Winter is lasting so long this year. We have more snow coming down. I thought I lived in the South.
More Snow In Georgia
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Category Archives: Mental Health
Dude…Wait, What?
Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time, knows that I try and keep a positive message in all my posts. To do this, I do not talk about subjects that are considered controversial by most of society. That is not the purpose of my blog.
I do have opinions on things, very often I have strong opinions. Sometimes those opinions must come out. My hope is that I can express my opinion (negative or positive) about a topic in a constructive way.
I have been reading again….. I ran across a blog post written by Slash Coleman. I found the title interesting, Are You Responsible For Your Friend’s Behavior?
I started reading it thinking it was going to propose the question suggested in the title, answer it and expound upon the answer, in a way I suppose it did. For me though there arose more than one problem with the blog post, its topic and resulting conclusion.
I have taken a few days to think about what was written before I responded. Now that I have my thoughts together, I decided it was time.
The author asks the question “Are you responsible for your friend’s behavior?”, if you have introduced two people. He then goes on to talk about how he has on more than one occasion “set friends up together” by sending both unsuspecting parties an introductory email with an explanation of why they should get to know one another.
I had to stop reading the post for a bit at this point. I was appalled, I mean completely and totally appalled by the thought of someone “meddling”, as I see it, and “setting” people up with each other, even as friends. I readily acknowledge that I could be way off base with my feelings about this. I am the one with personal space issues and other anxiety issues. However, this whole scenario just feels wrong to me.
The next part of the author’s post is this, after you have taken the time to arrange that these two people meet, are you responsible if one of them flakes out on the whole thing. In other words, once the connection is made, is everything else out of your hands? Considering I see the first part as meddling, I think any continued involvement would compound the problem. Also, people are people and we are not responsible for their actions.
However, again taking in the fact that you meddled in the first place and set them up for this meeting, I can totally see why the involved parties would hold you responsible for some of how the other person behaved. If they had come to you and said, “Hey! Set me up with a new friend!”, your responsibility would end once you gave them contact information. That whole meddling thing, doing it without being asked, just ensures that you will be on the hook no matter what the outcome of the meeting is.
What do you think?
Is sending contact information, an introduction email, and an explanation of why two people should get to know each other, without them asking to begin with, meddling? Or am I totally off base with my reaction to it?
Are you responsible for your friend’s behavior once you have given the two people involved the information about each other?
I Am The Boss
I am of the opinion that computers have personalities. Very much like an old car that you have to sweet talk, I think computers need the same type of tender loving care. I believe that when they feel neglected or that you are taking them for granted, they will suddenly have an “issue”. Most often, the issue is something small, and very fixable, but is guaranteed to annoy you the most, or take the longest to find the “easy” answer to fix it.
For many weeks my computer has had an overheating problem. I scanned and rescanned my computer for viruses, malware, and anything that might have been causing the overheating problem. Nothing worked. I decided that the problem had to be a hardware problem then.
Great…I am not an expert when it comes to computers, but I can usually figure most software out, however, I am totally lost when it comes to hardware. My computer knows this. This was its way of messing with my head and causing me extreme frustration. If I could not figure out exactly how and why my computer was over heating, I knew I would have to spend a lot of money at the computer repair shop having its insides fixed.
Because I also believe sometimes if you ignore a problem it will “fix itself”, I chose not to do anything about the overheating problem right away. You can predict the results. My computer, again tired of being ignored, decided to crank the pressure up a notch and the overheating problem became worse.
Early this morning, I once again ran all sorts of scans on my computer, with nothing being found. I decided it was time to show my computer who was the boss around here. I did a quick search on overheating problems in laptops. The most common cause appears to be improper air circulation due to a build up of dust and debris. The only thing I could think of was “Duh!”
I read through a couple of instructions on how to clean a laptop, they all recommended that air in a can stuff. Of course, there is none of that around here. However, me the asthmatic, who apparently lacks common sense decided it would be a wise decision to just put my mouth close to the air vents and blow and blow as hard as I could.
The good news is that my lungs must be doing good because I did not turn blue while I was blowing stuff out of my laptop. As I am blowing, I can see all kinds of debris coming out of my laptop. I am hoping that I will be able to blow enough of the debris out that it will fix my laptop. In the back of my mind though, I realize that most likely this will not work.
At some point my daughter must have realized I was awake and came into the room I was in. I looked up at her and she had a funny look on her face. She then mumbled about “something” being on my face. All I could figure out, was that it was something black.
I looked in the mirror, from under my nose to the tip of my chin was black, and partially up my cheeks. Wiping it only smeared the black more. The dust and debris that I had blown from my laptop was now all over my face.
