They were soooo nice. :)

We met in the food court actually (isn’t that where you meet all your internet friends for the first time?! LOL) where I got a pile of Chinese food for $5.46 … I mean like, a mountain of food. It was obscene. And incredibly beautiful. Mom and I picked at the doggone thing for over an hour — and there was still food left over!!

(There are times I seriously miss living in the city — and that was one of those moments… we have zero variety up here. It’s boring little grocery store fare, or "fancy" grocery store fare for $45 + your first-born, or it sucks to be you.)

I then struggled through 2+ hours of shoe shopping. This is the eternal ritual: finding a pair of shoes that fits right. It’s always been like climbing Mt. Rushmore in a straight-jacket. My feet are picky as hell. Now that I have these excellent arch supports from the Good Feet Store, life is better …….. but I soon discovered you can’t just chuck your arch supports in any old shoe and be able to wear it. Some were too wide, some too narrow, some too tight, one rolled outward really badly, several rolled inward really badly … and WTF is with Reebok gluing their insoles in their damn shoes anyway?! Hello?? Dear Reebok: you’ve lost a longtime loyal customer (20+ years!), because you glue in your insoles! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nobody else glues their insoles in. Just Reebok. Apparently they’re special. *roll eyes* Yeah … special enough to be left on the shelf!

So, given that I lost my hiking boots a few months ago (I think while changing out of my fire gear on the highway ……….. but I don’t know for sure??), I did at least find a pair of mens’ athletic shoes that will sufficiently substitute as hiking shoes. Didn’t find a single pair of womens’ shoes that were workable *roll eyes* but the mens’ shoes were a hit-it-out-of-the-park home run.

So the hunt for everyday shoes continues. *sigh*

I then screwed together all the bits of courage I had as we went to pick up our kitty at the vet. Our dead kitty, who’d been cremated. I was okay ’til we pulled in the parking lot. As we pulled up to the place, exactly 1 hour before the time we’d walked out when he died that night in September, those God-awful feelings all came flooding back. That horrible weekend, that horrible night. The worry, anxiousness, desperation, concern, love for my baby, frustration … and utter suffocating helplessness. The helplessness, that’s what really ripped me up. There wasn’t a single thing we could do to fix him, he just looked up at me with those sweet soul-filled eyes, trusting and loving me, looking to me for answers and security, clinging to me desperately as I held him as close as I could… broken. And I couldn’t fix him. It broke my heart. What do you do with that???? He could not be fixed. He was broken forever. As was my heart.

We had him put to sleep. It was the right thing to do, but an absolutely horrible thing to do. Even though we saved him from massive pain and suffering, I still wrestle with the simple act of taking a life — and a life I loved with all my heart, no less. I know he is happier now (I mean, I know this) but there is something in my soul that rages and reels at taking a life. Taking a life! There is no greater, purer Power that we can see with our own eyes, than life. To kill that life … that core part of me *rebukes* it. Who am I to take such a thing from someone else??? Yes, even an animal. To me, it means no less, it is no less, if it has four legs or two.

He was tucked in a little black-and-white kitty-shaped tin, in a paper bag with ribbons tied to the handle. The bag had been carefully labeled with his name. And tucked inside was a pawprint. A little print of his sweet little paw … a paw I couldn’t have back. A little paw I would never kiss again, or play with, or tickle, or gently touch. A paw that would never reach out to touch my hand again, nor cling to my shoulder for dear life as his eyes implored me to protect and love him forever. Seeing that, that’s when I really came unglued.

It all flooded back so vividly, so wholly, the emotion of it just swallowing me up. We climbed back in the car and I just sat there and cried.

But I held on. Because something I’ve learned the last few weeks, is that I can feel pain, but it won’t kill me. I can hang on and endure it, ride the wave, and push through, and it will in the very least dump me washed-up on some sh*tty abandoned shore somewhere. But it won’t carry me away forever, and it won’t kill me. It does end (or at least ebb), and I then I can crawl up to higher ground and brush myself off.

