Bring on the trick cyclists… :(

Posted on March 26, 2009 by borysSNORC

I’ve been shopping around the last two weeks trying to find a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist who specializes in pain management but I’m getting nowhere. I’d prefer to find a psychiatrist because they might have some decent input on managing the veritable plethora of medications that I’m chugging down in alarming quantities. There’s a few reasons why I’m finding this so difficult. Firstly, there aren’t many pain management specialist psychiatrists in BrisVegas. Secondly, I’m reluctant to start seeing someone and dredge up my dreadfully convoluted history and then decide they’re a plonker and need to start all over again… and then of course there is my inherent distrust for the entire profession which is predominantly based on my previous personal experiences. Basically I’m generally cynical that any amount of counselling can make someone okay about being in pain all day… and I strongly doubt that talking about it hour after expensive hour is going to alleviate the overwhelming frustration that results from not being able to do every day little things either. But that’s just me…

My initial exposure to the psychiatric profession (strangely enough for pain management) was when I was about 23 and I was referred to a psych for medication management (no wonder I’m feeling so much deja fucking vu atm). Mogodons and Prozac were drugs du jour back in the early 90s and I was on them both and others as well. This first psych was an absolute cockhead who chewed on his biros and even though he was only about 35-40 he had horrid little rows of hair plugs across his forehead that made it hard to talk to his face. He would constantly ask me about my relationships with my family (esp my Mum and my Dad) which would cause me to regularly ask what that has to do with my pain issues. He was always running late which meant I’d be stuck sitting around in uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room once for about an hour and then wonder why I was argumentative and pugilistic when I finally got in the door. I remember one occasion where I’d sat there bored out of my trolley and started doing the Woman’s Day crossword in a magazine from the waiting room. When he finally ushered me into his minimalist, anti-decorated and impersonal office and asked me how I was – I put the magazine on the desk and asked if he’d mind waiting two more minutes and I’d have it finished. It probably doesn’t help instill confidence in your medical professional if they seem confused by your vocabulary either. Wang-karrr… Hated him, hated him, hated him.

I saw one psych for IVF related depression which was a total waste of time. How is anyone supposed to help you accept the absymal grief and depression that comes with repeated failed IVF procedures?? I spent four years resisting taking anti-depressants which were being reccommended by my IVF specialist, the psych and my GP because I could see no use whatsoever in trying to medicate the problem. I knew what was making me miserable and anti-depressants weren’t going to fix it… nor could I see how drugs were going to make me happy with the situation. This psych (who was supposed to be a specialist in the areas of infertility related mood and adjustment disorders) was aiming for empathetic and understanding… but somehow only ever managed patronizing and condescending instead. Her office was full of photos of her children growing up and then photos of her grandchildren… looking around the room and listening to her almost text book bedside manner conversational style made it feel like she had absolutely no frame of reference for what infertility does to you and how it makes you feel. I made a polite comment about one of her photos on one visit and she started telling me how amazing her one year old grand-daughter was. Oblivious. Totally fucking oblivious. Barely managed to sit through two appointments with that one.

Oh, and the worst one of all has been vividly etched on my brain forever. It was last year and I got sent to an assessing psych whose rooms (which were located in the downstairs of her house) just about sent me crazy… she had so much shit crammed into her ‘office’ (and I use the term loosely) which included exercise equipment, an old couch, massive flat screen tv, scraps of paper pinned to the walls, the door, sticky notes EVERYWHERE, papers piled from arsehole to breakfast, broken ceramic ornaments, a copy of Russian Ark on DVD (which haunts me to this day – I mean who’d buy that film? ) and a wet smelly dog under the desk. That place made me twitch really bad and there was so much shit in the room it was everything I could do to keep focussed on what she was saying and ignore the state of the place. It didn’t need a clean – it need a some lighter fluid and a match. Really glad I only had to go there once.

There have been others too… mostly medico-legal types who aren’t interested in treating you or even reccommending treatments their job is just to poke and prod you and pull you to bits at the seams and offer an ‘expert opinion’ on how fucked up (or not – depending on who was paying their bill) you were for the court cases (and I say court cases…. because there were several). So basically I don’t like them and wish I didn’t have anything to do with them in general…. except it’s becoming more and more obvious every day that I’m not coping (which is hard for me to admit). I’m not coping with the pain or the side effects of the medications or the lack of sleep or the loss of amenity.

