The Progesterone Chronicles: Medical Rage

The scene: My appointment with my new OBGYN, who I acquired after my OBGYN-Oncologist decided suddenly one day without warning that he didn’t want to prescribe my HRT anymore because I don't see him for anything. I get it, but also it was annoying to just randomly get that phone call one day. (So I’m already cooking coming into this appointment, just for context. It took three weeks just to schedule an appointment because my PCP doesn’t feel comfortable prescribing them and then going back to said OBGYN-Oncologist, telling them this, and his office saying “well, we don’t know then” and then ME being like “WELL CAN I JUST SEE SOMEONE ELSE IN YOUR OFFICE THEN PLEASE I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY IT TOOK THREE WEEKS AND TWO CUMULATIVE HOURS OF PHONE CALLS TO SCHEDULE ONE APPOINTMENT.”)

This is after two and a half years of feeling like -absolute- shit with minimal improvements and no answers as to why, much less how to fix it, no matter how much I talk about it to my medical team. We're talking multiple naps a day, going to bed earlier than I want, waking up later than I want, and sleeping all day Saturdays. The fatigue has made me withdrawn and angry because I can't get out of my own way enough to do things that I want to do. I’ve gotten two and a half years’ worth of shrugged shoulders as to why I’m barely functional, along with variations of the following:

Yeah, pituitary suppression sucks. Just gotta live with it.

It’s not adrenal insufficiency.

Your hormones are fine.

It’s probably your vocal cord paralysis.

You just worry too much about this stuff when all you really need is patience and time to heal.

Try changing your diet and see if that makes a difference. Here’s a referral for a nutritionist.

Have you tried MBSR? You just need to lower your stress.

That’s the context we’re dealing with here. My doctors have hit all of the Medical Gaslighting Greatest Hits without a single fucking solution, while I'm over here questioning my entire life or if I should just give up and go on disability because I can't function. That's a legitimate question I've been asking myself over the past six months or so. ANYWAY. Continued dialogue.

New OBGYN: We can for sure put you on progesterone, and that’s going to fix everything you’re describing. Why didn’t you ask sooner?

Why didn’t I ask sooner.

Why didn’t I ask sooner.

Friends, the rage I felt swallowed me whole in that moment. I get that question a lot. A LOT. I got it from my neuro team, who were SHOCKED that I’d never seen any neuro doctor before at all in spite of having migraines for 20 years and a brain tumor so large that there is no way it was in there for less than a decade and a half. I got it from my neurologist when I told her I’d only ever taken either Tylenol or a barbiturate for migraines, or the shot in the butt when it got so bad I had to go to urgent care or the ER. I got it from my OBGYN-oncologist when I told him I was so relieved to no longer have periods so painful that they woke me up from a sound sleep. I got it from my endocrinologist who found the cancer. I get it from my PCP every time I wait until day 10 of being sick before coming in.

They all have these shocked looks on their faces as if they’re not complicit in this system that gaslights women at every turn, even when they find a problem.

I tried what I’ve always successfully done: Bracket and pivot. Bracket and pivot.

Except I couldn’t.

So, my response: You’re nice and I like you, and you’re about to have to deal with me for the next 10-15 years. I feel like I want us to start off on the right foot and so I’d like to give you some feedback, if that’s ok?

OBGYN: I mean, sure! I don’t get asked for my consent for feedback very much.

Me: Ok. That’s ridiculous and I’m very sorry about that, and also I’ve heard that question a million times and I absolutely hate it. I have been banging this drum HARD for the past two and a half years AND I WAS EVEN PROACTIVE AND ASKED ABOUT IT WHEN I WAS BETWEEN THE TIME OF MY HYSTERECTOMY AND GETTING MY THYROID OUT. Do you know how many doctor’s appointments I have in any given year? A lot. Do you know how many of them I see as an opportunity to bring this up and so I do? One hundred percent of them. I talk about this issue with any medical professional who gets in front of me. To ask why I didn’t talk about it sooner assumes that I’ve made no effort to make it known, which is entirely untrue.

