!0...9.8...7....6....5....4....3...2...1

Blast! I am done! I had a steroid injection in my spine today. It really really sucked. I yelped when the needle hit my nerve. It was like a lighting bolt to my feet. I was drenched with sweat, the doctor asked me what happened, I mumbled "leg".... I can hear him talking to the nurse about my vertebrae defect or something (my spindo).... Suddenly another nurse was patting my shoulder and telling me to breath.

It wasn't that bad, but so so scary. Before I had the shot I saw the people ahead of me. I was worried as the first guy I saw come back was looking bad and they gave him juice. They then wheeled the next guy in...he was a manly man. He came back looking ruffled.

I already called in sick for tomorrow. Not that I will be in pain, but they just injected me with a shit load of steroids. I really don't want to be around my generally sick (and hygiene lacking) clients. They all seem to be a Hep C carrier. A day off seems in order.

I spilled two cups of coffee this week

So this week I had four projects due. I did the excel sheet, and it look great. I brought it to class and the group member who was a bitch to me about it……complained because it had no page numbers on it! It was formatted to death and look great.

It just makes me wonder what the fuck I did, for her to hate me so much. Of course I can think of possibilities, but…whatever. Actually, I feel hated by many people. Maybe not hated, but people are indifferent to me. Last semester someone came up to me and told me that every time I spoke in class, the girl behind me frowned.

You know when you are the last picked student to be accepted into the “group” you have been marked as black. Many people don’t like me. Or find me annoying. I am sure of it. I just don’t fit in.

So I walked into a class on Monday, not have completed my paper. I just told the professor that I just was a little sick (I was!) and just did poor job managing my time. I sent him the paper later that evening. So Tuesday morning I walked into class. I see everyone with their typed and stapled papers…..

What the fuck…..

There was a paper due?

I did not have this on my calendar. I actually spent 5 minutes looking at the syllabus…
I had no fucking idea there was a paper due. I remember faintly hearing a bout paper…but…..wtf

I am such a loser.

The worst factor in all of this….

It was the same MTF professor.

He asked to see me after class. He wanted to know if I was just doing this in his classes. I told him…oh no…I am screwing up in all of my classes! (I handed a paper a week late the week before0.

This is the same professor who last semester made me re-do 2 papers. And asked me why I did so poorly on them. I just told him that I was overwhelmed (and I was!) and I needed to hand something in. He scolded me and told me I should have talked to him. So irony is a bitch.

Anyways, he was cool, but he said I had to get it done.

That was yesterday, and I still haven’t started it. Honestly. I just feel so broken about everything. I just feel like a total fuck-up. This school is hard, it really is hard.
And no one really likes me, my mental fog is worsening, my self-esteem has wavered, and my health has taken a bit of a dive.

Tomorrow I will be getting injections into my spine; I have a herniated disc in my spondylolisthesis. I need to start PT and get braces for my carpel tunnel. I Am around really sick people all of the time….and I might be getting an ulcer.

My car is going into the shop tomorrow.
Thank god my mechanic is my neighbor, or that would bring me over the edge.

Why am I doing this?

I am exhausted. I am currently typing on government property, the half dying computer in the intern office. After reading the little font on an academic article I decided I had enough. I am having the most self confused weeks. I just could not get it together. And in some way, I am really annoyed of the expectations other people have on me. Today I was at my internship and I wandered into the break room and sat down to read an internship related academic article. My field educator, “boss”, walked in and asked me if I had done any therapeutic work today. It was said in a way that implied that I was sitting on my ass all day. I just stated that I had just sat down a moment ago, as the dayroom emptied. I am kind of annoyed. I just sat in a room with about 30 seriously mentally ill veterans. Most of the men and woman are doing very well. However, there were about 5 floridly psychotic or manic men in the room. Well most of the people in the room are officially psychotic, but are functional. But 5 guys who could have easily been admitted in a psy ward in a second.

So I had three potentially dangerous men, I was the only one supervising them. Okay, not supervising, but observing.

Anyways, a minute after I typed the last paragraph my “boss” came in and told me that I needed to start documenting therapeutic interactions. Okay, I have had conversations where people have talked to me about weather; I don’t need to fucking document it. I I have documented all sorts of fun stuff (like someone admitting to me that they were doing heroin),

The thing is, nothing really happened lately that needed documentation. Unlike some of the staff, I actually read the prior notes to see if some random tid-bit was already recorded (like the delusion of the day). I don’t know…My notes have meat to them. If someone is in a group, even if they said nothing, they will get a big beefy note from me. It is the informal stuff.

