stormdog | Entries tagged with panic

I've continued to be a mess. No surprise there I suppose.

My neck and shoulder continue to be in pain. This morning, though, it was improved enough that when I woke up I was able to roll over and lie on my stomach for a while. That's been mostly out of the question for about two weeks, so that's a relief.

I tried to go to a walk-in clinic on Tuesday, but the two that I went to did not have walk-in hours that day, and I gave up. It was nice to be called "ma'am" at the second one at least.
On Wednesday, there was a trans and allies night at a local brewery, Malty National, that Miriam and I talked about going to. We ended up not staying long because of Covid exposure, and I've been having a really hard time since then. I wrote:

Miriam and I got to the trans and allies event yesterday and only stayed for 10 minutes or so because even though the building wasn't very crowded yet, C0₂ levels were already pretty high. High C0₂ levels indicate poor ventilation, and are a proxy for one risk factor for Covid transmission. I bumped into someone I know from the online group who invited me to join them for pizza (which I couldn't eat because of the respirator), but I declined and went home with Miriam. And then I intended to be in the online meeting for the trans group on Wednesday, but I was too distracted and/or distressed and missed it.

I'm having a really hard time with this. I don't know how many more years of this I can deal with. I don't know what else to do. I'm sad and lonely.

I'm still having a really hard time with this, three days later. That, on top of being sick and being in pain have really destroyed what regularity I'd managed to find in my schedule with exercising and managing my food better. It's really hard for me to feel like anything is really worth doing in the abstract long term.

That said, I'm working on trying to get a CV done to either submit for academic library/archives jobs or to construct resumes from as necessary. If I get it done, I'm going to order some pizza for myself, because at least immediate tangible rewards feel somewhat motivating.

I do rather like the picture of myself I took when I got a little dressed up to go out, ane before I had to put a big ugly respirator on my face. This is the ear I'm going to get a helix piercing on, as soon as my mental health is good enough to manage taking care of it.

Yesterday, I was having something like a panic attack in the morning. I wrote:

My brain is a mess lately.

This morning, a combination of two things are in there. 1: I have to get out of bed to take care of animals even if taking care of myself doesn't matter. 2: What if something happens to Miriam (who is going to a job-related thing) and she's just gone without me even getting a chance to see her again, like my dad. I was in tears at the door as she was leaving, asking her to please be safe as though she's going to visit a war zone instead of driving across town to the university.

Today, though, with the pain reduced and the chaos in my brain a bit more under control, I'm going to write about my ideas for my upcoming name change.

Miriam and I have been in the new/old place for a couple nights now. Overall, it's wonderful. We have a couch we don't hate. We have room that isn't taken up by a bunch of furniture we don't need and that isn't ours. We have nice big windows in the living room we can open up and enjoy the breeze through. It's been a long road getting here, and there's still a lot of stuff to move from the old place, but we're near the end.

Though IKEA had said they would reschedule for Wednesday, I called on Monday to ask what the status was. I was sitting at the apartment when I called. The person on the phone said it would be there in the next hour.

"You said the next day?" I asked.

"No, in the next hour."

"I better get over there to receive it then!"

And I did, so I would have been pretty annoyed if they were a no show as seems to have happened to so many people leaving reviews for them. But they did in fact show up, so that's finally all done.

We spent the first night sleeping here on Tuesday. That makes 337 days, or approximately 11 months, since the fire. I fervently hope this will facilitate a return to some kind of normalcy.

Honestly, though, things don't really feel normal with my dad being dead. Sometimes I don't think about it for a while, but sometimes it hits me pretty hard. The latest such hit was when something reminded me of Christmas and I thought about the first Christmas without him. For the last years, while I was overseas or in Canada, we at least hung out on Zoom on the holiday, and on New Years. I really wish I hadn't been unable to be there in person. I would finally have been this year.

Yesterday I tried to use the oven for the first time. I briefly started it up without realizing the instructions were still in it, and that scared me a lot. But I took them out and tried to get all the remains of the protective plastic off the door because I realized some of it was still wrapped around inside the door frame. I had trouble with that, and Miriam and I looked up what you're supposed to do when starting a new oven. We learned that you're supposed to let it heat up to 500 degrees and sit for a while so it can burn residue and oil used in the manufacturing process. I couldn't get myself to set it that high, but I managed 450.