OBGYN: Ok! Noted. And good point. It's nowhere in your chart that you've talked about this.

Me: I’m not surprised that this isn’t in my chart. If I was a doctor, I’d also have a hard time wording “patient reported persistent low energy, fatigue, and hypersomnia. Gaslit her out of conversation because I have no answers. Will continue to monitor.”

(She admittedly chuckled at that one.)

Yes, I monologued at a brand new doctor. Yes, she got the brunt of my reaction to the constant medical gaslighting. Do I feel bad? No. My medical rage had to come out somewhere, and who better than a medical professional who was in the very middle of a gaslighting attempt, rather than an unwitting person who doesn’t deserve it? Some would argue that she didn't deserve it either, and I see the point, AND ALSO maybe she shouldn't assume that her patients don't do their due diligence.

So I trotted out of there with a progesterone prescription. I started taking it a couple of nights later because I didn’t want it to interfere with the cortisol testing that I was having done. I started it Wednesday night and everything went fine overall. Thursday night I woke up with…let’s call it gastric distress throughout the night, and through most of the next day. I was eventually able to rally and get to work, but wow.

In between episodes of gastric distress, I cleaned my house. I got paperwork done. I functioned like a fully normal, grown-ass adult. I did laundry. I got myself going with minimal effort. I felt normal. I was totally floored.

Then I forgot to take it but also had a “can’t get out of bed” migraine. I think my body has finished its current revolt, so we’ll see how the next few days and weeks go. In spite of the fact that I felt like absolute shit for a few days, here’s a list of things that feel WAY worse:

1. Being constantly gaslit by my doctors

2. Questioning whether or not I can even function enough to practice

3. Questioning whether or not I should just give up and apply for disability

4. Strongly considering just giving up on getting medical care at all if the only things that happen are my time gets wasted and I get gaslit for the ten minutes I’m in front of a provider

5. Being angry literally all the time because I had a brain tumor and thyroid cancer that got missed for a long time because my doctors didn’t listen or were outright dismissive (yes, I'm looking at you, Dr. "I don't know what blogs you read") when I told them what I was experiencing and nothing has changed

6. Wondering what I’m doing wrong to feel this way when the actual answer is nothing and I’m powerless against a truly awful system that isn’t designed to genuinely help me and instead is invested in keeping me sick because that’s where the money comes from

Yup. I’ll trade ALLLL of that mess in immediately if not sooner for some gastric distress but feeling hugely better in general, please and thank you.

Also, instead of rage-quitting all medical treatment (which was a legitimate option at one point of peak frustration last week), I instead moved every single Boston appointment to the same week every year, so I’ll be taking a medical vacation the first week in March annually for at least the next ten years or more likely permanently. The last one I need to change is my Lynch dude, and if I can bag my annual colonoscopy in that same week (this probably won’t happen, but a girl can dream), AWESOME. Get it all done at once. This not only lowers my stress about my appointments overall, but then gives me one big huge dose of medical gaslighting instead of a bunch of little ones spread throughout the year, which I think will hugely improve my mental health if I don’t have to just bide my time between appointments and have that gross toxic hope that I’ll get a different answer. It also will help me feel a lot more normal, which is something I've needed for three years and didn't know it until I had the realization that this change was going to help with that. (Also a huge perk is that if I'm covered in ultrasound goop from my ears to my chest or I'm in an MRI machine, I'm unreachable, so that might be the first legitimate time I've taken off and set boundaries around work since my brain surgery.)

Speaking up helps. I’m really starting to come into this idea that I get to stick up for myself and it’s both ok and I’m not going to spontaneously combust if someone says or does something not ok to me and I say something. I don’t have to explode but I also don’t have to let it go.

Ok. I’m going to go for a walk now because I have the energy to and I feel like a totally normal human for the first time in three years and three days. Happy belated hysterversary to me.

Managing Medical Rage

15 days ago, I started to feel congested and achy. “Here we go,” I thought to myself. I’d had a client come in who was stuffy. It got a little worse over the next few days, and then I got a fever.

