The Return To Innocence

So, until I see a full end to these violent migraines, brain pains, and flares of fibromyalgia, sciatica, chondromalacia patella, knee arthritis, ulnar nerve entrapment, hypertonia spasticity with hemiparesis, hemiparetic ghost sensations, itching, shaking, hay fever, exhaustion, true muscle weakness, and hypersensitivity... I will be pretending like all hell to be a normal ordinary human. Nothing to see here, nope, move along...

What with husband working a computer trade show job in Manhattan for the next couple of days, my sweet Charlotte will be coming over every day to help me work on organizing the rest of the house. Gods know I will need such help.

Also, I have a plush red fox and a plush gray wolf to cuddle, and my darling Serenity the Pony to whisper to, kiss on the lotus bud blaze mark on her forehead, brush her long long hair with a boar brush and wood comb.

And naturally, there is my wonderful balance of pharmaceutical pills and supplement pills.
Klonopin, Codeine, Ultram, Soma. Ashwagandha, MSM, Yerba Mate, Devil's Claw, Raspberry Ketones, Mangosteen, Moringa, Goji.

So.
Craniosacral therapy with Feldenkrais Method.
Yeah.
Well.
So.
So, wow. Yeah. Like, WOW. Up to eleven.

It was such an amazing, indescribable thing. There was the usual craniosacral bit, and Peggi was amazing. And then, very suddenly, I... wasn't there anymore. It was not an "out of body" experience. It was an "in body" experience. I still can't find the words. I felt myself inside... inside someplace. Some-me. I was electric. I was a neuron, perhaps? I don't know. I don't KNOW. Peggi spoke, and my eyes snapped open, and for a minute I didn't know where I was. I was groggy, but filled with a weird energy, a crazy intensity. She told me I had entered an altered state of consciousness, that it was normal, that I should just rest. My brain felt... settled. My body felt... settled. Aligned? When Peggi helped me off the table, my pelvis shifted and aligned all on its own and my posture became practically perfect. It felt bizarre. I still had pain, but Peggi said that was normal. She said that the goal was to communicate, to be conscious of my body, to understand my pain and my disabilities rather than fighting. Listen, learn, grow. If my pain asked for a certain drug in my arsenal, a certain supplement, a certain exercise or stretch... I needed to listen.

My synesthesia is still going wild. Colors and sounds are emotional. I need to pull back a little. So much conscious energy. So much power flooding all these parts of me not used to having all this energy and spark. Mom suggested writing everything down and recording the length of time it all lasts. A few days. A week. Two weeks. I plan on seeing Peggi again next month.

So.
So, yeah.
I can't even.

It is not my place to say if it is a good treatment method for anyone else. Maybe, maybe not. You are not me. But all I can say is that whatever Peggi did on this very first treatment did something extraordinary, and I think it really will help in the long run.

http://www.restoremotion.com/PeggiHonig.html
http://www.aebodywork.com/
http://feldenkrais-method.org/en/feldenkrais-method
http://semiorganized.com/articles/other/ReeseDynamic_systems.html

I crave more coffee now. I just... do. Already had chocolate. My body wants what it wants. I shall listen.

So, I'm not going to fully describe the four distinct simple partial seizures, the Raynaud's flare, the lumbar and sciatic spasms that literally crippled me and put me on the floor writhing, the chondromalacia patella flare that was just purely evil, the spastic hemiplegic flare that left my entire left side feeling ghost-like, the fibromyalgia burning that I compared to nerves hooked on heated barbed wire and connective tissues touching a bonfire - skin included - the sinus and jaw pain caused by my generally being irritated, the depression, the twitching anxiety.
Details are pointless. But since I am a disability advocate, I will leave this open for questions and stories and understandings and commiserations and complaints, since a huge percentage of my Friends List is disabled in some way.

My female cats are taking turns jumping on my lap and nuzzling me, occasionally preventing me from getting up. Obviously I could remove the cats from my lap at will, but I don't want to, and also they kind of dig in because they really want to hang out. Fine by me.

Although, if anyone actually wants details, please ask. You never know.