We had bought a toaster oven recently at a garage sale, so Miriam suggested I make dinner in that instead. I started the toaster oven up, but started having a lot of fear about this unfamiliar device. It being on top of the counter was scaring me in particular, because the fire inspector had said that our faulty oven had gotten so hot it ignited the cabinetry through radiant heat. The irrational fear that this would happen again because of the toaster oven was almost making me panic, so I turned that back off and Miriam comforted me a bit while we waited the half hour for the oven to do its burn in.

On the couch, I started feeling even more fear. This situation was *so* like the one that started the fire. Turning the oven up to a high temperature and leaving it alone. On top of that, a little smoke (which is to be expected) was escaping from the oven vent. I kept intently watching the oven, waiting for something horrible to happen and unable to look away for fear that it would.

I can't remember if it was after the process was done or even before it when I collapsed against Miriam and started sobbing uncontrollably for a while. It was pretty bad as panic attacks go; hyperventilation, crying, stuffed up nose, terror. Miriam let me lean against her and take comfort from her touch and I managed to get under control eventually. Then we ordered delivery.

I'm going to try again tonight. I think it will be ok without having to do the burn-in.

Stuff from yesterday:

I went to the dog park with the intent of walking for an hour while Ella ran around, but the whole place was like walking through a living cloud of mosquitoes. Someone even gave me some bug spray and they were *still* getting me. Ugh. I left after about 10 minutes.

In the evening, I unexpectedly smelled a burning-related smell and had a rush of fear. I had to be 100% sure that the smell was outside (it was) before that fear reduced. I'm not sure if it was the wildfire smoke making it to southern Saskatchewan or if it was neighbors barbecuing, or what. But I closed the windows again.

Also yesterday evening, with the kitchen cabinetry being installed in the condo in the near future, Miriam and I talked about still not knowing how insurance is going to pay for appliances, what our budget for them is, when they should be chosen, or anything like that. At some point, our adjuster said that they would be covered by the condo corporations policy not ours.

We asked the rebuild manager, Pamela, who's been managing lighting, plumbing, flooring, cabinetry, and just about everything, about it. She said we should ask our insurance adjuster. We asked him and he said we should talk to the condo board and/or their adjuster. We asked them and they said we should talk to the contractor that is doing the work. We thought that was Pamela, since her title is flooring/rebuild manager and told the condo adjuster she told us to talk to our insurance.

The condo adjuster said we should talk to a project manager at the company Pamela is with and that Pamela is a flooring manager, not a project manager, so she can't help us with this. Her title in her email signature is flooring/rebuild manager, but ok. Now we're waiting on hearing from a different person at Pamela's company.

We are having some anxiety that it will turn out *nobody* is paying for the appliances and that they will come out of our personal possessions fund in direct contradiction to what our adjuster told us months ago, but he's a crappy communicator so it could happen. We have not been budgeting any of that for replacing appliances, so that would throw a wrench in things.

We also were just told, by the condo insurance adjuster, that our stove will *not* be covered because it caused the fire. If our adjuster didn't suck at his job, we would have known that *long* ago and been able to plan around it.

There's been just one really competent person in all of this; Pamela. Her communication is great and she gets shit done. We're going to send her an email once this is all over telling her how much we appreciate her unusual and remarkable level of effectiveness. She's really been a pleasure to work with.
And lastly, it just feels petty to me to not cover the stove, you know?

In other news, yesterday I heated up the chicken sausages we'd bought in our last grocery collection yesterday for lunch for Miriam and I. As I took them out of the microwave, I smelled something that was really disturbing me. I actually can't remember after that whether I asked Miriam to come and smell them or get them out of the microwave, or what. But they were out of the microwave on the counter and I put mine in buns and put cheese and mustard on them and took a bite of one and I was scared and distressed and told Miriam that I could not eat them. I think it was then that I realized that they smelled like the condo after the fire.

Looking at the packaging, I realized they were made with smoked chicken, and I was smelling and tasting the smoke. In the past, I would have said that I didn't really know what a smoked taste was. I would eat smoked meat and question whether being smoked had any effect on my experience of eating them. I wasn't sure if my sense of taste was even good enough to notice any smoke flavor. Well, it is.

