#im not a neurologist but i dont get them as bad anymore at least

[savetheghost]

save do you have any tips for managing migraines

uhhhhhh lessee

personally i have prescriptions for it cause mine screwed my brain up but obvious ones like proper rest + maybe log what you eat and see if theres any correlation + general put nutrients in your body stuff which is actually kind of hard to keep track of

i have some REALLY WEIRD scent based triggers so i have to stay away from ammonia-like scents and eucalyptus cause those will put my ass out flat IMMEDIATELY, thats not an everyone thing but maybe note if theres sensory stuff around you that might be a trigger

for me warm toned lights and screen tints are way better than cool tones/white light and if youve got light colored eyes wear amber tinted sunglasses outdoors

water + salty snack > pedialite > gatorade and depending on caffeine sensitivity maybe moderate that cause it can either help or hurt, kinda depends on the person, but water and saltines will get you electrolytes and its cheap as fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck even if it doesnt taste as great as gatorade

sunlight on your skin and not in your eyeballs

also vitamin d just in general helps but its way better to actually use the sun for that than trying to digest it so like just 10ish minutes in the sun is what my neurologist recommended on top of taking 2000mg tablets

thats what ive got off the top of my head

[brokenhayatim]

two mins forty-three seconds

it’s been so long since i’ve written. i don’t think any of this will make sense.. also my hands are shaking so it’s taking me longer to type.

you ever know something is wrong with you? and like it’s so familiar and you just think ‘it’s happening again’. i’ve felt like that for long but i’ve been managing it pretty well. in the last month or so though, i felt it shift into deeper waters and it’s not like anything in my life has drastically changed like moving back here was. but i just notice my reluctance to start the day, my difficulty to concentrate during it, the nighttime routine of ‘i failed today yes i’m a disappointment’. it’s odd...i feel like i have no control. someone else has taken the clock and is dragging the minute hand to just speed up every second and i can’t think. my thoughts race every second even if im sitting down and next thing i know it’s three hours later and i hate it. i started up running to help my surgery recovery process and even that doesn’t feel like control. this looming surgery date is good and bad. it’s giving me a lot of free time..that i don’t need. i constantly feel like i should be doing something even though i don’t really have a task to take my mind off anything anymore like job searching. it’s almost made me feel useless like i’m a sitting duck. and then i have so much anxiety about my capability to re-enter the job market being out this long, especially after the surgery recovery. i don’t feel like i’m even average anymore like im the bottom of the barrel in terms of skills so i keep trying to stay with them, doing small projects, but it’s not enough.

anyways. i’ve thought about seeing a psychologist and psychiatrist when i first came here, as my prev ones recommended, but with the pandemic i pushed it off and it’s so intimidating trying to find one, now that i’m not given about 6 options like at uni, i’m just supposed to find one now and try 20 questions to see if they’re actually right?? the thought of going through the awkwardness and distance of zoom appointments too, i felt uncomfortable with it even when i knew and liked my doctors. so, i felt like if i told myself i could do it on my own, i could do it on my own. but everyday i have this nagging feeling that i’m just putting pretty icing on a moldy cake, so i deny and avoid that with social media distractions, of course. i have this overall sense of just feeling like shit and the only thing keeping me afloat in the days are people not even around me, people in my phone, especially moments with noor. often, i think of just shutting off my wifi or my phone and ghosting, but it isn’t even fair to them to do that and it never was - without at least forewarning. because tables turned, i worry like hell on top of missing you. so i woke up today feeling at the cusp of a break and was going to send noor a text about it and to just let her know. and although a big part of me wants to just disappear, the other part so attached to people now doesn’t and knows it wouldn’t do me any good but let me wallow in misery (she’s got the self-realization now yall) and what would that help? especially now being at home where i can’t stay in my room for a week and come out like a crab just to eat (just kidding, i do that anyways). i think the gravity of how much i’ve been avoiding and denying that i need to do something was brought to light last when i mentioned to my sister, after i kneeled down for something in pain, that i can’t actually sit on my legs like i can sit 90 degrees only but anything lower and my thighs experience so much pain it’s like my body is screaming not to go lower. i haven’t done the tashahhud position in salah properly for months and i don’t want to sit in a chair because i feel like that’s cheating like i can move just not that position. my neurologist gave meds - which i took for a while but kept forgetting to establish a routine & my dad said i didn’t need them so i questioned it more - and a physical therapy prescription and i’ve done nothing with it. partly due to covid but i also just feel like a burden, that something is actually wrong again. i dont know...as if my brain should be the only thing everyone needs to worry about now. but my parents were talking about how i might need physical therapy after surgery and how they might bring someone in and something about it just makes my skin cold. i don’t think it’s necessarily fully my disdain of depending on someone for my needs but i just have this vision of struggling and having everyone know it. like i won’t be able to do it in private anymore, it’ll all be out for someone to watch and they’ll want to do something to help and they can’t. that goes with any of my surgery recovery - especially the pain and discomfort. okay, i’m getting away from my point now...

i went to sleep quite early last night because of my mood and probably because i slept at 6 am the night before. but i woke up today and was like i feel like shit and this is definitely depression that i’ve had. so i took my phone and searched “psychology before after surgery” (got the point across ok) and god, the results. i don’t know what i was expecting.  

“Why Aren’t We Talking About Postoperative Depression?

Depression can occur after even a minor surgery. But doctors have noticed that people who have the following procedures often have depression afterwards: Heart surgery, especially coronary artery bypass graft Plastic surgery Gastric bypass surgery Brain surgery...

The most significant risk factor for postoperative depression is pre surgical depression or anxiety. In fact, anyone with a history of mental illness is at greater risk for postoperative depression.

