Car Crash

Sooo, I'm terrified of driving.

Always have been. This possibly stemmed from having a crazy mother who drove a shitty little mini that was prone to breaking down in the middle of the road pretty much every day. Or it may have stemmed from the fact that I actually understand statistics*, and realise that a) most people are stupid, b) most people drive, c) most car accidents are caused by stupid people, and d) the chance of you being in a car accident at some point is pretty ridiculously high. Or it may have been some combination of the two.

I've never considered it a phobia as it wasn't an irrational fear. As I've just explained, cars are fucking terrifying and that's a perfectly rational, logical thing. What's less logical is me trying to train myself out of this fear and trying to make myself trust people's driving skills. I'm thinking that was a bad idea.

See, last night we were driving along a country road in the dark and the rain. This is partly because the dual-carriageway we would normally take was closed and the satnav refused to recalculate in any way other than continually trying to get us back onto that dual-carriageway by forcing us down country roads every time we got turned away from the turning we wanted to take by traffic cones and shit; partly because we'd driven all the way down from Manchester and were only 3 miles away from Rambo's Dad's place (our destination) and weren't gonna be stopped by a little bit of rain and/or dark when we were that close. Nor would we be stopped by the road being closed.

What we would be stopped by, apparently, was a tree.

I can't really tell you much about the situation leading up to this tree collision as, being utterly terrified of this whole driving thing, let alone this extra-terrifying driving-in-the-wet-and-dark thing, I had my eyes firmly shut and had resolved to do keep them that way until we got there.

Then I heard a 'shit' from Rambo, opened my eyes, saw a tree, thought 'Oh shit we're ACTUALLY going to hit that' (as opposed to all the other times I opened my eyes during this drive to see something or other that we were in no way going to hit and thinking 'oh shit we're going to hit that' before promptly closing my eyes again and telling myself to trust Rambo), heard a bang, felt some pain, and kind of sat there taking stock of my various joints to make sure they were all in place whilst Rambo shouted at me to 'Get out of the fucking car!' - surprisingly, all joints remained firmly within their various sockets at this point.

After being yelled at twice by Rambo and once by the person whose house this tree was in front of to get out of/away from the car, I figured 'screw it' and got out and away from the car despite my aching leg and lack of shoes (because shoes are evil torture devices and having had to endure them all the way TO the car I will immediately take them off until we reach our destination), managed to hobble over to the garden steps of the woman-whose-house-this-tree-was-in-front-of (aka; the-woman-we-woke-up or even the-woman-who-called-the-ambulance-and-police), and sat there in a state of terrified shock and pain until Rambo fetched me the wheelchair out of the boot so I could sit in a state of terrified shock and pain on something that wasn't wet and muddy. Then woman-we-woke-up-who-called-the-polica-and-ambulance's neighbours came out with an umbrella for me and some tea for Rambo (I think they offered me a mug but I was busy being in lots of shock and pain and mayyy have snapped at them to stop asking me questions - if so I apologise for that, lovely people who offered tea and whose umbrella I accidentally stole).

Eventually, round about the time when I was getting rather sick of shock and pain and was moving on to boredom, the police and an ambulance got there. Lovely paramedic asked me a bunch of questions - some of them repeatedly, because he refused to believe that I hadn't hit my head at all and needed to keep checking. Then wheeled me into the ambulance, helped me transfer onto the bed/stretcher/thing/(what is that called?) in there, got annoyed with me for having no conditions that he had actually heard of or knew how to spell, made me laugh, got told off for making me laugh as my stomach hurt (note - I had my laptop on my lap in the car as earlier I'd been using totally-not-scary-because-it's-not-moving traffic to write (totally blame NaNo curse for this) and airbag jammed it into my stomach quite badly), offered opiates, got more annoyed with my awkwardness when I explained they didn't work on me, then gave me laughing gas** and proceeded to spend the rest of the journey making me giggle without being told off, and telling me over and over again to take more despite the fact that the reason I kept stopping was to answer the questions he kept asking me.

