Friday, December 20, 2013

If I'm An Artist Now, Does That Mean I Need To Wear A Beret And A Turtleneck? Because I Look Awesome In Berets.

So, getting back to the story, I'll actually let you back in on the timeline.  In my mind, the times get a bit muddled around this part because the depression part of my life seemed to stretch out for years.  In reality, it had only been eight months.  Once I started getting back on my feet (quite literally) and getting into my life again, I had some fun things happen.

I met a new guy, for one. He's not super important on the boyfriend scale, but he did become a really awesome friend and a really supportive person.  There have been a few people in my life like this (my nurse friend, my friend from computer science, my work husband from the uni, my Seattle friend, some family friends who are ALWAYS supportive and there for me, and of course, my own family, immediate and extended), but to be honest, people like this are just so few and far between that it's worth it to mention.  He made me feel normal, and still does. When I told him about my health stuff, he nodded and said "everyone has stuff." But then he was also the first person to text when I had surgeries. He made me realize how bad I'd had it with Josh, so he came in at a good time in my life.  I'm not going to say a lot about him in this, but he'll show up in the future briefly.

Another awesome thing that happened was I decided to add an art minor to my school.  This is a huge thing in my life because I'm not very artistic.  I wanted to better myself and step out of my element. A lot of amazing people that I know are artists, and I really respect them, so I did feel like I had a lot of hard work to do to get anywhere near the realm that they were in.  The title of this post is symbolic of what people think before they do anything artistic. Artists are some of the most creative and hard working people. It's only the one's that are obsessed with their image that wear the beret's and turtlenecks. Josh had previously wanted me to finish school asap so we could work on paying off his debt and he could go to school again, but now I was ready to add on to my degree.

One thing I did that I never thought I'd do is I got a tattoo on my left inner wrist. It says Fight.  I used to write this on my wrist all the time because it gave me strength when I needed it, and I needed it a lot. One day I decided I was wasting a lot of ink, and I may as well just waste a little and get it put on permanently.  I've never regretted it, and I don't think I ever will. I look at it several times a day and feel a bit stronger.

On top of all this, I got a wicked new Smart car, Smarti.

Despite having so many great things going on, my life felt like a constant battle. I felt like I was trying to roll sideways up a steep hill because there was cheese at the top (I love cheese).  I had so many appointments at the pain clinic. They were all massively helpful but doing them between school and work and life was draining. I kept with it though because I knew I had to.  I didn't want to slide back down that hill and away from the cheese.

Around October or something, I got back in line for my left shoulder bone graft.  My parents were very hesitant about this, saying that I should just have some time to be me without surgeries, which I understood. However, my shoulder was still dislocating several times a day, so I was pretty ready to have that fixed.  Just as I respected their opinion, they respected my decision, so I jumped back in line and got ready for it. There was a hitch though: I also needed to get out my gall bladder now. Apparently the steroids I'd taken for my brain surgery and meningitis all those years ago had also given me gall stones. So I went and talked to my shoulder surgeon about timing, because I needed to know what would happen if I got my gall bladder out and my shoulder came in.  He assured me that they would do it after a minimal amount of recovery time, so I decided to go ahead with the gall bladder surgery.

For New Years of 2012, I decided to go to Hanna to hang out with my cousin one last time before she moved away.  I went to this big Hanna dance with them all, and I wore this tight, tiny blue dress.  I hardly hung out with her at all, because there was a lot of people she knew there and she was everywhere at once.  So I ended up hanging out with my other cousin and his friends. One of the people I hung out with was this guy that he'd known for a long time. I'd always heard stories about him but hadn't really talked to him. He was pretty shy and kept bringing me coke's all night (I wasn't drinking). At the end of the night I drove him home, even though you can walk anywhere in Hanna in about five minutes. It was cute.  I contacted him on Facebook a bit later (I realize now he was too shy to contact me) and we ended up hanging out in Calgary again. Then we started dating. I though it would be great to date someone long distance because there would be the added bonus of having no pressure to hang out all the time instead of focusing on school. I didn't account for all the driving time, mind you. That's fine though. So we started dating, and he and I started alternating driving back and forth from where he was, which was Red Deer for a couple months, and then Hanna for a long, long time. But you'll hear more about that in the future.

It was around this time that I got a text message from an ex, the one I dated for 2 years and a bit. He told me he wanted to talk to me and that he was sorry for everything that happened. This stressed me out terribly. I told him not to talk to me again, and even considered changing my phone number. It had taken me a long time to get to where I was in my confidence, and I just wasn't ready to have him bring it down again. In hindsight, I should have been more willing to listen.  You'll hear about that soon too.

