I was Due for Something Bonkers.

I am on vacation.

I don't know if it's the break of it all and everything finally all coming to a head and needing some kind of a release, but it probably wasn't that.

It could have been that I tried to see over 20 clients in 3 days. I only had like three cancellations, and then I had people who I couldn't get in at first, but was able to fit them into said cancellations. The last three days have been...we'll say busy because it sounds nicer than "a total chaotic shitshow" at work.

It could be the stress of all of the medical stuff (the thyroid extended biopsy came back benign, so I had much relief-crying to do after that) or the impending medical procedures I'm going to be having over the next six months, starting with an endocolonoscopy in 4 weeks. Maybe it was my way of exerting some kind of control over what's happening to me medically.

It could just be that the last time I took a break it was because my dog died. I really needed a break at that point, but it got eaten by grieving. (I'm also not entirely sure that this break won't be eaten up by the same grief but more manageable, but I'm hopeful that it will be better.)

It could also be pandemic fatigue and having to have Christmas over FaceTime with both of my parents instead of just one because of COVID and feeling really sad about it. Or it could just be this COVID bullshit in general.

It really could be any number of things.

My point is this: Before I tell you what I'm about to tell you, I feel the need to preface with the fact that I've got a lot going on. A lot. Also there's some Stuff that I'm Still Not Ready To Put Out There Because I Have To Get Some Ducks In A Row First But Trust That It's Taking Up All Of My Free Time.

I feel that I also need to preface what I'm about to tell you with the fact that back in August, I got a Very Bad Haircut. The person had not the first clue how to cut curly hair, and she gave me choppy layers. Were my hair straight, these layers probably would have looked great. But they didn't at all. Also, I have a hair appointment today that I frantically made at 6am today to fix what I've done. You see where I'm going with this.

I never, to my knowledge, went through a phase when I was a small child where I cut my own hair. Maybe it was 6-year-old curious Ryan coming out. I could say that I was having some weird Freudian Regressive Temper Tantrum in response to the stress I've been under over the past 6 weeks, but really, I'm 90% sure that with my hair, I just Hit My Limit.

Generally, when I've hit my limit when it comes to my hair, I am patient. I either ride it out and know that this too shall pass, or I make a hair appointment. I had no such patience yesterday. I took one look at my hair, took my damn scissors and I chopped 4 inches off of my hair. I cut off that whole bottom layer. It was dead and gross and I just...couldn't take it for one more second. My biggest mistake, however, was in keeping my hair in a ponytail while I did it. Because then I undid it and had to cut off two more inches.

I laugh at myself for doing that, because it's just about the most impulsive thing I've ever done, ever. I try not to be super impulsive, but as we all know, it's hard to plan being impulsive. There was definitely a build-up, but I could have made a different choice and I didn't. I just went for it.

I suppose there are a couple of lessons here - the first being that I need to take better care of my hair and speak up when I've been given a disastrous haircut. And, that being super impulsive like this doesn't really serve me so great. That's not a lesson that I need to learn, necessarily, but it definitely is something I need to remember. I suppose this is not the worst way for my impulsiveness to show itself - it could have been much more destructive, but when I get that urge to do something impulsive, it would likely be more helpful to tune into it than act on it. I usually do - but I don't know what came over me this time.

Anyway, time for my well-deserved chiding from a hairdresser, which I'm also used to because I don't get my hair cut enough and I don't go in unless my hair is in terrible shape. Because I don't and have never had a regular hairdresser in my adult life (save for my first two years of college), any hairdresser that I go to gives me the reality of my hair unvarnished because they know that I'll never see them again anyway. There's something freeing about it for both of us, and maybe that's why I don't have one. However, in times like this, I kind of wish I did have a regular hairdresser, because I could have called them before I got to this point with my hair and they would have been able to get me in before I cut six inches off of it myself.

