too tired to blog

Now being THAT tired doesn't happen often! Goes without saying though that it wasn't tired enough to go to sleep early. Spent this morning sleeping in the bath. With a basket of little birds next to me, so when they screamed lots I could half wake up, feed them, lie back saying to myself that I must wash and get out now. Repeat last sentence every half hour.

Lack of desire to get up has been around for a while, but the Leponex is definitely contributing. Haven't had to sleep in the morning like this since we tried the Prothiaden, which made me sleep all night, all morning (after a location shift to the bath), and all afternoon (location shift to the couch). Before we gave up on it having any a/d effect at all, I worked out that most days I was asleep for at least 18 hours.

Busy day at the centre yesterday - more than half the shift (all new people) just failed to rock up. Left me with an absolute full house in the clinic, and one person to do the outside feeds. To give her due credit, she worked her ass off, and between us, we got almost up to date by 13h00. Hadn't been able to take birds to the vet in the morning, so instead of going home, I did the vet runs. Back to the centre in time to sort out a few more waifs and strays, and do handover on the vet cases that I'd brought back. Got home eventually at 17h30 - for a half day shift! Brought lots of little ones, including 3 red-headed finch nestlings. Too sweet. The skin in their mouths is black dots on a white background, so that when mommy brings food she has a very visible target to aim for in the dark nest. They are still adapting to mommy not looking quite the same as she did two days ago, but once they do, there is a never ending, low-pitched hum from them, broken only by a ten-fold increase in volume when the nest is touched. Just in case the food giver is in doubt about where to deliver...

I don't know if I can actually do the whole wild-care thing anymore. I am becoming obsessed with the ones that I can't save again. Last Jan it was so bad that I eventually stopped doing shifts at all, and then ended up in hospital for 3 weeks, when we started the Parnate. Which did nothing. Up till then I'd been doing 5 shifts at least every week, and I've never gotten back to that. Now I'm mostly doing one or two, but making up for it by doing more and more of the pickups and catches. And I have my own huge collection of mynahs and pigeons, and the babies that I bring home from the clinic. But I am looking at them with this little devil on my shoulder the whole time that says 'don't love them, they are all going to die anyway because you are so crap at caring for them'. Statistically, depending on the species and the age, I know that some of them will definitely die - amongst the species that I chose to take, and the little, pink, eyeball-less ones, I know that it's likely that at least 1 third will die, some of them up to 2 thirds. I tell myself not to take these ones, but then I feel the guilt anyway, if they stay in the clinic, because when we are so busy they end up missing out on some of the feeds they should ideally have.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Sometimes I am sure that I have the best possible job in the world. Other times, like now, it's probably going to be the cherry on top of the suicide cake...

aching muscles

Well... going to bed early, taking Leponex very early, phone call from t-doc, alarm and two reminders on phone all failed to get me up and awake at 06h30. Not a total disaster, because I did leap up at 07h30, made coffee, fed the cats, slung all the birdies into baskets feeding as I went, put food out for stay-at-homes, and leaped into the swimming pool instead of having a bath. That confused hell out of the dogs... mommy washing her hair in somewhat chilly water while cursing fluently. Out the pool, into denims and rehab tee-shirt, birds in car as I delivered food to aviary birds, coffee as I ran back and forward past it, a gulp at a time. Probably a new record for me : wake up to closing gate in only twenty three minutes. So only about 15 minutes late - although it will probably result in a few more speeding fines. Last month I distinguished myself by getting 7 separate fines (these devious little cameras that they hide on the side of the road, and move every day or so. So by the time you find there was one there, it's gone elsewhere, and you can't go beat it to smithereens. Although, I have to confess that the same intersection got me three times in four days, twice going south, and then one going north.). None of them are really really fast - it's all things like doing 119 in a 100 km/h zone, or 91 in an 80 km/h zone. But they have recently increased the fines substantially, as well as lowering the limits for which they can haul you to court without the option of paying the fine. So I really need to work on leaving to go places with enough time so that I don't have to speed. Haha. With my current abysmal failing at doing anything when it should be done, I seem to permanently disorganised and late for things. Guess if there is nothing you want to do, and nowhere you want to go.....

So apart from working my way from one end of the clinic to the other, and then going back to the beginning because it was already time for the next feed, at least one of the other good volunteers came in unexpectedly. She is a 4th year vet student, so we could just divide the clinic in half and just do our bits without either of us having to check on the other. And it also means having someone to hold the birds when medicating. Especially the Gymnogene (African Harrier Hawk), which is a raptor about 24 inches long - and has lots of sharp, pointy bits that need to be restrained while a gastric tube is inserted and food and meds are tubed. It can be done singlehandedly, but much easier with someone to hold the bird. None of the afternoon shift turned up, so there will be crap about that next week, but luckily the morning shift were very generous with time, and prepared all the afternoon feeds for the cases that are in outside aviaries. That helped enormously.

Worst bit : finding a dead Barn Owl in one of the outside aviaries when I did a round to check on all the cases. I hate it when owls die. And Barnies have such sweet, lovable little faces. I don't think anyone at the centre doesn't have a really soft spot for them.

Best part : getting a call for a large lizardy thing that needed catching and relocation from a suburban garden. Info - a metre long, up a tree, very angry. No idea of what exactly it was. Our indigenous monitors and iguanas are normally very aggressive. They can take a finger off with a bite, and have been known to break ribs and fingers with a lash of the tail. No-one else willing and able to take the call. Most of the calls like this one are done by either Bosslady or me, and there are about another 4 people who could do it, but no-one around today. So I went to catch the beastie, armed with gloves, nets, large dustbin to transport him in, and my fingers crossed that I wouldn't screw it up and lose him. It was also the first time I had been able to sit for longer than a minute all day (time was 12h50). With lots of help from the home owners who'd called us, I eventually netted and binned one very unhappy Green Iguana - after I'd been balancing on a 4m ladder and sawing off branches so that I could get my net around to where he was sitting. Needless to say, all this was done with sweat dripping and adrenalin pumping.

Longest part : trying to be friendly and polite to everyone, when all I wanted to do was just run for home and cry.

What I would like most right now : someone to hold and love and who would be very generous and massage my neck and shoulders into some semblance of pain-free movement. Wishful thinking...


And I'd better move my fat butt into the bed and get some sleep before another shift in the morning.

a feather-full house

Birds for the day:

12 pigeons and a finch - outside
4 mynahs - outside
6 mynahs - inside, feeding on own
4 mynahs - inside not eating on own
3 thrush pinkies - ""
3 pigeons - ""
2 doves - ""
1 mousebird - ""
3 sparrows - ""
1 crested barbet - ""
1 olive thrush - ""

Tomorrow I am working fullday at the centre. T-doc offered to call me at 06h30 to try get my lazy fat ass out of bed, so I can get to the centre on time. Not going to be fun - me and a bunch of newbies, so most of the day will be spent doing the feeds and medication that they can't do yet, and in between, explaining a million times how to prepare food items, and how much, and where things are. And the same again on Monday morning. I am tired already, just thinking about it.

And of course, all the babies who aren't feeding themselves have to come with me.

Took Leponex at about 16h30, so hopefully I won't feel so dead in the morning. P-doc reckons go to 3 without waiting, seeing as 2 did nothing.

Just stuffed my obese and ugly face with barbecued ribs. Bad thing about current meds is that I am pretty much not hungry at all until about 15h00, so I end up not eating all day. And then when it gets to evening, I suddenly start wanting food, and then I eat too much.

US readers...anyone know much about Optifast personally? The web site looks encouraging, but then it would, seeing as it is written by the manufacturer. Was reading about a woman who lost huge amounts of weight in the current book - "Love's Executioner" by Irvin D. Yalom. Very good book - cases of psychotherapy from his practice. And the Optifast sounds very effective too.

Meanwhile, let me take myself off to bed with the furballs and the fervent hope that tomorrow is bloody marvelous rather than just bloody Sunday.

friday can join thursday in the naughty corner

Translation : today was just as crap as yesterday. Disorganised and chaotic. Traffic on way to t-doc was so snafu'd that I got there almost half an hour late, and cried most of the way there cos I was so frustrated. Didn't do much at FM except for leaving some birds, picking up a whole bunch more, and leaving late enough so that I got caught in rush hour. Feel guilty as hell for not doing my shift. Would have been worse if I'd stayed though - even now, my eyes are still red and sore.

Needless to say, cried at t-doc for the full hour. Even literally cried on her shoulder when she hugged me.

Have only killed 3 birds today, but am worried that at least 2 of the current ones will die overnight.

Two Leponex give me a tired neck. I know. It doesn't make sense, and it's not a normal kind of side effect.

Can't even sleep late tomorrow 'cos of babies and painter coming to do the cottage.
And on Sunday, it's the rehab centre all day as stand-in manager, and then again on Monday morning - seeing as I stuffed up today's shift(and lied about having to go to the office). I am such a nasty dishonest piece of shit.

I wouldn't want to be friends with a fat, ugly, loser like me either...

bad thursday....... naughty thursday! go to your room immediately! and no dessert either

Poor p-doc. I was crying before I even got to his rooms. And the whole way through the appointment. He's a medical only p-doc, by preference, but he usually does 30 min appts so that there's some talking and assessment. Even though he is always nice, I can still see that he's not that comfortable with howling witches in his office. And I've pretty much cried the whole day. P-doc reckons it might be from cutting down on the Cipralex, having taken out Ludiomil last week. What sucks is that if that's the case, then I really wish that either of them had shown a positive effect while I was taking lots of the stuff.

Meds... for the week. I'm tempted to add a 'meds for the day' sidebar, because they keep changing so often. I do take all of them for at least 3 weeks, but they generally overlap each other. So if I am stopping one, he'll taper it off at the same time as he starts something else. Sometimes he will put in one that he refers to as a holding drug, while he does a partial washout. So from tonight:
Cipralex : 3 for 4 days, then 2 for 2 days, then 1 for 2 days and then stop.
Leponex : up to 2 for 3 days, then 3 for 3 days, then 4.
Tertroxin : still 1 a day, but planning on it being in for at least a month.(How do I know these things, you ask? Easy. 'Cos he gave me a script for 30. which also gives me a clue about not taking those for the great escape - if he gives me that many, they can't be useful in OD...)
Quilonum : lithium. He reckons it will maybe kick the others up a bit.
Zopimed : sleeping tab. Up to 1.5 because I whinged so much about not being able to get to sleep at night, even with the Leponex. This is a sore point for him because he doesn't want to give me any at all until I have used up my stash, but he also knows that I can't/won't make myself use those on a daily basis, and he can see that I look and feel like shit, and I'm tired all day, and I am only getting my 9 hours or so if I sleep through the alarm.