So, yeah, here's the thing. *ahem*
Yeah. So, about my strong pain relieving and muscle relaxing pharmaceutical prescription drugs? The ones that might "some day cause a major addiction"? They won't work unless I am in such severe pain and distress that I am crying and clenched in agony. No, really.
This is why, whenever a pill of Soma kicks in, I briefly act like I am melting and euphoric and slightly ecstatic and kind of in tears of joy.
Because, you know, it is actually helping my muscles loosen up, which does not and can not happen naturally, since my damage from birth caused spastic cerebral palsy and hypertonia... which, if you are so smart, you would know causes permanent muscle tension, spasticity, and constant clenching throughout various parts of the body depending on which parts of the brain were damaged.
And unless you know what that feels like, you cannot say shit to me. Unless you know how it feels to have every. single. muscle. in. your. whole. body. loosen and relax and unclench and quit spasming and lose that extreme tension, all at once, you have absolutely no right to criticize me, bully me, or insist that you know beyond all doubt that I will become "fully addicted" to Soma or Baclofen or Ultram or Codeine. Even if you were a doctor. Since, you know, you've never met me outside of internet networks.
You cannot tell me that I will abuse those medications - because, in fact, I can't. I literally won't be able to abuse them. They don't work if I am not in enough pain to need them. My body has not adapted to them. My body has not developed a tolerance to them. I have no dependence on them. And there is no point in taking those pills unless I actually require them to, you know, function, to be what you call normal.
So, really, you don't need to send me messages expressing your concern and worry about my prescription pain drugs. I, my body, and my doctors are fine without your concern. Really.

*facepunch with cinderblock, etc.*

Sorry. Having a moment.

Hey, every body system and entire central nervous system? Can you just... not, for a while? Can you just behave and be okay for a couple of weeks? Please? I don't like to beg, but... I need this, okay? It's important. I need you to stop feeling horrible. Can you try? Just try. Please. Please just try. I will do what I can to help, I will do everything I possibly can. But I need this from you. Just... be better. Dear brain-body and body-brain, just try to be better.

See, I am having a horrible migraine, a sciatica flare, a fibromyalgia flare, an anxiety attack, hypertonia and hemiparesis, lameness, neck stiffness, hip pain, jaw pain, and burning in my finger joints. But whatever. Whatever. There is a quote that I am humming like a mantra: "I know it has been tough, but I am still cheering for you, always." This right here is for everyone who knows and feels and deals and fights. I love you. ♥

Now I'm just really tired.

I woke up on my back with such severe lumbago that my entire lumbar area felt smashed by hammers. So I cried and screamed and panted all through clenched teeth for a while, did that turtle thing where I rocked back and forth until I was on my side, curled up in a fetal position, inched my way to the bed's edge, and let my body fall until my feet touched the floor. Then I hobbled to the mini fridge, grabbed my creamy cocoa coffee, took it to my dresser for my pain pills, took my pills, then did a ton of stretching.
And that is how Joanna wakes up every morning.

And now that the caffeine has been working alongside the pain pills, I feel better.
Also, if I don't have coffee, I have superfruit energy juice or caffeinated drinks at all times. Often I use a food grade oil serum to mask the bitter tastes of the pills, which my cat Rose then asks for after I'm done. I pour a few extra drops in my palm and let her lap it up. It makes her fur smooth and glossy and her eyes shiny.

In conclusion, chronic pain is a terrible horrible no good very bad thing, but at least I can manage it well enough. I would like to thank pharmaceutical companies, supplement companies, holistic remedies, nutritional food medicine, and exercise ideas.

This sums up too many things for me. It shatters and heals my heart.
Thank you, Shinga.
http://shinga.deviantart.com/art/Into-Dust-326278238

The body sings in harmony with the brain since the beginning. And when the connections are shattered and the harmony is broken, the only thing left to do is write a new song, even if it takes until the end.

*I cannot sing. I cannot dance. But I can write. I can speak. I can dream. And I can fight.*


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4RMyI90_o

I don't want to describe the pain today. I don't want to describe the seizures this morning. I cannot stop thinking about the dreams when I slept, the insomnia until four in the morning, the anxiety attack upon waking, the desperation to feel happy, the lack of appetite, the desire to feel comfort.