So the clock ticked towards the new year, and I stared into my future with apprehensive but excited eyes.  I had a lot of stuff that was going to get done in 2012 whether I liked it or not.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Yeah, You'll Probably Just Be Alone For The Rest Of Your Life... High Five!

I had a lot of potential coming out of this time of my life, and for good reason.  It is extremely hard coming out of a deep depression, and you need a lot of things to look forward to.  I vividly remember being in my kitchen, leaning again my cupboard, having my family telling me I have a problem with my pills and with being depressed. My eyes stung with tears, my chest hurt, and I just felt helpless.  What was I supposed to do?  Well, I had a little ways still that I could go down, but I had a long ways that I could go up.  Luckily, I'd gotten rid of two big parts that were weighing me down, so it was time to swim.

I've had this happen a couple times in my life, though never to that extreme. One thing I've learned is to never let myself not work or not do things with my mind again.  Apparently I always need to be thinking or I get upset.  Some people need to exercise their body; I need to exercise my mind.  I'm interested to see where that will take me in life, but I guess that's likely going to be a different story.  Another thing I've learned from it is to nip it in the bud and start fixing things early.  This chapter will center around how I did that.

The first step I took wasn't actually under my control.  I got rid of Josh. I didn't realize it at the time but he was like the black hole of my happiness. Every time he came home he was just whining about his job and stuff, and he just made me so freaking miserable. I'd have to work to keep him happy, and then try to defend him to people. It was exhausting. So when he left, I was instantly several magnitudes happier, because I only had to focus on my own happiness and not his.

The next step I took was going to a psychologist. This was a very familiar step for me, I've gone to quite a few of these over the years. A lot of people call psychologist shrinks, which is stupid because they're very normal sized people, and they're quite helpful.  This guy specialized in trauma.  He talked through everything I'd gone through and everything I was going through with me and did some trauma techniques with me.  It was very helpful.  One thing we talked about was relationships and about whether or not I would find a husband that I would be with for the rest of my life. He told me most people divorce nowadays, and so it wasn't a bad thing to find a man for the now instead of for the forever. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with him, but it's definitely something I've kept in mind.  Not everyone can handle my health stuff, but that doesn't mean I can't be with them.

The next step I took is one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, and if you're in chronic pain I strongly suggest taking this step.  I went to my family doctor (who is a complete hero in this story, she is the person who got everything in motion from the get go and essentially saved my life many times because of it).  I told her about my difficulties with the pain and the pills (which I'd now gotten control of) and how I just needed some help.  She immediately suggested the Chronic Pain Center, saying she'd refer me to it.  This is one of those things that I get emotional about when I mention it.  They're amazing! They give you group sessions so you can discuss techniques with other people to deal with your pain, such as sleep sessions, figuring out your triggers, meditation sessions, yoga, swimming even! And once you go through a bunch give you a team of doctors, physiotherapists, kinesiologists, occupational therapists, nutritionists, psychologists, nurses, etc. and all of them, ALL of them, specialize in PAIN!  I walked into that place a wounded animal and walked out a confident person.  The only issue I had with the place is I found a lot of people, mostly the ones who were a lot older than me, were extremely negative.  That's fine though, I tried to spread a little positivity wherever I went.  I have stories galore from this place, not about other people because I feel their stories are not mine to tell, but about me.  Unfortunately, you guys only have so much time to read this, so someday, if I ever make this blog a book, I'll delete this sentence and tell you a bunch of awesome stories.  The current outcome of the CPC, however, is that my pain has gone down and I'm able to manage it. I do have flare ups, of course, but I can deal with them better. That's absolutely amazing, and apparently a pretty rare outcome of this place (that the pain goes down).

One thing I should note about my time with the CPC: while here I saw the psychologist about my issue with relationships. She told me the exact opposite of the other psychologist, that there are men out there that can deal with health problems and there are men that can't, and there are also men that will target women that have them (eg. creeps).  I should be looking for the men that can deal with them and can make me feel normal.  I totally agree with this. I need to think about this long and hard though because there's apparently not a lot of guys in the world who can do that.

Another step I took was starting my charity, Team Kelli. I raise money for the Alberta Children's Hospital by selling wristbands (hopefully doing more in the future) and telling my story. I've raised almost $2 000 to date. The hospital has done so much for me in the past, and now I want to give back.