For people who have had a thyroidectomy, fevers can be downright dangerous. There’s a reason that people who have thyroid problems also have body temperature problems - the thyroid is the organ that works with the hindbrain to control your body temperature. Mine, when things are normal, runs around 96 degrees, usually high 95s. So when I get a fever, not only is it VERY uncomfortable, there is also nothing to be done about it because I have no thyroid to be like “hey. It’s getting a little hot in here. Maybe have a little hormone and take a fever reducer and go to bed.” So fever reducing by medications doesn’t work because there’s no organ to tell my brain, “hey. She just took some fever reducer. Ease up, will ya?”

Two Saturdays ago, I was feeling tired, but ok. I went and ran a few errands and while I was out, my energy totally crashed. I was about 10 minutes from home, waiting in line at the coffee shop, and had to go home. Like immediately. That hadn’t happened in a while - to the point where I was running errands by myself again and I had started to regain trust in my own body to be able to go out and do a few things, so it was totally unexpected. (In the past, for about a year and a half post-thyroidectomy, Rob and I would have to run errands together so that when I invariably crashed, he’d be able to drive so I could sleep in the car. Yes, it was that bad.)

This felt familiar, so I got home prepared to relax and take a nap. Rob got home from the Penguin Plunge and we started to make plans and I said, “yeah, just let me take a nap,” and then proceeded to sleep for 15 hours. I woke up on Sunday feeling worse, and then on Monday, I went to urgent care the first time, knowing that they’d laugh me out the door if I went before being sick for 7 days, and even that was pushing it.

I knew I had a sinus infection. My teeth hurt, my ears hurt, I couldn’t stop sneezing and coughing, and I couldn’t move my eyes without it hurting quite a bit. I wasn’t having trouble breathing yet, but I knew that was next.

The doctor that I had was so dismissive that he didn’t look in my ears or even listen to my lungs. He just said, “yeah, you gave a virus that’s not COVID, RSV or the flu, but it’s going around. It lasts an average of 18 days. Go home and get some rest.”

COOL.

So, rest I did.

And then I rested more. During this time, in addition to the other shit, I lost my voice. (It still hasn’t returned.)

And then I cancelled my weekend because I both didn’t want to get others sick and didn’t want to cough my way through a show Rob and I had plans to see. I felt a little better, but I was Not Functional.

Yesterday came and I was able to get to work, but then I had the worst coughing fit yet, so I went to urgent care again.

The doctor listened to my lungs and was like “I’ll get a chest x-ray to confirm, but you have pneumonia.”

PNEUMONIA.

The medical rage is real, friends. I recently restarted EMDR to reprocess…just all of 2021… and my therapist was like “Ryan. Your medical rage is valid. You had migraines for 20 years that no one looked into and if they had, they would have found a BRAIN TUMOR. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Also you had concerns about thyroid stuff that no one listened to and it ended up that you had cancer, which would not have fully been found if you didn’t argue about whether or not to take your whole thyroid. YOU had to do that because almost every doctor in your adulthood has failed you. This is a systemic problem. It’s going to keep happening. I’m not sure EMDR will help with that part.”

Maybe she’s right. But I have to try because if I don’t, the rage that I feel about how I am treated by medical professionals literally feels like it’s going to swallow me whole sometimes. I have countless stories of “well if the doctor had just listened the first time, then this wouldn’t be a problem” throughout my lifetime, and so I need to be able to bracket my own reactivity to it and simply put, effectively start yelling.

Starting with calling patient services and making a complaint about that first doctor.

New Year's Resolutions

I hate New Year's resolutions. I feel like they set people up for failure, and the statistics say that they are not effective anyway and are usually abandoned within the first two weeks of the year. I think  the goals we set ourselves up for both are not realistic for us and only serve as a vehicle of shame.

Yes. I genuinely hate them.

I started my 2023 off with with one question: how can I be more compassionate to myself and to others? I started 2024 off the same way.