The best things about today:
All three cats surrounding me on the bed.
All three cats following me down to the living room, with Luna trilling, mewling, chirping, barking, begging for hugs.
Still being able to smile and be amused by Futurama and My Little Pony Friendship, which I think have been saving parts of my sanity.
My amazing husband calling from Las Vegas to tell me that he will be home a day early - tomorrow morning, in fact.

And so, I drink my superfruit smoothie, swallow my medications, perform my meditative magics, and try to mend my cracked rhythm for another day.

Oh, son of Ammit who devours the dead under the Scales of Justice in the Hall of Two Truths in the house of Osiris. I was absolutely not expecting such a ferocious migraine to burst into the fibromyalgia flare, take over the party, get the cerebral palsy hypertonia drunk, and sit back and wait for some random symptom to explode all over the place until my neuromuscular system and musculoskeletal system get scorched. I would maybe curse Anubis and Osiris under my breath, but hell no, I can't.
All I can do is treat it as best I can and wait for it to pass. And hope that nothing gets too insane, because screaming and sobbing makes my throat hurt.
Besides, I am already backing away and crawling toward the Greek pantheon, because oh my various gods and galaxies, I need to feel better soon or the screaming may happen. I am about to cry out for Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Aceso, Aegle, and the Moirai themselves, because this is hard to breathe through.

...anyway, I'm going to take some heavy medical drugs and curl up now with my penguin and dolphin Pillow Pets. And my three cats.

Also, I need to copy this Facebook comment that I wrote, because it explains a lot about my brain, and I need to remember:

*Well, Mom was atheist while Dad was agnostic until he started leaning more atheist. They actually did "celebrate" Christmas and Hannukah, mainly because their friends did, and they wanted to raise me with overall world religion knowledge. I grew up believing that the Abrahamic god was just like the Greek gods, Egyptian gods, etc. Fallible, human-like, silly, weird, touchable in ways, in no way above and beyond human comprehension.
In fact, in elementary school, a classmate asked me what religion I was, and I said "Um, American?" because I honestly didn't understand. When I came home, mom gave me a giant book on World Mythology and told me that I could figure out what I wanted to try. She then sat me down and explained all about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, polytheism, and other things like that. She told me that if I ever did choose a religion, that I should stay open-minded no matter what. Being six at the time, I said, "Well, I really like the Greek gods, but I think I wanna be agnostic. Is that okay?"
Then later, as a pre-teen and then teenager, I started having dreams featuring humanoid beings who identified themselves as various gods from the pantheons from Greece and Egypt. Given that my father's family was all Italian and Greek, that made sense, and my mother could trace her family history all the way to the Jews in Egypt, something like that. I did take the dreams seriously, because they really were that weird, but I figured that the so-called "gods" were interdimensional or cosmic entities. (I was always really big on science fiction and fantasy.)
So when I started college, I decided that eclectic paganism was the path for me, since it was a very personal kind of faith/belief. My mom is still skeptical of many things although she will admit to paranormal and supernatural stuff, and my father was accepted into the Freemasons (as his lodge's only stonemason) and just says he believes in an overall "God-like source" even though he's probably more of a pantheist. Me, I'm a polytheist polyagnostic pantheist eclectic pagan with a greco-roman concentration. But it was my childhood atheism that helped me figure things out. I'm grateful for it, because it helped show me how to see people and faith from a very specific perspective.
I've always said that if someone proved to me that one god/religion or another was completely true or completely false, I would shrug, say, "Okay" and go back to my business. I think Terry Pratchett said it best when Granny Weatherwax encountered Herne in the forest: Yes, I see you. Just because you exist does not mean I have to believe in you.
I also try to quote Sam's huge monologue from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." I can believe in a LOT of things.*

A hot shower helped a little bit. Rubbing healing salve into my joints and muscles helped a little bit. I am typing with one finger on my right hand, assisted lethargically by one finger on my left hand. Said left hand is currently spastic and hemiparetic and burning and stupid. Also my left leg and the left side of my face is doing the same thing. I am used to that, but I wish I were not.
I will be going to bed soon. I wish things would stop hurting. My head is still spinning.

