#PowerofMakeup

“Women who love to wear a lot of makeup can sometimes be accused by others of being insecure or of being overly concerned with impressing men, but Nikkie, a Youtuber famous for her makeup tutorials and expertise, wants to change all that.

After she posted a video showing the power of makeup and how much she loves it, women started to post their own half-made-up selfies on Instagram, sharing their own insights with the hashtag #ThePowerOfMakeup. Some women enjoy makeup because it’s fun, others because it makes them feel better, and yet others because it’s an art form!” – via Women Post Selfies With Half-Made-Up Faces To Fight Makeup Shaming | Bored Panda.

So here’s mine: 

I paint my face because it’s fun and I like how it looks. My pale, pink, freckled skin and dark circles are okay too… because they show how I really feel inside… how tired I am… and how much I hurt. I prefer my mask because it makes me feel human for a time.

My appearance is for me, just as yours is for you. Be happy with yourself.

Love,

My Brain Hates Me

Have Fat – Will Complain

Bad pain day. I slept until 1:30 PM thank goodness.

When my head hurts like this I try not to move much, and I do the things that distract me from my pain- sleep, play my ukulele and sing, take hot hot baths… etc.

I should have made a grocery list. We should have gone to the grocer this evening. But, no. I just can’t do it.

Luckily I made some vegetable broth last week and froze it, and I try to keep beans, onions, celery, and carrots around. I made a vegetable soup for dinner with some mini penne pasta, lots of celery seed and parsley (it’s a new thing I’m doing), chick peas, and spinach for colour.

I’ve been drinking smoothies, herbal teas, and doing salt water flushes. I have this desire to make the inside of my body really clean. My constant Monster Migraine causes tons of nausea and vomiting and makes my stomach and digestive system a mess. Throw in opiates, which cause horrible constipation issues and you have a cocktail for intestinal misery. I try to avoid all that by super hydrating, eating lots of fruit and plain yogurt, and doing things that help my body remove toxins.

One would think I’d lose weight or something… but NOOO. Stupid Nortriptyline and Seroquel.

Nope, Still Bitchy

This is a pretty bitchy blog entry. I just paid a huge stack of medical bills, made payment arrangements for what I couldn’t pay, and checked on bills which didn’t have insurance applied but should have had insurance applied.On the agenda for the weekend:- Today, I will be torturing the child by making him clean in preparation for his birthday party tomorrow
– Tomorrow, there will be a surplus of moody 12 and 13 year old children in my home playing video games and eating food and then some are sleeping over
– Sunday, I will be recovering from all of the noiseThis last batch of infusions reduced my pain a bit, but today I’m super dizzy and nauseous. I have more infusions again starting on the 6th, right after another Botox treatment.

The lovely Dr. H. said, “We are limited by having to be reasonable.”

“We are limited by having to be reasonable.”

That is both beautiful and tragic. I have a feeling the woman would love to just load me up with a ton of chemicals and see what happens. She feels so bad for me.

The Jefferson Clinic called. My appointment is on July 17th. I have to have a psych evaluation there in addition to meeting with the neurologist. I think my appointment is at 11:45. I don’t recall. It’s a Wednesday, I believe. I could look at a calendar. They are sending me a packet. They said the appointment will last four hours.

Golly I hope that I am “healed” well before July. I lose my job on August 6th if I am not better. I have made it half way through the bajillion pages of my long term disability application. Luckily my short term disability supplier will send their records to my long term supplier so I don’t have to go through the nightmare of trying to obtain records from my doctors again.

It’s been a rough road.

I think the worst part is that my head still hurts, and every time I get a treatment I feel like a failure if it doesn’t work. I feel like I have personally let my family down, along with everyone else. People care and ask how I am, and I immediately feel awful for not being able to tell them that I am, ” just dandy, thanks!”

I don’t feel comfortable unloading on any one person, but then I’ve never been good at talking about feelings in any rational or coherent way.

It hurts when people ask me how I am, and then seem put off by the fact that I’m not better yet. They don’t do it in any obvious way, but the conversation becomes stilted. I can converse about any number of topics. I avoid talking about my condition with friends unless they specifically ask or have been involved in this whole process in some way. So it really stinks when friends who used to text me all the time or work with me send me a message and the conversation goes like this:

FRIEND: Hey! Haven’t heard from you in a while. How are you doing? All better now?
ME: Hi there! Nah, same as I have been. But I’m hanging in there! It’s so nice to hear from you. How is that thing you were doing with that thing?
FRIEND: Oh, I thought you’d be all fixed now. Sorry you’re going through this.
ME: It’s fine. Sometimes things happen to people. Anyway, what about that thing? I’m excited to hear all about your trip to that place!
FRIEND: It must be really awful to be in all that pain. I can’t imagine. I’d be so depressed.
ME: Life is what you make of it, you know? How was your trip?
FRIEND: Well let me know if you need anything. Keep me updated on everything.
ME: No problem. So how are YOU?
FRIEND: I’m good. Really busy though. Catch up with you some other time?
ME: Sure. Take care.