And then in the middle of the howling bit, I said that I was so tired of existing like this that I would even consider ECT again. Same as with meds, sometimes it has worked, sometimes not. I don't like it because of the complete memory loss of 3 or 4 weeks after that. I'm fine in realtime, can remember everything from any other time, but what happens seems to just not get filed in memory. He looked very pleased with that, and have a strange feeling that he is going to schedule it for as soon as he can after he gets back from next weeks conference. Oh..and of course the other reason for not wanting it is that I don't particularly want him to see me in that charming hospital gown and cap. Which is really stupid of me. Especially if I've already been sitting in his office crying my heart out. And I cry really really ugly. Really. It's always been one of the reasons why I hate being upset in front of anyone. Not that I'm vain at all...no really, not vain!

Rest of day...I paid my R2000 in speeding fines, and got my car's licence renewed, only 2 months late. Chased a goose with fishing line knotted around his legs but couldn't catch him. Tried to tell DB why I am annoyed without fighting, but failed. Selective interpretation. Annoyed her by what I said yesterday, so will delete that. If anyone ever reads this crap, please forget what you read yesterday. Came home and cried in between feeds. Only 17 birdlets tonight, as I dropped some off at the centre today. Would dearly love to go out for pizza and lots and lots of vodka, but no can do. Promised p-doc not to drink at all while on the Leponex, and standing BP was a bit high today. How ass backwards is this; my BP goes up by 10/20 when I stand up. Postural hypotension is supposed to work the other way. P-doc said he wasn't surprised by that...he still doubts that I'm actually human, not some alien life form sent to plague him.

So now that the Leponex are kicking in a bit, think I will declare today over. Only 20h45, but enough is enough already. Standard goodnight wish for myself - that the morning is either better or dead. Sleep tight for all us southern hemisphere types, and the rest of y'all (tx GG) have a good day.

at least something good happened today

Archie the meerkat has won a reprieve!

Last night, apparently, an anonymous phone call (hehehe) was made to Archie's former owner, to let him know what his idiot tenant had done, and that because of the rehab centre's legal standing with nature conservation authorities, we would be unable to defy the confiscation by the State Vet. Some advice was given on possible action that could be taken by him, even if we couldn't act openly.

This morning, the owner contacted all parties, and then spent the day with Archie before the State Vet came to the centre to assess Archie. He passed the inspection with honours...the Vet said that it was absolutely impossible for him to be rabid. He decided that just to err on the side of caution, Archie should spend ten days at the centre being monitored, as we have the knowledge to judge whether his behaviour is normal for a meerkat. And after that, he will go back to his owner. Because he had a shattered pelvis as a youngster which was pinned surgically by an expert vet, we were hesitant about his release potential - generally, nothing is released with any kind of implant that could migrate and cause further problems for the animal. I'm not sure what plans have been made in terms of the bitee and Archie meeting again. But I think all of us involved with the centre are very relieved tonight.

Our policy involves euthanasia for animals that are not releasable, but as far as I know, we have never been put in a position of having to euthanase a healthy animal without everything in our power being done to find a solution. The only other meerkat incident that was similar was Twiggy, whose captivity (as a pet) had resulted in semi-psychosis. She was integrated into a group, where she became alpha female, and while still in our care, where food was provided daily, she coped reasonably. Although she did manage to bite almost everyone who went in the enclosure except for Bosslady - Twiggy regarded Bosslady as dominant, and obeyed her. When the group was being hacked out in the desert though, and the survival of the whole tribe depended on them functioning as a team, Twiggy became rampantly psychotic and paranoid, and her behaviour prevented the group from foraging properly. Eventually, she had to be removed from the group, and Bosslady had the unenviable task of driving 13 hours to get to the site just to euthanase what (on her own again with people) was by then a submissive and affectionate meerkat.

That was the best bit of the day.

The worst is that Duckbuddy and I are having a kind of fight. Has to be labelled "kind of" because she doesn't talk on the phone, so daily conversations are carried out by sms. I know... it's weird, but she has a whole lot more hangups than that as well. Makes me look like the life and soul of the party. So today's bit started when she nagged about when we are going to have coffee, and I just figured that I am tired of always being the one who has to go out of my way to meet her at one of two places, both within a kilometre of her house.

She has previously told me that she hates it when I bring baby birds with, and that "other people" are upset by it. Nobody has ever even hinted to me that they don't like it - quite the reverse. Especially if they have kids, most people want to have a closer look, to hold a baby, and to show their kids what baby birds look like.
So when she wanted me to make time tomorrow, I explained that I couldn't because of birds. I see p-doc tomorrow at 11h00, just down the road from her house, but it will take me 30 mins to get there, 30 mins back, 30 mins with him, and more time if he is running late. So it's at least 90 mins to go see him, which means that I have to take 3 thrushes, 1 bulbul, 2 sparrows, 1 mynah and a wagtail. These have to be caged in at least 2 different baskets (minimum), and if I can't get covered parking, they all have to go with me to p-doc. He likes birds, and doesn't mind if they come with me, as long as they behave while I am seeing him. If I allow for extra time to have coffee, I would also have to take another 2 mynahs, 3 crested barbets and a pigeon. Means at least 4 baskets, and some very noisy birds. Can't manage that.

So Duckbuddy started doing the don't hate me and you don't understand all my social phobias and anxiety issues and and and. I DO understand them, I've been f**king making allowances for them for a year now, since I've known her. But today was just too much. When I can't go all the way there to see her because of bird-feeding schedules, I keep suggesting that we meet halfway. Or that she comes to my house. In over a year of being friends she has never come here. I only went to her house for the first time about 3 months ago. Ok, I don't like bringing people here that much either. She invokes having to fetch her daughter from play group at 12 as a reason why she can't come anywhere closer to where I live. I'm not expecting miracles, but every now and then it would be nice if she would make some compromises. She IS socially phobic, but she manages to do a whole bunch of other things that involve her going out and seeing people. Just not for me.

Tried to tell her some of that in response to her moans today. Just got told that p-doc understands all about her problems, and I don't. We see same p-doc, by the way. One of the other things she is paranoid about is him finding out that we are friends. Admittedly, we do talk about him, which we probably shouldn't, but I don't think he'd give a toss if he knew that we know each other. Besides, we were in hospital together last year anyway, and (I sneaked a peek at my chart once. OK, more than once...) and the notes from my hourly suicide watch bit kept saying that 'patient was talking to patient DB', so he probably knows from then anyway.

Actually make that 'knew' - his memory is kind of spotty, probably because there are three million thoughts in his mind at any time and unimportant factoids get turfed quite fast. Sort of relevant ones too, sometimes. Last week he looked at his notes from the previous week, muttered to himself a bit, and then asked me what he had been thinking of doing i.r.o. meds when he wrote notes, because he couldn't remember what his cryptic messages were about!

So now DB tells me that I hate her. I said let's rather leave off talking about this for tonight. She says that I'll still hate her tomorrow and that I don't understand her anxiety. I don't hate her. Maybe I don't understand, because she manages to cope with it well enough to do everything she wants to do, from what she tells me. Maybe I am just a miserable old bitch anyway. I am so apathetic and devoid of energy that to me, any activity that requires that I leave the house, even if it is for half an hour, is a complete mission. I move so slowly getting ready, then rush to whatever it is, and am exhausted by the time I get home. Mostly I don't do half of what I am planning on doing, because I am just wiped out by being places and having to talk and be the happy walking-talking-jcat-doll. All smiley and capable on the outside. Lost and drowning within.

lots of little stars where my description of yesterdays crappy day used to be. Deleted on request.
Lots of bits put back, and little stars deleted. It's my life, my blog, no-one I know personally except DB actually knows the blogname. Not even t-doc. Reason I primarily didn't want to give DB the address when she first started asking for it was so that I could write freely. T-doc says that's cool for me to not want anyone in realtime to connect jcat the real life asshole and jcat the online version.
(2 March)

rabid beasties and other animals

The meerkat free zone at the rehab centre was breached again over the weekend, with the arrival of Archie, a 15 month old neutered male with a pin in his pelvis after it was fractured. And it has rapidly become a war zone. Archie's history - rightly or wrongly - is that of a very spoiled house pet. Slept in the house, never left alone etc. Very sociable, well behaved....until a few days ago. That's when he bit someone who (apparently) he had always disliked. Just a scratch, but it broke the skin. Bitten dude raises all hell, owner eventually decides that he had better hand Archie over to us before the idiot bitee (??) kills Archie. So he is brought to the rehab centre, along with his vaccination papers for rabies - although he has been an urban house pet, and has never come into contact with any possible carrier. Idiot rushes straight to hospital in absolute hysteria, and insists on having all the rabies treatment possible post-exposure. Owner offers to pay for all this (refused), owner offers to release idiot from remainder of lease (idiot rents accommodation from owner on owners property (refused). Idiot insists that meerkat is rabid and must be euthanased. Much back and forward debate. Until 16h30 this afternoon when we are advised that the State Vet has been called in by idiot, and that we are to isolate and secure said meerkat until the State Vet can collect him. Vets hands are tied, rehab centres hands are tied. We all know that this animal is in no possible way rabid. Unfortunately, the only way to prove this is either a post-mortem brain study, or 6 months isolation. Which is worse than a death sentence for Archie. All the knowledge in the country can do nothing faced with a hysterical whining fool.

If you ever hear of a JHB-based pianist named Thomas, ask if he was the ignorant asshole who condemned a small animal to death because of his stupidity. And then...from me, please spit in his face.

