This started as what was to be a short email note to my youngest daughter, but it went so far off the rails, I am pasting it here, and cutting the email down to it's original intent.
Here we go:
Reading this over, obsessively and too late to fix anything, my favorite typo is "Hope Depot". I would definitely shop at "Hope Depot", and have an irrational urge to photo-fake a storefront and try to make some kind of meme-ish thing out of it. Too lazy to do that, but not too lazy to spend three nights meticulously remastering an extremely obscure David Sylvian track, featuring Robert Fripp (Approaching Silence, 1994), to make it less dominated by white noise, and to make the many layers of other sounds and voices easier to hear, while introducing a minimum of noise-reduction artifacts. The trick in such cases is to spectrally divide the audio into separate files for each carefully-selected frequency band, and to meticulously edit each file before mixing them all back together again. I think I did a good job of it, but I don't know who would be pleased by, or even interested in, the result other than myself. This is the kind of thing I do all of the time. I can't let anybody else's work, if it is of interest to me, stand as-is, as presented. I always have to mess with it and make it some kind of unintended, by the originator, collaboration with me that interests no-one but me. When the pain of sitting in this chair was too much, I couldn't do this, and it nearly killed me. Fortunately I can do this stuff again, because I am not sure how I would live if I could not. I hope there isn't a name for this disorder, other than "obsessive-compulsive disorder' which is way too general, because I want it to be my lonely little corner of the world of madness. It would be wonderful perhaps to live in a world where such meddling as mine is appreciated by others, but I'm fine in my lonely universe of insanity just so long as I can keep working on these pointless projects. This has long since passed from a legitimate email into the sort of thing that can only exist as a blog post, so I may cut-and-paste it into my blog as well...
[Hey, my first ever holy shit what did I write last night self-censored blog, let your imagination fill in the blanks, or not. Really not, please.]
Damn, I need to stop drinking. I need to give that treatment another try so I can reduce my insanity to a more manageable level. Or not. Bring on the Electro-Convulsive Therapy, I have nothing left to lose!
Monday, February 24, 2020
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Too Real For Facebook
Warning: the following is pretty much a remix of the immediately previous post here. I had originally posted it to Facebook late one night, and woke up a few hours later regretting it. So I hid it on FB, but here it is, for no good reason. Pointless update follows.
[begin deleted FB post]
Depression, if that is what this is, is a confusing thing. I never thought that I would not feel like singing, but that is where I am now. Singing had been the best medicine for most of my life, especially when I discovered how much better it was with an audience, and even better with the support of a live band. The last time I tried I was terrible, and it was humiliating. I keep intending to try again, but I am reaching the point of accepting that I should never try again. I have tried pretty much literally every purported treatment, both conventional and unconventional, except ECT, Ketamine, Psilocybin, and LSD. I have been trying self-acceptance instead of escalating to yet another treatment, but it isn't working. I am so broken inside in so many ways, and I always have been, but now I am also old and tired, physically weak and in pain. All I want to do is to believe that I can sing again, but I can neither sing nor believe.
[end deleted FB post]
And now the pointless update and inevitable reiterations.
Given that the choices are suffering, suicide and treatment, I choose to suffer through the remaining untried treatments, of which the above post omits one highly dubious option: MDMA. There is a legal Ketamine treatment facility in the area, but it is very expensive and very likely not covered by insurance. I don't know of a reliable source for correctly synthesized LSD or MDMA, and outside of clinical trials or eventual legal treatment, finding either seems hazardous and unlikely. Besides, my experience with big-pharma anti-depressants makes me more than a little wary of synthetic psychoactive compounds. Anybody wondering why I'm not talking about CBD or THC, I have already eliminated those from further consideration. CBD is very likely at best a placebo, and THC has no history of efficacy in treatment of depression. Similarly, narcotics are not under consideration, as they are at best distractions from, but certainly not direct treatments for my problems, and pose numerous obvious risks.
So, there is both clinical and anecdotal evidence that Psilocybin is a possible effective treatment, often compared to LSD in both efficacy and theorized mechanism, but has the advantages of not requiring complex synthesis and being readily available. Positive results have been reported from a single substantial dose providing sustainable improvement after the initial experience, and positive results have also been reported from periodic "micro-dosing". I propose that I might try the first, and if later deemed worthwhile, the second method.