2023 was a rough one to start, and while I didn't have any resolutions, I definitely needed change. Because we are always the last ones to know it, looking back, I was definitely starting on a burnout spiral. Over the past couple of weeks, I have definitely done some reflecting on 2023, and overall, I think I did some pretty amazing things for myself. I'm not sure what I wasn't doing to help in my recovery from my surgeries, but I was definitely missing something. 2023 was my year to get that figured out, and figure it out I certainly did. It was a huge year of change and growth for me personally, probably bigger than most of my adult years thus far, and while the year certainly had its ups and downs, I learned more about myself this year than ever. Has it been chaotic and messy and totally beautiful? Yes. Some highlights:

• I started taking Ritalin in May, and I went from needing to carve out time in my schedule to nap every day and sleeping all day every Saturday to being a functional human without having to sleep all the time.
• I finally advocated for myself enough and got myself the mental health assistance that I have needed for my entire adulthood (and likely most of my childhood) for my ADHD.
• I found my favorite gluten-free donut places. There are three. There is one I realized recently that I cannot eat at actually, but still.
• I started eating eggs again and while that particular journey has not been fantastic for me in the digestive realm, I am better in just about every other way possible. Vitamin B3 is a thing, y'all. Definitely not the same in pill form as it is from just eating a damn egg or three or five.
• I got myself a headache neurologist, who finally gave me a concrete plan for the migraines that I've been having for 20 years and it is working. I did not have a migraine for six months this year, which is the longest stretch I have ever had in my entire adulthood.
• I was finally deeply reflective about my personal and professional boundaries and the impact of not honoring them and took immediate steps to rectify the gaps. Are there still some? Absolutely. But I am feeling better, which tells me that I am very much on the right track. As a result, I feel safer than I ever have in my whole life on many fronts.
• I've had many professional accomplishments this year, but by far my biggest was acknowledging that I cannot run my very quickly growing business alone. I not only hired more targeted admin help internally within my business, but I surrounded myself with a network of colleagues and friends who are doing the same things that I'm doing and got the support that I needed from people who get it. I now have a beautiful network of colleagues and friends that I am really proud to call my people. I also feel really proud of the work that I'm doing.
• Probably the biggest thing though, is that if something was happening and I was in a position to advocate, I did it. Around a year ago at this time, I testified in front of a committee of the New Hampshire house about a transgender bill, I fought with Medicaid about reimbursement rates and won, and most importantly, if something was really fucked up, I didn't just let it happen, and I didn't care about the audience. Even if they were in a position of power, if they were doing something that I felt was really wrong, I said something. This was really huge because I spent my life being silenced, and I just realized that I don't want to live that way anymore, so I stopped.
• I believe that I hit peak burnout in early October. I was at a conference, I lost the entire first day to work stuff, and this was when I realized that I had a big problem that needed immediate addressing. And so, that's what I did! I made sure to go to a couple of really cute yarn shops before I left, I left the conference early, I took a week off of work, and during that time, I addressed it immediately. It resulted in such a drastic drop in my workload that I didn't actually know what to do with myself for a little while, but I'm adjusting.
• I also finally realized my own emotional exhaustion on many personal fronts and took concrete steps to address it. I went back to therapy, stopped doing things that were causing said exhaustion, and as a result I feel a lot better.
• We adopted a puppy. Has our life descended into chaos as a result? It sure has. But I would not trade either of these dogs for the world, even if Ruby and her wildness was the reason that I broke my hand two weeks ago.

2023 also had a little bit of a rough end when I broke my hand the Wednesday before Christmas, so it was a nice bookend to the way that it started, but I think it was the Universe's way of telling me to keep going. Keep leading with compassion, and keep the fires of self-compassion burning. Were there things that I could've done better? Always! But I feel more in a position to look at those things without shame and do better than this time a year ago, and that ain't nothing.

Professional Self-Care

Two and a half weeks ago, I finally hit the tipping point that I needed in order to change my relationship with my work.

I was at my favorite conference, this year in Denver. I was primed with the following information as I was embarking on this trip:

1: At the last national one, in Seattle that time, I had just left my job with community mental health and was so burnt out that all I could do was surrender, and it ended up being one of the best conferences I had ever attended (see how we’re in trouble with expectations already?)

