It’s Been Awhile

The short: lithium poisoning.

It's a interesting experience to be sent to the emergency room, get interviewed by the check-in nurse, then be pushed to the front of the line, in front of people with their arms wrapped in bloody dishtowels, because your brain isn't working properly.

But the poisoning isn't what I'm here to write about.

In my ongoing attempt to correct my brain problems, I spent seven weeks doing TMS. Five days a week I had an electromagnet put to my for up to 20 minutes. Once a week, I met with two doctors who run the clinic, but weren't actually at the clinic because their main office is in another city, to check my progress. When it was becoming clear the I had no progress, the doctors started bringing up possibilities for what is causing my brain problem. After discussion, one of the doctors asked me if I am autistic.

This caught me off-guard.

To the best of my knowledge, autism is not a cause of major depressive disorder. Autism does not cause a person to wake up just as exhausted as you were when you went to sleep. Autism does not cause you to sleep more than 12+ hours a night, if you don't have an alarm to wake you up. Again, to the best of my knowledge. These are the things that I was hoping TMS would help fix.

And yet, it stuck with me because I have... tendencies.

Last year, I brought up autism to a psychiatrist, and he blew it off completely.

Having it brought up to me by a doctor, though, that's different. That's an external source, listening to me describe myself, and coming to a conclusion that maybe I'm somewhere on the autism spectrum in a way that affects my life.

I took several online tests for adults to see if I may fall somewhere on the spectrum. All of the, every one I've taken, say that it's quite possible that I am on the spectrum. Every. Single. One.

So, what next?

Based on the research I've done, diagnosis will cost me $4500-$8500. That's not counting travel and hotels, because nothing is local. Sure, everyone offers video conferencing for the testing, but I can't be myself, for better or worse, on a video call. When I'm on a video call for more than 90 seconds my brain starts shouting at me to get off as soon as possible; I'm the same way on a phone call, get off as soon as possible. So, if I am going to do this, I need to be able to do this in person.

If I do it at all.

Because, honestly, what good would an autism diagnosis do me?

Sure, there's that simple elation of getting a diagnosis. That moment of feeling not alone. But what's next?

I'm not suddenly going to want to join a community and make friends. My depression won't go away because I have a label. I won't feel again. I won't be able to stop masking. I still won't be whole.

But... knowing would be a good thing. Knowing more about myself, understanding myself better, would be good.

While I'm pretty sure that I fall somewhere on the spectrum, I don't know if I'd even be able to get a diagnosis because, based on my research, for diagnosing adults they want to speak with someone who was an adult when you were a kid so that they can get an idea of who you were back then because, again according to my research, an individual on the spectrum couldn't know how to mask when they were young. And I don't think I can trust my parent's to give an honest account of how I was when I was younger.

When I've brought up the idea of getting a diagnosis to them, my dad is indifferent. He says that if I'm autistic then I'm high functioning, his words, and it shouldn't matter because I live a life. Also, I don't know how much my dad actually saw me as a kid. I think, to him, I was a bit of a mystery: a kid who wasn't a kid the way he thought kids should be. My mother, on the other hand, seemed offended at me even considering that I might fall on the spectrum. She worked with autistic kids when she was an aide at an elementary school. Not the worst of the worst, but pretty bad. Kids that really couldn't function if they didn't have a constant guiding hand and I did not need that kind of help growing up. There are no other people, who were adults when I was a kid, who I spent significant time with. My parent's are my only option.

Am I willing to shell out up to $8500 to have my parents possibly derail the process? I've read too many stories online about someone who had their diagnosis process stop after the adult person was interviewed. To not even get the chance to describe yourself would be terrible. More than disappointing. Legitimately terrible.

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I don’t know if I’ll be writing again. I want to, but I just don’t know.

Be well.

Sitting

Have you ever gone to sleep and woken up the next morning and felt like you never slept, but you only remember getting up to pee once during the night?

Has it ever happened to you for five+ years?

It's why I'm sitting on my bed at 6:15 about to put my CPAP mask on. It won't help, though.

Dear Nobody

I am not well.

I am always tired. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. Always tired.

The worst is mentally.

Long ago, I used to be able to read a couple of novels each week. Now I struggle to read one a month, if at all. I can only read three or four comic books in an hour. The less words and pictures there are, the faster I can read it, but I still can't read quickly.

I'm also way, way fatter than I've ever been in my life. I've always been fat (I remember when I was seven or eight being taken for a blood test to check my thyroid. I sat next to my Dad, waiting, and asked him what was going on and he explained to me that we were going to see if my thyroid was working right because it could explain why I was overweight.), but never like this. Never.

I sleep and don't feel better.

Yesterday I woke up. I did my laundry. I went back to bed. I woke up seven hours later. I ate dinner. I went back to bed.

