I’ve recently realized that I have gotten quite gassy lately.
As is my usual mode lately, now that I’ve noticed it, I can see that it has, in fact, be building up slowly for a long, long time.
Starting at least as far back as when I had those weird attacks where ended up (grossness alert) horking up an enormous ball of lung butter in like a belch from hell.
Got over that, thank god. I think I just subconsciously learned to burp more often, and to be more “open” in general.
Better out than in, like I always say. Especially when you have IBS like me and holding it in can lead to hours of painful cramping.
It’s not easy being me.
Anyhow, yeah, I realize I have been burping a lot more lately, and it’s been getting worse over time, and it has me worried.
Because as comical as gas can be, when it gets like this, it generally means something is wrong with your digestive system and that is leading to under-digested food making it into the lower intestine, where it ferments and produces gas.
This is, incidentally, why old people get gassy too.
So I am worried that my digestive system is not doing its job properly, and I need to get that looked after.
Sure, why the hell not, everything else is failing, why not my gut?
Once more, I wish I could just check myself into the medical equivalent of an auto shop and tell them to check everything. Don’t ask me questions, just pretend I came to you unconscious and you have to figure me out with instruments.
Because my responses aren’t normal, Doc. In general, I always feel like I am not giving people whatever it is they expect of me, but it’s especially bad with doctors and other medical professionals. I describe my symptoms as best as I can and I can see that they just don’t add up in their heads.
And it’s particularly stressful because the stakes are so high.
Life of death, even.
So some time soon, I need to see (or, I guess, call) Doctor Chao, my GP, and get him to check me out on some more levels.
I’m a tad worried bout my lungs too. Some of the shortness of breath I was having went away when I got my stents but not all of it.
Plus my untreated sleep apnea and my under-treated diabetes and… sigh.
It’s all so complicated and stressful, with way too much stuff I am supposed to know an act on, and it all makes me want to run away and hide until a grownup comes to tell me what to do.
That’s all. Just tell me what to do right now. And keep telling me. I can’t figure it out myself. I need someone to cut through the complications and red tape and just give me a clear set of instructions to follow.
I am so very lost.
Someone please come to get me.
And take me home.
More after the break.
The eternally arriving curry
So, half an hour ago, my Indian food was twenty minutes away.
Fifteen minutes later and it’s 15 minutes away.
Now it’s been twenty minutes since I ordered and it’s 5 minutes away.
I’m getting a real Xeno’s Paradox feeling here.
On being crazy
First, quick update : the curry arrived. Huzzah!
Anyhoo, being crazy is a hard thing to wrap your (warped) head around.
Because no matter how much you tell yourself that your perceptions are distorted and untrustworthy, they are still all you’ve got. Still your only window on the world.
So most of the time, you have to believe them. As much as one might want to aggressively challenge one’s every perception with one’s mighty powers of reason like some kind of 60’s science fiction hero, in reality you just can’t keep that up all the time.
And when your particular flavour of crazy is depression, the distortions are subtle and therefore require a much higher level of metacognition than actual hallucinations.
If you look out the window and see a thirty foot tall flaming moose playing banjo, you can be reasonably sure there is no such thing and therefore know you are hallucinating and can choose to either ignore the creature or join in on mandolin.
But if you look out the window and see your neighbor Greg and instantly know that Greg hates you and wishes you’d just die already,” that’s much harder to discount.
Still, I try. I use my own powers of rational analysis to challenge the distortions of my mental illness when I can.
I reassure myself that thoughts like “all my friends secretly hate me and resent having to put up with me and only do so out of pity” are not supported by the evidence at all, and do not connect to any rational worldview, and that helps pull me out of the mire.
It’s not the right solution for everyone, but it works for me.
Some of the time, at least. But it’s a poor substitute for proper brain chemistry. And there are plenty of times when the bad chemicals are simply too much and I have no choice but to think and feel things I know are not true.
And that’s when I truly feel crazy. And it’s fucking terrifying.
Because only insanity can fuck over your entire universe. If you mind goes there is no way of escaping it. It makes you acutely aware of being trapped in your own skull and that is not a feeling I would wish on anyone.
We are our minds. Our brains. And they are our universes. We only ever get this one body, this one brain, this one life. One identity, one set of arbitrary indicators (gender, race, country of birth, etc), one plotline in a story of billions.
And I find that very sad.
I suppose that’s kind of crazy, too.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.