2: At the last regional one, last year, I was dealing with work issues and was not as present as I wanted

3: Work hounded me literally as I ran through Charlotte NC’s airport to catch my connecting flight. I literally almost called someone and yelled at them who under no circumstances deserved it. (I also lost an AirPod down a grate. WHO PUTS GRATES INSIDE. I will always hate this airport for more reasons than just this, but WE ARE OFFICIALLY SWORN ENEMIES FOREVER, CHARLOTTE AIRPORT.)

4: Before two Fridays ago, I was the only one responsible for running payroll for my company.

5: I worked LITERALLY until the time I had to leave for the airport on the day I left for my conference. I then opened up my laptop the second I got settled at the airport.

Ok. You’re fully primed.

I get to my hotel at 1am Denver time and shower immediately, because COVID and also I just do that after I fly. Planes are gross. Hop into bed around 2 (so if you’re keeping up with the math, it’s 4am according to my circadian rhythm, so I’d been up for 23 hours) and plan to get up at 8 so that I can get to registration and start my favorite conference, and run payroll first, which I do on Thursday mornings.

Nope! Payroll system was down.

I contact my person at our payroll company, who is apologetic and also has no idea what’s going on. I keep trying. Then I run out and run a few errands because it “should be back in just a couple of hours”. I come back, still nothing.

Payroll was due by the end of the day and it was quickly approaching.

For those counting, I hadn’t been over to the conference yet, and it was about 2pm MT.

At that point I was like “ok. If it’s down and won’t be back for a few hours, I’ll go find a yarn shop,” and that’s exactly what I did.

Came back, still nothing.

Cancelled dinner with my colleagues.

Still nothing.

8:30pm, it finally ran.

By this point, I had come to a few realizations:

1. I was in no state to be around people

2. I can’t detach from work and that has suddenly turned from a Big Problem to a Herculean Problem

3. I need to leave Denver as soon as possible.

I still had a presentation. So, I changed my flight to leave directly after it and got in around 1:30 on Saturday morning instead of what was supposed to be 24 hours later. In this time, I sent an email to my three most trusted people at work and said, “Something is changing or I quit. Literally quit.”

I spent my entire flight home planning. I let my staff know that I would not be working the whole next week. I needed some time off, genuine time off, and I also needed to figure this out.

I came back to NH and had meetings. Strategized. Planned. Got organized. Most importantly, rested.

For the first time, possibly ever, I went into a make-it-or-break-it moment in my work determined to make it better because this particular job is worth saving. I was determined to change my circumstances and not me because that was what needed to change and for the first time ever, I was in a position to change them instead of quitting.

So that’s exactly what I did. It was probably my most significant moment of self-care since becoming a counselor.

What do I hope this looks like?

Cutting my schedule down by at least half.

Getting my weekends back.

Staying caught up.

Focusing on the things that actually matter.

This whole week has been offloading my responsibilities, and I have to tell you, it has been nothing short of terrifying. Put another way: Trusting other people is terrifying. But, I’ve gotten back into the habit of leaning into that feeling. What’s this really about? Why am I so scared of this? I trust people all the time in my job. I have to. In order to let people grow, I have to trust them to do the work. So why is this such a sticky wicket? I sat back and really actually listened to my anxiety instead of just indulging it. The answer was, of course, not rational. Something about patterns repeating and my needs will not get met and my business will fail. None of it was rational.

I’m still sitting with this and now that I know what my anxiety is saying, I can continue to train that midbrain, because there is quite literally no evidence that my admin staff is not trustworthy. It’s already working, by the way.

The reason? They have better boundaries with my anxiety than I do because they’re not experiencing it. They probably spend more time telling me they’ve got what I’ve asked of them and that I can take my hands out of it now please than they should, but that’s already getting better. It’s an adjustment, to be sure, but one that’s been necessary for over a year.

Then I went to this training this weekend. I’ve been to it before and can always count on getting a lot out of it, because the presenters are always amazing. This year was a bit different because there was a new presenter, so I was a tiny bit nervous, but I trust the people putting on the training to have good people presenting the information.