Somebody make me laugh, please? Jokes, cute pictures, funny stories, weird or crazy stories, whatever. I may not see comments until tomorrow, but it would be lovely to laugh.

I like things that make me laugh. No matter how much I hurt, I want to laugh.
Oh, fuck, this really hurts. Somebody help me joke about it.

"Dear entire body: I hate you right now.
It has been suggested that I get angry at my pain and fog, in order to keep shoving and pushing through, and believe me, I am angry. I will not lie down, body, just because you are too foggy and drowsy and drained to do anything, go anywhere, or work properly. You suck. No love.
The postictal state is still happening and has combined with the fibromyalgia fog and the spastic hemiplegic hypertonia, and it is turning my world into a mess of convoluted, creepy, nightmarish, spinning reality, where I can barely think of proper words without struggling. Typing works better, because I can at least pause during the thought process while I type with two fingers.
I am exhausted and angry and shaky and irritated. If I start snapping and snarling and turning that pain and anger on you, friends, I apologize in advance, as I am currently in absolutely no mood for jokes of any kind. My very drained brain will not take it well and I cannot do anything about that at the moment. Maybe later, but not now. So if you are going to tease me, mock me, joke at me, or poke me, save it for tomorrow."

-Me, on Facebook, because there are several friends there guaranteed to poke and joke. Luckily, on Livejournal, there are not. I love all my friends, even though some of them need to be punched occasionally.
Also, this is me venting and rambling, because I need to make a record of this kind of thing.

Rose seems unnaturally fascinated by my cheddar on rye toast. I want a cat thought translator.

Also at the new Family Dollar store, we bought Duck Jerky for dogs, cut it into cat treat sized pieces, and offered some to all three cats. And there was much scrabbling and meowing and begging and "Oh Bast where did you get this it is amazing I must have it now I need more wait why are you putting the bag away nooo come back flavor!"

Also, Rose likes croissants. I wonder about that child.

I have been outside all day, without pain relievers, on bus and shuttle and feet, testing my muscle endurance again. I truly believe that my ability to walk for more than twenty minutes before wanting to collapse is a powerful gift that I honor and am grateful for, because it could be so much worse. I absorbed plenty of Vitamin D. I am now sitting as comfortably as my lower back allows, feeling every tiny muscle in my core, back, legs, and arms spasm and burn. The price I pay is worth every step.

Oddly enough, I can handle eyebrow waxing just fine. The hot wax, the tweezers, the quick gentle skill of the stylist's fingers, somehow relax my mind enough so that I am able to easily drift off into a space between everything. Karen's Nails Salon is right next to my local CVS, and my stylist, Katie, is a great expert. Even when she plucked the ingrown hairs at nearly blinding speed, I was all right. It was quick, simple, and would bring reward. My brows were perfect. Katie even managed to balance out the unusual natural mismatch of my eyebrows, which is very hard to do even for a master stylist. I will certainly return to her in a month or two. Her work relaxed me and the result made me feel satisfied hence much needed endorphin rush.

At CVS, I picked up refills, said hello to everyone by name, chatted briefly, and left the shopping center feeling as though I had really Done Something Good. I started faltering and wilting while waiting for the bus. My energy was draining, I had lost too many Spears. But it was a good day, it was a very good day.

Yesterday morning, Adam had to assist me while I tried to get out of bed. He then massaged, stretched, and kneaded me, although it barely helped.
Then I had to explain what my fibromyalgia is about because what he called gentle massage caused me screaming pain; and that my brainbody's pain-processing skills are damaged, and that no matter how long something painful happens, my brain will not run out of pain substance (the way most people do when they endure pain for certain lengths of time and then stop feeling any pain and just feel numb or sore because their brains protect them). I just keep feeling pain even on top of the soreness.
Pain will not end without external interventions, such as drugs and possible biofeedback or meditative exercise or somesuch. At least that is my deal. Other patients probably have other ways of dealing, or will disagree with me, and that's nice but I don't care right now. I'm representing myself only, not everyone.
So we will work out a system. Because screaming and crying with numbness, tingling, back muscle spascticity and severe hypertonia when I try to get out of bed is starting to get annoying.