When I was in recovery, that’s what I missed most – the relief. The escape from everything I was feeling.
And its still the thing I continuously go back to when life gets hard. I’m either bingeing and purging several times a day or I’m avoiding food entirely. I’ve lost all sense of balance and my body is struggling desperately to keep up.
Every time I sense rejection, or unworthiness, and every time my sadness grabs at my throat, I numb it frantically with food. Then, instead of sadness, I feel fullness, which is even more unbearable. So I purge it all out.
This new, fresh emptiness is much better because it is a clean, hard-earned, exhausted emptiness. Now I’m too tired, too sore, and too weak to feel anything else.
So, I feel nothing. That feeling of ‘nothing’ brings such a tremendous amount of relief.
I ventured outside today. Not because I wanted to though. The last thing I wanted to do was put a coat and boots on to go walk around in the snow. I went out because I needed to. I’ve barely moved from the couch in 3 days. This year is not off to a good start.
First, we had the first-ever earthquake here in Central Newfoundland. Very minor. But there has never been an earthquake here. Then we had a major 3-day storm. Our driveway was washed out and our roof had some damage. Thankfully it was minor. Then I ended up spending 9 hours in the ER, for dehydration.
Through all of that, I’ve been struggling just to keep breathing. CPTSD has been kicking my ass. Between the paralyzing panic attacks, nightmares, disordered eating (restricting, binging, purging), chronic pain, and insomnia every breath I take requires effort. Putting in effort takes energy, and energy is something I have very little of. Or maybe it’s just a lack of drive or willpower. Either way, I don’t have much of anything right now.
But today I managed to tap into something inside of me that gave me a little boost. I was wiping away tears as I was putting my boots on. The dogs were so excited to have mom play ball with them. They’ve really been feeling the effects of what I’m going through and that has created such a massive amount of guilt for me. I try and tell myself that I really am doing the best that I can right now but it feels so fake.
The fresh air was amazing though. The sound of the waves along the shore was incredibly comforting. I miss walking there with the dogs. Another reason I dislike winter so much. When I get cold it triggers my CRPS and sometimes I’m in pain for several days after. It’s frustrating. Especially when more than half of the year is cold here in Newfoundland. So outdoor activity is quite limited. It’s a big factor in the decline of my mental health once the fall months are upon us.
Today the cool air was welcomed. It wasn’t windy, which made it much more manageable. It was as if by breathing it in I was bringing back a little glimmer of life. It even energized me enough to later vacuum, sweep, and mop through the house.
It was discouraging though to find myself standing in the middle of the room, on 3 separate occasions, completely dissociated, and I had to check my phone to see what time it was. Everything has just been so surreal. Over the last year, 40 years of trauma decided to all come flooding back at once, at times leaving me completely incapacitated. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through. I’ve shed more tears these past few months than I have my entire life.
So yeah. It’s been tough. But I guess surviving all of this is a testament to my strength? Maybe. I dunno. But I do know that growth doesn’t always look like success. Sometimes growth involves holding on when everything just feels so damn heavy. At least for me, it does.
It all started when I went for my regular Ketamine infusion, which is part of my treatment for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
Felicia, the head nurse, asked if I was doing ok. She said I wasn’t looking like myself and that I was pale. I said I was good and that was all that was said.
I remember lying back on the stretcher while they prepped me, putting heart monitoring stickers on my chest, attaching a BP cuff to my arm, oxygen in my nose … I was shivering and could feel tears running down from the corners of my eyes but i had no emotions. It was strange because that doesn’t usually happen. They took my hand to start an IV and I heard a faint voice in my head whispering – don’t touch me.
I remember turning my head to the side and just letting myself drift away. Don’t have any more memories about the treatment than that.
Once the infusion was done they wanted to talk to David. Felicia asked him how I’ve been doing lately. David later told me that he told her I’ve been purging a lot, that I’ve been quite depressed and that he’s been worried. Apparently she told him that I’m not looking well. That I was pale, my eyes were dark, and my lips were almost grey.
I was awake, my eyes were open, but I was non-responsive. My neck and head were spasming and I was staring off with no reaction when someone spoke or touched me. So they decided to keep me an extra hour to give me more fluids and more time to let the meds wear off. David asked if they felt I had taken anything and she said no because my vitals were all good. But they did bloodwork just to be sure.
An hour later Felicia called David back in and told him that he needs to take me to the ER. Apparently I had been mumbling some things that no one could really pick out but Felicia had heard me say something about this being the end and it was almost time to die …. I don’t remember any of that. I’m just telling what I was told.
So they put me in a wheelchair and David registered me in the ER, where I sat/slumped for 9 hours. David said I kept falling to the side as if I couldn’t hold myself up. He had to ask for a pillow and blanket to put around me to secure me a bit. He said I was in a completely different world.
Then they called us in to a small room that had nothing but 2 chairs bolted to the floor. And that’s where I spent the next 26 hours. It was nothing short of brutal.
Tears are burning my eyes now as I write that. I think it’s cruel how this was handled. They took me from the OR after having a procedure done and forced me to sit up on hard seats for a total of 36 hours. I was hallucinating. I was in terrible pain and developed a migraine. Had multiple bouts of vomiting. And I started experiencing opiate withdrawal because after I took my meds Thursday morning, I wasn’t given anything until Friday night. By that time I had missed 6 doses of morphine. It was torture.
