Had the visit from the lady from Assisted Living this morning.
About an hour before the 10 am visit, I was getting so (irrationally) nervous about the whole thing that I decided to take an Alprazolam to steady myself.
What then followed was a fascinating feeling of my anxiety and the drug duking it out in my blood stream. I could clearly feel my mind trying to assert its adrenalized state against the calm, cool feel of the Alprazolam.
Every time I say the name of that drug, I expect a genie to appear.
I did manage to get some cleaning done before our morning guest arrives. My funky little grotto is nowhere near clean but it’s a lot cleanER than it was before.
I will continue to peck away at the job, a lil here and a lil there, until I have cleaned up my room for the first time since we moved in here a decade ago.
It’s important that I have gotten the job started. I am going to try my best to solidify the lesson that cleaning is really no big deal, despite what the forces of evil in my mind say, and I am free to make my environment more pleasant and decent whenever I like.
OK, enough preliminaries, on to the visit.
She was nice. Had an accent I couldn’t place. Kind of like Russian but not quite. So maybe her language of origin is a related Slovak tongue of some sort.
Basically, she asked me two tons of questions about myself and my needs. I was glad that Julian was also there, as that helped me stay calm almost as much as the Alprazolam did. Thanks Julian!
On the less fun level, tussling with my anxiety this morning did remind me that I am, in fact, a crazy person.
And yet, in a weird way, that made me feel better. It felt good to feel anxious because it still beats feeling numb. I’d rather get freaked out and take a pill than just feel nothing.
At least being scared makes me feel alive.
Anyhow, we went over a ton of stuff. For example, there’s a sort of drop in program for people with disabilities she wants me to try. They meet once a week and stay from around 9 am to 2 pm, having lunch together as well as occasional snacks.
And I know it’s something I should at least try. I need some way of breaking out of my limited world of Denny’s and Wound Care. I need to meet new people and learn to socialize and essentially finally get the kindergarten education I missed way back when I was of preschool age.
But obviously, the idea of doing that REALLY sets off my socially anxious/Avoidant side. So if I am to give this thing a try, I will have to climb that mountain first.
Undoubtedly I would take another Alprazolam before heading there.
We also talked about a program where once a week, I could go to an old folks’ home and the staff there would use their walk-in tubs and such to give me a shower.
I… really would rather not be washed by another person. Like most people, I have not been washed by someone else since I was a toddler. I would much rather go into the walk in tub by myself and wash myself, with a staff member standing by in case something goes wrong.
She is also referring me to an occupational therapist who will assess my physical needs. I didn’t bother telling her that I had seen one twice, both times when I was leaving the hospital after a long-ish stay, and yet, somehow, nothing came of it.
Probably because there was something I was supposed to do to get the ball rolling but I missed it in the deluge of information they keep subjecting me to.
And the social worker this morning was no exception. So much information given to me all at once, without a break, and I am expected to somehow remember it all?
I can’t do that. By this time next week, I will have forgotten most or all of it.
If these people want me to do a whole bunch of things, they are going to have to make me an itinerary.
Otherwise my foggy mind won’t be able to retain any of it.
More after the break.
Two kinds of memory
I can hear you asking, “But Fruvous, you are so academically gifted. Why can’t you apply that to all the medical information they throw at you?”
At least I think that’s you I hear asking. Might be Floyd.
Good question, you and/or Floyd. Why can’t I treat these medical infodumps like lectures at school and just passively absorb the info?
Well, for one, it’s not a lecture in that it is aimed directly at me, not an audience of students that happens to include me, and therefore it is a lot more stressful, and stress inhibits memory formation.
Also, it involves a mix of things I’m supposed to remember and things I am supposed to do, and that’s a lot more complex than a regular lecture.
Additionally, there’s the fact that I am out of practice when it comes to academic learning. Haven’t been in school since 2018 or so.
And finally, academic learning tends to fit into an overall pattern of knowledge that I have been subconsciously learning through the whole course, whereas these medical tsunamis are quite out of context in my life.
What I really need to do is take my tablet to these meetings and record them. Along with taking pictures of whatever documents they hand me.
Eh, who am I kidding? I would probably still end up utterly lost.
And yet, it’s not like I am being treated any differently than anyone else. So these infodumps must not be a problem for most people.
At least I have Julian to help me make sense of it all.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.