"Watching" TV With My Mind

My fingers hesitate, then decide to pick up our steaming mug of deliciousness instead of typing just yet.  In our mug, which is extra-large and has a picture of the Seattle skyline all around it (K used to live there), we are drinking a modified version of a Peppermint Patty, which is hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps (Our sister taught us to make these when we visited her in Utah one Winter) and I mixed mine with coffee.  It's a cold night, only about 30 degrees outside, and so this warm adult beverage is ideal and we are enjoying it very much.  We sit all alone, (HAHA everybody laughs inside my head) just us and the laptop, unless of course, you count the TV, which K almost always has turned on; she likes the sound of something else besides what's in her head.  She doesn't actually watch TV much, at least I don't, although some of the K's do enjoy certain programs,  and so we have a DVR and we record these shows and watch them when we're feeling up to the challenge.  It's impossible for us to remember what night and what time a particular show comes on, many times we can't even recall the name of the show, and so we try to program the DVR as soon as a commercial airs, telling us about something we'd like to see.  I know that even if I could remember when something came on, I'd never know when that day/time is, so I'm still hard pressed to watch any particular television program.  It's a challenge because one of two things happens when we watch TV: either we find it utterly impossible to concentrate on whatever it is we're trying to watch, and keep getting distracted by voices behind me or a man walking down the hall (a man who's not really there of course); or else we get so wrapped up in the story, so totally absorbed, that we are no longer aware of the people around us, or of what's happening in the Real World.  These two extremes are all we know or have known for many years now. Because I'm not particularly fond of losing myself in the TV (unless K's been smoking pot), I usually just pretend to watch it.  I will look out the window or at the wall behind the television set, or I'll just let the images on the screen float past my field of vision (I can see without looking) without focusing on any of the images. 

 What kinds of TV shows do we watch?  Well, the answer to that question would depend upon who is answering, as each of us seems to have her own favorite type of programming.  The Kellie likes artsy films and dark comedies. The Little Girl loves cartoons and silly comedies, and any of the Disney/Pixar movies.  K loves true crime and horror and documentaries about serial killers, and she has always been drawn to the creepy, the spooky, the scary.  Mom worries that these sorts of movies will give us nightmares, but what she doesn't realize is that the nightmares are there regardless of what I see or hear in "real time".   We've had nightmares since we were a little girl, for as long as any of us can remember.  Usually, I'm running from someone who's trying to kill me or hurt me in some way.  These dreams are often violent and K will wake up in a cold sweat, her heart pounding in her chest, and she'll have to take a sedative to get rid of any panic attacks.  Thankfully, these nightmares don't come every night.  One of the K's, the witchy one, she likes to write down her dreams and analyze them, but we've misplaced that book and after scribbling dream fragments down and trying to keep up with them for awhile, it all got to be too complicated and so we stopped; there were more lists than K could handle and things got out of control.  I can't remember when that happened...

Also, note here that K talks in her sleep...I'm not sure if that's important to the story or not, I just thought I'd mention it.  It's interesting (and humorous to me) that she usually talks about sex, drugs, or food.  We know these things because of what people have told us over the years, and also what's been recorded.  Some of K's friends thought it would be funny to record her and ask her questions in her sleep, questions which she would often answer, and the thing is, she will not lie when she's asleep, for this is her subconscious talking.  Anyway, the friends put a voice-activated recording device next to K's bed after she'd fallen asleep, and then asked her a bunch of personal questions. They anxiously awaited the next morning, when they got a good laugh at K's embarrassment as they played the tape back and most all the questions were about sex or which guy K had a crush on. K gets embarrassed easily, although she tries to pretend she doesn't. The Good Daughter gets embarrassed the same as any average person, that is to say sometimes but certainly not all the time.  The Kellie doesn't seem to get embarrassed at all.