Or maybe I need to take my Professional Overthinker Hat off for about five seconds and just laugh at myself because it's ridiculous and that's the reaction that's warranted here and not make anything of it. I'm not, necessarily - it's pretty hilarious and my hair is a total and complete trainwreck - but it's unclear to me why I reached that point without doing anything about it first. I think once I can figure that out, I'll be able to laugh at it for the truly ridiculous act that it was.

But, one could argue that I was due. Not just for a haircut, but for a time to just let loose and do something ridiculous. Maybe this was just what I needed. Snort.

Sweet, Miraculous Ativan

“I had a hunch you’d call after we got the test results from your thyroid biopsy,” said my doctor. 

I never thought my anxiety would get to the point where I’d be panic-sobbing at my doctor’s office because it became so unmanageable that I wasn’t sleeping and I was barely eating, yet there I was.

I’ve had panic attacks before. I know what they feel like. I’ve been able to get through them without meds, understand them for what they were, and ride them out. It’s only happened once or twice, and there was usually a medical trigger.

Then Miles died. Then two days later I had a thyroid biopsy. Then the following Monday (this past week) I got the call from my doctor: Indeterminate. This means that the extra samples that she took during the biopsy get sent to a lab for further testing and there are only two possible results: benign or suspicious. If it’s benign, monitor the nodules every six months. If it’s suspicious, my thyroid is coming out and they’re doing pathology on it and hopefully (and pretty likely - the rate of metastatic thyroid cancer is less than 5% if the cancer originated from nodules - if you think I haven't been researching obsessively since she called with the initial test results, you are sorely mistaken) there will be no further steps from there. I’ll know around Christmas what the next steps are.

I’m seriously considering having it taken out anyway so that I never have to go through this again, ever. It’s an option that is available to me since I have thyroid nodules, and I think that discussion may be worth having. When she and I meet in 3 months, we are absolutely having that conversation if it doesn’t come up before that.

Then a couple of days later, I met with my Lynch person and waited in the most depressing place ever (let me tell you, an oncology office is just...I can’t find the words for the sadness there. The receptionists were overly cheery, I think to try to overcompensate for the general feeling of malaise - and the look that people give you when you look young and walk into an oncology office made me want to scream that I don’t have cancer, I don't think, and even if I do it's not reproductive cancer so STOP GIVING ME THAT LOOK PLEASE) to sit with her and have her tell me that the only reasonable treatment for Lynch is to have a full hysterectomy. She went over some alternatives, all of which were painful, invasive, would mean that I’d have to be put under, and would have to happen once a year, and recommended none of them except the hysterectomy. I told her about my thyroid issue and that I have to triage. She totally understood and remarked that that’s a lot of medical stuff to throw at a person all at once. She wasn’t quite prepared, I think, when I started crying.

Luckily I could anticipate this tipping point coming and was already scheduled with my doctor for 7am the next day!

“We really opened a can of worms here, but it was worth opening. If you’re going to have any kind of cancer, thyroid’s the one you want. It’s treatable by surgery, and the recovery and long-term remission rate is 99%," said my doctor. I'm not sure if she intended it to be, but I found it both reassuring and not. I expected "It's probably not cancer", but that's not what I got, and it took me a little time to process that. She also said that in order to stop the panic cycle, we have to reset my sleep schedule. I went drastically from 9-10 hours a night to about 4. I also went from eating two meals a day and some snacks to having to practically force one meal a day down my throat. She gave me a prescription for Ativan.

I was...not entirely wild about this idea. “Ativan is addictive!” I told myself. “Is my anxiety really that bad?” I asked myself as it sat on the shelf in my kitchen (which is a super fun game that people with anxiety play - they catastrophize and then when it gets really bad, they invalidate, lather, rinse, repeat.). If I was going to take it, I was going to wait until the weekend so that I wasn’t a total mess during the week more than I already was. Then Friday night came and I figured, what could it hurt? So I took a half a pill.