P.S. Tell him, BTW that I'm not rabid either, although I have been bitten 4 times by non-rabid meerkats, and fully expect to be bitten again in future. Meerkats bite. No, it's not pleasant, but most predators do, sooner or later.

The rest of the animals are all OK, except for me - the miserable one. I tried really hard at the centre today to be sociable and friendly to all the new volunteers, but it was a battle. I need to find something that works. Anything. Just can't keep on like this - miserable, exhausted, apathetic, futureless....

traditional coloured monday

Started off with only waking up at 08h10. Should have fed babies by 07h00, should have been at rehab centre by 07h30. Got there too late to be very useful, so mostly stuffed around feeding my babies. Then - idiot that I am - ended up taking another 4 from the centre, one mousebird and three (day-old) thrushes (?). As if I didn't have enough already to neglect. It's so dumb, because I stress about doing a good job myself if I take them, and stress that they wouldn't get enough care at the centre because the clinic is so full and boss-lady is away.

Heard as well that Timone, the meerkat who lived with one of our vets, had died suddenly, probably of a heart attack. He was the first meerkat to come into the centre as an unwanted pet, and at the time, it was decided that the vet should keep him - she knew what she was taking on, and had all the expertise and permits etc. Very sudden, and unexpected. We'll miss him at all the fund-raisers and events, as - even with all we know about how unsuited they are to being pets - Tim was kept stimulated and with enough attention, so that he remained a sweet and affectionate animal. RIP, Timone...

Rush to get to t-doc via a pick up of two doves, then spent an hour sitting there crying over nothing. She probably really wishes that I would fall over the nearest convenient cliff because it just seems to be the same stupid stuff for so long now. There IS nothing wrong that can be changed - except me. Everything else in and around my life is good. Not that t-doc is ever anything but nice, and supportive, but if I think 'enough already' every day, it must be even more so for her.

Bought some fresh veg for the centre because we didn't get our normal weekend donation, took it there, got talked into fetching a bird a few km's away that was "lying on the lawn not looking too good, and not flying away". Well yes...normally birds that are dead do find it hard to fly away when you approach. Hit rush hour traffic all the way across town to fetch another three little doves.
So the slightly less populated stabilisation area at home is now fully populated again. And because I stuffed up my morning shift today, I got my arm twisted into coming in tomorrow as early as possible, and for the whole afternoon.

No coffee with my Duckbuddy today, and probably none tomorrow either.

My nose hurts, and the last couple of stitches are pulling, and there's still a scab the size of my thumbnail. And having assessed my profile over the weekend (took 3 mirrors artfully arranged before I could see it side on without rolling my eyes and looking even dumber) - I can't think of anyone well known who has a dildo-nose like this. It starts off straight and strong, then has a little bump, followed by a noticible change of slope followed by a blob on the end. Actually, now that I'm trying to describe it - looks a lot like one of the slopes at Arrowhead, Co. One that normally has a few unexpected moguls, and a strange ending. Coooooool bananas...
my nose and a weird ski slope. Except that half my nose is red and the rest is mottled shades.

And there's a whole bunch of other things that I'd moan about, but I think they probably all fall under the TMI label.

If I'm honest - so does the whole blog. TMI applies just as much to boring as it does to intimate. (But I'll promise to tell you anyway if I ever ever get laid again....)

klutz comes to town

My parents are in JHB for the weekend. The good news is I got through the loud and raucous evening without drinking anything other then Coke Lite. The bad news is that (stonecold sober) I walked around the table, kicked the edge of the paving, knocked over the ice-bucket for the wine, swore loudly, and ended up flat out on the ground. Mortifying, very mortifying. I think maybe drinking alcohol is good for me - I never make an ass of myself like this when I've had a few.

Have been having a huge 'find free downloads of all the really esoteric SA music from the last 20 years' surf. Managed to find a few, but now I'm going on a mission -tomorrow, cos it's way past bedtime. What started this was trying to find 'Delaray', a storm in a huge teacup at the moment. It's a reasonably ok, rousing singalong kind of song - the sort that you have to listen to 300 times in a week, and then never want to hear again. General Delaray was a Boer leader in the Anglo-Boer war, and from the sounds of it, one of the good guys. But everyone is leaping up and down saying that this a call to arms for the far right Boere - hell even the guy who wrote it and sings it says its not. It's just a catchy song about the Boer War, and a bit of historical culture. I see even the loony dudes in the States are commenting on and linking to it. Pity they can't understand the words as they are; a translation loses all the poetry and meaning of many of the phrases.

Rehab in the morning, so better try get some sleep.

bipolar bitch from hell

Very disgruntled today. Quarter Leponex did so NOT make me sleep last night. P-doc said don't take sedative for an hour afterwards, I eventually took it at 23h00, and then still couldn't sleep until 01h30. My babiest mynah died this morning. I didn't do 5 out of the 6 chores I should have done, because they involved leaving the house. I pleaded illness to the rehab centre and didn't do my shift this afternoon, for the same reason. (They did have enough people, I made sure of that, and in return I agreed to doing the whole day next Sat). I didn't eat breakfast or lunch, and supper consisted of a steak, which I overcooked even tho' I was standing right there. No vegetables, because all the ones in the house looked like they needed too much thought to cook. Have just started 3rd book for the day and don't feel like reading any of them. Finished nice book by Greg Iles - Blood Memory - this morning, wish it had lasted longer. Half Leponex earlier is not doing anything noticeable. It's Friday night and my almost-date dumped me before we even got to the date bit. No mail, e- or snail, except for my overdue tv licence letter. Family dinner tomorrow, and I just don't know if I can endure being alive and sociable for at least 3 hours, even though I love my family and want to see them. No alcohol, firstly cos of new year's reduction vow, and secondly cos Lep and alcohol apparently really don't mix well - which will make sitting through dinner while everyone else has at least two glasses of wine seem even longer. No coffee with Duckbuddy till at least tues.

No real problems. Nothing wrong with anything in my life except me. Not only am I a total loser a$$hole, but I am a whining, stupid self-pitying one. If SHP hadn't already used the label, I'd appropriate it - jcat 'the miserable git'. P-doc asked for my med stash on Thu. We have a stalemate - he asks, I say no, he says 'didn't you promise to give it to me', I say no, and that the way things are dragging I still feel like I need it. Should have told him that it was perfectly safe with me at the moment, because I am so apathetic that I couldn't even organise myself into using it.

Ah hell, think I should take sleeping pill and boring book to bed. Maybe cuddling, purring cats will lull me to sleep.

kitty valentines

One of the monster-boys celebrated his version of Valentine's Day just after I went to sleep last night. No idea why, but I woke up to feel little sniffling whiskers. Followed by little fangs in the earlobe. I screamed. All 4 cats leapt from the bed and ran away. Personally, I thought screaming was a very controlled reaction to unexpected pain in a sensitive area.

Full morning today. Feed and clean all home birds. Pack all that I could divert to the centre into carrying cases. Deliver them before early appt with t-doc (accompanied by 6 babies that I was keeping, but who couldn't stay home on their own) where I just cried and got miserable. Funniest thing for the session was telling her that I could dumped by the online dating guy from the weekend. Before we even got to the dating bit. We exchanged more than 80 emails and text messages between Sat afternoon when he contacted me the first time, and Tues afternoon. Provisional date for tomorrow. On Tue he asked for a picture. Haven't heard from him since. Only reason I'm not miserable about it is that I am so miserable anyway that I figure its probably a good thing. BTW, the faking bit is something i'm very good at doing for other people, including even my friends and family, never mind strange men on the net.

Then it was off to p-doc, where I started crying before I even said hello. So it's new med plan again - phase out Cipralex, start on Leponex, keep others the same, don't do too much more until after he gets back from national shrink-congress. Then start planning Nardil. Of course, all of this changes if anything actually ever works.

After that it was vet visit, to get little broken legs splinted properly. That's an art form all on it's own, bending paperclips and toothpicks to the right angles to support the leg, and then bandaging them so that they are secure without being tight. Mynah boy, of course, screamed as if he was being tortured by fire, and did his best to bite the vets fingers. Seeing as it's mostly a bird practice though, and they are used to hearing screaming parrots and macaws, nobody even blinks at loud shrieks. And being bitten by a mynah is negligible after an owl has dug the pointy bit of his beak into the side of your nail and held on for 3 minutes. (That particular incident, as the owl bit me, the vet said 'great, now hold still in that position...', and ignored my semi-audible moans and swearing).

And by then it was lunchtime and I was so exhausted that I came home and vegetated. As if I had done something constructive. Ha ha..

Uuuuggghh

is enough to sum up today. So not good. Although I haven't killed any birds. Yet.

wish it would snow

I am very definitely a winter person by choice. Probably because I'm fat, but I have never really felt the cold much. Look at it this way - the Eskimos use whale blubber for insulation, and I'm carrying lots of it subcutaneously. And while you can always put extra clothes on...

It has been a very hot summer. Which makes it ironic that at the moment I am hauling all the heating sources out for the birdlings. The little featherless mynah that I picked up today was shivering earlier, so he is now ensconced on the heating pad. The sparrows and the pigeons are on the hot box. The mousebirds have the hotlamp, as fruit-eaters need an indirect heat source, otherwise the contents of their little tummies can ferment. Could do with an extra spot for the other mynahs to go, especially as the one poor baby has a fractured femur, so his leg is splinted and he can't huddle into himself properly. Hmmm- perhaps they can share with the littlest mynah, if I keep them in seperate cages and give each one a half of the hotpad.

It always seems weird somehow that all the heaters are out for the birds while the dogs are sprawled out on the floor tiles for a bit of coolness, and the cats won't sleep closer to me than the far side of the bed. Another thing I enjoy about winter, is the little furry hot spots in the bed.

Tomorrow is the next appt with nose-dude. Hopefully he looks happy and takes the stitches out, although it's still a bit swollen and sore across the top. P-doc can't pull his next medicinal rabbit out the hat until the antibiotics are done with, but meantime he is preparing for it. I'm off the Ludiomil already, and although it didn't do any good - maybe it was stopping a bit of bad. This week is very flat and tearful. And fractious. Enough already, I need something to work properly now. Just so tired of feeling crap, and I want my life back. Any life, cos this ain't one at the moment...

ten little ball and chains

Was awake for early feeds, only to find red-faced mousie and little swallow dead. Guess swallow was partly expected, as he was very flat yesterday.