I'm concerned about this.

I've been trying, for nearly two years, to get better.

I got a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. It hasn't worked. I keep using it, though, because when I have forgotten it on trips, my sleep is constantly interrupted. I don't wake any more rested.

Now I'm working on medication adjustment. Hoping that something will help. Hoping that a tweak will give me just a smidgeon of energy back and I'll be better able to move forward.

My doctors' don't seem so concerned about my concern, though.

They are more worried about the fleeting thoughts I have of killing myself. Fleeting because it just crosses my mind briefly a couple of times a day. No dwelling. No planning. Just a swish across my thoughts.

I keep trying to convince them that more energy would help with those thoughts. More energy would allow me to move forward with things. Work on hobbies. Write. Find healthy distractions. Be able to make decisions. Be able to think clearly.

My thinking is fuzzy. Especially after work. I put so much of my brain power into doing my job well that I have very little when the day is done. My focus isn't strong at the beginning of the day. It's pretty much non-existent at the end.

And there's no one who isn't a brain specialist who I feel like I can talk to about this.

I don't have friends. And even if I did, I wouldn't want to burden them.

Which leaves my family.

One of my brothers has cancer in his brain and it regrew earlier this year. He had surgery in May or June. He's been out of state getting radiation treatment since the end of July. He has burns on his face and is losing his hair. When he gets back, he may be back on chemo, again.

My mother is focused on my brother, his wife, and the grandkids. It's her way of coping. But it seems to make it hard for her to be elsewhere. And it makes her feel guilty that she's not doing more for others while she feels guilty for not being able to do more for my brother and his family.

My father doesn't understand because he's never been through something like this. Without first hand knowledge, he has a hard time being able to grasp the situation. In the past, I've been able to find a starting point he knows and then help him use that to lead him down a path that helps him understand. I don't have the brain power to do that right now, though.

My other brother live a long way a way. He's an Md. To be a bit cruel, I don't need anymore clinical bullshit. I don't need to hear statistics and about studies and blah blah blah. He might not do this, but he might, and I get it enough from the people I pay for help. Also, he has a family that he doesn't see enough and shouldn't be burdened with my crap.

So, that leave me. Me sitting in a shirt and underwear watching TV and clicking around the internets and playing mindless computer games. Sitting, trying not to think about being stuck. Trying not to think about faltering and sliding back into the worst. Being petrified of making decisions. Being scared of being who I am. Being scared of being who I may be. Being scared of being.

Theory

I'm in episode 14 of Attack on Titan. My guess is that the titans were created by humanity. Perhaps created to be a shared threat for humanity to unite behind. It may have been a virus released into the population that transformed a number of people and killed even more. The survivors were immune. That would explain how so few humans survived. Books from before the titans still exist, so chances are good that Eren's dad had seen some. (Perhaps through a benovolent secret organization.) What was learned in the book helped to recreate parts of the knowledge and gave Eren a form of the virus that allows him to become a titan and remain human at the same time.

I guess I'll see as I continue to watch.

To Sleep Perchance

When I'm feeling down in the dumps, like the air itself is trying to crush me, I tend to stay up later than I should. That is to say, tonight.

It's an illogical way to put off facing tomorrow for as long as possible. Unfortunately it also makes tomorrow harder because I'm tired.

Unfollowed

Except for my mother, sisters-in-law, and brothers are no longer being followed on Face-A-Gram. I didn't unfriend them. I simply can't see any more of their announcements.

I did this last night.

It's been weird looking at my feed today and seeing the same thing all day long.

I'm still following those few because I'm a good son and I want to see the posted pictures of my nieces and nephew. (Even though I'm uncomfortable with their parents posting pictures of their children because their children have no say in their own privacy.)

People from work keep asking me for friend requests and so do acquaintances I know through my job and people I know and I finally said "screw it" and added them. I just don't want to read their bullshit. I don't care about their kids and grandkids beyond the fact that I care about humankind in general.

There are a few people that I'll miss looking at and I may follow them in the future, but fuck it, for now. We haven't really be friends in a long time. I haven't seen them in five and a half years and I'm exhausted.

Just exhausted.

Two Things Before Bed

1. I keep thinking about a pie made with apple and brie. Crunch top. But does the brie go under the apple or over?
2. The longer I've been on Facebook, the more disturbed I get at parents, grandparents, and other peoples posting pictures of children. There's no real consent. Even if the child wants something posted or was asked, he/she can't really grasp what having that picture posted can mean now and in the future. Not only are kids going to dig up drunken pictures of their parents to try to use in hypocrisy debates, but they're also going to find their childhood, happy times and breakdowns, posted for the world to see. It doesn't seem right to me.