Sitting in the dark car, the parking lot illuminated by the yellowed glow of a magnesium streetlight, the same scene of that fateful night swirling and awash in my tears, I knew that I had to feel the pain and ride its wave, in order to deal with it. This part of the ride had to be ridden in order to process it and put it to rest. The rational side of me recognized that this was a normal way to feel, and so it was okay to ride it out and feel it for what it was. I didn’t die on the trail. This wouldn’t kill, or even mortally maim me, here in the car. I would be okay.

And I was. It took awhile. We shed our tears, we voiced our regrets, we mopped up our faces with paper towels, took a deep breath and pulled out of the parking lot. We had our boy back. And we brought him home where he belonged. Our baby is back home by his Mamas.

##

Not skeletal muscles, as that would be like back spasms? I don’t have back spasms.

But my left hip, the internal muscles which keep the femur pulled up into the pelvis, squeeze tight. Not the external buttock muscles. The internal ones. The result is that the femur is pushed up into the cartilage and joint constantly, and the hip joint (in my pelvis) becomes really sore. Not so much sore to walk on, but it hurts particularly bad to lay on.

Although I’ll describe it to my family that “my hip is spasming up again,” it’s not really a spasm, because spasms are involuntary. This is voluntary, but controlled subconsciously; It’s not like I choose to do it, like picking my nose! It just happens.

But “spasm” closely describes the tension and tightness of the muscles that are clenched up. It closely describes the fact I am not trying to tense up my hip. And after 20 or 30 minutes, the whole joint just aches.

I try to be aware of it, and consciously relax the whole hip joint. However I’ll catch it and do this relaxation exercise easily 30+ times an hour.. sometimes several times a minute. It’s a constant battle with this subconscious thing that keeps tightening the muscles up. And I do the whole awareness-relaxation thing because if I don’t, if I left the joint stay spasmed up, it is unbelievably sore for days. At its worst, I haven’t been able to even sit on the hip. Give that whirl in real life … NOT!

So I am perpetually distracted by checking whether my hip is tightened up, then stopping whatever I’m working on and focusing on forcing the muscles and whole joint to relax. Then I go back to whatever I was thinking about.

The net result is, I am constantly distracted, and inefficient, and I often forget what I was doing, or what I was thinking about. This makes even checking or acting on emails impossible at times… I can’t follow a thought process through. It is supremely annoying, and leaves me feeling incapable.

But I am not lazy, my TV is off, and I have no beer.

It all comes down to comfort level. Which is not to say, "it’s more comfy here in my jammies than bundled in a coat outside" but rather whether I am feeling strong enough to put myself in a situation that makes my heart pound and skin crawl in fear.

Today is not a Strong Day.

I had a doctor’s appt yesterday, as I believed I was coming down with shingles. I had insatiable, deep itching in a band around my left back and chest, and the lower 1/4 of my left breast. My lower back around T12/S1, as well as inside my spine at T6, were both sore. When I would scratch my skin, it didn’t help, because the itch was under the skin and I couldn’t reach it! I would scratch one place, and the itch would flare up in patches to the left and right. Then when I stopped scratching, the whole thing would flare up in defiance. Urghhhh!!! I also had a headache from sneezing/coughing, so I took an Excedrin, which cut down on the itching. (I later read, this probably happened because the aspirin/acetominophen decreased the inflammation of the affected nerve) I then took a neurontin, to try to make the Excedrin work better (because the sneezing/coughing headache rarely responds to pain meds) and naturally, that shut down the dermatome itching by probably 90%. I mean, wahooo!!! but, it’s also like taking your car to the mechanic when it’s not making the funny noise. "Hey, I’m sick, but you can’t tell." *snicker*

Anyway the doc popped a gasket about my weight, which is a smidge below my heaviest (which I’d hit last winter before losing 32 lbs), trying to scare me straight by telling me my wonky overnight/on-call work schedule is cancer-causing, and I was getting set up for a heart attack, diabetes, etc. To which my response was, (a) tell me something I don’t know, and (b) I don’t care!! I could have a heart attack tomorrow and I would not care. Got diabetes? Oh well. *shrug* Guess that’s the way it goes.