Theeeeen we got to the hospital, and lovely paramedics had to go away and take my nice laughing gas with them. Hospital staff refused to give me anymore, and instead offered me paracetamol and some bullshit weak opiate that I was long past bothering to try on even my normal pain. Without the laughing gas my pain rose to an 8 and then steadily up to a 9, at which point I started crying uncontrollably because that's what I do at a 9. Then they made me lie around waiting for hours. I'm not sure why. An hour or so later a nurse tried to take my blood, failed, got another nurse to try it who also failed (they both tried on both arms so that's 4 unnecessary holes in me). The second nurse came to the conclusion that stopping me from shivering with cold (remember how I'd walked on bare feet through the wet a couple hours ago and then sat in the rain for ages before the ambulance got there? Yeah, nobody thought to get me a blanket or anything (except Rambo, but as he got me that in the rain it was then soaking wet and got thrown on the floor of the ambulance)) might be a good idea. Then they left me alone under warm blankets for another hour or so. The warm blankets don't stay warm that long and I was freezing again after only ten minutes, but nobody came back for another hour.

Anyway, hour later and finally got to see a doctor, who asked me where it hurt and then, completely ignoring me crying hysterically and pleading with him not to, proceeded to press down extremely hard over pretty much everywhere I was bruised. I may or may not have screamed. I'm not sure. Everything goes a bit blurry when the pain hits a 10 and I'm not precisely aware of anything but the pain. I do know that he spiked my previously-considered-to-be-at-a-9 pain even higher after he'd stopped. I had to re-evaluate my scale a bit to be able to call this a 9 as I sobbed uncontrollably (different to crying uncontrollably - that's a normal reaction to a 9 for me but usually involves no sobbing whatsoever as if I'm at a 9 then sobbing will do nothing but make it worse...which it did, but I still couldn't stop). Then presumably due to possible-screams (still not sure on that - will have to ask Rambo), a nurse brought me some morphine, despite it very clearly saying on the notes the doctor had been handed by paramedics that opiates DO NOT WORK on me. I had the morphine, doctor did an ultrasound on my stomach while I sobbed a lot and couldn't speak, then told me I could leave once the morphine kicked in.

...

Yeah, once that thing that doesn't work on me works I can leave.

...

So anyway, an hour later Rambo finally manages to get a hold of someone to ask them what the fuck they think they're doing, and doctor comes back and basically tells me to gtfo***. Nurse apologises that she can't give anything else to help with the pain. Rambo tries to explain that I cannot physically get up because the pain in my abdomen means I can't bend, and the subluxed ankle and swollen shin mean I can't walk, and I have no shoes on, and I don't have my wheelchair there. Doctor says we can take a wheelchair out to the taxi ramp outside, and once again basially tells me to gtfo.

...

By this point the back pain of being in a hospital bed coupled with the pain of being poked and prodded and subluxated by various doctors and nurses has me pissed off, filled with adrenaline, and most importantly ready to get the fuck out of there so I manage to transfer into a hospital wheelchair despite the dizzying-nearly-black-out-ness of the pain level 10 that creates, and then do the same again at the taxi***, and the same again when we get to Rambo's Dad's.

Long story short: I'm stuck in bed at Rambo's Dad's (where I have no air machine because he wouldn't approve). I can't sleep, because lying anywhere but on my back bumps my pain up to a 10, and trying to sleep on my back causes my brain to think I'm falling for some reason and jolt me awake with a start which hurts like fuck. I can't eat because I can't sit up properly, and because my stomach hurts like fuck. I am managing to drink small amounts of watery squash but probably not enough to combat the dehydration from not being able to stop crying. I can't get out of bed unaided, and have nearly passed out 4 times already from attempting to go to the toilet. Every single part of me is screaming from being stuck in this position but trying to move out of it puts me back in that state of complete unawareness of anything but pain that is my 10.

I'm finding it rather hard to believe that they let me out of hospital, to be honest. Let alone insisted against both mine and Rambo's wishes.

(NOTE: Rambo's fine, by the way. In case anyone was wondering. Lucky fucker got off with a graze on his arm and nothing else. And has managed to both eat and sleep since then.)




*Don't start arguing with me about this. I don't have numbers to back this up and I can't be arsed to go looking. I'm in a lot of pain, you douche.

**It's pretty much exactly like sucking on my air machine, except it doesn't last longer than 10 seconds after they take it away from me, whereas air lasts me hours.

***No not in those words. I can't remember the exact words - everything is a pain-addled haze. I just remember the gist and no matter how politely it was put, the gist was 'get the fuck out'.

****Quick sidenote - Mr. Taxi Driver, I don't care how interesting the car crashes you want to talk about are, you do not talk about them in front of someone who has just come out of hospital from a car crash and is already absolutely terrified of the fact that she's in a car, and has politely explained this to you and asked you to fucking stop it already.

Argh!