The rest of the day until about an hour ago was basically feeding, short break, feed again. Good thing about having lots of sparrows on the list was that I don't have to time their feeds - the noise level does that for me. If I can hear them, they're hungry. And while I'm there, the others get fed as well.

It's bad because it shows that they are imprinted (which is why they are home with me, for a longer hacking out period), but the sweetest feeders today were the adult red-faced mousebird and the glossy starling. I have limited space in which to put the cages while still ensuring that they all get the right mixture of heat and light, so I ended up with the starling on the left, sparrows in the middle, and mousebirds on the right. And every time that I fed the babies, there were shrieks from the starling and wide open beak from the red-face, hoping that they'd be offered a syringe full of baby food. The inside mynahs, BTW, are hulking great juveniles, and are fiercely resisting the switch from baby puree to adult food. Not quite passive resistance, more along the lines of a food riot in jail - food everywhere except down their gullets. Mind you, the worst weaner I've known (also a mynah) was still eating baby puree from a spoon every 30 mins when she was more than 6 months old (i.e. very adult, and about 4 months at least after she should have been feeding herself. And 30 minute feeds are what the babies who are so young they don't even have eyeballs yet are given). Shows you what weak-willed mothering can do to a kid..

As FD said yesterday, 'fake it til you make it'. Might not be a relaxing w/end, but I guess it keeps me out of self-endangerment.

oh yay, it's nearly bedtime!

A sure sign of being a real loser.......is when the most exciting thing that happens on a Friday night is that you can go to bed early. Guess that part of it is working a long, hot shift at the rehab centre, which is full of little babies of all kinds.

Ended up that the biggest group of meerkats didn't go, because 3 of them were still in hiding this morning when Boss collected the rest. They came out a bit later though, and hopefully we have now dug up all the tunnels so that they can't repeat that trick. (don't you love the way I can say 'we', when this one of the group noun has not touched a shovel? Although I did pull out humungous numbers of giant weeds and tomato bushes in the enclosure yesterday). So instead of zero, we still have seven. And just so that even if that tribe had gone, we wouldn't be able to celebrate a suricate-free day, a baby arrived yesterday afternoon. Hand-raised as a pet. Only about a month old - HELL! HE SHOULDN'T EVEN BE WEANED YET!!! - ripped away from his real family, now discarded by his abductors. (And it is THEIR fault, whether they took him from his family themselves, or paid someone else to do the dirty work.) They probably didn't think that a pup this young would cry constantly for reassurance and company, that he would normally be with his siblings, mom and a babysitter 24/7, that he will try desperately to claim his territory by scent-marking and urinating everywhere. And now he is on his own, and we have to walk the difficult line between giving him the physical contact that he absolutely has to have and not wanting to reinforce his imprintedness any more. We might be able to introduce him into the tribe that stayed behind, but not until their juveniles are a bit older, and not until he is at least a month older. And even then, there is no guarantee that they won't just kill him outright because he is regarded as a threat to their bloodlines. Then again...it could be his fate with any other meerkat he ever meets. And a meerkat on his own in the wild would be lucky to make it to the end of his first day alone.

GGGRRR....how to piss off a wildlife rehabilitator in one easy move!

However, between the long afternoon, the soreness of nose and the oh so delicious combo of TCA, SSRI, T3, sedative and antibiotic, this tired rehabber is heading for bed. Oh - don't forget the stomach stuffed full of fresh sushi that I picked up on the way home. There is a lovely Afrikaans saying, 'Maagie vol, oe toe'. Translation is 'stomach full, eyes closed' but it doesn't sound as quaint in English.

And I need to be up early, given the following house guests :
9 mynahs (eat on their own but need food given to them)
12 pigeons (ditto)
1 red-headed finch (ditto)
1 glossy starling (ditto, but has to go into aviary here as he is too imprinted)
3 sub-adult mousebirds (ditto # 2)
1 bulbul (also ditto # 2)
2 fledgling mousebirds (need hand-feeding every hour)
8 sparrows, ranging from a pinky without eyes yet to a fledgling that is almost ready to go, as soon as he can feed himself (all need feeding every hour)
1 swallow (ditto # 3)

Breakfast should preferably be delivered at sunrise - unless the screams wake me up, it will probably arrive 90 mins later. Rule of first feeds says that one should never tube a bird until you can keep your eyes open properly...!

busy, busy, busy

- well, busy for me at least. Standard wake up late, standard stuff around feeding cats and birds, cleaning up bird cages etc.

Then off to see p-doc, who is very umimpressed with nose and its current state, because it interferes with his drugs. So for this week, all we do is increase Cipralex/Lexapro to 60mg, cut the Ludiomil down to nothing, and then, nose permitting, start a real dog of a med next week - Leponex/Clozaril. Not only is it a fat drug (or cuddly...as J so sweetly euphemises it), but it is likely to make you drool and wet the bed, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff. But : as always, if that is what it takes to lift this whale-shit feeling off the sea bed, I'll take it and hope.

We also talked a bit about Ketamine - a few months ago I was really interested in this, after some of the initial studies on its rapid, rapid mood elevation. I would still be keen to try it - imagine spiking a drug and waking up happy within a day! He has a new variation though, using ket and valium in a controlled theatre situation, followed by (and this is the exciting bit that he couldn't remember the link to....) an enhanced response to most a/d's. Cool,cool,cool bananas. If I can find the study to back it up - and it then becomes a theatre drug trip every few months with - dare I even hope - something like a standard 20mg dose of Prozac. Absolute heavenly choirs and angels on fluffy clouds etc!

But meantime it is just removing stuff, so there's the offchance of being cast deeper into the wallowing pits of despair. Which is deep enough already, I spent half the appt crying, and I really, really hate crying in front of him.
And then if nothing to date brings sunshine, it's on to the Nardil.

And after all the various p-delights on offer, I went to see t-doc. So first of all she got the remainder of p-docs tears. Then she got her own lot over the meerkat thing and what a failure I am there, and then we somehow managed to get in another 2 or 3 crying subjects.

Post t-doc, I went to drop off a dove at the rehab centre , a two minute in and out delivery. Bosslady figures I owe her for dropping out of the meerkat trip, and exacted retribution in the form of assisting with the catching and crating of the said devils spawn. Hometime stretched from 15h15 to 19h55, with lots of hard labour, resulting in a totally aching and sore jcat. I swear...no-one out there has any idea of what a non-existent body fitness indicator I have. I am the one the machines won't even start up for in case I expire while on them. Bad bad bad bad.

Just no more bad for tonight please, this inn is full - even the stables.

of noses and nothing

I saw nose surgeon this morning. Quite strange, when I arrived for last week's appointment, the whole reception was packed full, with a good mix of people who were early, people who were late, people who were emergency referrals....I ended up seeing him 2 hours later. Not a problem, it just gives me two hours of Sudoku with a good excuse as to why I am just sitting around doing puzzles.

Today, I was the only person there other than the reception staff, and I got to see him 5 mins earlier than scheduled. And out within 5 mins too. He wasn't particularly happy with the way the graft is healing, so now have a week of oral and cream antibiotics before he takes the stitches out.

When I asked his opinion of whether I should go spend two weeks chasing little meerkats around in the semi-desert all day, he thought I was joking at first - but wasn't quite sure why I thought that would be amusing. When he realised I was serious, he said no way. Not at all in the next two weeks, and after that only once he is satisfied with the scar.

I feel like an absolute jerk about this, cos I had to tell my rehab boss that I was pulling out - had warned her on Monday, but still...basically 2 days notice. At the same time I am relieved, that I won't have to go out there and fail a group of meerkats because of my stupidity and unfitness. I'm not sure which is worse now, doing it or not doing it.

I guess at least Nic won't die of disappointment, whereas my failings would have jeopardised the lives of the tribe.

little things dying all over

Started this morning with a dead mynah. Passed through a couple of euthanased birds (paramyxa and trichomoniasis), and another that will go that route tomorrow - spinal injury. Finished with a dead red-faced mousebird.

And in between...I had a dentist appointment which turned into a whole new crown, saw t-doc and just cried for an hour, and my nose looks/smells like it is either infected or just rejecting the graft.

And worst of all, what happened to my poor Duckbuddy. She lost her 20 year old cat a couple of months ago. After a while, her husband brought home (unexpectedly) two Burmese kittens of almost 3 months. Last week he was away on business, and the male kitten developed overnight signs of some really bad disease, which is apparently chronic in Burmese, and which, she discovered, is known to be congenital by the breeder. So h/b took him back to the breeder over the weekend. This morning, she put a load of laundry into the washing machine...and when the wash finished, they found that the little girl kitten had crawled into the machine, probably for a nice comfortable nap, and had drowned. DB is shattered, and nothing I can say is going to take that little corpse off her conscience. It's been a really bad couple of weeks for her already. I want to help, but I'm so close to sucking exhaust already, that there isn't very much I can offer. Just wish I could wave a wand...

Oh, and in between all the cr*p, there was one funny bit. I see an amazing dentist, who I was referred to by my rehab boss. In turn, I've sent him a couple of my closest friends. And discovered that another friend has been seeing him for 20 years or more. So this morning I'm lying there with my mouth half numb, and he checked to see if my meds are still the same, to which I said yes, for at least the next 3 days. He tells me that all I really need is the right medication, and that he has just the right Dr for me. Sings his Dr's praises for the next few minutes - turns out he (dentist) has really bad panic attacks, but all is well now thanks to Dr putting him on the right meds. Tells me to see Dr J, who is frantically busy, but I might be able to get in with a referral from dentist. So the next time he took his fingers out of my mouth so that I could talk, I told him that yes, Dr J is amazing, and I've been seeing him for 18 months! Well, after that he kept me on short rations for the nitrous oxide...kept telling me that Dr J wouldn't want me floating around the place half-stoned...

may you live in interesting times

- that's supposed to be a reallly nasty thing to wish on anyone. And I'd be OK with the current times being a bit less interesting.