Quote from my daughter, “Mom, I thought you had fallen asleep while eating oreos and that was why you had all that black on your face.”
There were several possible titles I could have used for this post, but I liked the one about me being the boss the best. It sounds much better than, Duh! You should clean your computer.
Oh! My computer has not overheated all day!
Sigh….Pout….Sigh….
Sigh…pout…sigh. *move around to make sure someone is looking at me* BIG SIGH…
Someone has been pouting….and it is not me.
My daughter appears to have reached her limit of being away from home. Yesterday she let me know that fact by saying to me “you would think after someone spent six days in the hospital they would be ready to go home”. Followed by “I am going to walk home”. My response to the latter was, “you better get started so you can get home before dark”. When I offered to fix her a little lunch she told me she was not going to eat until we went home.
All day, she sat on the couch, doing nothing except……sigh…sigh…shift position…more sighing…
In the afternoon, things turned a little…how should I say it…ugly…
It was at this point when I became angry, and asked her to go to her room for some alone time, until her attitude was better. Of course with my daughter being thirteen, she had to have the “last word” as she headed off for her time out.
Unfortunately for my daughter, it was at this point that I became extremely tired, again, and went to sleep for a number of hours. I had totally forgotten to check on her and had forgotten to let her out of her time out.
When I woke up she was out of her room and seemed to have a better attitude. I hope it lasts.
I can completely understand why she wants to go home, she wants to be around her things, in her bed, on her own schedule, and doing her own thing. I just wish she would understand things from my perspective.
Today, I have to drop a prescription off at the pharmacy, my mother is driving, and I will be bringing Anna along. For some reason she loves Walgreens, so I am hoping, getting her out and about for a little bit will help her feel more like herself again.
Smiles For Enguardia
I am not very good at smiling, but I made a slide show just for you, Enguardia, maybe you will see a smile there that meets your expectations. Now I expect a real picture of you!
umm…Yes It's Me Again With More Ramblings….
So are ya’ll totally bored with all my ramblings and postings today? I hope not. I am so, so happy that I feel like getting back into the groove of things.
My mother and I made a brief get away and went shopping in the hospital.
My new pink watch with New pens that look like
bling. syringes
A refreshing peppermint A new purple light weight
foot spray cashmere scarf my mother
bought me.
My final doctor came in a little while ago. The plan is still the same, oral steroids and if there are no problems (and I do not expect any) then I get to go home tomorrow afternoon.
All together, when I leave tomorrow I will have been here five and a half days. About the same amount of time I spent in the hospital last time. The difference this time is I feel so much better going home this time than I did last time. I will be going home with a slight wheeze, but since I will be taking oral steroids at home the final bit of wheeze I have should be going away in just a few days.
Except for the little hiccup when I first was admitted, the care here has been wonderful. The hospitalist I had has done a terrific job keeping my blood sugar under control. The doctors and Physician’s Assistants from Georgia Lung Associates have rocked! The respiratory therapists have done an awesome job keeping me breathing and even when they had to take blood for a blood gas reading they did a good job.
Have a good evening, Neighbors!
Can Weaknesses Be Strengths?
I am once again thankful I am feeling so much better today. I am back into my blog reading and have read some good stuff already this morning.
Grey Ang wrote, what I thought was a very interesting post, entitled Making Your Weakness Your Partner And Dance With It
She starts her post off with some very good self inspection questions.
“But actually, who is it that is there to determine what is normal or success? And how do we weight ourselves, is it from your heart, or is it from how others see you?”
Grey Ang also takes the time to tell a short story about a young woman name Amiee Mullens. Amiee Mullens had both her legs amputated when she was about one years old due to a birth defect. Rather than let not having legs hold her back she has gone on to be a model, and an Olympic Athlete.
Grey Ang has a quote from Amiee Mullins that says,
“It is not so much about overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves to it, embracing it. Grappling with it. Maybe even dancing with it. Perhaps as we see adversity as something natural, consistent and useful, we’re less burdened by the presence of it. “
At first when I read that quote, I knew those were inspirational words but I could not really think of how they could apply to me. I decided to do some more reading and thinking.
Basically, I think what I think is being said by this quote is that if you have something that is considered a weakness or a disability, embrace it! Really get to know it/them. Acknowledge that it is part of you. Love it since it is part of you.
Do not run from it. Do not hide from it. Do not keep it a secret from others. Be proud of it!
In the last year, I have made no secret of my severe depression, suicide attempts, and other things that most people would consider weaknesses or disabilities.