If that doesn't work, I think I will skip Ketamine, all known risks and possible benefits considered, which leaves me with ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy), if it is considered safe enough given my compromised cardiac condition. ECT has a bad popular perception, but a surprisingly good clinical history of safety and efficacy. Nonetheless, I hope Psilocybin will "magically" improve my condition so that I no longer have to consider either ECT or suicide.
Suicide remains extremely unlikely, as I perceive my condition and prognosis at present. Life will end soon enough one way or another without my assistance. Bringing it about abruptly by my own action would selfishly impose considerable temporary distress and inconvenience on my immediate family.
I may have mentioned earlier, but just to make it clear here, after the failure of TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, likely just a very elaborate placebo), I resolved to try simple acceptance, and to relieve myself of the debilitating cycle of hope and disappointment. For long stretches of mere numb existence it works, but then there are days and nights when it doesn't. My emotional landscape consists of alternating absence*, sadness, and anger. Of these, I find anger the most intolerable, not just because it is pointless but more because it is unpleasant for those with whom I interact. I have no right to subject anyone to my irrational, unproductive anger. Being merely useless is bad enough. I consider the pursuit of any available reasonable further treatment to be something of a duty, more towards others than myself.
*"absence" as I use it here is a difficult state of being to describe. Time passes, I perform the bare minimum of daily required functions, and I am in many ways not entirely conscious. I may putter about ineffectually on various projects, gleaning no actual progress or results, frequently leaving one effort in scattered pieces and simply taking up another new or previously abandoned effort. Most of my time is actually spent trying to remember what I had been doing, or trying to find the fragments of unfinished work I had previously abandoned.
[begin deleted FB post]
Depression, if that is what this is, is a confusing thing. I never thought that I would not feel like singing, but that is where I am now. Singing had been the best medicine for most of my life, especially when I discovered how much better it was with an audience, and even better with the support of a live band. The last time I tried I was terrible, and it was humiliating. I keep intending to try again, but I am reaching the point of accepting that I should never try again. I have tried pretty much literally every purported treatment, both conventional and unconventional, except ECT, Ketamine, Psilocybin, and LSD. I have been trying self-acceptance instead of escalating to yet another treatment, but it isn't working. I am so broken inside in so many ways, and I always have been, but now I am also old and tired, physically weak and in pain. All I want to do is to believe that I can sing again, but I can neither sing nor believe.
[end deleted FB post]
And now the pointless update and inevitable reiterations.
Given that the choices are suffering, suicide and treatment, I choose to suffer through the remaining untried treatments, of which the above post omits one highly dubious option: MDMA. There is a legal Ketamine treatment facility in the area, but it is very expensive and very likely not covered by insurance. I don't know of a reliable source for correctly synthesized LSD or MDMA, and outside of clinical trials or eventual legal treatment, finding either seems hazardous and unlikely. Besides, my experience with big-pharma anti-depressants makes me more than a little wary of synthetic psychoactive compounds. Anybody wondering why I'm not talking about CBD or THC, I have already eliminated those from further consideration. CBD is very likely at best a placebo, and THC has no history of efficacy in treatment of depression. Similarly, narcotics are not under consideration, as they are at best distractions from, but certainly not direct treatments for my problems, and pose numerous obvious risks.
So, there is both clinical and anecdotal evidence that Psilocybin is a possible effective treatment, often compared to LSD in both efficacy and theorized mechanism, but has the advantages of not requiring complex synthesis and being readily available. Positive results have been reported from a single substantial dose providing sustainable improvement after the initial experience, and positive results have also been reported from periodic "micro-dosing". I propose that I might try the first, and if later deemed worthwhile, the second method.
If that doesn't work, I think I will skip Ketamine, all known risks and possible benefits considered, which leaves me with ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy), if it is considered safe enough given my compromised cardiac condition. ECT has a bad popular perception, but a surprisingly good clinical history of safety and efficacy. Nonetheless, I hope Psilocybin will "magically" improve my condition so that I no longer have to consider either ECT or suicide.
Suicide remains extremely unlikely, as I perceive my condition and prognosis at present. Life will end soon enough one way or another without my assistance. Bringing it about abruptly by my own action would selfishly impose considerable temporary distress and inconvenience on my immediate family.
I may have mentioned earlier, but just to make it clear here, after the failure of TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, likely just a very elaborate placebo), I resolved to try simple acceptance, and to relieve myself of the debilitating cycle of hope and disappointment. For long stretches of mere numb existence it works, but then there are days and nights when it doesn't. My emotional landscape consists of alternating absence*, sadness, and anger. Of these, I find anger the most intolerable, not just because it is pointless but more because it is unpleasant for those with whom I interact. I have no right to subject anyone to my irrational, unproductive anger. Being merely useless is bad enough. I consider the pursuit of any available reasonable further treatment to be something of a duty, more towards others than myself.