So after big-time wipeouts on Weds, Fri and Sat, today was done on auto-pilot. Wake up, feed babies, take tortoise to the best reptile vet in town - it came in on Sat with a massive depressed shell fracture, which was clearly not new, since there were maggots and flies deep in the wound. Going to be major surgery for her, just to see what's happening inside, and I suspect that it will be just too much internal damage and infection to fix. Then helped the new tenants in my cottage to move in. The previous tenant had been here for 3 years, the whole way through her university studies, and was an absolute angel. Only thing she didn't do was tell me that quite a few areas needed damp-proofing, so that now has to happen with the new tenants in residence.
For some really unknown reason, I signed up for an online dating thing - blame it on Guiness Girl, and her posts! So far I have had 3 indications of interest, one of which has done my mood a whole lot of good. He is 32 (9 years younger than me), very cute, student (but has just spent a tour of duty with the marines in Germany), did I mention cute? And seems to have a fascination with fatter, older ladies. And likes to give massages. Whoooohhhh! He came to JHB this weekend, but when I have a huge nose wound that is not looking to good - it's a bit grey and oozy, and don't think it's supposed to look quite like that - I figured I'd postpone a meeting for a drink or two until next time round.
Trying to think of positives about this meerkat trip. So far, all I have come up with is that I'm going to be doing way more excercise than normal, in great heat, so between sweating a lot and drinking water, I should flush my system out a bit, and maybe even lose a few kgs. Especially if I only take minimal amounts of food with, and no treats. Well, will have to get go-ahead from surgeon first.
Have cheated again, ended up having a few drinks last night, and again tonight. Not nearly as much as I had been, so I'm hoping my tolerance is dropping and that I'll get to falling over levels much sooner.
One of the bad things that we've discovered over the last year is that my liver seems to have way more efficiency than the rest of me. As in I can tolerate high dosages, with very minimal side-effects, and those I am willing to live with if only the damn meds would do their jobs. Went some for some genotyping tests earlier this year, but all that they showed was that I was within the normal and efficient parameters. The only funny liver bit so far was when Dr J sent me for - amongst other things - liver function testing, and he'd said in advance that with my alcohol abuse, I should expect some poor results. Well...they came back to show that I have an impressively active liver, that is actually just so, so healthy all round! I think J was a bit disappointed - not that he would wish anything bad on me, but that he was hoping to be able to say that there was noticable lifestyle damage. I did manage to refrain from more than a few seconds of smugness...
Seeing t-doc tomorrow. Good, I need a bit of hand-holding and kicking me back to a less destructive path.

even with nice times, saturday is still never-ending

Good things : comments/mail from FD and Peggy, releasing a whole bunch of tortoises, hedgehogs and a terrapin, my so sweet and cocky mynahs - the babies inside as well as the guys that are being hacked out, my desperate pigeon-lings - they are all eating well, but when they see me it's a frantic 'wheepwheepwheep' and shoving their heads into my hand on the off-chance that I might feed them, my boss - even if she crapped on me about the mynahs, and told me to keep them to myself, no picking them up from the centre etc.

But even with almost 6 hours of today being fetching and releasing critters....I still have to come home with big-time loser a**hole jcat. It is such a futile idiot thing to do, but I ended up cutting last night. Bicep with the whole neat checkerboard, and then the adidas stripes on the forearm. Followed by the normal Q's as to what bit me...and the standard answer of I fell out of a tree. And double triple idiot that I am...did both parts of the left arm again tonight.

Cutting...probably the most definitive borderline symptom. In 1992, the 2nd time I went skiing in Colorado with my folks, I was browsing in the local bookshop. Picking up about 15kg of books that I just couldn't resist - most of which I wore in a backpack under my jacket to take home with me. No idea of why I just beelined in on a book on the psych shelf. It just called me, skimmed through the first couple of chapters, thought 'thank f**k...it's not only me' as I read the 9 definitive BPD characteristics. Since then, I'm supposed to have grown out of a lot of it. There have always been a couple of things that have never really fitted. But there have always been a few of the total loser behaviours that have hung around, that come out of the woodwork when I'm bottoming out.

I cut the first time when I was at boarding school, when I was about 15. Couple of times where I lied, and got away with it, then the time I figured that I was going places I didn't really want to explore - and turned myself in. Got kicked out of the boarding house, saw the first of the p-docs...so so NOT a bond of any kind. And then I kind of kept it together for about 12 years. In hindsight?? Maybe if I'd owned up to how lost and screwed up I was then...maybe I'd not be drowning now. Maybe I'd have done a proper job of offing myself long ago. Maybe I'd have gotten to the other side of the dead places.

Biggest regret of my whole life? Shortcutting out of here seems to have become a constant undercurrent. But there has only been one attempt. And apparently it was close...1993...almost made it. There have been a whole lot of good things since. There have also been a whole lot of things that I just haven't even tried for - because I know what a stupid idiot loser asshole I really am, that I can't even fake being someone worthwhile. I really wish that I had succeeded then. And meanwhile.. as interim self-inflicted punishment....I cut. And contrary to standard BPD stuff that says you outgrow the ugly evidence - seems that the older I get, the more I end up taking out the cr*p on my epidermis. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Repeat X 10000000.
Such a total loser.

full-up friday

Today was one of the very few that I was actually useful to anyone. Started off with (as always) caring for my at-home birds, the ones no-one else will care for. Then spent the rest of the morning doing some IT work. Should have been only an hour or two, but as is usual for me nowdays, I screwed it up right at the beginning. Luckily I could fix it, and then get the new work done, but it is so humiliating, even if nobody else is aware of it. I used to be so so hot at my job, I was always the first/youngest/best at it...and now I am barely coping with a few part-time hours. Sometimes I think that it is unfair of me to still contract to my employer, when I know what an absolutely useless wanker I am. If they find someone to replace me, I would understand it. Meantime at least I can lurch from one crisis to the next, and keep the system pretty much stable and available. Guess that's about all that rescues me - the fact that my bosses don't actually realise what a loser I am.
And then to one of my few shifts at the rehab centre. I used to do at least 5 or 6 shifts a week, but since last year Jan it's about all I am capable of to just be there for one shift. In between, yeah, there's all sorts of pickups and catches etc, so I go there often anyway - just not as someone they can rely on to either staff the centre, or, when the manager is away, to run it, as I did a couple of times before this downer took hold.
What is really scaring me now, is that my boss has asked me to be one of three 'pack leaders' for troupes of meerkats (suricata suricatta) that are going to be released.
It means going away to the almost-desert for at least 10 days, probably two weeks, to get them acclimatised, take them foraging, monitor their progress etc. Just about every other volunteer would be better at it, but the number of people who can take the time away limits the choices. I can't say no, because it really has to be done, but I am so terrified of this. I don't have the bush skills needed, I am way too fat and unfit to go hiking through the desert all day, I really don't think I can do it properly. But I can't not agree to doing it. And at the same time, it's also an indication that my boss still thinks I am even halfway useful. It means finding lodgings for my birds, I have someone who will take care of the dogs, cats and house, doing all sorts of organisational things that are just going to end up being inadequately done. And most of all, it scares me that my failings are going to compromise the release of my troupe, and that they will probably end up dying in the desert because of me.

About the only thing that might save them is that at least one of the other group leaders is really capable, and will maybe help me enough to get them through the rehab. I hope so - I have enough bad things to account for already, without adding a whole bunch of cute, little dead creatures.

special song

...in my opinion. Paul Simon, from 1964. Best rendition of it is by South African folk singers Ian & Ritchie, in mid-60's. Only ever found one recording - the Wits University Folk Concert 1965, and about half the audience had bronchitis...


Who will love a little sparrow
Who's traveled far and cries for rest?
"Not I," said the Oak Tree
"I won't share my branches with no sparrow's nest
And my blanket of leaves won't warm her cold breast"

Who will love a little sparrow
And who will speak a kindly word?
"Not I," said the Swan
"The entire idea is utterly absurd
I'd be laughed at and scorned if the other swans heard."

Who will take pity in his heart
And who will feed a starving sparrow?
"Not I," said the Golden Wheat
"I would if I could but I cannot I know
I need all my grain to prosper and grow"

Who will love a little sparrow?
Will no one write her eulogy?
"I will," said the Earth
"For all I've created returns unto me
From dust were ye made and dust ye shall be"

Paul Simon 1964


- would be the perfect eulogy for me too, if could change sparrow to feral pigeon...the truly unloved bird is the one closest to my heart.

whose life is it anyway

I don't want to do this anymore. This has been two years of breathing without living, and I am just so tired of it. Nothing seems to work anymore, and having the best family, p-doc, t-doc, job....just makes me feel worse. All the resources that are being wasted on me could be given instead to someone who can use them properly.

I am so scared of trying and failing. And so scared of succeeding as well. My most persistent personal belief is that there is nothing after death, that the spirit dies when the body does. But when I'm trying to accept the horrible things that the world does to good people, and to animals, often the only way I can come to terms with it is by believing in reincarnation - that the good and the bad that you do in one life will determine some of what happens in the next one. And if this is really true, then I guess that taking a privileged upbringing, a loving and supportive family, some very good friends, and the best mental health resources in the world.... and wasting them through suicide - can't see that that would give me any brownie points for the next time round.

As with just about everything in bipolar... we vacillate between extremes. Just wish that I could have a while at the other emotional extreme. Depression sucks. Two year old depression sucks even more. Every different therapy, every different drug - I keep believing that maybe this will be the one. But they never are, are they. All just bricks in a pointless wall.

I have the pool hose, the meds (as backup, to ensure that I'm flattened and comatose before the CO does it's job), the vehicle, the location. Only thing that isn't decided yet is the date.

Maybe the Nardil will be the one that works?

Hey, who stole half of january!!

Seems to have disappeared way too fast, somehow.

My fortune cookie for the day told me 'you will achieve success by doing things today rather than tomorrow'. I know, I am procrastinating big time, but if it's measured against mood, it mostly ends up being things that there isn't any point in doing now. If you can't see a future, there's very little that needs to be prepared for it, apart from trying to keep things neat and tidy, and understandable for your executor.