It was a game-changer. I was present for the whole fucking thing. I was engaged with the presenter and the material, I had hugely important moments of insight, and though I am going back to work today and I am super tired, I go back armed with really important ways to either tweak or validate what I’m doing and how I approach things. I feel more professionally confident than I have since I opened this business, and my ideals are as strong as ever.

Most importantly, though, I’m unstuck. I was in some really difficult and toxic patterns, and because of my position, no matter how much I talked about them, the change had/has to come from me and I have to be ok with that. I have to constantly reassure myself that the onus of this change being on me is for my own well-being and that this is how I’m breaking the toxic cycle of taking all of the responsibility for all of the wrong things, and that this isn’t like the patterns in my personal life where I’m the one doing all the work because no one else is - that’s not true here.

I feel better. I finally feel better.

Wow.

I’ve been obsessed with a particular make and model of a car for…we’ll say several years. I bought it yesterday, and here are some things I said to myself throughout the process, which has been over several months:

“No way will I ever be able to afford it.”

And then I started making enough income to pay off every cent of my credit card debt. I had a lot. It will all be gone by this time in April.

“No way will I be able to get them to sell me this car for under $40,000.”

I’m…we’ll say very persuasive and a good negotiator and I had a Very Good Education that taught me how to be a master manipulator (by the way, I'm on an active crusade to de-load that word because it’s flung at people as if it’s a character flaw and we all do it. Every single one of us. Soapbox for another time.). As in, I used my favorite counseling skill and when they were doing the hard sell on sticker price, I told them my price and just…sat in silence. Want to see someone squirm in general, especially when they’re trying hard to tell you something? Just sit. Wait them out. Then, when they were trying to give me The Package (you know, how they do) at the end, they were all, “here are these amenities. See how pretty they are? See how pretty this car is? If you opt in it’ll be an extra $200 per month.”

Nope! And also, that door-in-the-face technique is BLATANT and must be super effective.

“Ok. Let me play with some numbers.”

Ok. And I just sat in silence while the person simultaneously squirmed and punched in numbers on their keyboard, not saying a word. It’s hilarious how uncomfortable people are with silence.

“Oh my god. I can give you that whole package and your payment will go up $8 per month. How did that happen? I have no idea how that happened.”

That’s right. Eight dollars a month down from two hundred on a warranty THAT EVEN COVERS MY TIRES for the next seven years, and unlimited miles. 

Also, I know how that happened. I’m not someone who can be fleeced and I knew that $8 per month was still a little high but I took it anyway. That’s how.

“People are going to think I’m entitled and privileged.”

First, I am. Full ownership. I had the privilege enough to walk into a car dealership and drive off in a Mercedes GLA 250 and had the hubris to negotiate exactly what I wanted. Have I have historically Thought Things about people who drive luxury cars? Yes. Not for a long while, but I had a definite phase in my very early life. A definite one.

“This car is too much.”

For some godforsaken reason, it doesn’t stick with me how much I drive. I drive to Boston at least three times a month, often more. I drive up to Plymouth once a week. I drive to all of my different offices on a regular basis. I looked at leasing, but unless I wanted to have my monthly payment go up by NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH, it was out of the question. I bought The Blueberry new, and I will never do that again, even though they totally gave me more for it than I owed. A lot more. And it had 65,000 miles on it. Not bad overall, but I also bought it about 10 months before COVID hit. Before that, I put, on average, 40,000 miles a year on my cars. (My top number was 55,000 one year. Yeah, I was in grad school and commuting 110 miles a day round trip five days a week.)

So, I have this beautiful new-to-me car in my driveway now. The only thing left is to get over my fear of being judged (both by myself and others), which will come with time, I hope. I don’t feel bad about buying it, but I know I’ll feel awesome about it when I can stop justifying why I bought it and rest in the idea that it was a smart decision.

And adjust to the learning curve, because there’s a very large one with this car and also I can use it like Siri and say “hey Mercedes, I’m cold” AND IT WILL HEAT UP MY SEAT. AND THE SEATS AUTO ADJUST TO HELP ME GET IN AND OUT EASILY AND ALSO WHILE I’M DRIVING SO THAT I DON’T FALL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. (That’s never been a problem for me, but it’s nice to have that safety in there.)