*"absence" as I use it here is a difficult state of being to describe. Time passes, I perform the bare minimum of daily required functions, and I am in many ways not entirely conscious. I may putter about ineffectually on various projects, gleaning no actual progress or results, frequently leaving one effort in scattered pieces and simply taking up another new or previously abandoned effort. Most of my time is actually spent trying to remember what I had been doing, or trying to find the fragments of unfinished work I had previously abandoned.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Listen to "Bad Birthday" by Servotron.
My Birthday present to myself this year is indulging in feeling sorry for myself. For a change.
I learned weeks ago that a Karaoke From Hell performance would, for maybe the only time ever, be happening on my actual Birthday. I have been trying to psych myself up mentally and physically for actually going, but... mostly due to anxiety I have had very little sleep. I already felt a little overshadowed by other very publicly promoted Birthdays near this date, some related directly to Karaoke From Hell, and then I find out that tonight's performance is "JJ's Karaoke From Hell Birthday Party". I don't even know who "JJ" is.
This goes to the heart of the problem. There is a core group of KFH "regulars", but I haven't been regularly a part of that for longer than I was. Back in the early days, I was so omnipresent at their shows I may have even been an annoyance, but it has been much longer since then than my return and my second absence combined.
There has to come a time when I realize that I am no longer meaningfully part of something. That something is a thing with or without me. That is as it should be and it is petty of me to be hurt by it.
Consider also, that I seldom feel the stirring of the urge to sing, even though it had once been, for better or worse, right or wrong, the most important thing to me, especially with an audience, and that when I now do attempt to sing, I am horrified at how much worse I am now than I indulgently remember myself to have once been. Awkward run-on sentence win!
I learned weeks ago that a Karaoke From Hell performance would, for maybe the only time ever, be happening on my actual Birthday. I have been trying to psych myself up mentally and physically for actually going, but... mostly due to anxiety I have had very little sleep. I already felt a little overshadowed by other very publicly promoted Birthdays near this date, some related directly to Karaoke From Hell, and then I find out that tonight's performance is "JJ's Karaoke From Hell Birthday Party". I don't even know who "JJ" is.
This goes to the heart of the problem. There is a core group of KFH "regulars", but I haven't been regularly a part of that for longer than I was. Back in the early days, I was so omnipresent at their shows I may have even been an annoyance, but it has been much longer since then than my return and my second absence combined.
There has to come a time when I realize that I am no longer meaningfully part of something. That something is a thing with or without me. That is as it should be and it is petty of me to be hurt by it.
Consider also, that I seldom feel the stirring of the urge to sing, even though it had once been, for better or worse, right or wrong, the most important thing to me, especially with an audience, and that when I now do attempt to sing, I am horrified at how much worse I am now than I indulgently remember myself to have once been. Awkward run-on sentence win!
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
"Enough" for what?
I sleep as much as possible lately. Two things I have come to like about dreams are that I don't feel physical pain and I don't feel fear. I just awoke from a dream where I learned that my dreams are not an escape from sadness or self-pity.
I just had this dream where every job, every friendship, every project, every relationship from my whole life, everything in which I had ever invested any part of myself, were mashed up, mixed with fictional or allegorical stuff and represented as two jobs I held simultaneously. I had returned from some sort of self-indulgent money-wasting "business trip" and found that both workplaces had been re-imagined, re-shuffled, lots of new people were there, and I couldn't find my desk any more. At each place, someone tried to fire me without firing me, telling me I could "work at home". In both cases I just broke down and admitted that I knew I no longer had anything to contribute and had been faking it for years. I liked to believe that in the early years I had something to contribute, if only because back then everything was as disorganized as I was, and just putting in an effort to prop up the fallacy that things were better was enough. I admitted I had been faking my way though everything for years and that I realized this day of reckoning had to come. Everything had outgrown me. I was still this unreliable fake who sometimes worked really hard at things that didn't really work and sometimes just goofed-off. I had never really been good at anything, and never will be.
I had trouble finding the exit. I would head down towards the basement on staircases that just kept getting shorter, narrower, smaller, until I couldn't move any more. I went back up and kept trying doors to the outside. They all opened to strange places, mixes of the familiar and unfamiliar, and people told me I was in the wrong place.