My kick in the ass for today was going to have the dressing on my massively purple nose checked. The surgeon does a lot of major reconstruction work, and one of the guys I was waiting with was a young man of about 25, who had been zapped by 1200A of electricity. He had major burns on 80% of his body, spent 3 months in a coma, and still has a whole lot of treatment to go through. Makes one little nose kind of fade in comparison.

how appropriate

According to the Urban Dictionary of slang, Jcat is
'California Prison slang for a mentally Ill person. Shortened from Catagory "J" (Meaning Mental Patient/Inmate) to Jcat.'

Ha ha....so even my long-used nickname is whacko!

how many times a day do you touch your nose?

As I'm painfully discovering tonight, way more often than you think you do! Today was the great nose op, which all went smoothly. The surgeon said though that he'd had to cut much deeper than he anticipated, but he and the lab are happy that they got it all, although that's what they thought 5 years ago, and it still reoccurred. From what I can find out though, BCC often redevelops in the same place, even if it is completely excised.

My nose was numb for the first few hours, but since then is sore as all hell. What is really annoying me though, is that I keep touching it or bumping it accidentally. And I can see the sticking-up bits of the dressing in the corner of my eye, so half the bumping is me unconsciously wiping whatever is on my nose away - after which I swear a lot.

BTW...the plastic surgeon is the same one who, when I saw him 5 years ago, was so sweet and so cute that I plucked up all my courage and asked him to have dinner with me if he wasn't involved. After which his receptionist phoned me to say that he was involved. I almost thought of going to see someone else instead of him, but it would have made everything a lot more complicated. So instead, I just had my fingers crossed that he's forgotten about that little excercise in self-humiliation. He didn't refer to it at all, but maybe he was just being polite. And yes, he is still really sweet and cute and so so sexy. There aren't that many people who look good with those funny little hairnets on, but he is definitely one of them! I know that lusting after your doctor is pretty common, but really. Do I have to keep getting such eminently sexy ones to start off with?

very, very nervous

Surgeon's rooms phoned earlier to say that he wanted me on the table tomorrow, but they hadn't yet been able to get pre-authorisation from the medical aid. Without that, I'd probably end up paying for it myself, which I can't really afford at the moment. So I spent 30 mins on the phone with their customer service dept, while we went round in circles about how if I didn't have a histology report, they weren't going to authorise it, because without that, there is no proof that it's cancer. Right,guys...I'm just a surgery freak who wants to have my nose mutilated and scarred even more than it is already because of the cancer. Ooooh, yeah. Spoke to the rooms again who sent the medical aid the report from 2001, and said that it was a recurrence of the same tumour, which it is, and medical aid was happy with that.

So within about two hours I went from knowing that it will happen some time, to having it booked and scheduled for tomorrow. Now I'm really nervous, because if he is rushing it like this, it might be worse than I already think it is.

At least I saw p-doc this morning, so I have had a hug for the day. Have now gone up to 50mg Cipralex (Lexapro), with no effect. Not even side-effects. We're now adding Tertroxin, a thyroid hormone to the mix, because sometimes there can be low T4 to T3 conversion, and it can cause depression, and you can't test T3 levels in the brain. Or at least that seems to be what I've read. So we'll give that a go for a couple of weeks as well as the extra Cipralex.

And after that, wheee! Nardil. Maoi diet sucks. I tried Parnate last year, with no joy, but from what I can find, Nardil is more effective although harder on the body. Which means being really really adherent to the diet, and that excludes about 90% of the food I live on at the moment. But giving up salami and cheese for the rest of my life does at least imply that I will have one. At the moment every day contains a few random thoughts about just had enough of this and why not go suck exhaust pipe now instead of dragging on like this. This isn't living, it is existing, barely.
P-doc only asked for the med collection about 10 times in 30 mins. He got me to agree that he can have them if I show up happy in the next month. If I am happy he can have them with the greatest of pleasure - I won't need them then. Until then, I need to have them as a supplement to the CO, and to make sure that I'm unconscious. I hate myself even more for all the organising/planning I've done, and I really wish things could be different, and that I wouldn't be so close to the edge all the time.
Until then the major aim for every day is to endure it in the hope that tomorrow is the one where I wake up singing.

stupid question time

OK...hopefully some total strangers will give me an opinion on this one, because at the moment I'm feeling somewhat ambivalent about it.

So, here goes. Most of what I have done for the last two and a half years has been in the wildlife rehabilitation field, so this is now my 3rd summer of it. And what happens with wildlife, is that, depending on species, anytime from early spring thru to early autumn, they have babies. Of our roughly 8000 cases last year, I'd guess that 90% of them were younglings of one kind or another, for a whole bunch of reasons. Nests blow down, babies fall, fledglings jump, cats and dogs bring them in, trees get cut down, houses get demolished. Whatever. We get lots. In the 1st summer I was still pretty unsure of myself, and I can't remember bringing much home for extra TLC. I also wasn't getting that many rescue calls, after hours etc.

Last year and this year though, there are a quadrillion people out there with my phone number, and they pass it on etc. And depending on location and time etc I get a whole lot that I fetch or are delivered, and need care for a day or so till I can take them through to the centre. Then there are my own sweet babies - the feral pigeons and mynahs that the centre doesn't treat, and I collect them from all over and raise them. The pigeons I release at home, the mynahs are hand-reared as pets (they are so, so clever! and funny! and lovable! after all, the reason they came to the country centuries ago was as pets for lonely migrant sugarcane workers), but they all need regular feeds. And then, when the centre is packed out, especially over Dec when we have less volunteers available than usual, there are also the extra needs babies. Some of the birds have really fast metabolisms, and need feeding every 30 mins. Lots of them need feeding for longer hours than the centre is staffed. The mammals need night feeds. So the more senior volunteers are often expected to "bring our work home with us". He he.. that sounds good! What it means though is a lot of us travel with babes of one kind or another for about 6 months of the year.

Anyway, my very special duckbuddy who I am having coffee with tomorrow (yay! been short on duck rations the last couple of weeks!), told me earlier that me bringing birds to coffee places - in this case, an open air garden shop place - makes her uncomfortable. That she sees people look disapprovingly at me when I feed the birds.
Who all get syringe-fed, mostly in their carry-basket. I haven't ever noticed any disapproval - normally the reverse. People want to see them, and touch them if they can, especially when they have kids.

So the question for the night : would you (keep wanting to say y'all thanks to red,redwhine's GG!) have any objection to seeing baby birds or animals in a restaurant where you were eating? Bearing in mind they don't get to fly around or anything like that. Would you mind if they were brought to your house, etc?

I really don't know - it's never been something I'd have a problem with. On the other hand, I find women breastfeeding in public pretty gross. And I hate it when I am sitting in a smoking area and people bring kids in - makes me feel bad for polluting their lungs, even if it is at their parents instigation. But I wouldn't mind dogs or any other animal being around while I eat.

Well...if anyone reads this...let me know what you think?

seeing as it's sunday

I've been reading through Red Red Whine's blog . Damn, it's depressing! That girl is so so funny, and she writes so well. And reading her posts just makes me want to delete everything and start again. Sigh.

One of her links is to a site that matches you up with different religions according to your answers and priorities on a whole bunch of questions (BeliefNet). This is what I ended up with, some surprises there!

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
3. Liberal Quakers (98%)
4. Reform Judaism (96%)
5. New Age (88%)
6. Secular Humanism (88%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
8. Mahayana Buddhism (81%)
9. Theravada Buddhism (79%)
10. Sikhism (78%)
11. Bahá'í Faith (70%)
12. Jainism (69%)
13. Orthodox Quaker (68%)
14. Taoism (64%)
15. Orthodox Judaism (61%)
16. Scientology (59%)
17. New Thought (56%)
18. Islam (53%)
19. Nontheist (53%)
20. Hinduism (45%)
21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
22. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (37%)
23. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (35%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (32%)
25. Jehovah's Witness (25%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (24%)
27. Roman Catholic (24%)


So I guess mostly what it shows is that my religious/spiritual beliefs are just as confused and contrary as the rest of me. Actually, they change radically with mood, mostly depending on how close to dying I feel - the closer that is, the less I believe in any kind of redemption. When life is good, I like to think that we get to carry the points we earn here forward to another go round. That's kind of a self-serving range, isn't it?

loser...i am such a total loser...

There is something about a Friday night, isn't there. Even if you've been out until dawn every night of the week, and have schemed and planned and lied to carve out a Friday night at home for yourself...there will still be a fleeting thought that if you were really a great person you wouldn't be home alone on a Friday night...??

So if you are an prime example of pond-scum/sea-mud/whale-shit, and are really hating yourself every second of every day...etc. Then Friday night is just about the most hateful time of all.

Wipeout, big time. P-doc has been really pleased because I decided to stick to my family's customary no-alcohol-in-January resolution. Normally done to recover from the christmas excesses, in my case I'm basically doing it because p-doc says he'd rather I didn't drink, that it doesn't help anything, and because I know that over the past year I have been drowning my sorrows way too much.

I'm sorry J - my abstinence since the 2nd of Jan has just ended spectacularly. Badly.
Saw t-doc today...my only achievement for the whole day, other than feeding birds almost often enough. Not a good one, I just about didn't talk, cried lots, what little I said was stupid and inane. Came home. Got so restless that I eventually cut. Both parts of left arm, the normal geometric pattern on bicep. And the three 20cm parallel stripes on the forearm - the really humiliating have-to-explain-a-lot-can't-hide-at-all ones. What p-doc calls the team Adidas tattoo. And then I went and bought a bottle of vodka. Have cased about half of it. Didn't help. Can't help.

Oh yeah - almost forgot this morning's fun time. As a good 'ol pink-skinned blondish type growing up in Africa in the '60s, we were always outside playing and swimming and doing stuff. And 30 years on we are reaping the rewards for our enjoyment. Had a basal cell carcinoma cut away from my nose about 5 years ago. Part of the total apathy for the last 6 months has been ignoring the fact that it was back, but eventually I made myself call for an appt with the surgeon. So now I have an impending cut-away of about 1.6 cm square, with an insert of some kind of stuff and a graft from the back of my ear to cover it. What fun. If it wasn't on my face I'd just leave it. Ah hell - so apart from fat and fucked up and a total loser whackhead idiot I get to die ugly too.