Do I know how to turn it on and off and put it in the correct gear? Kind of. I’m learning. It took me three tries to shut it off last night because screw key fobs, but I’ll get there. Also my car has an app now. I fully expect to get in my car and be all, “what is all of this shit?” When I get in because that’s how I do, but I’ll get there.

Vestibular Migraines and New Information

Last week's chaotic good?

My ENT appointment.

As I mentioned before, I have been occasionally experiencing total hearing loss in my left ear. It lasts a few days, is sometimes a little painful, and is always accompanied by dizziness, but not to a debilitating degree. I talked to my neurosurgeon about it since it's been happening since my brain surgery. She wanted to get an audiogram to make sure that it was nothing to do with my hearing (and it isn't - but then again, I was not experiencing one of these episodes during the audiogram.)

As with all chaotic good lately, I didn't have to look for it because it presented itself immediately. I was in my appointment with my ENT, and he asked what was going on. You know my answer?

"I unapologetically use Q-Tips to clean my ears. This is not that." Good thing he was wearing a mask, but I'm 90% sure that if I had seen his entire face, he would've been scowling. I definitely heard a heavy sigh and when I called him out on it - as in, "I heard that heavy sigh" and he laughed - he said, "I don't have to tell you how dangerous that is for your ears." My response? "Nope! But that also won't stop me. Also I was cleaning my ear out with a Q-tip yesterday, and I hit something and it was so painful I had to sit down for a minute and almost blacked out."

He did a...we'll call it thorough exam of my ear canal. All the while talking in general about Q-tips. He definitely wanted to get the point across that under no circumstances should I be cleaning my ears out with them.

Message received. Still doing it. Just did it this morning, as a matter of fact.

We then had a rather humorous conversation about cranberry juice and I told him that if it was Meniere's disease, I'd choke it down every day if I had to. I effing hate cranberry juice. I also made the point that when I called him about this issue a few months ago and was told to drink said cranberry juice, that was hands down the weirdest medical advice I'd ever gotten, and he chuckled and was like "yeah, I get it."

During this discussion, he asked me some very thought-provoking questions and took a more thorough migraine history than any doctor I've ever had (yes offense, neurology team). I was confused why he was asking these questions, and so I asked! You know what he said? "Migraines don't just go away, Ryan. Your body changes, as yours has drastically over the past two years, and they shapeshift. But they don't just go away. I think you are having vestibular migraines."

I hadn't even put it together, but the pattern fits. I get them about as frequently as I was getting migraines before my brain surgery, and while the pain isn't there and the light sensitivity isn't either, I have a hunch that he's right based on the symptoms he rattled off about vestibular migraines.

Do I like this theory? I absolutely do not. I thought I hadn't had a migraine in four months, yet I'd had this problem about 11 times in that time period. His solution is a tricyclic antidepressant, oddly enough, but it's also used to prevent migraines. So, we're going to try that for a little while and see what happens.

In other news, this week's chaotic good was that my voice healed from the botox and the flu and the gross. I definitely belted out Lizzo in my car yesterday on my way home from work and I'm so stoked that I can't even. I won't overdo it. Yeah, that's a lie. This is the first time I've had a full voice in a year and a half, and I'm taking it for a ride until the filler wears off in a month and a half or so.

There's also my hair (which is so ridiculous and I currently look like Gilda Radner, but I absolutely love it) and the fact that there was a bat in one of my offices yesterday, and life has been full of shenanigans that are funny even when they're not funny.

This chaotic good thing is going to work out just fine.

Chaotic Good

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I think they're bullshit and from what I see from my vantage point, what ends up happening is that people who can't follow through with them, which is most of us, are left feeling less than when they give up the ghost on a goal that was likely unrealistic, but they couldn't admit that to themselves.

Instead, I set intentions. I start to figure out what I want to manifest the coming year.