Some neighbourhood kids keep knocking on my door and running away. Every time they do it I hurt myself getting up and to the door and the puppy goes crazy barking. They've been doing it for weeks. I've asked around, and they're not doing it to anyone else but me, and I just don't fucking know why. What is so wrong with me that they feel the need to do this? I'm sure they don't realise how much they're physically hurting me, but even so it's not very nice and I just...I've never done anything to them. I don't think I've ever even met them. I don't know. I have a terrible memory. But I don't recall ever meeting/seeing/saying a word to these kids, so why are they singling me out for this?

I am actually crying over this. That is ridiculous. But I am in so much fucking pain from getting up to go to the door and calming the puppy down five times in the last hour and I have a horrible headache from all the fucking noise and I just can't take it anymore. Please make it stop.

...Why me?

I'm Going Crazy

OWWWWWWWWW.

+Yaaaaaaaaaaawn.

^Pain and fatigue. That is all my life is.

I missed a doctor's appointment this morning because I just could not make myself be awake for it. I'd care more if I thought there was any chance my doctor would have gotten me some painkillers but all I can think is 'At least I didn't hurt myself walking down there.'

When I DID wake up the first thing I did was read news and blogs and catch up on current politics, as I do most days. Then, as I do most days, I cried and settled into a slump of depression and was unable to do anything for hours.

My mental health can't take knowing what the government's doing, but I can't bear to NOT know. I don't want it just sprung on me all at once later, but the constant barrage of assaults on equality and justice are slowly eroding my sanity.

Puppy Getting HEAVY

I just had a bit of a mental breakdown, and whilst I was sat there crying hysterically I realised that the monologue in my head* might actually make me feel a little better if I actually SAID it to someone, or typed it at least.

Anyway, here's what happened: (Not the answer to the whole 'oh shit what's wrong?' question, but the answer to the 'what little thing happened that made you start crying which then made you think of all the other shitty things which perpetuated the crying and turned you into a hysterical sobbing mess?' question. Which is a far better question. Why does no-one ever ask THAT question? I don't care if it's wordy; I like wordy.)

I got up to go to the loo. There was a puppy downstairs, but she's always intrigued by the noise of people moving upstairs, even if it's only down the hall, and there was an open packet of cookies on my bedside table. It wasn't within easy reach and puppy KNOWS not to EVER take things off of tables/desks/etc, but the cookies were too tempting. I should have known this because she stole one earlier when I got up to go to the loo***. I come back, see her with her head in the pack of cookies, shout at her (which hurts my throat), grab her (which dislocates a shoulder and subluxes a wrist), she squirms, I keep hold of her (subluxing the other wrist and an elbow) and throw her out of the room (not quite literally, but still getting the other elbow). Then close the door and collapse sobbing against it because both of my arms are just huge masses of PAIN and WRONGNESS and I have no idea how to go about setting them to rights when both of them are so completely dead and I'm so weak and ill and crashing and I'm already in so much pain and the stupid fucking thing about putting joints back in the right place is that you have to put yourself in MORE pain in order to FIX the pain and it's all just so ridiculous and overwhelming and I don't know how to deal with it and I HATE putting myself in pain and WHY exactly haven't people prescribed me any working painkillers yet? Then the hyperventilating hysterical sobbing hurts my throat and my ribs and I tell myself to suck it up and I fix all my joints because I know damn well that the longer I leave them the worse they'll hurt and the more likely they are to cause some sort of permanent damage so now matter HOW bad I hurt I can't just sit there crying like a baby; I have to be all grown up about it and fix it.

I fucking hate that. I want to be able to break down and CRY dammit. Except I don't, really. Want to cry, that is. Crying sucks. It's given me a headache and made my throat worse. What I want is to not feel so goddamn helpless that I feel the need to break down and cry like a baby. I HATE being so broken and I HATE being so fucking dependent on someone else to take care of me. And I was HOPING to be able to look after myself for the rest of the night until I'm able to fall asleep but I'm fairly certain my chances of that just went out the window and now I'll have to wait on someone else's fucking convenience in order to get drinks to soothe my goddamned throat.

I have no idea how I'm going to manage getting up next time I need the loo, by the way. All that sitting against the door seems to have killed my back, which doesn't help me with walking, and the crying made the lightheadedness worse, which also doesn't help with walking.

Fuuuuuck.