Hey, at least my postmortem plans have never included an open-coffin funeral.

disappearing weeks

One of the strange things about major depression is the time distortions. Every minute seems to drag on for eternity, but the days and weeks slip past unchangingly. The only constant is the feeling of having accomplished nothing in a day/week/month.
Maybe even year, if 2006 is an example. I guess the feeling is constant because I literally have accomplished almost nothing. Except surviving.

Saw p-doc today, and we somehow veered onto the topic of google, and the fact that google somehow saves all the search terms used and can retrieve them. And that the searches done were used in court to convict someone of killing his wife. I mentioned the Shrink Rap Top 10 for 2006 and listed the ones I could remember. He found the topic of girls having sex with fish particularly interesting, so we chatted about the possibilities of that for a bit. And then the 'how to worry your psychiatrist' phrase reminded him that I didn't bring him my meds collection - yet again - and I reminded him that I had said I wouldn't. He told me I'm responsible for half his grey hairs, and the other patient only worries him as much as I do because he has a gun. Mentioned that I have one too, and have had for the last 20 years - which he said will give him even more grey hairs. I pointed out that if I haven't used it on myself or anyone else yet, the chances are that I never will, but he still figured that people with psychiatric illnesses shouldn't have guns. Ha ha, one of ex-p-doc's greatest interests is guns, and we spent many happy hours debating makes and models, and gun-related subjects. Current p-doc seemed to think that that was even stranger....

does the fortune cookie crumble?

I bought two fortune cookies yesterday. Both of them said

"Rather than a lot of words, say a few words; rather than a few words, say
good words"

Maybe this is the universe's comment on my blog?

antisocial days

Saw someone asking about prosocial activities, haven't seen the term before. But I guess its fair.

These have been exceedingly a/s days. For the whole weekend, I have talked only to dogs, cats and visiting birds. Am going to be releasing the three mousebirds tomorrow at a really great garden site for them, and the temptation to blow kisses on 2-legs's tummy is almost irresistable. Other than that doing it would negate the 3 months of completely withholding contact, so that hopefully he wont go and sit on the wrong persons shoulder. I have had some sms chatting to Duckling, my psycho buddy. And I've been ignoring calls from rehab friend. I am still way too cross with her to talk without exploding. On Monday, she was at the centre (about 35 kms away), I was at home, she lives about 10 blocks from me, I asked her to please bring home two mynahs for me. Note...bring home, not fall in love with or anything. Not even feed if she couldn't bear to do that. I know she doesn't like the mynahs, I know that strictly speaking they are not treated by our rehab centre. She refused. I drove all the way across town, to pick up one. The other had been euthanased before I got there. So while she feels that she has moral virtue on her side, I feel that all she has on her side is a dead bird that didn't need to die. And I guess, she gets the dead friendship too. Stupid maybe, but given that I do an awful lot of pick-ups and favours for her, just occasionally I'd like the big favour I ask to be granted.

Harummph. Think today I am undergruntled extremely.

eeek a gap!!!

...which reminds me of the best ever band-name. Used to have a fun competition going with a friend of mine (way way way back in the days before instant research via the net arrived..so we had to actually WORK to find new names..). For quite a few months, there was a clearcut winner, with a band called Eeek!AMouse! or something close to that. Hey, thats about 20 years ago now, can't remember the exact punctuation for a band whose music I could never ever find. I did try though, had an order in at every good music shop in town....

So, three days blog-free. No good reason, other than just being a boring stupid and useless git. Doing the same as always. Catching/fetching/delivering little birds and animals. In between psych appointments. For the last 13 months my entire life has been defined by seeing p-doc, seeing t-doc, taking a med-driven timeout. And in between, I do the animal bits. Oh, and the paying IT bits as well.

Actually, not always in between. In Feb last year I'd been hitting the wall for a while. P-doc's first question was always 'did you bring your pyjamas?'. As in, was I going to call it enough and camp out in hospital for a bit? So I finally said yes, farmed out all my birds, arranged good care for the cats and dogs, and checked in.

Of course, given that 99% of JHB didn't know this, I kept getting calls about birds. Most of them I could redirect, but about 10 days in, I got a call for a baby mynah that I just couldn't get anyone else to take. So after a few calls, I arranged that someone who could feed it overnight would take it, someone else would collect him in the middle of rush hour traffic, bring him to me, and also pick up all the vital foodstuff on the way. And deliver him to me in the hospital.

Took two days for anyone to realise that a bird was sharing the ward. And then it wasn't because of anything he or I had done. Just some really whackhead psycho bitch who decided she hated me because I love my p-doc. And because he doesn't pander to attention-seeking the way her doc does. As in...ten urgent messages, 'i think i have to cut', 'i really want to cut', 'i cant stop wanting to cut'....every 5 mins, while p-doc facilitates the behaviour by saying 'oh no darling patient, don't do that. go sit with the nurses for a couple of hours, and everytime they try to do their work, just scream about how you need their devoted attention'. I'm sorry, but that was really the way patient, p-doc and nurses reacted.

I know cutting is really gross and stupid behaviour. But if I really end up having to do it, then I think the way my p-doc handles it is the best. He asks, looks at cuts, makes sure they don't need medical attention, teases the shit out of me because (as he puts it), I am really good at it - can carve geometric patterns in my bicep that hurt like hell, bleed like hell,(leave scars sometimes unfortunately), and I keep them neat and clean enough that they don't fester. He handles them exactly the way I'd like - it's not meant as attention-seeking, not meant to hassle people. Just a really ugly and stupid way of venting.

But with sicko Air-head Aur...the fact that my p-doc and I had agreed on a way of coping that (not being a bitch here, but...) made her p-doc's dramatic reaction really stand out as being pure attention-seeking/facilitating....that was first reason she hated me. Second was that I said straight out that p-doc was way sexy, and that in a different time/space I'd be jumping his bones anywhere I could, and this somehow seemed to bring out some serious latent aggression, because she was incredibly proud of being a 27 year old virgin, whose fiancee of nearly two years hadn't even got close to sex. I respected her position - she didn't respect mine.
And Charlie the mynah was the casualty. I only discovered a fortnight later that all the complaints had been hers, and that all except one were outright lies.

But I reckon that never before, never since, has a small bird been a patient in a five star private hospital. Yo Charles!!

the devil finds work for idle hands

Well...not quite. More like the angels, last night.

In this case, an angel with beautiful white-feathered wings. Really. This isn't a hallucination, or a psychotic break or anything like that.

As I was about to cut my arm, my cell phone rang. Because of my IT job, for which I am on permanent callout, I have to answer the phone - especially when I don't recognise the number. It was a woman, whose family had just found a pure white baby pigeon walking down the road...all by himself, in the dark, not flying....

They were willing to bring it to me, but I thought I'd use the opportunity to work off a bit of tension by driving too fast, along a fairly good road. So I went and fetched him, got given a box of Swiss chocolates as a thank you, and heard from the man who had seen him first about his new business, that had begun trading at New Year. His emblem is a white Roc, the mythological bird - so he saw the pigeon as being a good omen for the business. Didn't tell him that it was also intervening in my bad habit.

So thank you, little Roc. (I name the birds while they are in my care, mostly just so that I can differentiate between them, and keep records of their care. Not because I am a bunnyhugger. Although I am.)

And today was just about 8 hours of travelling around town, fetching birds, delivering a few to the centre, fetching a few more. The rehab centre that I volunteer for doesn't treat either Indian Mynahs or Feral Pigeons, as both are regarded as non-indigenous species. So I have a roaring under-the-counter care system going for both species, as they are among my most favourite birds. The down side of that is a day like today, where my net bird population has risen by 7 "illegals", and 2 temporary residents, all needing hand-feeding and/or gastric tubing.

One way of keeping out of trouble, I guess.

i wish that weeks didn't have to start with monday

Caution. I think this is going to end up being what they call a triggering post on some of the interesting sites I've been to. As in...if you are sitting with your sharp object of choice right next to you, maybe you should skip this one.

The weekend stayed crap, although that was probably a given, after Friday nights stupidity and hysteria. I left a message on p-doc's office phone asking if I could have an appointment today (intended to reach his receptionists, not him). Sent him an email saying it was really not going great but that I didn't want to talk to stand-in. That was about 40 minutes before I phoned her anyway. The rest of the weekend was just numbness and post-sedative vacuum.

Saw t-doc this morning, had to confess to Fri, and that my parents are questioning where we go from here. As in, "now that you've spent another year being sea mud, shouldn't we try something else?" Subtext being : "given that we are basically paying your medical expenses plus more, we think you should be doing something different, and can use financial coercion to direct that". Part of what was boiling over on Fri was the question of what I'd do if it does come to that. Easy answer is that I will increase my mortgage(currently at 0), and that would cover docs and drugs for a couple of months. Unfortunately, that would also be the end of family peace and togetherness, so it's not quite so easy. T-doc said that she is more than happy that I look at all possibilities, including seeing someone else as well, and that if it came to that, she would write-off the costs. Which made me cry all day, but I couldn't do that to her.

And then I spent most of the day hoping that p-doc's office would call. Theoretically, he employs someone whose primary task is to call the 'shit list' (I think they call it something bland like 'daily phone check') and make sure that we aren't totally losing it, most days of the week. Didn't get that, didn't get appt. Too embarrassed to call again, because I'd end up just crying. And feeling really loathsome cos they didn't phone even after I left Fri night's miserable message.

So now am sitting with razor blade on the keyboard, just watching it. It is such an ugly, moronic thing to do, and I still don't really understand why I end up doing it. Other than as punishment for being such a totally unloveable bitch. And a loser. And a miserable asshole. Not that cutting helps with any of that. It just makes it more unlikely that I will ever get into a position where I get naked with someone, because it's inexplicable to anyone who doesn't do it. But somehow, once the really sore bit is past, just watching the blood run down my arm seems to bring some kind of calmness. Meditation through mutilation?

And in between t-doc this morning and now, I had coffee with duck-buddy for first time in about 3 weeks. She is also not doing well at all, so mostly we just sat and made cynical wisecracks about what losers we are. But it was good to see her anyway.