Finally the last step I took was writing this blog. I decided I'd gone through a lot in my life, and people have always told me I've been really positive and done really well.  After seeing things like people in hospitals and hearing stories of other people in similar situations, I decided to write this to hopefully help people see that you can be positive no matter what the circumstance, and that it will help you to push through and get to the greener side of the fence.  Nothing in life is easy, but if it was we wouldn't appreciate it. That's what makes life fun! So I hope by reading what I've written here, you've realized this for yourself and taken more risks, found more positives, and had your life become a bit better.  Or, missing that, you've at least found this an interesting read thus far.

I say thus far for a reason... one thing about my life that the only things that seem to be constants are bad luck, pain, and health problems.  I don't so much mind that, it gives me something to depend on.  Don't take that as a negative statement, please! More just as a statement that you'd only understand if you were in the situation.  I view pain as a level system. First it's excruciating and you just want to get rid of it. Then it's annoying, then tolerable. Eventually you don't notice it. Finally you're so used to it that it's one of your closest friends, always there with you, never leaving your side.  You get a bad grade? At least you can depend on your pain still being there. Friends ditch you? Pain didn't! It is weird, but that's what happens.

Anyway, I digress, as usual.  Back to my usual, happy self, I was back in school, back to work, and back to life! I could now focus on getting some of the things fixed in my messed up body.  And boy, was I going to get them fixed...

Saturday, May 25, 2013

My Cat Doesn't Respond To Her Name, But She Does Respond To Smurf Face

Once we got home from the surgeon's appointment, I settled into the couch to await the surgery.  And when I say I settled in, I mean I settled the heck in.  There was a permanent imprint of my body shape on that couch.  I figured I'd be there for a while, so I may as well get used to it.

I had a pretty major revelation at this time: when things are really bad for you, that doesn't mean it can't get worse, and it definitely doesn't mean that you can't have other things happen to you.  This is something that should have been pretty obvious to me in the past, for so many reasons, but I decided that nothing more could touch me while I was sitting on that couch, so I was good.  And thus, when I got a kidney infection and started running super high fevers and hallucinating, I didn't really care or even pay attention to it.  This was right around New Years, about January 2nd, and for obvious reasons I don't have a huge amount of memories of it.  At the time, we were getting a railing attached to the wall going up the stairs so that I wouldn't fall down them if I was alone, and we were also getting the guest bedroom repainted so that we could use it as my living room (it's right beside my bedroom).  I remember Mom and Dad standing in the guest bedroom and me sitting against the wall.  They were talking about something, and I was looking up at Mom, thinking about how pretty the shapes were that were floating around her head.  She was watching me looking extremely worried and eventually got my attention, telling me that I was going to the doctor the next day.

So I went to the doctor the next day.  Whoever said the Canadian healthcare system sucks is a fool, they get you in when you need it.  I've had an awful lot of times where I've been extremely sick and needed healthcare, and they always get me in immediately in those cases.  Anyway, I digress. They sent me to get blood work, and they took pretty much all of my blood (not really, but it felt like it, they had to take it from both arms because I was so dehydrated, and I needed a cookie after).  Once I got home and settled back into the couch, they called me and told me to go to the hospital.  I remember Josh looked annoyed and I couldn't figure out why, but once he saw that I was looking at him, he looked worried.  Right, actor.  So we called my Mom and she came home, then her, Josh, and I went to the Peter Lougheed Emergency.  They took my name, gave me some orange juice and basically told me to drink as much as I could before I went in.  I feel like I waited a while, but it was only a couple of hours.  Mom and I were quite used to this.  Eventually I got to go in, where they pumped me full of antibiotics and fluids to get me hydrated and not infected any more.  Good times.  They kept sending Josh in to keep me company but he was such a downer and so bitter about being there the whole time that I kind of just wanted him to go home and just be there with Mom instead.  I'm pretty sure he felt the same thing.

I felt much better after this. They gave me more antibiotics to take at home, so we went back, I tucked into bed, and pretty much stayed there for the next five or so months.  I remember very few things about this because time started quickly blurring together and I wasn't doing much at all.  I really like watching people play video games, and Josh really liked playing them, so there was quite a few nights when he'd get home and I'd be on the couch or bed writhing in pain and he'd be playing the game, asking me if I was okay every few minutes.  I felt bad always because we both knew there wasn't anything that could be done; I wasn't okay but it's not like saying "No" was going to help anything, so I just gave the normal thumbs-up.  Painkillers didn't work well at all any more because I was in so much pain, so I started having to take 12 hour oxycontin pills a lot of the time. That was a huge hit on me because I basically took the dive into bigger pills and allowed my body to get hooked on them by necessity. I really started to hate myself because of that, because of the pain, and because of my relationship.  But I stuck with it, because really, what else could I do?