I didn't fit and I couldn't get out and I was utterly humiliated.
The only thing I am good at is feeling sorry for myself.
This is not a suicide note. I will never commit suicide. It requires a conviction, a sense of purpose and righteousness that I will never have. I know that sounds contradictory and weird. That's me.
But I am sick of half-assed bullshit meant to prevent suicide. What good is a suicide hotline if it talks you off the edge? Will they be there tomorrow and every other day after telling whatever lies it takes to keep the same person from taking the final step? A suicide hotline is there to make the people answering the phone feel good about themselves in the moment, not to save lives, not to change lives that are beyond hope of changing, beyond imagining anything better being possible. Charity is a dark and selfish business.
"You are enough". Enough what, for what? Congratulations, now the word "Enough" looks weird and meaningless.
Again this is not a suicide note. So if anyone reads it, just let me go back to sleep and hopefully dream something more abstract without the psychic agony of this dream I just had.
I just had this dream where every job, every friendship, every project, every relationship from my whole life, everything in which I had ever invested any part of myself, were mashed up, mixed with fictional or allegorical stuff and represented as two jobs I held simultaneously. I had returned from some sort of self-indulgent money-wasting "business trip" and found that both workplaces had been re-imagined, re-shuffled, lots of new people were there, and I couldn't find my desk any more. At each place, someone tried to fire me without firing me, telling me I could "work at home". In both cases I just broke down and admitted that I knew I no longer had anything to contribute and had been faking it for years. I liked to believe that in the early years I had something to contribute, if only because back then everything was as disorganized as I was, and just putting in an effort to prop up the fallacy that things were better was enough. I admitted I had been faking my way though everything for years and that I realized this day of reckoning had to come. Everything had outgrown me. I was still this unreliable fake who sometimes worked really hard at things that didn't really work and sometimes just goofed-off. I had never really been good at anything, and never will be.
I had trouble finding the exit. I would head down towards the basement on staircases that just kept getting shorter, narrower, smaller, until I couldn't move any more. I went back up and kept trying doors to the outside. They all opened to strange places, mixes of the familiar and unfamiliar, and people told me I was in the wrong place.
I didn't fit and I couldn't get out and I was utterly humiliated.
The only thing I am good at is feeling sorry for myself.
This is not a suicide note. I will never commit suicide. It requires a conviction, a sense of purpose and righteousness that I will never have. I know that sounds contradictory and weird. That's me.
But I am sick of half-assed bullshit meant to prevent suicide. What good is a suicide hotline if it talks you off the edge? Will they be there tomorrow and every other day after telling whatever lies it takes to keep the same person from taking the final step? A suicide hotline is there to make the people answering the phone feel good about themselves in the moment, not to save lives, not to change lives that are beyond hope of changing, beyond imagining anything better being possible. Charity is a dark and selfish business.
"You are enough". Enough what, for what? Congratulations, now the word "Enough" looks weird and meaningless.
Again this is not a suicide note. So if anyone reads it, just let me go back to sleep and hopefully dream something more abstract without the psychic agony of this dream I just had.
Friday, January 3, 2020
No Lunaria Calendar for 2020
A minor "boo hoo" for me. There is no Lunaria calendar for 2020. Despite being handed off to various publishers and designers over the years, it was always beautiful and had lots of interesting lunar lore, and I liked the way it had a page for each lunar cycle rather than each month. Fortunately, my other favorite calendar, the glow-in-the-dark LUNAR calendar which has been put out by Universe Press for over a decade, is still being made. It is a traditional page-a-month calendar, but does show the lunar phase for each day. I'm no astrologer, but I've always been fascinated by Earth's moon.
I first wrote this as a Facebook post, but then thought it was too trivial and self-involved, so here it is, safely tucked away in my blog that doesn't get in anybody's face.
Usually my blog bog is full of grim grime and hyperbolic self pity. I don't often bother with that any more because it doesn't change and it doesn't help to keep writing the same gloomy shit over and over again. Rest assured, I am thoroughly miserable, so the world must be functioning normally.
I first wrote this as a Facebook post, but then thought it was too trivial and self-involved, so here it is, safely tucked away in my blog that doesn't get in anybody's face.