And I also told him where he could stick turning my diet upside-down, and eating all new foods that I hate. (Which is going some, because I love meat and veggies. So you know he suggested some real crap.) My diet might not be healthy, but what he was suggesting was climbing a mountain, freaking me out, and it was NOT gonna happen.

He identified a lot of what I was saying and feeling as depression, which neither I nor Mom saw … and this led to a frank discussion about my PTSD and where I’m at with it. Finally, a meeting of the minds. It pissed me off that I had to break down and snivel in a puddle of snot to get the point across, but by the same token, I protect my weaknesses and emotions fiercely. I don’t let people see ‘em. I don’t let people in. So the doc had to break down my barriers in order to get to ‘em, and honestly I don’t know any other way he could have gotten to it if he hadn’t pissed me off.

So instead of just upping my Paxil to 30 mg consistently — which did "get me by" during my first 6 months of (then-untreated) PTSD, he added 150 mg Wellbutrin XL to the mix, while keeping my Paxil at 20 mg.

I was uncomfortable adding a 2nd anti-depressant because I felt as though I am masking what was going on, rather than fixing anything. I was also worried I was basically going to go manic. However, I had forgotten that anti-depressants do not make you drunk like booze, or zombie-ish like Valium. The right AD will clear the junk and sickly thoughts out of your head, and restore your long-missed clarity and good attitude. But how does that work when you’re already on an AD??

Walking out of the Dr’s office, I felt like I’d been put through a wringer. I was tired, battle-worn, and weak. Mom and I grabbed some lunch at a quiet restaurant, which felt really nice, actually, and then we parted ways… she ran her errands, and I went home and went to bed!! I’d only had 2 hrs of sleep that morning and was exhausted. Well, my nap sucked… I slept very lightly, so the 4.5 hours that passed seemed to drag by… I woke up at 9 PM cranky as all hell and with a very dry mouth. OMG, it was like cotton mouth on steroids. As I woke up a little bit more and a little bit more, my mood did improve, and I read about the side-effects of Wellbutrin… naturally freaking myself out because "irritability, anxiety, and panic attacks" are all side-effects and had been widely reported by others. I was thinking, great, I’ve been started on something that’s going to cause the problems I’m trying to get rid of! I tried to push that thought OUT of my mind, and also noted that the dry mouth was a very common side-effect… much more so than irritability and anxiety. :) Well, at least I knew it was working, right? LOL. I drank some water. Dry mouth is not a show-stopper.

Today I have noticed my eyes are very dry too. At this rate I am going to have to take my contacts out for sleeping (I know, I know, spare me the lectures) because they are way dry and clouded up. Dang! Now that’s annoying.
However I’ve also noticed that I am in a fairly decent mood today. I don’t feel quite so victim-ish today. Just generally, I don’t feel like I am at the bottom of the totem pole. I feel like I’m up a bit higher on the pecking order in life. I do feel uncertain, and fragile, like I am struggling with sorting things out in my head? I don’t feel strong. But I do feel less bad.

Add to that the fact that the world is literally covered in ice outside… we had downpour rains, then downpour ice pellets, then the temperature dropped 25° in a couple of hours, and then it snowed up the wazoo, yesterday. And the temp kept going down, down, down. The roads suck. It has been sub-zero temps all day with an incessant, cutting, dangerously cold blustery wind. Now the sun has gone down and the temps are dropping even further. My class is at a rural fire station that is out in the boonies, miles off the highway. If I go to class, we are talking a total of 45 miles on glare ice-covered roads, with bald tires, in sub-zero temperatures, in the middle of frickin’ nowhere, after dark. Uhmmmm, no, thank you. That is just way, way outside my comfort zone, especially with the emotional and physical upheaval I am going through, 36 hours and counting. The timing on this is just crackpot.

So I sent my instructor a nice email with an apology. I didn’t explain the PTSD/meds thing, I just cited the bad roads and sub-zero conditions. If he wants to push it, I will go into the gory details. I also suggested his sending me the homework assignment that he had created for the 3 people who are missing tonight due to a conference. So, there is a suitable make-up assignment, and by suggesting it I should have met the criteria the ADA cites.

