not going to manifest. I went to get additional readings. My pulse oximeter gave me a 94 reading which isn’t awful but it’s not great either. I then went to Welltory and did a long HRV reading. So I’ll be in bed if you need me.

Welltory reading of my HRV suggests my Covid case requires rest
Categories
Medical

Day 355 and Not That Bad

I made one of the rookie mistakes in coping with illness today. Yesterday I came back positive for Covid. It was pretty mild. So I didn’t cancel any of my appointments. I went to therapy. I still had an on and off work day with a few obligations. And now I feel like shit

Basically I ignored my own advice. I wrote a post about how to effectively beat back an illness in a post I called “How to be sick.” And just a few days later I forgot everything I said. I feel very on my own bullshit.

My experience of Omicron has been quite mild. It feels much more like an inflammatory condition than a respiratory one for me. My whole body aches. I ran a slight fever. I’m exhausted. And I have awful brain fog. Like my normal speed of thinking has slowed ten fold. I can still recall the topics or even general contours of what I want to say. But then I can’t quite get the specifics to form in my mind. It really is like living through a fog.

So I need to wrap this post up and go to bed. I am sick. It’s mild but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. So I need to treat myself gentle and make sure I help myself get well. If you get sick don’t push yourself. It will only extend the experience.