I worked in places that I had to tract behavior, little insignificant stuff, which is significant for the person. If I needed to keep tract of how many times someone picked their nose, I would. If there was a prescribed intervention for the nose picking, I would do it.

It just pissed me off a little because I told my “boss” that someone was acting a little bit manic, is that normal for them…yadda yadda. And then he has this conversation with me.

I am in my first year of social work school and I am running groups. My 1st year peers are playing board games with children. (My field educator, my boss, has typically had second year students.)

There is a part of me that just wants to forget everything, forget trying.

Part of the reason I feel burned by this situation, is that I have a mental illness as severe (if not worse) that many of my “clients.”
To me, it seems like a recipe for failure. I guess I am just a bit hurt. And very defeated.

procastination highway

I tossed and turned last night. I finally gave up and stumbled downstairs. I fumbled through my medication loot to look for benedryl. I then saw the little pill that I take at night that makes me really sleepy. I am so dependent on my crazy meds.

I have multiple papers to do today. Blah...I hate papers. I hate writing notes on medical charts just as much. However, I do seem to get those done.

I am just annoyed by school and school work. In one class, I have a huge group project. I have been in the same group since early last semester. The end of last semester. I fell down and went boom. While I was in the doctors dealing with x-rays, slings, and casts....my group was doing a last minute woop-hoop on the project.

In general, I do like my group. They took charge and finished everything up while I was a broken mess. One of my group mates was really into the methods part of the research. And that was key to last semester's final project.

However, I was the one who dealing with the agency we were evaluating, I and another group mate, actually created the hypothesis and envisioned the big picture project design. I had a significant knowledge about the population, the cognitively imparied, we were interviweing. I was the one who would modified the project in ways that it would be possible. As an example, I suggested we, um, read the survey to people...cause are subjects may not be able to read.

So, I think I have done a lot of intangible work for this project.

So....the next step was to make a code book for the study. Or methods girl tackled the project. Great! Someone volunteered to type the results. After some discussion, it was apparent that this person, and everyone else, would have troubled with excel. I worked as an accountant for 7 years. I know excel, I know excel very well.
I offered to do it, and explained my reasoning, and calmly offered to do the work, and explained that I may be able to do it much faster than anyone else. Everyone was just fine with it. Except the methods girl. She told me that I better do it exactly as she written, and was trying to covertly imply that I may fuck it up.

So my group members, I mean her, think I am that much of a waste of graduate level space! I just told reassured her that I will be send it everyone asap.

So I did it, it really looked good, and I sent it to everyone the next day. I have not heard of any complaints. I really do like excel, and miss my numbers work.

However, I do have two papers I should be doing right now!

I wish I was out

I am sitting here on a Friday night
I haven’t been out anywhere in a month or so
I am alone
And feeling….um…alone
And yet the phone rings
And I don’t want to answer it

(I will call them back!)

My saving grace
Is that every Saturday morning
A group of us get together
We even have a special name
We refer to it as “breakfast club.”

It started with me and my ex boyfriend
And then the coffee house that I loved
That closed down
And now it has become the friends of friends
Who come together
And no one remembers who was a friend with whom first

It is a motley crew
Of liberals and libertarians
Of men nearing retirement age
And our youngest friend
Who seems like she is still only 21
(Okay 24 now?)

We are professors, boiler makers
Bartenders, law students, social workers,
Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents

We have heated argument about politics over coffee
And French toast
I am glad I have these friends

Pictures

This is my crazy blue bedroom. I took this picture around x-mas, hense the pink tree. Part of my jungle is shown here...


Snow as seen out my windows

And these are my acoustic guitars. I don't play much anymore. I started working on my calluses again....

You can see some of the ugly wallpaper that still lives in my house. I have not had the money to do my stairwell. I am afraid to do it myself, I don't have the right ladders. I still have silly wallpaper in my computer room too!

Boom Boom Boom

I fell in love with a troubled girl
Her art inspires me
I have a cd full of her muses
Amy Winehouse
I like to think that I am hip
But it seems things need to bite me in the ass
Before I notice them
She is wonderful
Even when she is blasted out of her mind

She made me dust the cobwebs off my guitar
And even make me think of my bass
I need to make a trip to get some strings
And all is well

I am dying my hair
The color of the darkest rose
For it fad in a week

I cannot stop the grey
As it grows not stop
Having to dye my hair
Every 3-4 weeks are so

I am older
But look very young
However I get compared
To the beauty of very young ladies
And I don’t compare