Usually my blog bog is full of grim grime and hyperbolic self pity. I don't often bother with that any more because it doesn't change and it doesn't help to keep writing the same gloomy shit over and over again. Rest assured, I am thoroughly miserable, so the world must be functioning normally.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
I Am A Very Unstable Genius
Dealing first with the title of this: Today an obvious riff on a quote from the current United States President, a transparent play for attention and readership, may not not be so obvious in the future. Even without that context, it is, I believe a relatively apt statement, as any reader of many of my prior word blobs would know, if such a creature were to exist. Whether to reiterate or initiate, I nonetheless explain that I believe I was born with the brain of a genius, somehow trapped within the brain of an idiot. More accurately, imagine a potentially genius brain afflicted with virtually every known, and probably some yet to be codified, learning disability. That is the fundamental dilemma of my existence. A gnawing hunger not just for knowledge, but for functionality, for coherent creativity, constantly tripping over myself, too thrashed by constant context switching to concentrate towards any achievement. Able to grasp logic, but unable to perform calculations. Able to hear the music but unable to write it down or play it. A thousand more ways of saying "almost, but not quite", which is the same as nothing.
Several weeks now into TMS (Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation) therapy, I have had mixed indications.
The most positive was when, about two weeks ago, I went out and did my favorite thing with some of my favorite people, a live karaoke band thing called Karaoke From Hell. I had a not terrible time. I sang two songs, carefully chosen as easy for me, and it was not terrible. Nearly a year earlier, I had attempted this same thing and it was very terrible.
Unfortunately, a few days ago I had every intention of repeating this experiment, with the added motivation that it was a celebration of a milestone birthday for one of the band members, and one of the few people with whom I have enough in-person history to dare to count as a friend in a more-than-Facebook sort of way. I didn't make it. I felt both physically and mentally exhausted and generally terrible. Even worse, I construed tidbits of information about the event as indications that I was not as welcome as I might have thought.
About once a week, they (the TMS people) have me fill out a simple form that is intended to measure how depressed I am. I remember just a few days before my above-mentioned disappointment, filling out this form and being surprised at the general positive impression my responses were creating. It seemed strange, even as I was doing it, but I also thought, at the time, that my answers were accurate. Within hours I felt entirely differently.
Today (technically, yesterday) was by far the most unusual and perilous experience I have had during TMS treatment. This is going to be difficult to contextualize properly since I have not been writing reports of my TMS treatment experiences to date. Essential facts are that I remain stationary for a little over 20 minutes with a helmet strapped to my head with a chin strap, receiving ~2 second bursts of 36 high-energy electromagnetic pulses every ~20 seconds. It sounds like a machine gun, feels like a woodpecker on my head, and causes involuntary facial spasms. This is with earplugs and without my glasses so interaction with the technician or perception of any distracting media is limited. All things considered, it is significantly less traumatic than this description might seem to indicate.
Back to today, shortly after my session began, someone opened the door to the room just a little and had a brief and seemingly furtive conversation with my technician, which I of course could not hear. I guess I should also as background mention that I have a history of anxiety symptoms which I describe not as "panic attacks" but as "spontaneous visualizations", where I suddenly and vividly see a worst-case outcome of the immediate circumstances play out in my mind, usually in traffic, usually on bridges, usually involving earthquakes. Something similar happened at this moment, but not a visual manifestation. Something new that is hard to categorize. I suddenly was vividly focused on the possibility that the conversation was about something terrible that happened to my wife, and that they decided not to tell me until after the session. Thus I spent the whole session imagining that my wife had been killed in some accident or random act of violence and all that would follow from that. It was like a waking nightmare. In that 20 minutes I mentally lived through days of grief and confusion in detail, including a scene where I interrupted a speaker at her funeral with my own extemporaneous rant about how none of them really knew her. I could go on for many hundreds of words describing this experience, as it was that detailed and intense. Fortunately, miraculously, in the real world she called me moments after they had removed the equipment from my head. I have no idea why this happened, other than the fact that untimely death and funerals were kind of the theme of the week, since my wife's former Dragon Boat coach, younger than us, had recently died of a stroke and she had gone to his funeral a couple of days ago.
Remember the "Fire in my Veins" post? If not, that title alone should suffice. My physical pain situation is different now, as it is less full-body and more centered on my legs, both muscles and joints, and at it's worst, focused more on my left leg and the left hip. Yet there are occasionally brief periods when I notice that I am not in a terrible amount of pain, but those are extremely rare, and again, almost completely unpredictable, other than tending to be more towards the end of my waking hours, and never at the beginning. To some extent pervasive pain has given way to pervasive weakness and tiredness. A dullness and sluggishness of both body and mind. A feeling each day upon waking that there is no fundamental advantage to being awake over being asleep. Getting out of bed only when physical pain has awakened sufficiently to prevent a return to sleep.