Damn! I've just noticed the time, and I'm irritated that the whole night has slipped past me, again, and I've not yet had any sleep.  I had intended to write a blog post about one of my old friends and an email he sent Husband, wherein he tries to explain to him what it means when K switches and how to handle the situation,  Apparently I got off track, because now all I can find is this nonsense about TV shows and sex jokes. (sigh)

Running on Empty

It feels as though I have to write, I have to clear my head, I have to put these thoughts down on paper (here, only in a manner of speaking, although some of us are actually, literally writing some things down on paper).  Yesterday was the mental and emotional equivalent of giving birth.  I am utterly drained and just don't know if there's anything left inside me with which to compose a blog post...but I'm going to try, just for a few minutes, while I sip my hot tea (with a tad of honey) and wait for the medication I took to kick in and (hopefully) put me to sleep for the whole night.  I can't remember what it feels like to sleep through an entire night.  I can barely remember what it's like to sleep at night, period.  K is so very tired, her body is worn out and her health is beginning to suffer.  It's my job to take care of her, to see that she remembers to eat and sleep and shower and things of that nature, things which a "normal" person just instinctively knows to do, without being prompted or told to do those things.  When most people get hungry, they eat. When they get tired, they sleep.  It seems simple enough, and in the Real World people are automatically tuned in to their bodies and what they need and these needs are met, often without even a conscious thought.  In my mind, in us, inside Kellie World, food and sleep are optional and usually misused.  We either deprive ourselves the luxuries of eating and/or sleeping, or else we overindulge and end up feeling worthless. Lately, or before I got here, the sad and lazy K was doing nothing much outside of sleeping on the couch all day long.  Sure, she'd wake up to take more pills, and occasionally eat a small meal (mainly just to stop her mother from scolding her for not eating) and every once in a while she'd have enough energy, motivation, and/or desire to leave the house, usually only with Husband, on some occasions all alone but in those situations we have to heavily sedate her to take her out in public.  But sometimes, just sometimes, it feels really good to get out and be social and interact with others, my friends in particular- K doesn't feel comfortable around strangers-and so K looks forward to those good days, those days wherein she could appear "normal" to the outside world.

Read This! (AGAIN.)

THIS PART IS SO ANNOYING, IT ABSOLUTELY DRIVES ME/US/WHOMEVER IS DOING THIS-THIS OBSESSIVE TYPING, RESEARCHING, STUDYING, ETC.-It is driving us fucking crazy! KELLIE HAS TO REREAD EVERY LAST BLOG POST AND JOURNAL ENTRY AND TWEET AND PHONE TEXT MESSAGE AND ANY OTHER MEDIA-WHICH WE ARE STILL LEARNING, STILL FIGURING OUT- STILL GETTING TO KNOW US/ ME/HER...(???) [CRAZY, PUN INTENDED]...She has to reread everything because of her terrible memory problems, which I'm certain I've mentioned (or you've noticed) by now.  I am still learning the in's and out's of all of this technology/social media; please be patient with us and try and understand how very difficult this must be for K (and I don't just mean her lack of computer skills).  I can’t imagine how bad the trauma must have been for her to have done this to herself (That part still blows my mind) Am I doing the right thing when I try to write everything down as I remember it, even trivial little mundane everyday normal kinds-of-things?  This is terribly confusing, to most all of us; I still haven’t figured out which ones of us are doing the talking and which ones are doing the writing and researching, etc.  The Switch Kellie persona, this current state of mind, this current “consciousness” has an overwhelming amount of work to do, and one of our biggest fears is that we will die before we’ve had the chance to tell “our story”. I really and truly think and feel that way.  I don’t know how to put this into words without coming across as a crazy person, which I most definitely do NOT want to be. (sigh-I know, I know-TOO LATE!)  So I’m just going to spill it and see what happens next…. Ready? OK here we go.  Keep your arms inside the ride at all times.  Most importantly, try to enjoy yourselves!  (Sigh) SOME OF US ARE REALLY, DESPERATELY TRYING TO REACH OUT TO OTHERS WITH THIS CONDITION, THIS MENTAL ILLNESS THAT UNFORTUNATELY WE’VE HAD TO DEAL WITH IN THIS LIFETIME.  Not sure how long I’ve been typing in all caps; Damn but K's OCD is funny to me, but in a good way most of the time."The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." ~ Bertrand Russell 

 As I told our husband last night (?), just try to ride out the "wave".  Just hang on and ride it out…perhaps it might even be fun at times, or at the very least quite interesting, or it is to "US" anyway, to Smart Kellie,  aka Switch Kellie.  Which is me, the one who’s currently doing the typing.  Have I mentioned (yes, I’m positive that I’ve mentioned this already-sorry for the repetitive nature of this disorder; I realize it must be tremendously irritating, the repetition of stories and symptoms and whatever else it is that we've been writing about) that I feel it is a fantastic idea to let US do some art therapy and writing therapy?  It amazes us that no-one has ever thought to do this before, or perhaps they have and I just can’t remember right now.  That’s probably it, don’t you think?  It’s a logical conclusion, I think, and that is I being Switch Kellie, the one who’s here to protect Kellie and see that all this work gets done properly and on time and, let’s face it--at all.

