Why I was awake at 4 a.m. today

A story of too many doctors, medications, and sheer terror

On February 23, I went to the doctor because my feet were suddenly hurting when I got out of bed. Not just in the morning. When I climbed out from scrolling endlessly through Reddit, or on Facebook, or writing a deck for class. They hurt after work, and not long after my nightly bath. What was this? Was this what I fear?

Diagnosed with plantar fascitis, I felt helped, but also blown off, and now I can’t remember why. I can’t remember how I felt the need to see my PCP, an ND. Why? What was so unjustified? I had been off of work for a week, a span of time both horrible and helpful. At work I had been constantly criticized, their voices literally echoing in my head (a trend all to common recently.) But I missed being there. I had just mentioned to my boss I liked being at work better and we had an adult-level giggle about how we both enjoy work better. But I had to drop my shift on Monday and today’s. The pain was too much. But was it? Was I just over the constant bullshit?

Yeah. There’s that.

It was a time where I had hoped for the better with online therapy, only to be consumed over the weekend with a terrible PTSD trigger from my “therapist” — she wanted to know what I thought about since November. What I thought about? I didn’t. I tried my damnedest not to. And now I was. Every. Moment. And so I asked for a refund. This was the beginning of the end.

My pain was a kind of psychosomatic. The more stressed, the more pain. I was becoming more stressed than usual.

The stress of work politics added on. I was being ignored on Facebook. I was even condescendingly condemned for not wanting to work for free.

So there was that.

Yesterday I saw what would have been a new PCP fail to look at my meds list and prescribe Lyrica. I’ll fast forward to this morning, after I opted not to take my gabapentin last night to make the switch: I felt so high AND drunk and whatever else you can feel off illegal substances I had to get my shift at work covered. My paranoia now high, I needed to see another doctor. I already talked to PT, which stand for “exercise.” it’s not kinetic tape. It’s not massage. It’s what you get with medicaid. Not helpful. And not what I need, oh, really, maybe?

So this doctor thinks the problem is in my spine.

So then I call my ND, again, because I’m low on meds. Really, scary low. I’m stretching them out. I forgot to ask for them earlier this week because she breezing through my labs about as gently as a hurricane. I spaced on asking for meds.

I’ve just been spacing.

Spacing, and dealing with that lyrica. Oh, Lyrica. And gabapentin. Variations of gaba-affecting medications that are not of the opiate category, so doctors are clear to prescribe them. They produce euophoric effects. They are painkilling. They are, to me, wonderful because I can sleep and work and be “steady”. But not with Lyrica. Lyrica brought on a pile of emotions I wasn’t ready for, a high I don’t know what to do with, a feeling of being drunk I said goodbye and goodday to in 2015.

It also brought on voices. Yes. A kind of auditory hallucination. I imagined my mother speaking over to me as I did something. In everything I did, was someone in that context speaking to me about it. Not loud, as if it was a memory.

Yeah. WHAT THE HELL.

This is something the doctor did wrong. I told him I was having issues like this already. And he started me at a HIGH DOSE of Lyrica, which has been known to do this.

At what point, who do I say “YOU. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY CARE.” Or is that me? When I can’t?

There are people who do this for those who can’t make choices. And deciding to do that is a big choice. Deciding to go the disabled route is a dangerous choice. Is it L and I? Or am I fine?

Am I Fine?

Am I Okay?

I ask that, every day, usually every hour. I usually seem to be. And every day I am usually pretty ok. I maybe burned a bridge. Maybe hurt my parents. Maybe scared them. Scared myself.

But if I just sit back, sit really far back and just breathe in some fresh air and do only what I need to thrive, that’s what ends up happening.

I thrive.

So enough. Enough chasing answers for a little while. I’m cool with just having medication and my small little life. Maybe it’s too hard to detox off medication. Maybe I just want to….have things BE. And that’s something psychiatrists always get wrong. They want us to be in a constant state of change.

I want a constant state of peace. Because I am terrified of one more medication that goes wrong, one more thing that causes me fear of my own brain, fear of the sounds I don’t hear, the thought that, if that’s what’s happening, what I might have wrong with me — or is it my meds?

You know, sometimes, I just want to wear a hat that says “please be nice.” I feel delicate, an egg that could crack. But I’m not, and I’m more like I’m hardboiled — but you’d never know, jokes on you!

To be honesty, and fragile, and vulnerable for a moment, it does scare me when I wake up at 4 a.m. — my father is barely awake, and yet, I’m tired, but want to talk to him…. yet, the fact I’m awake is all we both need to know. So I turn up the heat, and bury in deeper, deciding how to unravel my kinked up body, tight from who-knows-what. Age. Meds. Walking more. Walking so I am paid ever day. And in these days I fumble around for things to do, trying not to cause problems. Investing in a hobby that brings me more joy than I think I can explain, except to others who find joy in this weird, bizarre craft that is more about being organized and pretty — at least, on pretty. (#MessyBunGettingStuffDone.)

And at 4 a.m. I have ample hours to obsess, and think and plot. But it gives me, by midnight lots of time for those medications to wear off. So I am tired, brutally exhausted, but I feel better. I crave my medications, sometimes spaced out so I can enjoy them. But really, I just enjoy sleep. Sometimes people say their favorite hobby is sleep. I often wonder if we never talk about sleep, as if it’s a big unconscious pause button, but we do feel it. We feel every instamoment of sleep, the joy it brings us to be at peace, in a dream that makes us think of pleasure, or remember someone, and remember it for hours, or forget bad ideas, or truly innovate and inspire ourselves in a way that pops up at 3:30 at the office. I don’t think it’s as complicated, just too hard to explain. So at 4am, I didn’ have much time to enjoy sleep.

Tonight, I will. I will enjoy my medications working, the melatonin remiding my brain it is, in fact, sleeping time, not waking up time, and that it’s ok to rest. I’m just dedicating my next 4 days to work. I often miss being a workaholic. And of this nature, its where I feel home.

At 4 a.m. I will not wake up, but if I do, it will be to research why adult women get diaper rash. I have theories, but want to find out. Tomorrow.

Because this brain dump has helped me figure out a pattern in my scramble for medical care. And it’s another dump in itself. The answer to every problem is in the pattern of the problem.

We’re just not all good at seeing patterns. Or dedicating the time to it.

Me? If I can just dump all my ideas, eventually I’ll connect the dots. Sometimes, it’s harder to identify; others, deal with.

Knowing you even have a problem isn’t the answer we want. And somehow, I think that will be what my career turns into.

For now, one more bite of ice cream, and then I sleep. Beyond 4 a.m. I hope.