I tire of writing these reports as I am sure anyone who might read them would have long since grown weary of them. What is the point?
The point had been to document my experiences with my various malfunctions and my various treatments in some forlorn hope of gaining some insight or perspective or some damned thing that could be useful at some point going forward to optimize treatment and behavior towards preferred outcomes.
I am increasingly unconvinced that this very unscientific experiment is building towards anything of practical utility, except maybe one little epiphany.
What if I stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed? What if I learn to have as peaceful a relationship with the reality of my existence as possible? I was born with a profoundly flawed brain, and many of my life experiences have only served to make it worse. Why should I believe that there is some kind of a "fix" or "solution" to being what I am? It may happen, for someone in similar condition, someday, but that day is definitely not today. We cannot use our brains to fix our brains. Maybe someday, an advanced and unaccountably benevolent Artificial Intelligence will be able to understand the human brain well enough to undo everything that is wrong with someone like me. But now is now, and maybe my best path is that of acceptance, rather than resistance.
Without hope, there can be no disappointment.
One more point. I come to acceptance reluctantly as someone who has already abandoned about as much ego as is humanly possible. I no longer care that "fixing" me means killing me and bringing into being someone who might not even like me as I am. I already don't like me as I am. I welcome the idea of reading my own words and being unable to relate to such a miserable maladjusted malcontent as the person that I am right now. I would love to be the person who says "I'm sure glad I don't even remember being that person." I attach no pride to my humble state. I want to get to the middle of "Flowers for Algernon" and stay there. Even when I read the crap I wrote as a teenager, I recognize myself with shame. I may have gained some marginal skill with syntax, but the heart of what I was saying then is still the heart of what I am saying now. A sick and stupid heart, the same lonely and frightened and superstitious little boy that I have always been.
Several weeks now into TMS (Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation) therapy, I have had mixed indications.
The most positive was when, about two weeks ago, I went out and did my favorite thing with some of my favorite people, a live karaoke band thing called Karaoke From Hell. I had a not terrible time. I sang two songs, carefully chosen as easy for me, and it was not terrible. Nearly a year earlier, I had attempted this same thing and it was very terrible.
Unfortunately, a few days ago I had every intention of repeating this experiment, with the added motivation that it was a celebration of a milestone birthday for one of the band members, and one of the few people with whom I have enough in-person history to dare to count as a friend in a more-than-Facebook sort of way. I didn't make it. I felt both physically and mentally exhausted and generally terrible. Even worse, I construed tidbits of information about the event as indications that I was not as welcome as I might have thought.
About once a week, they (the TMS people) have me fill out a simple form that is intended to measure how depressed I am. I remember just a few days before my above-mentioned disappointment, filling out this form and being surprised at the general positive impression my responses were creating. It seemed strange, even as I was doing it, but I also thought, at the time, that my answers were accurate. Within hours I felt entirely differently.
Today (technically, yesterday) was by far the most unusual and perilous experience I have had during TMS treatment. This is going to be difficult to contextualize properly since I have not been writing reports of my TMS treatment experiences to date. Essential facts are that I remain stationary for a little over 20 minutes with a helmet strapped to my head with a chin strap, receiving ~2 second bursts of 36 high-energy electromagnetic pulses every ~20 seconds. It sounds like a machine gun, feels like a woodpecker on my head, and causes involuntary facial spasms. This is with earplugs and without my glasses so interaction with the technician or perception of any distracting media is limited. All things considered, it is significantly less traumatic than this description might seem to indicate.
Back to today, shortly after my session began, someone opened the door to the room just a little and had a brief and seemingly furtive conversation with my technician, which I of course could not hear. I guess I should also as background mention that I have a history of anxiety symptoms which I describe not as "panic attacks" but as "spontaneous visualizations", where I suddenly and vividly see a worst-case outcome of the immediate circumstances play out in my mind, usually in traffic, usually on bridges, usually involving earthquakes. Something similar happened at this moment, but not a visual manifestation. Something new that is hard to categorize. I suddenly was vividly focused on the possibility that the conversation was about something terrible that happened to my wife, and that they decided not to tell me until after the session. Thus I spent the whole session imagining that my wife had been killed in some accident or random act of violence and all that would follow from that. It was like a waking nightmare. In that 20 minutes I mentally lived through days of grief and confusion in detail, including a scene where I interrupted a speaker at her funeral with my own extemporaneous rant about how none of them really knew her. I could go on for many hundreds of words describing this experience, as it was that detailed and intense. Fortunately, miraculously, in the real world she called me moments after they had removed the equipment from my head. I have no idea why this happened, other than the fact that untimely death and funerals were kind of the theme of the week, since my wife's former Dragon Boat coach, younger than us, had recently died of a stroke and she had gone to his funeral a couple of days ago.