 

It's late, or early I suppose, and yet once again we find ourselves in this situation, the situation in which K is physically exhausted and needs desperately to sleep for a good solid chunk of time.  I am simultaneously concerned about her (both physically AND mentally) and frustrated at the fact that I can't stop thinking long enough for her to lie down and get that much-needed rest.  She's hoping that this sleep deprivation doesn't come back to bite her on the ass as it were; she has no desire to start hallucinating again,  (a symptom which we have sometimes but not all the time)  The insomnia has come and gone throughout the years, being with us more often than not, although it'd be quite difficult for the outside world to know this, as K sleeps so much "now" due to the medication(s) she takes. "Now" meaning normally, as in pretty much all fucking day long, or at least that's how it's been seeming to me, since that sad and lazy K came to stay with us.  Now this chemically-induced comatose state is exactly what I, the physical K, have needed for weeks now, or at least it seems like weeks have past (dammit I'm just not sure) since our body slept in a bed during regular nighttime hours, for any length of time past 3 hours or so.  Last night, as in the most recent period of sleep for our mother,  I seem to recall that Husband wanted us to go to bed early, and so we did, I don't remember what time it was, but definitely at a more logical hour than we've been doing lately.  Now he went to sleep and stayed asleep and for that I am thankful, for Kellie is worried about him not getting the proper rest (as well as eating) because of his being so worried about us, the K's. However, I, Switch Kellie, wouldn't allow K to waste too much precious time sleeping, for I understand that we have only a limited amount of time in which to be here, in which to exist, and so therefore I only let her sleep for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  K was back up by midnight and even though technically my brain was still incredibly tired, it was working at a frantic pace STILL and so we had to-and I do mean HAD TO- write these things down.

There was something important which I wanted to write about, and now, of course, I can't remember what it was.  This infuriates me! Wait-let's take a look in our notebook...We've been taking notes for a while now, I'm not sure when this started, but it seems as though I've always taken notes and written things down and made lists and such.  However, these latest notes seem to be of some importance, that is for the recovery of K; they seem as though they might help her doctor give her the proper diagnosis, something we have always wanted but which I'm afraid we've never gotten.  Well, it did seem at times that we had the correct diagnosis, but then things would all start going downhill and then inevitably crash and burn and I'd end up running away and leaving my friends and loved ones and sometimes material things too.  That's hard to admit, for I do NOT like to waste things or throw things away, and I worry about the state of the environment and things of that nature; I'm very considerate of the world around me. One of the K's we affectionately refer to as the "tree-hugger", and she/ I/ was in charge (at least part of the time) whenever Kellie lived in Seattle.  Also making appearances in Seattle were The Little Girl and The Kellie.  I'm not sure if there were others, but I'd venture a guess that there were others, it's so hard to remember-it's as though everything were wrapped in saran wrap or something along those lines; I can see things, things just aren't crystal clear for me.  I can see bits and pieces....Damn.  I've just remembered that we wanted K to write a blog post this morning (? not sure when that is)  OK, let's see.... How can we handle this dilemma, the dilemma being whether or not to write this blog post or whether to take care of other business, like getting K dressed for the doctor's appointment which she has this morning...?  That's right, at long last the day has arrived when we, the Kellie's can go into our psychiatrist's office and confess to her what the hell has been going on all this time (although we're not sure how much time that is, time that's past I mean). What is simply hilariously tragic is that the shrink's office called the house phone, that is the Real Life phone, yesterday, twice.  The first call was to verify that we had an appointment at 3:00 this afternoon.  The second call, hours later, was to tell us that the doctor had some sort of illness in her family and was therefore unable to see me at the regularly scheduled time.  The psychiatrist apparently was going to try and see all her day's patients in the morning today instead of spread throughout the course of the day.  And so we found K's note this morning, the note telling us that we're to be at the doctor's office at 9:30, which is only about 25 minutes from now.  I guess that means that we should shut the hell up and stop typing and instead put our energy into getting dressed and made up to go see our doctor.  It's such a shame that we'll only get to see her for 15 minutes, instead of the usual length of time, which I can't be certain of but which seems much longer than that, perhaps an hour? I couldn't say for sure.  OK, let's go get ready for this rather monumental day (it will be if things go as planned).  Cross your fingers for us!

 

 

When Do People Sleep Around Here?