Do you know what one of my favorite things is? Chaotic good. It's when someone is trying to do good, and the outcome is good, but hoo boy, the route to that good thing is...chaotic. Or maybe the good thing creates chaos. Either way, chaotic good is my jam. Anything that will flip the table on me and snap me into a better frame of mind is worth paying attention to, because that's hard to do in general.

So, my primary intention? Find the chaotic good.

Some examples, you say? Of course! My very first one, and it happened on like January 2:

I found this tea that I am absolutely WILD about. Chocolate Hazelnut decaf tea by my favorite tea company (Stash, if you're wondering. No this is not a plug for them, because that's not the purpose of this story, but in case you want to try some pretty amazing tea, there ya go. They have like a million flavors.), and you can order a gajillion of them on Amazon. So I ordered a box of 100, knowing that I was going to blow through it because hyperfixations, and I expected it to come maybe in 10 boxes of 10, or 5 boxes of 20, or some other neat way.

Nope!

What I got was this:

One hundred tea bags, packed like that. I laughed so hard when I opened the box that I needed a minute to not hyperventilate.

I still randomly laugh about it from time to time when I walk past it, because how do you even put tea away like this, so let's just keep it in the box since I drink like six cups a day of it anyway.

I also tried amigurumi last week, and it came out not terrible! My first project was a narwhal. I named him Eddie and his fins are uneven and his horn is HILARIOUS. I'm trying a unicorn next.

Also, the business that I run is chaotic good. Do I want to throw things at least once a day? Yes. But I also kiiiiiind of live for it. It's also gained the kind of financial stability that I've been hoping for over the last three months or so, and I went from "Am I going to make payroll this week?" to "Yes I can Pay Myself Fully and Consistently and I won't Bankrupt This Business" kiiiiind of abruptly, and I'm pretty relieved about that. We're also on an even keel at this point around how the day-to-day operations are happening; just gotta hammer out a few other very tiny things, and we're good to go. I'm trying hard not to manifest an office in the Lakes Region, because I DO NOT NEED a fourth office, and that's working at this point. The thought pops into my head daily, but I'm not going there right now. Three is enough at this point in time and I have no intention of opening any offices for at least three years, thank you.

My most recent chaotic good is my favorite, and they just keep getting better. Are you ready?

Seriously, hold on to your hat.

Snoop Dogg made a Youtube channel called "Doggyland" and it's full of kids' songs and affirmation videos for kids. 

I just.

I was scrolling social media like I do, and up popped a video of a parent lip syncing to one of his affirmation videos. I was stunned for a minute when I realized that it was, in fact, Snoop Dogg, and the video mentioned that he has created a ton of content like this. Feel free to click on that link and enjoy.

I also think I had chaotic good yesterday? I tried float therapy. It's sensory deprivation while you float in warm salt water for an hour. Did I come alarmingly close to a panic attack and have to leave after 30 minutes? Yes. But it's also given me something to work on, and that's definitely...something.

Anyway. Over the next few weeks, I'll have less of a mental capacity to look for chaotic good, which tells me that I have to lean in and work harder to find it. Follow-up-palooza is happening in February and March (and starts right on February 2 with an audiogram to figure out why I randomly lose hearing in my left ear from time to time since the brain surgery and will likely end with an endocolonoscopy in April), and I become a pretty insufferable human during follow-up-plaooza. I try to give myself some grace - Brain MRIs are stressful. Thyroid and lymph node ultrasounds are stressful.  Getting poked a million times to get blood taken or get contrast is stressful. Driving in Boston during morning rush hour is stressful. Of course, the self-validation is nice, but it doesn't lower my anxiety level. Self-care is literally the only option to help me during this time.

So, I decided that since my brain MRI is the week of February vacation, I'm taking that whole week off. Rob and I are going to see Hamilton that week too, so why not just lean into it and make my two days off five? Follow-up-palooza means ramping up the self-care, and I like that I know that and I'm not fighting against it finally.

I've also realized that self-care isn't supposed to be something that I fight against, but I have continually again and again and again. I mean, it's not torturous, or at least it doesn't have to be, yet I have historically resisted like someone's trying to get national secrets out of me or something. And I wonder why I get sick whenever I stop? Really?

I'll learn one of these days.