Here’s the problem I have with conversations like that: obviously I’m trying to be upbeat and minimize my broken head. I am not defined by my broken head. I am not my broken head. My broken head is something that is happening to me that is awful, but it’s not my fault and I can’t make it just go away. I deal with it every day. It’s just what my life is like right now. I’m not happy about it but I had to make up my mind that crying about it every day wasn’t going to cure me any faster. So let me be positive and tell me about the good things happening with you! Please?

I am not my broken head.

Keep you updated? Okay, I will add that to my to do list. You just told me you are too busy to have a pleasant conversation with me about YOU, and yet you want me to remind myself to tell you all the bad shit that is happening with me? You just brushed me off because you aren’t comfortable talking to a sick person. That JUST happened, and you want me to update you? Really? No. No. If you want to know how I am, pick up the phone, buddy. You aren’t my immediate family or taking me to treatments or caring for my kid on the weekends or holding my hand in any way through this process, so I am not going to give you the bullet points unless you ask.

Here’s the T and nothing but the T so help me whomever- I’m miserable and worried sick and losing my mind being at home all the time without being able to do anything. I am overjoyed to receive texts, phone calls, e-mails, anything… because I don’t see people on a regular basis. When I do see people I’m so drugged out of my mind on painkillers just to be able to deal with normal things like the grocery store or, heaven forbid, a restaurant, that I don’t know what I’m saying. It literally hurts to be touched, in bright light, or in any kind of loud place. I can’t drive at night. I have to wear these huge goofy sunglasses everywhere. It is horrible. All of it. I miss people and my job.

But that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it all of the goddamned time. Does it occur to these people that maybe I need distractions? My sanity is supported by nothing but distractions. Writing? Distraction. Ukulele? Distraction. Podcasts? Distraction. Documenting my insane medical whatever? Distraction. Listening to television shows and sneaking peeks at them when the sound just doesn’t tell me what’s going on? Distraction.

Blah. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. I have to find something to eat that I don’t mind possibly throwing up in half an hour and then try to rest a bit before I start ordering the boychild about.

Choose Your Own Botox Adventure!

I have good news and I have bad news. Let’s make this like a “Choose Your Own Adventure”.

To enter The Cave of Time and read Good News, read the green paragraph below:

All of the crazy extra pain from the Botox is finally over! YAY! My doctor, who is just so incredibly sweet, was optimistic on the phone about some of the changes to the pain I experience on the right side of my body. 

 

To avoid The Cave of Time and find out the bad news about Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey, read the red text below:

The Botox treatment didn’t stop the pain. That doesn’t mean it won’t, it just means that seven days is the minimum amount of time it takes to start working typically, and it may still work. I’m also up to 200 mg of Topamax daily so that could wear things down as well. 

It does not help that there is a hurricane headed for the East coast, which causes barometric pressure changes… which in turn fucks with my head and causes severe nausea. 

My doctor wants to wait three weeks before we move on to our next option. She doesn’t want to pile on treatment after treatment in case something starts working. If something starts working and I’m on a million medications, we won’t know which on is working so we won’t be able to stop any of them. 

To skip the good news AND the bad news and just get on with the vain news, read the blue text below:

A fun side effect of the Botox is that I look different, and I’m kinda sorta devastated. Facial symmetry is a big deal to me, I already have a mole that I have learned to love over the years, and now my eyebrows have dropped. Yeah yeah yeah, this is an entirely superficial thing to be upset about but it’s my face. I’ve already taken a hit to my self esteem because I don’t feel well enough to put my best face forward all the time. I’m already living in pajamas most of the time. This whole thing has completely stripped my life away and probably ruined my career… and now a treatment that seems less and less likely to be effective (at the moment I am trying to stay positive I promise, I am… but let me have my whiny moment and then I’ll go back to knowing that there are starving children and people with cancer and AIDS and UFOs and such) has made me look weird and ugly to myself. 

My husband still says he doesn’t notice a difference and gets annoyed every time I try to bring it up, but when I look in the mirror I don’t like the face I see. I put on makeup for the first time since the treatment today and I had to hold up my eyebrows so I could put eyeshadow on… and I had to do my makeup completely differently. I’ve had my face for 32 years. And now it’s not quite right. It’s really making me anxious. 

I hate having irrational emotional responses to things.

I Look Weird

It’s noon thirty on a Saturday and as per doctor’s orders I’ve done diddly squat. I’m not supposed to do anything exciting like staring at flashing lights or going to a disco.

Truly.

I clarified by asking about the disco.

I don’t think my doctor found me as funny as I find me.

Her loss.

The first thing I did this morning was look in the mirror and decide that I looked weird because of the Botox. Then I asked my husband if I look weird for about five minutes until I cried. Then I felt better. It’s been that kind of day. Obviously I still think I look weird and I will think that forever because I have convinced myself that I have been permanently disfigured somehow… even though I look exactly the same.

I dreamed about being caught in the middle of a plastic lightsaber fight at a daycare.

The doctor said it could take a week for me to feel any relief from head pain. So far it’s been worse. There’s the pain behind my left eye layered with this rotating, sawing, gnawing sort of pain across my forehead. My neck and shoulders are so very tight. Why did my physical therapist have to dump me. It is now that I need him most!

I suppose I will try my stretches and see where that gets me.