EDIT: Yup. Depressing moment there. First ever 'I need someone to help me go to the loo' moment. The shoulder that dislocated is none too happy about it, despite being fixed now, and I can't reach down with that arm, nor could I bend forwards without hurting my back and shoulder blade, so I couldn't actually pull my pants down myself. FML. Although, less FML than all the carer-less disabled people out there, who I'm feeling extra sorry for and depressed about at the minute. Because if it wasn't for Rambo...I don't even want to think about that. It's a horrifying and disgusting thought, to be honest. I'm going to go back to crying for a little while.






*I do that all the time. A constant attempt at explaining myself to other people from the rational part of my brain. Except it never gets said to said other people** and then I forget about it. And it's not explained and they don't understand and I don't feel any better for it.

**I'm sorry if I occasionally write confusing sentences like that. It's a poetic thing that creeps into my prose which I've always enjoyed because I have a thing for word-play, but other people like to shout at me about. Fuck off, I like it.

***My throat is on fire, so I've drunk about 10 cups of water today, and 4 or 5 cups of hot blackcurrant/lemon/throat-soothy-mediciny stuff. I have a weak bladder. I've been running back and forth from the loo all day, despite the nearly-fainting-ness that accompanies standing up when you a fever and POTS. I've not fainted. Yet****. Fingers crossed.

****Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I've fainted once since we worked out what was making me faint. I still FEEL like I'm going to all the time, but I know what causes it now and I'm so much better at recognising the signs and forcing myself to collapse on the floor if I need to in order to stop me fainting. I mean, I end up on the floor either way but the first is by far the better option.

First NaNo-meet

Went to my first NaNo-meet last night. Was fairly awesome. I'm not very good at this whole sociable nonsense and I was kind of dreading it whilst being excited about it but it wasn't that bad. I didn't manage to get any writing done because I was terrified of people looking at my screen and of course as soon as people realised this they started quite obviously staring and refused to look away. So they got a nice view of my desktop for a while. Which didn't help matters as I have it set to a NaNo calendar with some rather awesome writing and book-loving quotes on it so they were quite interested in reading it and refused to look away. Anyhow, I learned something yesterday - apparently it's socially acceptable to look at someone's screen but not to touch their laptop. I wouldn't do either, but I honestly don't mind people touching my laptop (though not the keys, without asking at least) but seriously freak out when people look at my screen. Apparently I'm a freak. Oh well.

Met a few cool people and made a few new friends. Was about the ratio of actual writers to retarded teenage roleplayers who think they can write that I was expecting though, unfortunately. But everytime the retarded kids tried to say something I just looked at (uhhmmm, just realised I don't have a blog name for her, but lets call her Green Python) and we both laughed and they got confused and wandered off. I was pleased by this. As was GP (Ooooh, bad name choice). This is her 8th time doing NaNoWriMo and apparently the last seven years the NaNo-meets have consisted entirely of idiots and she didn't bother with them after the first week.

I also met this primary school teacher (who I am going to call Trans-Dimensional Snail for reasons you will never understand). Teachers are awesome. I love teachers. Especially primary school teachers who carry stickers around with them for their classes. My laptop gained a new sticker. It is a tiger. The tigers are the best and only his favourite children get tigers *grins*. I have to write an extra thousand words over the normal word count goal to get a ladybird sticker next time though. I want the ladybird.

Anyhow, the meet was meant to be from 6pm to 8pm so at 8pm all the teenagers wandered off home, but that just meant all the interesting people stayed behind and I couldn't bring myself to leave them as I very rarely get to be sociable, especially with people who actually have similar interests to me rather than just obligatory sociableness with family*. I completely lost track of time as I was enjoying myself so much, and I wasn't the only one, and by 11pm or so people were getting phone calls from angry wives or just noticing that they have 13 missed calls and 5 messages that they hadn't heard because it was so noisy**. Oops. Most of them went home. Was just me, Green Python, Not-a-Knobhead and Fucking-DBA left. Bar decided to stop serving drinks around that time as well, but the four of us were still enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't want to go home so we decided to find somewhere else. I tell them I'll go if it's not too far and from that comment of course the whole spoonie-explanation-conversation ensues and we limp off to Burger King to get something to eat, with everybody walking ever so slowly for my sake and Green Python making jokes about the little old lady that she has to look after. They're all older than me!