Remember the "Fire in my Veins" post? If not, that title alone should suffice. My physical pain situation is different now, as it is less full-body and more centered on my legs, both muscles and joints, and at it's worst, focused more on my left leg and the left hip. Yet there are occasionally brief periods when I notice that I am not in a terrible amount of pain, but those are extremely rare, and again, almost completely unpredictable, other than tending to be more towards the end of my waking hours, and never at the beginning. To some extent pervasive pain has given way to pervasive weakness and tiredness. A dullness and sluggishness of both body and mind. A feeling each day upon waking that there is no fundamental advantage to being awake over being asleep. Getting out of bed only when physical pain has awakened sufficiently to prevent a return to sleep.
I tire of writing these reports as I am sure anyone who might read them would have long since grown weary of them. What is the point?
The point had been to document my experiences with my various malfunctions and my various treatments in some forlorn hope of gaining some insight or perspective or some damned thing that could be useful at some point going forward to optimize treatment and behavior towards preferred outcomes.
I am increasingly unconvinced that this very unscientific experiment is building towards anything of practical utility, except maybe one little epiphany.
What if I stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed? What if I learn to have as peaceful a relationship with the reality of my existence as possible? I was born with a profoundly flawed brain, and many of my life experiences have only served to make it worse. Why should I believe that there is some kind of a "fix" or "solution" to being what I am? It may happen, for someone in similar condition, someday, but that day is definitely not today. We cannot use our brains to fix our brains. Maybe someday, an advanced and unaccountably benevolent Artificial Intelligence will be able to understand the human brain well enough to undo everything that is wrong with someone like me. But now is now, and maybe my best path is that of acceptance, rather than resistance.
Without hope, there can be no disappointment.
One more point. I come to acceptance reluctantly as someone who has already abandoned about as much ego as is humanly possible. I no longer care that "fixing" me means killing me and bringing into being someone who might not even like me as I am. I already don't like me as I am. I welcome the idea of reading my own words and being unable to relate to such a miserable maladjusted malcontent as the person that I am right now. I would love to be the person who says "I'm sure glad I don't even remember being that person." I attach no pride to my humble state. I want to get to the middle of "Flowers for Algernon" and stay there. Even when I read the crap I wrote as a teenager, I recognize myself with shame. I may have gained some marginal skill with syntax, but the heart of what I was saying then is still the heart of what I am saying now. A sick and stupid heart, the same lonely and frightened and superstitious little boy that I have always been.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
More Complaints: Too many variables: Fire in my veins
Pervasive musculoskeletal pain has been constant for so long that it only relatively recently occurred to me to start mentioning it to medical personnel when they question me about my symptomology.
And now, for at least months if not a year or more, it has become worse.. and different. While more of an allegorical than literal attempt to convey the feeling, it is like a significant portion of my blood consists of some sort of corrosive material, like battery acid. Obviously, I don't know what actual sensations would be caused by such a condition, but it rings true enough to me. It is similar to what I have often imagined how chemotherapy might feel.
Obviously, when everything hurts all the time, and it even hurts more when I move, and the slightest effort causes shortness of breath, getting particularly excited about anything, or enjoying much of anything under any conditions, becomes difficult.
But then there are brief periods, infrequently, when I feel relatively not horrible for awhile, and I have no idea why. I try to pay attention to everything I do, all the medications, foods, activities, sleep patterns, to try to figure out the magic formula for temporarily feeling not horrible, and if not controlling it, at least being able to predict it.
There are too many variables.
Not part of this equation are the rare occasions when I intentionally drink an excess of alcohol. That, predictably, brings a temporary condition of "feeling no pain", and sometimes even being of other than morose or aggravated mood. Almost always, but oddly only almost, this is predictably followed by a period of feeling even worse than my baseline of terrible, so it is not a sustainable strategy. There are other non-preferred side-effects that come with even the up-side of the alcohol-in-excess experience. It is frustrating to be of poorer-than-usual physical coordination or clarity of thought.