Life has a way of pressing it’s way upon you
Grey, lines, a widening mid-zone
I feel ugly when I am at school
Surrounded by young beauty
Not yet toughed by stone

I hate my weight
I keep growing
The meds
The chocolate
The cold wind
That keeps me inside

I blew off my internship today
But no one knows
As I wasn’t suppose to come in
But I need to leave early tomorrow
So they doctors can poke me with sharp objects

Needles in my spine? Or just my wrists
I can not feel my hands anymore
Most of the time
Carpel tunnel
Carpe Diem

I feel better
Than I have been
But I am still
Somehow

My internship boss
Got mad at me somehow
I want late to a meeting
Cause I was gagging on my meds in the bathroom

I didn’t do what he mentally willed me to do
I wasn’t sure what he meant for me to do
But I somehow did what I could
And surprisingly, I didn’t care
Perhaps from the meds I took for my cold

I saw the guy I lasted dated
At school
(A grad student like me)
He is surprisingly cute
But in many ways dull somehow

I haven’t been on a date. In?
Almost a year…
Wait I recently had a date
With a really nice guy
But I just couldn’t see
How the numbers could equate

I guess I should go on match dot com
But Perhaps I should just get a life instead


I am waiting for the seeds to come
Bamboo! Banana and pine
Exotic shit, and not may vines
I have my fancy grow light
I should try
I would try
To make my jungle even more

My garden is under the cover of winter
And I have the cutest bunny
That lives near by
And I should be at battle with
Soon
Crocuses soon
And daffodil too

But I like the snow
I really really like the snow

by the way....

I live in the jungle.

I bought more houseplants at the greenhouse sale.

Overwhelming....

I find myself overwhelmed with school work. Some work with a questionable amount of usefulness. I find myself observing the curriculum and understanding the purpose behind it, and I sometimes see that the effects on the students are minimal.

Still, I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work required. Pages upon pages upon pages. I am so tired. I am possibly just getting too old for this. Almost 35, eh?

I am getting sick of being on campus. I go to school at a huge university, but I am bored with it. Perhaps it is because I went to undergrad here. Still, I wonder how my brother can live the life of academia. Maybe I just miss having a corner office.

I was just speaking to classmate who is doing a bs/msw. She is practically a senior in college. And......it shows. Not the maturity, or the smarts, or the coursework. Just the lack of experience. She talks of friends who still do not have jobs with degrees. I believe it. Why would you go to grad school to accept a $10 an hour job? Because the damn community make us. It is insulting that the non-profit sector will abuse social workers like that. But they do. It is called paying your dues.

I have paid my dues.

However, I bet I will have them reissued to me. Just funny to think I am spending so much money to get such a low paying job.

I am still very very tired.

The winds brings rain...

There is a cold wet rain today.
The snow melted some, but not all.

My parent's white dog wandered outside
Where did he go? White on White

I have way over due homework
And I forgot to refill my meds

I thought I kicked it
But I am still kind of blue
But better

I think the homework is making me blue
I am just too tired for this shit
I am so tired

Next week they will place needles
In my wrist
The idea makes me faint

I want to stay home all week
But spring break is a few weeks away
I am too old to go to school

I need a nap

Wow!

My blog is pathetically depressing

Does anyone read it?

I do not want to die.

However, I am having suicidal thoughts. The thoughts are intrusive in some ways. It like I keep running away from them, and as soon as I pause to take a breath, they are back. It is like I am keep filling a bucket with a hole on the bottom. As long as I keep some water in the pail I am okay, but the work is in vain. I always end up empty. Major Depression, bipolar depression, is a drain.

I spoke to my psychologist today. We talked about the possible who, what, why, when, and how the depression came to swallow my insides-out. A cup of lack of self esteem, added to a pint of stress, followed by a pinch of hopelessness, a teaspoon of failure, blended into miserable fluff of an existence……a jittered blackened gloom.

I try to keep my thoughts on flowers, birds and sunshine. Fuzzy dogs and bunnies. Hip hopping into a psychedelic serotonic fit.

I think the most upsetting part of delusions of depression is that you are psychotic enough to recognize them.

I do feel miserable. But I am going to try focusing on how much I like my fuzzy cow print blanket and the color of bright chartreuse green.

Whine whine

Wine?

I am clinically depressed.

Damn it!

Instead of Bipolar II, they should call it bipolar-blue

Hey that rhymed!

so frustrating....

I am a student at SUNY at Buffalo (UB). We have about 25,000 student (undergrad + grad).

After some research....I have estimated that the school has only 1000 public computers between two large campuses. I am being generous.

