Decision and everything fatigue
January 29, 2016
It’s been a long week and that’s the truth. Before that, it’s been a long six weeks of cold and flu season.
After downing gallons of cough syrup, a sackful of cough and cold medication, even springing for a humidifier (though why was I dragging my feet on that for weeks?) so that I could stay upright and take care of EVERYTHING, I could really use a vacation. As long as the request line is open, let’s also say work is banned on this vacation, involves a lot of pampering with all the food I can imagine, and an extra person to help entertain LB so sleep can happen. Oh and at least shed the damn virus, please! Oh, and the best vacation ever would mean no packing anything.
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There’s a great book with a great title that a long-ago therapist with lupus recommended to me: Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired: Living with Invisible Chronic Illness. It was recommended at a time when I was struggling with the experience of pain and fatigue, the limited and unnuanced language of pain and fatigue, the reality of pain and fatigue that is forever, and the frustrations of communicating my boundaries to family and friends who Just Don’t Get It.
Well, one of those times, anyway.
Abby does a great job of elucidating some of these frustrations, on the fatigue front. And Tim’s experience with pain is an exceedingly familiar one as well.
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Right now a horde of things To Do is taking up ever-more limited brain space so I’m dropping them off here so as to clear my crowded mind.
- We need the replacement car, Seamus is outta luck for a ride until we find it.
- PiC needs to make a decision about possible travel plans in February.
- I need to find Seamus a sitter for when we’re visiting dog-unfriendly areas overnight. I’m as picky about dogsitters as I am about babysitters, oh boy. We love our one sitter but her availability is limited this spring. This kind of makes me want to quit traveling anywhere Seamus can’t come. Putting together any travel plans involves so many moving parts now.
- Speaking of travel, we need to book a rental car for two trips this year. Bah.
- LB needs to transition to drinking from regular cups and we have exactly no infant-toddler friendly cups or plates or anything. Shopping. Ugh.
- Subscribe and Save failed us a couple months ago and we’re about 3 days away from running out of pill pockets but they’re add-on items. Curses! *It occurs to me that he takes his fish oil gelcaps right in his food. Maybe I’ll try that for a dose or two of the antihistamine to stretch the pill pockets.
- Seamus needs an alternate antihistamine, the poor guy is breaking out in hives.
- Also we’re running out of tissues and what is with my mental block about overpaying per unit for paper products??
- My hair requires some sort of maintenance but at the best of times there isn’t brainpower to worry about that. I’m generally carted to the hair stylist under protest. Does anyone know how to use duck or alligator clips? I’ve broken 89% of my plastic claw clips and I need one of those biannual lessons in grooming. I’d love to lop it all off a la Mako Mori but that’s way too high maintenance. Trims every six weeks? Nooo thank you.
- We have to make a decision about LB’s childcare situation sometime this year. Current choices: spend a lot more and stay where ze is or spend the same for more time someplace I’m not yet comfortable with.
- I know the deadline is January 30th for tax documents but I’m slowly going ’round the bend waiting for them to trickle in. So far we have 4 of an expected 35 documents. FOUR.
Whew. It’s a mix of big and little things, only a few are really important. It’s just that being stuck in decision mode and not being able to cross anything off the list makes everything seem worse than it is.
How are you destressing for the weekend? Have a vent in the comments if you’d like to join me in shedding things preying on your mind before the weekend and otherwise, have a great weekend!
I only have some minor venting. Next week is my last one on short term disability. I’m going to have to get used to surviving on less sleep and stock up on food again since I’ll likely be too tired to cook. Also, crushing my right thumb yesterday is making doing simple things like washing my hair and cleaning the dishes difficult. š
Does Seamus have food allergies? Things I’ve heard people use instead of pill pockets are pieces of cream cheese or hot dog. If you don’t mind getting your hands goopy, making a little meat ball out of canned dog food around the pill works, too.
I usually hate shopping, too, but I stopped at a few consignment stores the other day and enjoyed browsing and picking up some stuff on my list. (And some things that weren’t, but that’s the nature of thrift/consignment shopping, in my experience!)
Good luck with the car hunt!
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Next week is week six? Do you feel up to going back?
He does have some combination of food and environmental allergies, but we’re not enthused about testing him so we’ve talked to the vet and we’re limiting his proteins instead. It helps. I may try cream cheese next!
I suspect you might have better consignment shops than we do š
We used meat baby food and those little toddler hot-dog things for one dog. If you keep the food in the fridge, it’s generally solid enough to coat the pill and she loved the stuff.
As far as clips, are they breaking in your hair? If so you might have too much hair for that clip. They make big ones too (I can get away with fairly small ones because my hair is long but not thick). I use ’em mostly by making a ponytail, twisting the hair, and then putting it against my scalp & clipping, though I have been known to make a candy cane shape and then clip that so the ends of my hair aren’t sticking out the top.
Hm, good point. We stopped using baby food when Doggle wised up some years ago but never tried it with Seamus. Worth a try!
I accidentally break my regular plastic claw clips because I’m a klutz. Either I squeeze them, unnecessarily, too hard, or I fall asleep with them in and then I loose a tooth.
Hmm, thanks for the technique, if I can find a sturdy clip I’ll try it.