From a week and a half of struggling to sleep and getting an average of four or less hours a night (less than that even when I found out the biopsy results), I was out in minutes. I’m not sure if I was asleep or comatose, and I woke up sore because I didn’t move all night. I woke up refreshed in the morning and was productive! I was also awake pretty late, which was strange. I also found my appetite, which was both a blessing and a curse because Doritos. But, I was able to be present, I wasn’t anxious about anything, and I just...was able to get out of my own way for the first time in a while. I got stuff done around my house, I was able to focus, I hardly used my phone at all (it's my go-to coping mechanism when I'm feeling super anxious), and I definitely felt a difference.

I’m having such a strongly positive reaction to these meds that I find myself low-key wondering: have I been in a perpetual state of some kind of panic for a long time and it has just gone unacknowledged?

All signs point to yes. But, that's Later Ryan's problem. The most important part is that now that I have one week of waiting down, I feel like I can manage doing this two or three more times without unabashedly losing my shit, and that ain’t nothing.

Sweet, Sweet Relief.

I love teaching. I absolutely love it.

I also love closing the book on a good semester where all of the students are SUPER engaged and ready to learn and grow, and I get to bear witness to all of it. I just love it. It helps that I'm teaching at the graduate level because that's what happens every semester, and so I feel SO lucky to be doing what I'm doing.

I just closed the book on the fall semester (which is KIND OF an effing miracle with everything I have going on) and I'm off for the next seven weeks or so. Does that come with challenges? Yes. Do I also really need the break? YES. Because of COVID, my teaching schedule has been nothing short of frenzied since January. Breaks are a wonderful thing, and I've been ready for one since about August without the opportunity to get one. Now that it's here, I'm kind of in disbelief that I won't be teaching for seven weeks, and I don't know what to do with myself.

Of course, I know what I WILL be doing with myself.

I'll be going to doctor's appointments, having an endocolonoscopy, and possibly having a surgery (but hopefully not - I'll know more around Christmas). I have a lot going on that I'm not super ready to talk about yet, but after my second Lynch appointment today, I have more answers, and I'm feeling really good about this part of the plan going forward. There's more still to be figured out with other things, but I'll freak out for about four weeks and then I'll have more answers.

I've also decided that it's time. I've contacted my doctor and I have an appointment at 7am tomorrow to talk about getting back on anti-anxiety meds. I've tried to function for a long time without them and done fairly well with it, but with all of this health stuff that has come at me like a tsunami lately and some major changes that I'm going to be making in my life, I need some support. I'm going back to therapy too, but I know in my guts that it's not going to be enough. I feel pretty relieved about it, if I'm telling the truth, because I'm finally giving myself the support that I need and not trying to tough it out. Trying to tough out anxiety is like trying to tough out a sinus infection - it's really painful and annoying, and it will go away with time, but it would take a lot less if I just went on a damn antibiotic and got rid of it. I'm just...ready to feel better. It doesn't have to be perfect, just better.

I also know that my new doctor is a good one because I tried to make an appointment for tomorrow and she was like "I'm fully booked but willing to come in at 7 to see you." While 7 isn't my ideal time for an appointment, that she'd be willing to do that for me is pretty remarkable. She also can handle Real Talk about mental health stuff, of that I'm sure, so I'm going to just make the active choice to lay it out there and see where it goes. I know what I need, and I feel like she trusts that I know what I need, and so I'm hoping she'll meet me there.

But for now, I go crochet and toast with seltzer to the close of another successful semester and get ready to tuck into wintertime.

And probably decorate the Christmas tree. We bought it over the weekend and it's just sitting undecorated in our living room, making it nice and fragrant in here. Thank goodness the only thing our puppy is doing to it is sniffing it and drinking the water. We'll see how she does with ornaments and presents underneath it. (I actually kind of can't wait because I know it will be adorable even if it's a huge pain, and I have a hunch that I'll be re-wrapping some presents, but that's ok!)