Breakdown

I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown. I don’t know how much of it is from reducing the pain meds, if it influences the brain that way. Or, is it just the tremendous increase in pain? Pain everywhere. Knee pain in both knees. The headaches without end. The complete and total physical exhaustion. Being too emotionally exhausted from trying, everyday, for how many years? 11? 12? to get up and accomplish something when my body is screaming at me to just lay down and die. There, I said it. Shouldn’t be anything new, it’s not for Rhiannon, she knows. I am so tired of trying. Trying to get up. Trying to get to town. Trying to get well. Trying to clean up the house. Trying to eat. Trying to be a good mother when I’m not, I’m a terrible mother, since I hardly ever see Rhiannon anymore, since I’m always in bed, and having migraines, and Terra, well, that’s a long story.

And the knowing. Knowing Rhiannon needs a new bathing suit, but there’s no money, and no energy to take her shopping. Knowing I’m draining my mother’s retirement account a lot more every month I don’t get well, and how that burden is hurting her. Knowing there are so many things here that need to be done that I don’t feel like doing. That I never feel like doing. Knowing that what the doctor said yesterday is true – she advised me to go wholeheartedly into Dr Z’s plan for me because the regular medical establishment has no answer for this, that I’m taking or have tried to take everything that could possibly help, and it’s not, and so there’s nothing she can do to make me better. It would probably help to take some more supplements, vitamins, etc., but that takes money, I have to order them online, and there is no money, there is never any money.

Then we have Dart. Who isn’t dying on schedule. I was just petting her and begging her to go ahead and go. She fell down the stairs last night, or, early this morning, actually, about 6 AM. It’s at least the second time she’s done it. I’m afraid now to take her to the vet to have her put to sleep – they might charge me with animal cruelty when they see how skeletally thin she is. So, more knowing: people die all the time from overdoses of pain meds and sedatives. I have it in my power to give her an overdose, and if I get it right she will just go to sleep and not wake up. If I get it wrong, she’ll puke it up and feel really bad, even worse than she does now, for a while. But she’s so weak, and has been sleeping so much, and so deeply, that I think I can get it right. I don’t think that’s any different than taking her to the vet to have them give her an overdose of anesthetic to die. It’s the doing it that’s hard. Just like it was hard to take Shunka to the vet to be put down.

More knowing: that I should have called my mother to wish her happy birthday yesterday, but was so exhausted and just plain wrecked after my doctor visit that I didn’t. Rhiannon talked to her, and said she was happy, and had been getting wishes from many people. I didn’t want to bring her down. (I’m sorry, Mom.)

I’m just so tired. You can’t imagine it. And so tired of hurting. For so long. Time is a blur. The days become weeks become months become years and pass without anything becoming easier. Not just for me, but for the people I love, who are hurting because of me.

I’ve gone from 50mg of pain meds to 25mg, and been at 25 for about two weeks now, going down 2.5mg every 2 weeks. It’s taken since the middle of January to get this far. I’m thinking that rather than do this crap slowly, and have months of “mild” misery caused by the withdrawal, maybe I should try to do it faster, even if that makes it more miserable in the short term. At least that would be over with and we’d know if getting off them was helpful or not. It feels like not.

I need to go to town to get some more meds – some allergy nasal spray stuff, a different migraine med we’re going to try (which I can only use no more than two days a week – same rules as all of them), get my pain meds refilled. They close at 7. It’s after 5 now. So I have to get my head together. Stop crying. Get going. Supposed to rain tomorrow, so that makes it not such a nice day to go to town, especially since it will likely mean even worse migraine. Maybe that’s why my pain is so bad today.

Note to Mom – we can’t come to see you until something happens with Dart. I’m sorry. I know you will understand.

I’m sorry this post is such a downer. But I feel better, a little bit, for having written it. If you know me, you must have known that I’ve been feeling this way. I just don’t usually talk about it. Except occasionally at night when I have a migraine and I ask Rhiannon to shoot me and put me out of my misery (they shoot horses…). She’s known. But I doubt she’s spoken about it. And I know it’s tearing her up. And she’ll read this. (Rhia, sweetie, I love you and I’m sorry I’ve hurt you so much. )

I’m doing my best. But that’s just not good enough. And I don’t know what else to do.

Except buy a juicer, and do coffee enemas every day. Get my supplements and take them even if they make me nauseated. And stop crying, cause that is making my migraine worse.

Okay, I think I’m done wallowing in pity now. Time to get up and “try.”