Then I went to catch and relocate what turned out to be a Cane Rat that was trapped in someones bathroom. They are rodent-type mammals, but weigh in at about 5 kg, and can get up to 60 cm long not counting the tail. And they have large teeth as well, and bad temperaments. Sometimes feeling nihilistic works well for rehab - you just couldn't care less anyway, so storming into a closed area to catch large biting things is easy. I mean hey, I wouldn't mind if it leaped up and ripped open my jugular, so why should I worry about it sinking its incisors into my sandal-clad foot? So...after netting him and taking him through to the centre, he seemed to be healthy enough, and was taken straight out to one of our release sites, a nature conservancy about 30 km's out of town. At least I did something constructive today.

not a good night, not at all

So....in spite of everything that I've written both here and other places, last night was such a wipe-out that I ended up calling boyshrinks stand-in. I've seen her a couple of times when I've been in hospital, and like and respect her. That was around midnight, after I'd taken quite a few extra sleeping tabs, just to try get myself to sleep, but without much effect.

It was one of those idiotic calls, because I wasn't going to go to the hospital, and I'd already taken more meds than I should have, so she couldn't really do much except acknowledge that I was kind of distraught and then tell me to go to bed, and to come see her in the morning if I wanted to.

Needless to say, I was too embarrassed to do that. I've been trying really hard not to cut myself, which is one of the usual ways to blow off the emotional steam kettle. If I'd let myself do that earlier in the day it might have helped, but by 23h00 I was way beyond the release of cutting - I would have ended up doing really visible and vicious cuts all over my forearms (mostly, I can keep it to my bicep, where it's not so visible). Not sure which is more humiliating, but at least calling her needs less explanation than the blade marks do.

And in spite of having had almost 12 hours of sleep before I finally managed to wake up, I am feeling so empty and dead that I will probably be in bed by about 9 o clock.

Some days I can understand quite clearly why I hate myself. Cos I really am a total asshole.

she was waiting for her mother at the station...

Oh shit. Having a Shawn Phillips retrospective. How come I never realise it at the start??, that whoever I'm listening to repeatedly, at home and in the car....it's almost always not good.

Mostly I see it about 3 days into the lost world, when I realise I keep driving places and never seeing where I'm going 'cos I'm crying too much.

How much of the theory about how really close women friends atune their cycles to one another is believable? OK, so I've never discussed too much of my menstrual cycle with female housemates, but at the moment my best buddy Duckling and I are so attuned emotionally that it is scary. We don't see it as empathy - rather, it's a confessional thing. When we eventually say to each other that we're free falling into hell - almost always turns out that the other one of us has been spiralling out and out, and trying not to down the buddy on the way. I do believe that when the movement is upward - ha fucking ha! - that we'd be there together. Just that in the last two years there ain't been so much of that. As in almost zero - ok, in truth..about 36 hours. She is a rapid-cycling mixed state BP. So her moods are sometimes transient and hard to judge. And occasionally psychotic.

Sometimes it really helps to be able to tell someone what a loser I am, and to know that they can really empathise, not because of training, or not because they care. But because they really do know how it feels.

So at the moment, we don't talk too much, because neither of us wants to drag the other down any further. Hey duck-buddy....love ya anyway.

the best part of this week...

...is that I got to see my p-doc today. Seeing as he and t-doc have a first name almost the same, and seeing as she's always been affectionately known as girl-shrink, he's also known as boy-shrink. No disrespect intended.

It's been a long, long month since I last saw him, and while I wholeheartedly agree that he deserves a holiday more than anyone else I know, I've been trying to keep my head down and just endure the days until he came back.

Funnily enough, Shrink Rap posted yesterday on covering her practice while she occasionally gets a bit of private life. Boyshrink carries a pager, and three (!!) cell-phones. Or it might be 4 by now. If you want him out of hours, you need to page, and he will then call back asap. He doesn't respond to any of the phones, those are purely to call with. The hospital where he admits has 5 shrinks using it, and they cover weekends from Fri afternoon till Mon am, for each other - so he works one weekend out of five. When he is away, either one of the others will stand in, or he will arrange for someone else to cover. I don't call unless it's a really boring but needed med query. Don't really have much to say to anyone else, not about anything that matters.

The only thing I don't like about him....
- is that he is my doctor. It's not transference, cos that normally takes longer than about 5 minutes, but I've been in love with him since I met him. There is only one criteria that he falls short (heehee) on, and that's that he would be absolutely and completely perfect if he was about 5 inches taller. Unfortunately, apart from the professional bit, he's also married - and if he was the sort of man who'd overlook either of those, he wouldn't be the sort of man that I love him for being.

One of the nicest things about him...
- is that he does know how I feel, and hasn't made any kind of issue about it. And he also knows how much I need physical contact at the moment, and still gives me a quick hug on the way out.

Welcome back, J - I've missed you a lot.

the unpaid job, fun and not so fun

Last time that I dropped out of IT was mid 2004, although it had been about 6 months of planning. My really wonderful parents had suggested to me that maybe a less stressful job might help, and had offered to subsidise it until I could get some part-time income. My major loves in life are reading and animals, so after a bit of investigating of the book side, I approached the most well-known and respected wildlife rehab centre in the town where I live. Took a bit longer, but eventually I started to work for them as a full-time volunteer.

Since then, I was rehired by my old company as a contractor, to support one of their major clients - who had been "my" client for 5 years. Only took 4 months for my successor to stuff it up pretty badly....stop! gloating is ugly! smack self on wrist...**. since then I've been contracting part-time in IT, working most of the time in rehab.

The last year has been doing not enough of either.

Almost every day has been a struggle to get out of bed, although mostly I try make it up by 07h30. I have to, to feed whichever animals and birds are living with me.

There are 6 permanent residents - Whizzer, aka "big dog", cross GSD weighing in around 57 kg, almost 10 years old, suffering with arthritis and mast cell cancer. Zac is also almost 10 - where have the years gone to?? - and he's a highly pedigreed Border Collie, who was badly abused as a puppy. When he came to us, he'd been living on the same farm as Whiz and I, and we knew he would fit into the family, but we were his 4th home in 18 months. Years on, when he has never been hit once, he still flinches at sudden movements. Basically though, he's just a little love puppy.

And then the cat pack. My much loved Pushkin, who died a week after her 20th birthday, had been an only cat - and insisted on staying that way too! After losing her, I swore never to have an only cat ever again, and adopted Toby and Tessa, who are now 5. Brother and sister, and while Tess is a gorgeous grey tabby, Tobes got the looks in that family! He is a tabby-point siamese, with incredible blue velvet eyes, stripey tail, feet and mask, and creamy-grey coat. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, though. Stuart and Samuel are brothers, about 2 now. They were part of a feral litter that I rescued from an office block, and with no intention of getting another cat at all, the next thing I knew was that my local vet had found them a good home. With me. Damn..took them to her cos I didn't want more cats! They are both pure white, but Sam has 'odd eyes', one blue, one yellow, while Stuey has both being yellowy-green. Normally referred to as the boy-monsters...while they shred, knock over, climb on any available objects. Oh yeah... there are a few fish too. So far they have survived being treated as kitty-tv by Stu. He watches them for hours, but has only fallen into the tank about 6 times.

Birdy inhabitants vary from week to week, so I'll post about them often, but not many are here for longer than a few weeks at a time.

While I mostly get out of bed on time, after first feeds, I end up sleeping in the bath, or just wasting most of the day in semi-sleep. Sometimes I get as far as doing a couple of tasks...sometimes just being is way too much. I have cut down drastically as far as the number of birds I take on personally goes, but sometimes I sit and cry because just feeding 2 or 3 of them uses all the effort I have.

Sometimes just breathing uses way more than I have.

so who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

I am, definitely. My personal wolf is Bipolar 2 depression, and for the last two years it's been biting hard.

When you say Bipolar, most people think of what used to be called manic-depressive illness. BP2 is the boring relative. In the 'up' periods, known as hypomania, we get to be basically normal - for some with a bit of irritability. For me it's just a good mood, with a bit of energy. What I blow on the credit card is generally less, because I follow through on whatever I buy. I tackle things like redoing house plants, but after I've gone out and bought new plants, pots, soil etc, I actually get down and do the job. Whereas when I'm down, the wretched plants are quite likely to die without ever making it into the house, never mind into their designated pots.

Worst things for me are :
- suicidality...24x7
- guilt over everything that has gone wrong in the entire universe
- apathy - I sleep whenever possible, and when I'm not asleep I don't do much either
- exhaustion
- anhedonia
- anti-social...I get cornered into agreeing to see people, and end up lying to get out of the arrangements
- did I mention guilt yet?
- alcohol abuse as escapism
- cutting

And the most frustrating is that I have nothing to be depressed about. I have a loving and supportive family, good friends, great work, the best psychiatrist and psychologist in town, access to good medical care and drugs etc. And none of that is enough to keep away the wolf.

I was depressed and hell to live with as a teenager, and if I think back, I can see the BP pattern emerging then, although I kind of got through it somehow. A few good years, and then a period of six months which was about the closest I have gotten to manic. At the time I just looked at it as living at my full capability - challenging job, lots of excercise, lost huge amount of weight, got involved with a man that I worshipped. Got uninvolved. And the whole house of cards came down.

Since then I've never really got it together again. There have been a few relationships, but only with men that were not at all long term prospects. There've been a couple of jobs, but nothing that I've ever done more than minimum expectations. That hurts a bit, cos I used to be so hot, so brilliant at what I did.
There's been some travelling, and two periods of dropping out of IT for more 'amenable' jobs. And I've pretty much failed at those too.

There's been a lot of psych hospital stays, lots of drugs, lots of ECT. Lots of psychotherapy. Lots of trying alternative meds and methods. Lots of times where something has worked for a few months, and I've gotten my life together for a while.

And lots of times where I go to sleep OK, and when I wake up the whole lot has gone to shit again. In 2005 I had about 6 weeks where a new drug, new doc worked nicely.
In 2006 I had 4 good days in May. This year I don't think I'll get to May, unless something really kicks in. Just too much, too long this time.

I wake up every day and wonder if this is going to be the good one. Or the last one.