Where is my mind........

.........as that oldie Pixies song lyric goes and something I have been wondering more and more recently. I have lost about 5 weeks in the last 7 due to Tramadol, which I recently heard was not only an opioid......a close relative to morphine, but one doctor described it as watered down heroine. That might explain my loss of memory, fuzzy headedness and general malaise and desire to actually move from the sofa, ability to do so or not is kind of irrelevant at this point I think! Their addictive nature I think is also a bit of a ruse, since I could never actually remember what time or if I had taken them! Something of an obvious thing if you are not the one taking them!

So now I have downgraded to the 60mg of co-codamol, codeine paracetamol mix, which whilst Im not so cloud focused, still has limitations on driving, finding buildings on a street and wandering about in a bubble, plus going on the tube the wrong way and getting lost on a regular basis, resulting in confusion and feeling like Ive generally lost my mind. As the lyrics continue......

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind..........

Yup – thats all me! Just thought Id share my airheadedness with you all, and yes I have become a pro in looking at the clouds and finding animal shapes and other items, its about all you can do when you are on this stuff and cant move and seemingly very productive at the time! I assure you, really!

DIY and ESP

Now Im quite practical as it goes and for a chick have quite an impressive tool kit including drill and electric screwdriver so as a result I can drill holes in walls, put up pictures, weed the garden, paint stuff, Ive changed fuses, rewired plugs, and even once upon a time could change the brakes on my car, plus Ive put together flatpacks from Ikea when necessary, although I will admit that my removal men did  have to rebuild my last attempt at building a wardrobe. But like anyone else when  it comes to plumbing, electrics and anything to do with bricks or cement the general rule is to get a man in. This of course is all pretty standard when feeling fit and healthy, flexible and  solid state of mind. But that is not really my current state ........

A week ago after going into somewhat total meltdown about my predicament and the total realisation that life as I have known it up until this point is irrevocably changed from here on in, I had something of a moment with the boiler!  It was the straw on the camels back! I had ‘one of those days’ where simply everything I touched and engaged with seemed to go wrong! I wonder how many more clichés I can come up with? Perhaps.... its not what happens its how you react to it!!!

The day started with fire sirens as a house down the street had an electrical fire resulting in all the road being  closed off and cut off for about 3 hours of electricity. Now this aside was quite a dramatic start to the day, then rapidly followed by a rather rubbish consultation with the doctor that got me totally riled up and if Im totally honest, quite a few tears, mostly of the self pity variety! An attempt at tube travel followed, which if you’ve read the last post was and is generally something of a trauma, and then the power cut. All I wanted was to flop on the sofa, lick my emotional and “life as I know it” bereavement wounds and watch mindless crap TV in a fug of depression. So to suddenly find one of my core lifelines cut off I was at a bit of a loose end! (Ive become rather reliant on the TV, internet and telephone for general interaction with the rest of the world) Add in my rather hazy fluffy memory and attention span (all down to the painkillers naturally), actually finding something to do for a few hours was in itself quite a chore!  At this point I opened a pile of Bupa statements and discovered a mountain of medical bills that are not covered under my corporate policy, more bad news....So as you can tell my day was not going too well. By 7pm all I wanted was a hot bath and bed  -  so lavish and exciting is my existence these days! So you can imagine that despite all electrical supplies being restored I was dismayed when there was no hot water!

My boiler, as they have a habit of doing, is in an awkward cupboard under the stairs, which of course is also filled with various household items. These had to come out which involves lifting and moving stuff and yes that means pain. Meltdown turned into total tantrum as I couldn’t restart the pilot light and ranting, swearing about my general existence and random hurling of items from the cupboard ensued. Nope it didn’t get any better, the cat knocked over water all over a pile of books and general misery had well and truly set in. DIY at this point was of absolutely no use to me at all. And as you already know Im also not good at asking for help so the general tantrum level went  to 6 on the dangerous to be around scale! I think that scale only goes to 7. Funny now but not funny then.

 And then the phone rang. Somehow my mothers intuitive ESP had swung into red alert, her ears had been itching or whatever other device had kicked in. Much ranting, tears and more hurling of (small) things generally  and she and my father had taken the executive decision in the absence of any ability from me that she’d be on her way to London the next morning. A lifeline was kicking in! A lifeline that I have come to appreciate so very greatly. One of unconditional love and just providing a bit of sanity, and support in a time where my ability to cope with seemingly the smallest things had totally evaporated.

So back to the boiler and those clichés. Well you will be very impressed to hear that after a call to British gas premier service line and a rather gobsmacking quote of 159 quid to come and sort it out, my resolve to get the damn thing started kicked in and I took my biggest pills, the most mindnumbing but also pain dampening ones,  re-emptied that cupboard and eventually kicked that thing back into life. Small miracles! And the tiniest bit of self esteem restored.

My lifeline arrived about an hour later to pick up the pieces and restore some sort of order to my life. The Bupa bills are not sorted yet, but general levels of sanity have mostly returned  with just a few moments now and then of self pity, limbo panic and am now entering what I believe  to possibly a floating state of denial!