I’M TIRED

So it would seem that my caregiving lifestyle is catching up with me. I’m tired, y’all. Like, “want to sleep all day but can’t because insomnia” tired.

It’s fine. I’m fine. None of this is new. It just sucks.

Also, somehow, my entire body itches? I haven’t changed my laundry detergent or body wash or allergy pills or allergy shots or anything like that so WHAT GIVES, STUPID BODY? I keep scratching my head and wondering if I have lice (I don’t).

Some of it is stress/anxiety. I tend to absentmindedly scratch the backs of my hands when I’m HELLA STRESSED and I’ve been trying to not do that but… [skritch skritch skritch]. Keeping my hands busy helps a lot with that. EVERYTHING ITCHES. I took a shower to see if that would help. It did not.

I asked my therapist about it. She said it could very well be a psychosomatic reaction to stress/anxiety and I should try taking a Benadryl to see if that helps. The only problem is that Benadryl will put me RIGHT to sleep and since I’m the Prime Mover in this family right now, I can’t exactly do that.

So I scratch. I’m doing MOST of the self-care stuff I know how to do but it’s no match for the amount of sheer nonsense I had to carry around for so long. A couple more days of discomfort and I should be through it. It helps that things are getting back to normal here, too.

One-Eyed Freddie is doing a great job with his recovery. I have allowed him to go back to work a little bit so he is a HAPPY SHOUTY MAN about that. He is managing his TBI-related anxiety a lot better this week, too. After a particularly fraught day that included a lot of coffee, I nixed caffeine from his diet for a few days to see if that would bring him back down to earth. He slept a lot those three days, hahaha. But then he talked with his doctors and got permission to have A LITTLE bit of coffee each day (not half a pot, which is customary). He suggested decaf at one point and I nearly threw him out of the house. We don’t talk like that here!

Now that he’s allowed to have SOME coffee, he’s been feeling pretty good. Yesterday he folded all the laundry! We’ll see how long I can get away with “it’s part of your recovery, Sweetie!” Years, maybe?

The vision thing is something we will just have to be patient about. There are eye exercises he can do that will help, but it will take time to either resolve on its own or it won’t, in which case there is a surgical repair option. He needs to be patient.

Raise your hand if you think that’s going well. [ha]

That, I understand. He’s always been a “make this happen, right now” person and there are a lot of things in this recovery that just take time. He can’t control all of it, which is anathema to his personality and he’s been pushing up against that a lot. I tend to repeat “control what you can control and let the rest go” which is very unlike me but that’s something I’ve been working on for YEARS. I can’t control everything [yet] so why waste the energy trying? There are other things that need to be done with that time and energy.

But he’s an energetic guy. Kind of like a puppy, and when I can see him getting all torqued up, we go for a walk. We walk and talk and judge the landscaping in the neighborhood and talk about what our life together is going to look like going forward. We’ve always been more or less on the same page so we’ve never really sat down (or walked around) and really talked about what we want things to be like, so it’s been interesting to do that after all these years. It’s also nice to know that we are, as ever, on the same page about most things. While it sucks that we needed a near-death experience to do it, it’s nice that we are spending this kind of time together.

SO I GUESS WE’LL KEEP HIM, YOU GUYS.

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