An interesting thing, my Dr. was quite adamant about my having rights to financial support for medical bills (meds, appts, counseling) and that I need to hire a lawyer, if necessary, to stand up for myself and collect that. Yesterday I was sitting there looking at him thinking, "no Goddamn way, what is he smoking?!?" — particularly I did not feel I was deserving of it. Today, I find my brain actually wondering if I am deserving of it. Not so much in a logistical sense, but more in general terms, do I deserve help? As a person? Do I have a right to that expectation? I don’t believe I do, yet, but at least I am questioning it. Rationally I know there are people out there who would say this is progress.

Similarly, it took me some time to think about it today, before I finally realized that yes, I did have a right to expect to be safe at home and not out in the cold on crappy-ass roads (I mean, we are talking crappy by northern Wisconsin winter standards — this isn’t 2 inches of snow and 28° here — so you know it’s frickin’ bad) risking life and limb for something non-essential. (A 911 call is essential. A class is not.) It’s nothing like taking classes on a campus. I remember those days — totally apples and oranges. It seems rather preposterous to me that a night class being held at a backroads location 90 miles away from campus would not be canceled when every other school and meeting that required any bit of travel was canceled today. This is where the community colleges are way out of touch with the real world, IMO.

Incidentally, I have taken a NeoLife Phyto Defense pack every 12 hours and the itching has not returned. (That is also probably why I didn’t sleep well yesterday or part of last night — Phyto is so packed with nutrients, that it gives me an energy buzz and it’s just about impossible to sleep through) My New Chapter Stress Advantage arrived by UPS yesterday and I re-started my daily 2 pills/day yesterday. Between the two — I am sure mostly the Phyto, that stuff is titanium — the itchyness has not really returned, and my backaches are easily 60%+ less. I haven’t had the viral aches in my hands/wrists today either. I am thinking that I might actually successfully fight off the shingles. How freakin’ sweet would that be?! Guess we will find out when the rash doesn’t appear over the weekend or next week… :)

###

He has, as you might expect, accumulated quite a collection of breathtaking video and still photos.

He has also developed PTSD, and is “receiving treatment” for it. The news piece cited some heart-wrenching circumstances as being difficult for him — hearing people trapped and crying for help when he physically could not help them, for instance. Completely and totally understandable; that’d screw anybody in the head for a while.

What I find odd though, is that he keeps going back.

The first tenet of treating PTSD is to remove yourself from the source. You cannot make headway on it until you have removed yourself from the threat, and are safe.

This man has PTSD and yet he keeps going back. He keeps re-exposing himself to the threat, keeps re-exposing himself to more heartbreak, more risks. It just does not compute in my head. Granted the terminology in the piece was not perfect; I am sure that the choice of words “receiving treatment” is a journalist’s way of putting things. as one does not receive treatment for PTSD, one participates in or gets treatment. It’s not something you can be given, in a receiving sense, like a fine chocolate or a glass of wine. It’s something you have to roll up your sleeves and dig around in the muck bucket to find with your own two hands.

But I am stymied how this fellow can have PTSD, and yet turn right around and get right back in that car, and go out there, and stare down the source of his stress, and function. And presumably (although this may be where I am mistaken) come out the other side a sane and functional human being.

Then again, he did say that every chase changes him… every time he comes back from a chase, he comes back a changed person. Now on one hand, this seems reasonable. But on the other hand (the one that’s laying here tossing & turning in bed, chewing on this at O-dark:30) I am thinking, if he wasn’t screwed up in the head (PTSD) each chase wouldn’t have that profound of an impact on him. Just as each ambulance call left me a bit more appreciative, or sensitive, or compassionate, I would not have said (pre-PTSD) that every call left me a “changed person,” just that every call taught me something new, about life and about myself. But monumentally changed every time? No. I was more stable than that. Now (post-PTSD) does every call leave me a “changed person?” Yes, because I am that much more open to input. I’m operating with a much thinner skin, you could say.