About two weeks before my surgery, I had a chat with my parents and Josh about talking to my doctor and maybe a psychologist about the depression I'd delved into. They were positive that once I was able to work and go back to school I'd be fine, but it would probably help. I was willing to try anything.  It's really hard to be helpless.

I finally went into my surgery in March. This sounds weird, but going in for surgery is one of the most familiar things in the world for me now, and it's almost calming.  It's interesting how they do it differently for different types as well, and I always notice these things before the surgery.  For this, they brought me in on the bed, as normal, and the pulled me over on the sheets so that I wouldn't need to do anything myself. This is so that I don't have to put my weight on my hip.  The bed is quite thin for this but it's a full bed, not a chair like it is for the shoulder.  They take you in, put you on the bed, and pull your arms out to the sides, putting on the blood pressure cuff on one and strapping down the other.  They told me once that they have to do this when you're awake now.  They ask you some questions to make sure you're you, and then the surgeon comes in, says hi, and starts talking into his recorder to take his pre-surgery notes.  You can hear your heartbeat going.  It's interesting, because as I type this I'm getting the feeling that I do when I lay on the bed, where my heart starts pumping and my headache gets light and to the top of my head.  I usually at this point start breathing in for four seconds and out for eight to slow down my heartbeat because it's going pretty quick.  Then the anaesthesiologist gives me the drug that will "calm me down" and everything goes a bit fuzzy and calm.  I remember thinking everything was going to be okay at this point because my surgeon (who is a giant, by the way, he's over 6 feet tall) was joking around with the other doctors and the nurses. He knew what he was doing. The nurse beside me said "See you in a few hours." I said "See you in a couple of minutes." I was out.

I hate waking up from hip surgeries. At least with this one I could feel my feet.  I always want to know what kind of dressing is on my wound, immediately, but with hip surgeries you can't feel that because they won't let you throw back the sheets and start poking around.  I got to find out how it went quite quickly, they must have told my surgeon I was awake, because he just about immediately came over to me.  He was so happy and excited, and told me it went the best it could have gone.  The arthroscopy completely fixed the tear.  I wouldn't need a replacement.  I was so excited!  All I had to do was recover, and I could move on with my life!

So we went home.  I was going to be sleeping on the air mattress in the office downstairs because I couldn't get upstairs.  Mom slept on it with me (it's a huge great air mattress, seriously, I'm taking that thing with me when I move out instead of my bed) in case I needed anything during the night.  Venus, one of our stupid cats, also decided that she wanted to help out in the middle of the night and jumped onto my chest.  I screamed, Mom screamed, Venus fled, my hip hurt. Good times. The next few nights I slept on the couch because I still couldn't get upstairs.  Eventually I started healing more and more and could see that I was going to get better... it was awesome.  Around this time my cousin moved into our house for the summer.  This isn't super important to the story, but she's super important to me and I love her.  She's one of those awesome people who make me feel normal no matter what happens to me.

As I was going on this upwards track and starting to get into my life again, Josh broke up with me again.  This time, however, it was for real.  He told me he just couldn't handle my health problems. This was in June.  I was so confused, I was getting better from my hip and he couldn't handle it now?  I had been honest with him from the start about what I'd gone through and about what I would go through.  He told me he thought I was overstating it.  I was so hurt that he'd use something I couldn't control as the reason for him leaving me.  There was no question over who got to keep the cat: me.  Lola was mine.

Weirdly enough, it didn't take me long to get over him.  I've mentioned this before, but because of the way my life is it doesn't take me long to get over things.  I need to be like this because otherwise I'd spend much too much time mourning the loss of everything that's left me and spend no time celebrating what I have.  It took me about two weeks to fully get over Josh.  One of the main reasons was my awesome family, like my cousin.  I think the fact that it took so little time tells me it was clearly for the best; I have a bad habit of trying to stick with things when I shouldn't because I think it can be fixed or because I don't want to hurt someone. Luckily this situation ended for me.  The way he did it didn't do me any favours though.  It left me with a fear that any person I met would leave me because of my health problems.

For the next few weeks I healed extremely fast.  I hung out with my cousin a ton.  She moved into the room next door to me that was previously my living room, so Lola ran back and forth between us.  We were laughing all the time.  It was great.

With my labral tear out of the way, I now had the ability to focus on my school, my work, my shoulder, and my state of mind.  I had finally had a truly successful surgery, and I was going to grasp this bright part of my life and run with it for as long as I could.