Blah blah blah. Late-night Burger King is awesome. Realising that the night service bus only runs on Friday and Saturday nights rather than Thursday nights kind of sucks. Found myself stranded at the bus stop at gone midnight*** with six other people who also didn't realise that there wasn't a night service bus on Thursdays. Fortunately three of them were going to Salford so we all jumped into a taxi together and it only ended up costing a few quid to get home. They did make me (try to) run to get the taxi though and although I tried to explain that I really was going my absolute fastest and I couldn't move any quicker (not mentioning that my absolute fastest is ridiculously painful for me and trying to hold back tears whilst doing it) I got shouted at a bit. *sigh*

Point of all this rambling nonsense - meet-up was awesome but I'm overdrawn from the spoon bank and in ridiculous pain still and haven't managed to write a word since. Until this blog post. Which totally doesn't count. But is destroying my wrist nonetheless and I really need to fucking stop it.






*Although, socialising with writers is...uhh...odd, to say the least. We're all very interesting people who have a lot to say when we're talking about things we're interested in, but we're also all normally pretty unsociable. So when the conversation's flowing it's great but when the silence descends no-one knows how to break it and nobody cares for small talk. We were yo-yo-ing between the best conversations ever, friendly insults and in-jokes, to awkward silence. All night long. Was rather odd.

**For some reason we were meeting in Kro Bar, which is ridiculously expensive, really busy and noisy, has no plug sockets or free wifi, and really really really uncomfortable seats that I'm still paying for over 24 hours later. Green Python's going to organise us a write-in where she works from now on, so we can meet in a quiet place with tables and chairs and wifi and plug sockets and a kettle!

***Rambo was expecting me home about half eight or so, as I said it was meant to be going on until eight. He knew I was going without the wheelchair, and lugging my (pretty much lightest you can buy but still too heavy for me) laptop all the way there, and attempting to focus and be sociable, and would therefore be completely out of spoons by the time I got home, if not sooner. So, around half eight, he took the wheelchair and the puppy over to the bus stop and waited for me to come home. For an hour. Before giving up and going home and being upset that he hadn't been able to do nice things for me. And then dragging pillows and quilts downstairs, making up a hot water bottle and putting it under the quilt to keep it nice and warm for me. Remarkably, it was still warm and toasty when I eventually got home at one in the morning.

16 Hours

until Rambo comes home. I can't fucking wait. I am falling apart here.

Crazy abdominal pain flared up out of the blue on Sunday and my Mebeverine for some reason isn't doing shit about it. Then Dini kicked me in the stomach and I was unable to walk/cough/sneeze/laugh/BREATHE PROPERLY for the next few days.

Pain level's been at 8-9 since Sunday. Moxie has not helped in the slightest. I have no spoons left whatsoever, have borrowed quite heavily from the bank, and once Rambo comes home I will take to bed and crash for a good few days.

Needless to say, I've not been able to get any writing done, and am fucking hating myself for that. I had over a fucking month to get this done and I left it until the last week because I write better with a deadline but I wasn't expecting Rambo to bugger off and crazy flare-ups to happen.

Dazed and Confused

Everything fucking hurts and I'm sitting here bawling and Moxie is looking at me so confused and apologetic but it's not her fault I'm hurting - she doesn't know how fragile I am.

And I'm so confused and brain-fogged that I keep not being able to remember when I last fed her and I have the sneaking suspicion that the reason she has hiccups and is retching right now is because she's tricked me into giving her two dinners.

And I keep having odd chest problems and not being able to breathe properly and making such loud fricking noises trying to suck in breath that Moxie for some reason thinks I'm playing a game with her and starts trying to attack me - WHILST I CAN'T BREATHE.

And my POTS is still flaring and I keep nearly fainting with all of the jumping up and leaning down to grab the Moxie when she's doing something she shouldn't.

Once again, I CANNOT FUCKING DEAL WITH THIS ALONE.

EDIT: Oh, and I still haven't written my Screamprompt and I'm running severely low on time but Moxie can't leave me the fuck alone long enough for me to do anything about it. I normally hide upstairs for hours when I want to write but I don't want to leave Moxie alone for that long.

OW

Slept horribly. Went to bed with a migraine around four in the morning, woke up, migraine still intact, a total of four times from Moxie-crying and then woke up again at noon to the sound of a radio blaring outside my bedroom window - looked outside to see a BT van parked there, door wide open and driver nowhere to be seen but judging by the volume of his radio he was quite possibly a few streets over.

Migraine + blaring radio is even worse than migraine + puppy crying. Seriously. OWFUCKSHITCRAPFUCKINGOW.

Holyfuckingcrapshit

Just had a subluxed rib for two hours whilst a hyperactive puppy sat on top of me insisting it was playtime.

I cannot possibly emphasise just how incredibly painful that was or just how incredibly powerless I was to do anything about it.