Which leaves me with the conclusion that despite appearances, despite the off-handed way the PTSD was mentioned, addressed and then conveniently dropped, this is a man who is chasing sick. He is not alright. He is not his normal, pre-PTSD self running around out there, chasing untamed beasts. He is out there shooting video with one hand, while straining with all his might to carry a 150 lb. backpack labeled “PTSD.” It never leaves him. He’s not normal and he’s not healthy (not in the pre-PTSD sense). When he steps back out into the eye of a storm, he is dragging a ton of baggage that surely must be threatening to swallow him whole… or in little pieces… it’ll take him however it can get him. ;)

Where I am left quizzical is: Why? and, How?

Why on earth does he keep going back out there to taunt his emotional enemy? Why does he willingly go out, surely knowing that it is going to rip open and scald old wounds?

And how does repeatedly go out and face that source of trauma over and over again? What kind of coping strategies does he use that he is able to do that? — because a lot of PTSDers simply cannot face their trauma again. And especially not in roaring, screaming, living color. It is one thing to revisit a location when it is quiet, benign and safe … but it is another thing entirely to revisit when the threat is right smack dab there in your face.

Personally, you wouldn’t catch me doing it. I can’t do it. Right now, this moment. 18 months post-trauma, I hear LP gas smell calls get paged out, and I’m thinking, no – freakin’ – way. There is not enough rice noodles in all of China to make me go within a 1/2 mile of that crap now. Me and LP gas — not so much. The old LP did not get a Christmas card from me this year…………

Call it survival instinct, whatever. It’s an aversion, plain and simple. Not only do I feel the urge to run as fast and as hard away as I possibly can, but if I stay put for more than about 3-1/2 seconds, it is all I can do to not vomit. As in, actively clamp my esophagus down and not let the puke and bile spew out. A-ver-sion.

I know better than to judge Mr. Reed on the severity or seriousness of his PTSD. I have no doubt that he stuggles with it. Obviously his trauma is of the type that he is still able to function in the general scope of extreme weather conditions without flipping out. And/or, his brain (and therefore emotions) are of such a structure, interpretation and response that he is able to continue to function through whatever triggers and experiences he is going through … otherwise he wouldn’t still be out there doing what he is doing.

Lucky fellow.

Unlucky, perhaps, in that one has to wonder just how badly he is sacrificing himself for the ‘greater good,’ however he defines it. Time will only tell that one … not even he knows, right now, this day, this moment, whether it is an ultimate sacrifice or not. It’s something that has to play out, and no one can really predict it.

What really helped me about this piece was the realization that I am not the only one who is intimidated by, frightened of, and affected by, severe weather. I love a good snowstorm… I adore a downpour… but frankly, tornadoes shake the shit out of me. I didn’t like the first tornado I saw, and yet I continue to chase them out of some freakish obligation. Yet when I picture myself chasing on the plains as many do — or actually coming face-to-face with another tornado? I ask myself, do I really want to see that? The answer is, God No. Why would I subject myself to that? Why?

And I feel ashamed and embarrassed of that answer, because I have friends who think they are just the niftiest thing ever, and I really do want to be like them! I want to measure up to them, I want to have that in common with them.

But I don’t have that in common with them. I think tornadoes are scary, vicious, shitty things that hurt people and destroy beautiful things for no good reason. And they scare the bejeezus out of me.

Not quite as bad as LP, but close.

So yes, I very muchly understand how Jim Reed has PTSD. And I am supremely grateful for his admission of the fact, because it greatly validates what I feel and fear about severe weather. Yes, it is extremely cool, I understand that side of it too … but I have marveled in the past 18 months how chasers can be out there chasing, and not feel the fear and dread and loathing that creeps over my heart like a thick, heavy mat of mud… how are they so positive when there is so much negative? How does the preponderance of negative not smother the positive they seem to thrive on?

Maybe they aren’t thriving on positive. Maybe they are scared out of their wits and they are post-traumatic too … they just don’t talk about it.

It makes me wonder how many chasers have wound up post-traumatic … is it something they just don’t talk about? Do they get bitten and simply slip silently away? Or do they keep chasing and bite their lip, just not tell anyone about it?

At any rate, I am glad it is not “just me.” It is one more frontier where I do not feel quite so f*ed up. Obviously I am not alone on this one. ##