I think when I got my asthma diagnosis and then my diabetes diagnosis, instead of embracing and getting to know the new parts of me, I tried to shove them under the bed. They certainly did not cause my depression, but I very strongly believe that not dealing/embracing them added a lot to my severe depression. I became a hopeless person, and when I reached that hopeless point I tried to commit suicide.
Without knowing what I was doing, I have spent the last year getting to know my illnesses, my weaknesses, my anxieties, and more and embracing them. I chose to do much of that, publicly, here on this blog.
I have touched them, examined them, poked and prodded them, and now I know them so much better. I am not to the point of loving them….yet, but I am becoming proud of them. Proud in the sense that I am no longer boxed in by other people’s definitions of them.
My nurse for today paid me what I consider a very high complement. She basically said that for not having been in depression recovery for even a year yet, she thought I was really doing well. I guess my sense of pride for my “weaknesses” is actually showing through to other people. How cool is that?!
I think our weakness can become our strengths. I will be honest and admit that I am not sure how to put them all together that way just yet, but I think I am getting closer. I can see the look on people’s faces when I respond to them, and I see respect there. For example, the nurses and other support staff here have kept saying “Too bad you had to spend your birthday in the hospital”. My response has always been, “better here than at home not being able to breathe well”. Having been such a shining example of negativity for most of my life, it really feels good when you can say something positive, surprise someone, and see how it might change their own thought processes, and to hear them say out loud how strong they think you are.
Getting back to the questions from the beginning of the this post:
Who decides what is normal or a success? In the past, I let other people or society decide for me what was normal and what was considered a success. Now I define those things for myself. “My normal” is in no way the same as my neighbor’s “normal”. Why? I have a very structured drug regime, my brain certainly has issues, and to me sometimes a successful day just consists of getting dressed. However, since I am defining those things I can be proud of them.
How do we judge ourselves, from our heart or from how other people “see” us ? I very much judged myself on how other people “saw” me. Now I know, most people do not really “see” me. How can they really “see” me? Most people do not take the time to get to know each other well enough to truly “see” them. I can see myself, but I often ask myself, am I truly seeing myself completely? My opinion is, that it is extremely difficult to hold that mirror up to yourself and see yourself completely. So it is important to have one or two people you trust completely, to help you see around the corners and show you what you might be missing. Not to judge us, but so we can make a better judgment about ourselves. I use my counselor for that job.
Your turn! How would you answer those questions?
Have a great afternoon, Neighbors!
Thursday Thirteen
My Thursday Thirteen is late again. I had a bad asthma attack this week and now am in the hospital, so I did not feel like doing it earlier in the week.
My Thursday Thirteen list for this week is going to be a positive, but very hard for me to do. I am going to do a list of 13 things I have liked my hospital stay so far. LOL
Let’s see if I can do it!
1. Yesterday was my birthday and they gave me angel food cake and fresh strawberries for my birthday cake.
2. My mother has been a huge huge huge, did I say huge? emotional support to me while I have been in here.
Mom and my birthday balloons.
3. My breathing is much better than it was when I first got here. I could not talk Thursday when I was admitted.
4. I have a private room.
5. Even though I am on high doses of steroids, my doctors are keeping my blood sugar under 400
6. I do not have to share the TV with anyone, not even my family.
7. The respiratory therapist I had last night was a cutie.
8. My hospital bed does this cool trick. When it feels that I might need some extra comfort, it will blow up the section of the mattress where it decides I need the extra comfort. It is almost like getting a massage in bed.
9. I get to choose my own food for my meals, like in a fancy restaurant.
10. There is a blue couch in my room
11. I only need to be completely hooked up to my IV when I am getting antibiotics now.
12. The old Dr. Dolittle that I watched when I was a kid is on TV now. I am really enjoying that movie.
13. I am in the purple tower (name of it, it is not actually purple) part of the hospital. Purple is my favorite color.
Yes, some of those were very bad, but I did do thirteen of them
Time Out For Me
Since I am feeling really bad today, I am not going to be doing any blogging today. It requires more concentration than I can devote to it right now. Depending on how things go at the lung doctor tomorrow and how I feel tomorrow, I may take tomorrow off too.
I am feeling somewhat anxious at the present moment because of struggling to breathe, and it is making it impossible for me to concentrate on much.
I appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience.
Breathing Update
Just a quick update about my breathing…..
I opted to not go to the ER last night. I am going to try and make it until tomorrow and then go see my lung doctor. He has all the proper equipment and can get an accurate reading of my breathing. I will be taking a small overnight bag and my computer in case he decides to admit me.
My mother has offered to drive up from where she lives to take me to the doctor.