And that triggered my first crying panic attack about the condo in some time now. They're definitely getting further apart, so that's good.

I also tried to put the used king bed that I bought a few days ago together in the living room to take measurements yesterday and realized that I'm just not going to be able to do that in this space. I had a lot of fear and anxiety and shame that the bed would turn out not to fit a standard king mattress and slat base and it would become horribly complicated to make it work and we'd have wasted all our time and money on it and it would all be my fault.

So yesterday was already turning out to be difficult for me, even before the news about my grandmother.

I had possibly the most severe panic attack since the fire yesterday.

I was already stressed because I went with Miriam to a doctor appointment and then drove with her to the condo to get my bike. Driving to the condo is still hard. The car was also handling weirdly that day in a way that makes checking the tires over a priority.

But when we got home and out of the car, there was a burning smell in the air. I asked Miriam if that was our car making that smell, but she didn't know. (She said later she couldn't smell it at all.) It persisted on the short walk from our parking space to our front door, my fear that it was coming from our apartment increasing all the while. My reaction to crises is typically to deal with it as it happens and have emotions about it later, so I didn't realize just how much it was terrifying me until we got inside and saw that all was well.

Miriam went further in to use the bathroom. I sat on the little bench by the front door to take my shoes off and quickly lost all ability to do anything but put my head in my hands, rock back and forth, and sob.

Miriam came back out and helped me get out of my shoes and got me to the couch. I think it took 15 or 20 minutes of crying against her while she walked me through some grounding exercises and told me we were safe and it was ok before my brain was working again, and I kept having moments of panic through the rest of the day, off and on. Even writing about it now, my breathing is a little ragged sometimes as I think about it.

I don't know how I'd get through this without Miriam. She says the same about me, so I guess we're doing things right.

Sometime later yesterday, when I next had to take the dog out, the burning smell was still in the air but it didn't incapacitate me again. I'm still not sure what it was: it was reminiscent of the smell in the air after a fireworks display, or the smell of overheated mechanical equipment with petrochemical lubrication, but I don't know. I'm glad it's gone now.

One good thing about today: I was able to drive to the condo without having a panic attack. Last time, even though I drove a different route to avoid the place I saw all the emergency vehicles driving by me on the day of, I still had a panic attack and had to ask Miriam to take over.

A second good thing about today: I was dressed fem on Miriam and my trip to Costco today. I think one couple might have been looking at me and talking about me in another language, but I did the thing! The fact that my facial hair seems less noticeable in general even after just one laser session makes a difference.

Though I'm actually afraid, because some of the hair looks so much lighter than before, that laser damaged the follicles in a way that makes the hair lack pigment, and now laser won't work on it. I guess I'll just have to see how it goes.

When I was biking to school every day, I got out and rode regardless of the weather. I took a perverse pleasure in days when the weather was negative double digits before windchill because it meant I could prove how hardcore I was about bike commuting.

Now, walking around the block with the dog while the temperature hovers around freezing is more than I really want to deal with. True, that's partly because I'm not really dressing appropriately. That's because getting the gear together is more than I want to deal with some mornings. I'm feeling a lot better lately, but I still have some distance to go.

I was feeling pretty emotionally unstable yesterday. I'd had trouble sleeping; I kept starting awake just before falling asleep, feeling panicky and breathing heavily. I slept on the couch with Piper to avoid keeping Danae awake. Most of that morning, I felt physical effects of anxiety and fear; it sat in my chest, squeezing. I don't know why. I was feeling better by the afternoon, but I still had exaggerated emotional reactions to things. Printed instructions from the vet on keeping Piper from licking her sutures made me think about so many dogs who are confused about their situation. Licking themselves because they don't understand, getting very sick, feeling miserable; I felt like crying a few times while thinking about it.

Piper and I did go to the vet yesterday to get her sutures looked at. She has a minor skin infection, and now has a course of antibiotics to kick it out. The stitches should come out in a week, and in the meantime we have an e-collar for her to keep her from licking. Nathan decided that she looks like a queen in her big blue fabric collar and that perhaps she's gained a rank. I smiled. Later, I tried not to think about the implication that her mother and/or father had died.