I have eliminated alcohol completely from the equation for periods of time significant enough to eliminate it as a primary cause of my constant pain and malaise.
New, too, is a spectacular increase in anxiety, especially as it relates to sleep, and pardon the indelicacy of the subject, it also has significantly interfered with digestive functions.
There is simply too much going on, and getting worse, and too many medications in play, for me to analyze this situation. It seems to me that there is no single medical professional cognizant at any given time, for any period of time, with any depth of interest or contemplation, of the broader picture of my constellation of ills and pills. There could be some simple interaction of what is, or just one thing to add or subtract from the recipe, that might make the resultant metabolic stew less intolerably bitter.
I grow desperate, willing to consider approaches that I would normally consider pseudo-medicine.
Looking at my age in this condition, I have little expectation of significant improvement in my general vitality. I would settle for a noticeable reduction in constant agony. I see more potential for further ill than for any relief, and yet I remain non-suicidal. It makes me wonder just how unimaginably horrible life must be for those who are drawn to suicide.
I had a full plate of purely psychic horrors to plague me before all of this actual physical pain forced it's way to the fore-front. I almost miss the luxury of making myself miserable with just my disordered mind.
It remains possible that some portion of my perceived physical ills are directly caused by my many mental malfunctions. Perception, after all, happens in the mind, including that of pain, and the mind can certainly interfere with many bodily functions.
I finally get my first TMS treatment next Monday, to be followed by an attempt to maintain a schedule of daily treatments for several weeks. I am willing, but not hopeful.
And now, for at least months if not a year or more, it has become worse.. and different. While more of an allegorical than literal attempt to convey the feeling, it is like a significant portion of my blood consists of some sort of corrosive material, like battery acid. Obviously, I don't know what actual sensations would be caused by such a condition, but it rings true enough to me. It is similar to what I have often imagined how chemotherapy might feel.
Obviously, when everything hurts all the time, and it even hurts more when I move, and the slightest effort causes shortness of breath, getting particularly excited about anything, or enjoying much of anything under any conditions, becomes difficult.
But then there are brief periods, infrequently, when I feel relatively not horrible for awhile, and I have no idea why. I try to pay attention to everything I do, all the medications, foods, activities, sleep patterns, to try to figure out the magic formula for temporarily feeling not horrible, and if not controlling it, at least being able to predict it.
There are too many variables.
Not part of this equation are the rare occasions when I intentionally drink an excess of alcohol. That, predictably, brings a temporary condition of "feeling no pain", and sometimes even being of other than morose or aggravated mood. Almost always, but oddly only almost, this is predictably followed by a period of feeling even worse than my baseline of terrible, so it is not a sustainable strategy. There are other non-preferred side-effects that come with even the up-side of the alcohol-in-excess experience. It is frustrating to be of poorer-than-usual physical coordination or clarity of thought.
I have eliminated alcohol completely from the equation for periods of time significant enough to eliminate it as a primary cause of my constant pain and malaise.
New, too, is a spectacular increase in anxiety, especially as it relates to sleep, and pardon the indelicacy of the subject, it also has significantly interfered with digestive functions.
There is simply too much going on, and getting worse, and too many medications in play, for me to analyze this situation. It seems to me that there is no single medical professional cognizant at any given time, for any period of time, with any depth of interest or contemplation, of the broader picture of my constellation of ills and pills. There could be some simple interaction of what is, or just one thing to add or subtract from the recipe, that might make the resultant metabolic stew less intolerably bitter.
I grow desperate, willing to consider approaches that I would normally consider pseudo-medicine.
Looking at my age in this condition, I have little expectation of significant improvement in my general vitality. I would settle for a noticeable reduction in constant agony. I see more potential for further ill than for any relief, and yet I remain non-suicidal. It makes me wonder just how unimaginably horrible life must be for those who are drawn to suicide.
I had a full plate of purely psychic horrors to plague me before all of this actual physical pain forced it's way to the fore-front. I almost miss the luxury of making myself miserable with just my disordered mind.
It remains possible that some portion of my perceived physical ills are directly caused by my many mental malfunctions. Perception, after all, happens in the mind, including that of pain, and the mind can certainly interfere with many bodily functions.
I finally get my first TMS treatment next Monday, to be followed by an attempt to maintain a schedule of daily treatments for several weeks. I am willing, but not hopeful.
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