David had to leave at one point. We had taken our dogs with us that morning. So David spent the entire day going from me in the hospital to the dogs in the car. He’d switch every hour. Take them for a walk, a drink, get them a snack then settle them in the car again before coming back in with me. But they couldn’t do that all night. So around 10pm he spoke to the staff. They assured him that I would be in safe hands and would be looked after so he left to go home with the dogs. Just before he left, he brought me in Zoey’s blanket from the car because he’d been asking for a blanket for me for 2 hrs with no luck. So I just kinda dozed off, sitting up in the chair, with Zoey’s blanket over me.
At one point I started to be more alert and I was really confused. I needed to use the bathroom but there wasn’t one so I left the room and just wandered around a bit. I went to the nurse’s station and asked if there was a bathroom and he said down the hall on the right. I roamed the hospital for a while. Took the elevator a few times, and eventually made my way back to that room. I called David, upset, wanting to know what was going on. When he realized that I was still there in that room – alone, he drove back to Grand Falls again at 4am. In the meantime, while hyperventilating and being trapped in that space with the chairs bolted to the floor, I clawed/scratched/cut my neck.
David came, and he channeled his anger into fighting for me. He took me outside for some air then went and found a vending machine and got me a sandwich and water. I hadn’t had anything since 7am the previous day. Thankfully there was one nurse there on Friday that had a bit of respect and showed some compassion. She even gave me a little bit of her on personal toothpaste so I could brush my teeth. No one gave me a breakfast tray but she made sure there was one for me by lunch time. And she also contacted the necessary ppl to get my meds ordered.
Then my psychiatrist came. It was still another long painful day sitting in that chair but by Friday evening I was admitted to the psyc unit.
And I’m still here. I am much more stable than I was over 2 weeks ago but still have a ways to go. Have no idea what is going to come out of this.
Heart palpitations Nausea Nightmares Pain at the slightest sensation on the surface of my skin Sweating Shivering Phantom arm pain Stomach cramping Itching Brain fog Deep muscle and joint pain Dizziness Ringing ears
That is an incomplete list of things I have been experiencing over the last 12 days,
AND
I’ve survived it all! I started back on my meds yesterday so I’m hoping some of this settles a bit.
Self love is not my friend. While reflecting on recent days though I can’t help but feel a slight glimmer of something deep in my heart. I survived! 2 very challenging weeks that were filled with mental, emotional and physical pain. Yet I’m here right now – alive, intact, and conscious.
Our medical system really let me down this time. Radical acceptance of this is a tough one. But I have pulled skills from toolboxes I didn’t even know I had. This past week especially required me to often use some sort of coping skill to get from one moment to the next. My mind has been in a very dark place.
My faith has been the top thing that has carried me through. I felt like I was reliving the rock-bottom days of my drug addiction and the first days of rehab. I truly thought I was dying then – a slow painful death. I know there is a big difference between cocaine addiction and my current meds for depression, anxiety, blood pressure, and a couple of other things. Completely different situations. But that’s what all of this has felt similar to.
Today is a better day. Nausea has subsided for now. Am about to leave my house for the first time in a while. I have an idea!! And I need 2 new bookshelves for it. My dogs are also low on food so have to stock up on that. I can’t forget to pick up some Gatorade or Pedialyte as well. I told my therapist yesterday that I would pick up some sort of electrolyte replacement drink to help with the dehydration I’m experiencing. So that’s that.
Buddy is outside, trying hard to patiently wait for me. He’s laying in the walkway, and every few minutes he barks once to tell me to hurry up. Probably should have waited before I told him we were going in the car.
Ive dealt with disordered eating for as long as I can remember. It’s like it functions by a dimmer switch. It’s always there to some degree. Sometimes the switch is turned down and, while never really on friendly terms with food, sometimes it’s not all-consuming. Purging is random and not an everyday occurrence during those times. Thoughts are not centered on food all day.
Then the switch gets turned up. Something will be particularly activating and the behaviors become prominent again. l have a few days or weeks where food is at the forefront of my mind and restricting, binging, and purging is what everything revolves around day and night.
Then the dimmer switch will turn down and I can pull myself out of the cycle again.
This time it’s proving to be much harder to pull myself out of it. There was no gradual onset. And I can almost pinpoint the exact moment the alarms started going off in my head. It was when I was in the hospital a few weeks ago …
I was in the bed connected to the various tubes and machines, with no clothes on, just several blankets wrapped around me, bags of glucose and potassium running into my neck, fluids, and calcium flowing in through an IV in my foot, I had a catheter…
2 nurses were at my bedside with juice, cookies, and cheese telling me I had to eat it and they weren’t going to leave until they watched me finish it because after all, that food was my ‘medicine’ …
I was severely hypo-glycemic and it was imperative that they grasp every possible solution, and that included food with simple sugars.
Since that moment my mind has become preoccupied with every single bite of food I take. The monster in my head has woken up and is on a vicious rampage. I gained a few lbs in those 2 weeks b/c of everything I had to eat. And drink. So many calories were consumed through fluids alone!
3 days before I was discharged they took the catheter out and I could get out of bed then. The first thing I did was go and throw up. The tubes in my neck complicated things a bit because the pressure of vomiting kept causing the alarms on the IV pole to go off. But once I figured out what the different buttons were for I was able to turn off the alarms by myself.
So here I am, spiraling. I’m mentally and physically unwell because of the sudden lack of medication in my system. So vulnerabilities are running high. I feel raw, trying to claw my way out of this mess.
Her Complex Musings 
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