Possible Causes of Postsurgical Depression: Postsurgical pain Surgical results don't match expectations Problems with anesthesia (i’m using steroids but) A biological process Increased dependence on other people

Disappointment in one’s own body and health can also factor into postoperative depression. People like to see themselves as strong and healthy.”

you get it. immediately, i felt two things: frustration at not even guessing this would be a thing and fear. fear, because i have had thoughts of most of these causes being an issue for me before i even read this. fear, that all the trying i’m doing now to be okay won’t be enough and i genuinely will see my worst days. fear, that i won’t make it. fear, that i’m not strong enough to overcome this if i’m struggling with it badly right now. fear, that i’m not strong enough to recover like i want to. fear, that i made a mistake in choosing to do the surgery being careless enough to not consider this. so much fear my body crumbled under the weight. 

of course, it’s treatable. so where does this leave me right now? congratulations! now you’re caught up on why i opened this document and decided to type. based upon reading about my avoidance to fix my issues with the right methods, i think we can guess the solution here. oh look! it’s writing itself into the cloudy sky. 

xoxo big brain girl (just not mentally)

done crying now so time to start my day yayy!

[juliaahr]

i need to rant abt my health & all the doctors i’ve encountered so far so this will probably be very very long bc i’m so frustrated & don’t know what to do anymore

i’ve been having chronic pains for years now. i’ve been to the er countless times bc i was so frustrated i ended up seeing a bunch of doctors for the same reasons & their first instinct is to send me to the er bc of a suspected stroke. it’s never a stroke. every time they did that i KNEW it wasn’t a stroke (am also a nurse btw lol but focused on geriatrics) anyways somehow i always hoped that at least ONE doctor would take the time to figure out wtf was wrong with me. i have headaches that basically knock me out. they thought it was migraines but every neurologist confirmed it’s not migraines - what else is it then? well none of them cared enough to figure it out. none of the “basic” pain medication works for me. none of the migraine medication works for me. so occasionally i will just lie in bed completely apathetic bc i’m in so much pain n i just have to wait till the pain just ... fades away. might take a few hours might take a whole week. all i know is it starts w/ a sharp pain in my left eye and then i KNOW i have to get home asap bc i won’t even be able to drive myself home once it gets worse.

so now i’ve been dealing w/ a new thing for MONTHS. granted, i only told my family doctor about 2 months ago. a sharp pain in my hip which will eventually drag down to my knee, sometimes my entire leg hurts. usually after a while the pain in my hip would get so bad i would struggle walking. i ignored it first bc it would only happen every other day but when i started to experience the pain every day & it would get worse each day too i was like lol maybe go see a doctor. 3 days ago i couldn’t even lift my leg to get into my fucking car after i walked for like 15 minutes bc i had to get groceries. so my doc prescribes me anti-infalmmatory meds without even doing blood work. okay so those didn’t work. i stayed home for a while. sometimes it helps when i just ..... dont move. so i didnt move for about .... 3 weeks except for walking around my flat and getting groceries. so i go back to work & am advised to go see an ortho. so i go see one. n he gives me a diagnosis right away after doing an x-ray so i’m kinda stoked about it. he says we need to get an mri too just to be sure and i also have to do physical therapy. so i get the mri done and get physical therapy - which didn’t help me at all. the mri comes back n they say uhhh yea so the diagnosis u got after the x-ray is ... false. u dont have that. BUT u have a different thing go see ur ob-gyn. i’m not mad abt getting an incorrect diagnosis first bc well those things happen.

i also had an accident at work on my first day back so i stayed home for another 2 weeks bc i wasnt allowed to work lol.

so i go see my ob-gyn and i love this guy bc he’s done surgery on me before and overall he is an amazing doctor and he’s everything you’d want in a doctor. so he confirms the diagnosis i got after the mri n he’s like yea this has gotten worse in 2 1/2 weeks (it took 2 1/2 weeks to get the mri test result and then the appointment at his office) so u have to undergo surgery but we can’t do outpatient surgery in this case so you’d have to go to a hospital. so TODAY. i had my hospital appointment to schedule surgery. and they do a physical exam again n tell me that basically the thing that had gotten worse before seems to be getting better on its own. which is overall a doog thing right? so they tell me i dont need surgery and i should just go back to see my ob-gyn and family doctor on a regular basis. and they’re like “so about the pain ... it shouldn’t be that bad anymore, how is it?” and i’m like “Well it’s been getting extremly bad over the past 3 weeks and i can barely walk for more than 5 minutes, even getting here from the parking lot was a struggle” and they’re like OKAY GOOD, WELL U DONT NEED SURGERY ANYMORE SO IT SHOULD BE GOOD NOW. and they ... SENT ME HOME???

and i’m so fucking frustrated????? i had a whole meltdown when i got home???? i was SO STOKED to have a diganosis & be able to get rid of the pain through surgery like i was holding onto that little bit of hope that it would get better after getting surgery and now i’m just sitting here. still in pain. not knowing what to do bc my family doctor doesn’t care at all and my ob-gyn obviously isn’t a magician who can just get rid of everything. also nobody seems to acknowledge in how much pain i actually am??? i’m like yea i take these pain meds but they don’t work at all and everyone’s just like “okay”.

at this point i genuinely don’t think i will be able to keep working as a nurse - which kinda sucks bc i might hate this job but it’s the only thing im good at. hell, i can’t even GO ON A WALK. i’m just stuck in my home whilst being in a shitload of pain for reasons that nobody wants to diagnose and i’m going to lose my fucking mind bc of it.

and i don’t expect anyone to read this i just needed to write this down to calm down tbh lol