Thankfully, I can log into the UB website at any time, and the school has a lot of wireless access. However, there is more wireless access than there are electric plugs.

These small things drive me nuts.

Hello......anyone out there?

Being Bipolar really f**king blows....
Bipolar II, all the shit without the mania
I should have seen the signs
Problems with sleep
Watching two full hours of "COPS"

Spacing out
Isolating
Aleinated
Thinking of all the times I have done stupid things
Thinking of how much stupid shit I said in class
And that I should just shut up
Feeling like everyone hates me

My legs shaking
The feelings of wanting......
nevermind
The images my brain paints are ugly sometimes
Why does it coax me their?

Should I call?
Should I go?

Just need to learn to deal with it
Cannot concentrate

Just want to not feel this anymore
To not feel anything
Is worse than......

This my quiet scream

Another day…another diagnosis

Very early this morning, I understood why people freak out in MRI machines. The technician placed a washcloth over my eyes. I thought that was very good thing. There were loud noises and lights. I was pretty good about it, I am not claustrophobic. However, I began to get very very hot, the air seemed devoid of oxygen. But then a breath of sorts came by and I was okay.

My lumbar area was the focus of the MRI. I have Spondylolisthesis in which my lowest vertebra does not line up with the others. I have been having the wonderful burning nerve pain that seems to focus on my knees and shins. It is so annoying. I have been dealing with this for a while. I finally requested cortisone shots. And I hate needles. I never had an MRI done. I had a CT scan a couple of years ago that indicated that there may have been some nerve issues. I did PT, got a little better, but never really really better.
So we wait and see.

Next came the electro-shock torture.

My other problem is that my hands go completely numb. They completely fall asleep. Except they don’t “wake up” as easily. I would wake up at night and bounce my hand against the wall to get some feeling back, not that it was very effective.

I had nerve studies and an electromyography test done on my arms and hands. The doctor started by taping electrodes on me. At first it felt like a tens unit. Then it got really strong. Ouch! But only a few pulses really bugged me. Than I had a needle stuck in my arm. No one told me about the needles! I can now say I’ve felt what acupuncture may feel like. Except my acupuncture involved electrical current. Not to bad. Except the two places they tested on the hand. They hurt. They hurt in that way that makes you squeak a little. I was really happy that the doctor was playing music and they had things on the ceiling to look at.

Of course, the fact that the doctor was young and cute and very nice helped as well.

So….the results of the test…I have carpel tunnel in both wrists.

So my current diagnoses:

Asthma
Bipolar (DD,PTSD,GAD,BPD)
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Spondylolisthesis
Carpel tunnel

Can I still spell?

A quick review of my latest posts would indicate that I am a horrible speller. I am a bit, but more likely a really bad typist.

296.32; 296.89; 301.83 GAF 50

I have been trying not to fall into another major depression. I've been exhausted, crying, and isolating. Yesterday, I dragged myself to my internship. I even had to run a group. I had a conversation with field educator about dropping out of school. He knows I am bipolar, but I shared a little more, and told him I didn't think I was well enough to be in school. He told me that I was talented and that I should stick with it. That was nice.

I gave up on trying to do school work thsi weekend. I just feel so negative about it all. I am exhausted and struggling to get through the day "as is".
Wow, it is 9PM and I am exhausted!
This is depression, clinical. I have been having suicidal thoughts but they have been managable and fleeting. I haven't sunk too deep, and part of it, is just trying to have 'fun.' Instead of forcing myself to do homework, I am forcing myself to crochet. It is helping.

I need to call the doctor, and move my appointment up. Wow I cannot believe I am so freaking tired.

Save the Plant-it

I saved "it"

I was driving around with my friend when I saw a very pathetic looking fig plant dumped at the curb. The leaves were still green. At the stoplight I discussed with my friend that I wanted to save it.

****she rolled her eyes at me*****

A moment later, I realized the plant was more like a tree. A sad overgrown but sparcelt leaved houseplant. I imagined it lived in the dentist's office nearby until some new hygienest decided it was ugly.

And it was very ugly.

It took the two of us to lift it into the car. And my friend helped me bring it into my house. I cut off a bunch of the branches to help with the stress it was under. Some of the branches were under snow in it's tipped state. It was not very cold, really. It was probably over due for a repotting, but I am not sure if I can actually find a bigger pot. So hacking the branches and feeding it will suffice. I roped some of the branches together.
(Funny that when a plant is under stress, you break off it's appendeges. Doesn't really work with people!)
I hope it survives, which I am thinking it will.
I'll name it Frank. Just kidding, it was "it" remember?