It's far too early for me to be awake.  Then again, I've not yet been to sleep, not that I can recall, for the past night, maybe two, (maybe more) and as I'm looking at the clock and out the window, I'm seeing that the sun is up and the clock reads 7:42. WAIT- Now the clock says 10:10! How did we lose so much time already?? It's going too fast dammit, this "time" business! Therefore it's tomorrow already, now how did that happen?  It seems to keep happening to us lately, a great deal.  I feel as though I've been suffering from insomnia for some time now, at least a week or more I'd venture to guess, but it's impossible to say as I don't keep a sleep diary.  Maybe that's a good idea-a sleep diary-a diary to tell me when I've allowed my body to sleep and for how long and little details like that.  It might actually help us to take better care of ourselves, and therefore lead to a life filled with less sickness and more healthy days.  K gets sick easily and always has I guess, it's hard to remember now... K's always had a weakened immune system because of her poor eating habits, e.g. she does NOT eat fruits or vegetables and she very often forgets to eat at all.  So it should come as no surprise then, that she got sick, dangerously sick, in May of 2010.  This was her most dangerous illness ever, the one that nearly killed her.  It was her own fault really, if she'd only taken better care of herself and paid attention to what was happening to her body and to how she felt then perhaps she'd have gone to a doctor sooner.  Perhaps she would've ended up with only some bronchitis or mild pneumonia or something much, much less serious than what she ended up with in the hospital.

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), also known as respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) or adult respiratory distress syndrome is a serious reaction to various forms of injuries to the lung.

ARDS is a severe lung disease characterized by inflammation of the lung parenchyma leading to impaired gas exchange with concomitant systemic release of inflammatory mediators causing inflammation,  hypoxemia,   and frequently resulting in multiple organ failure.  This condition is often fatal, usually requiring mechanical ventilation and admission to an intensive care unit.

Kellie, herself, was in Intensive care for what seemed a very long time but which we know now was only a week, plus then an additional week in a regular private room, NOT on the Critical Care Unit but just "normal" like a regular, sick person would be.  Sigh.  I wonder how many times we've typed words to this effect?  Have I  been spouting off bits of information like this all damn night and morning?!?  God this is so fucking exhausting, I really and truly cannot express that enough.  IT'S EXHAUSTING TO BE "NORMAL"; wish I could let go and just "BE" but I'm not sure that this K, this current K, Switch Kellie, can relax enough to be any other way.  I mean, we are somewhat uptight, (not really, we just seem that way because of the serious nature in which we often speak) we are nervous about coming out to play, I guess you could say.  WE ARE AFRAID!!!! At least, some of us are, I think perhaps THIS K is not nearly so afraid as the others.  I'm not afraid.  Not usually, although I certainly do have that paranoia thing happening for me.  Not sure if that stems from Schizophrenia or what.  (At least one of the K's is schizophrenic; that's one of the things that's making all of this so damn difficult!)  We keep getting misdiagnosed because different K's show up for different doctor's appointments, and none of them have ever "compared notes" shall we say.   Should we publish these findings as a blog post, or simply keep all this information to "ourselves"?  This is utterly over-the-top exhausting, for all of us involved and certainly for K, whom I fear hasn't slept in days, we really can't be sure.  Hopefully Husband is seeing to it that we get at least SOME rest and food and the like.  This always seems to happen to us around Christmas time, is that important?  Yes, I think that IS important-Good job at finding that out for us. K has suffered from the holiday blues for many, many years now, every year, every holiday season, without fail, for reasons unknown to her but which seem vaguely to feel like...homesickness.  Even when she's at home.  That makes no sense, no sense at all.  This is madness I tell you, absolute madness.  If only I were able to efficiently organize all my notes, all my papers, all my lists; perhaps then we'd be able to step back and look at the situation from a different point of view (as if we need any more points of view!) and form some sort of opinion about K's current state of mental health. Sigh.  This is really and truly becoming a nightmare for me, for us, for K.  There's just an overwhelming amount of work to be done, work which feels so utterly important, and I believe that it IS important, at least as far as K's recovery is concerned.  K's recovery is the reason we're all here now.  We want K to get better.  We want K to have a chance at a somewhat "normal" life, although not entirely normal, for to be normal is to be boring, no offense of course to anyone reading this who may be considered by society to be "normal".  Oh what I wouldn't give for another 6 hours of extra time today, whenever today is! Time to work, to write, to get this shit out of my head, and perhaps even to sleep.