I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like everything I do is pissing someone off because I just don’t have the energy to make nice… I really don’t. I’m just drained. I don’t want to socialize with most of my friends, I don’t want to meet new people, I don’t want to be confronted every day with more things that I simply can’t do without increasing my pain… I don’t even want to leave the house most days. It’s taking a monumental fucking effort to just get out of bed in the morning and go through the motions of making the Small Child’s lunch and take him to school. So my coping mechanisms are at an all time low and if I weren’t concerned about what the combination with all the medication might do… I think I’d be drinking myself into a stupor every single night. Which really doesn’t leave me much choice… so shrink shopping it is.

If only I felt equipped to make a decent decision at the moment… I think that would expedite this whole process.

Whoops I’ve done it again….

Posted on March 25, 2009 by borysSNORC

Last month I cut our DL limit sooo close we were quite literally capped in the offpeak for a whole 24 minutes before it hit back to regular speed for the peak hours and I used that to within an inch of it’s life leavng a bare 145MB left when the month reset itself. Oh my gawd thought did I get a drumming for it. I got in big trouble because that meant Mr K was going to have to wait for his Lost episode… a whole day he had to wait.

And now I’m in big trouble again because I set something downloading and thought the scheduler was enabled (which it wasn’t) and I’ve nearly killed the DL limit again which means Mr K will have to wait a whole extra day for his Lost (second time in four weeks!)…. Oh no! However will he survive! Why ’tis a tragedy of epic proportions.

Feel free to hang shit on him for being a Lost fan on Facebook etc (or should you wish, let me know and I’ll send you his work email address 🙂
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Puffins… mumble fuck… mumble fuck…

Posted on March 24, 2009 by borysSNORC

Many moons ago… way back in 1995, BigSal, Bluddy Mary and I went on an extended ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe. We spend 70 days hanging out with certifiable lunatics on an old Top Deck double decker bus called ‘Freckle’ on the contintent and another week with a different gang of lunatics on another double decker Top Deck bus travelling around Wales and then we hired a car for about 6-7 weeks to troll around Ireland, Scotland and the rest of England.

The tour around Europe was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I saw amazing places and it has inspired me to want to keep travelling (in spite of the absolute horror that is long haul flights for someone with my nasty back problem). it was an amazing trip and took us to France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Lichtenstein, Swizerland, Holland (and I think I’m leaving places out) and because it was 10 weeks we went to all the major tourist highlights as well as many out of the way places too. There’s nothing like travelling when someone else is setting the itinerary and all you have to worry about is not missing the bus – which you couldn’t because well you were sleeping upstairs on it!

The trip around the UK was obviously less formal. We went to Ireland first then headed to Scotland straight to the Edinburough Tattoo and Fringe Festival before pottering around the rest of Englands’ Lakes District and then down to Penzance and the Salisbury Plains etc. Anyway I am getting distracted from my purpose here (as per usual). I was thinking about Fingal’s Cave when I started writing this.

One of the things on my ‘Must See’ list was Fingal’s Cave on the uninhabited Island of Staffa in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. In fact it was just about my only ‘Must See’ in the whole UK… everything else was stuff that BigSal was keen on and me and Bluddy Mary were along for the ride. For the record BigSal makes one helluva tour guide – she picked some amazing places to take us to that we never knew existed 🙂 We had a couple of wild goose chases (don’t mention the Men-an-tol!!) but mostly it was great.

Well Fingal’s Cave looked like an amazing place, crazy hexagonal rock formations that are similar to the ones seen at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Island…. and home to puffins!!! Now I have no idea why but I REALLY wanted to see the puffins!. There were boat trips leaving from Oban I think (?) and unfortunately on the two days we were in the area the weather was too rough to go out to Staffa. I was upset… we were so far away from home and it was unlikely I’d be back in the forseeable future. So Bugger. Poo. Bum. Piss Fart. :S

I have no idea where the fascination with the puffins came from. But I thought they were totally cool little birds, they hang out on the cliffs where they lay their eggs in rather vicariously situation nests and they don’t look particualrly aerodynamic but somehow they get their fat little bodies to fly and they’re covered in beautiful bright coloured beaks and are basically just one of natures little oddities (well so it seemed to me anyway). But alas, there was no puffin sightings for me except at the Edinburough Zoo… which just isn’t the same thing at all.

I was reading a science article today that mentioned that puffins are monogamous… they meet up with their mate at the same time each year to lay one egg that they both take responsibility nurturing and then they go their separate ways until they meet up again at the next breeding season. Bizarre. No doubt the whole monogamy thing is a lot easier when you only have to see each other once every breeding season!

Well I had no idea puffins subscribed to such a ridiculous concept! Why it goes agains every evolutionary ideal to deliberately retard the gene pool by continuously breeding with the same bird year after year! I’ve lost all respect for them now! Why would they choose to be monogamous when they don’t have a religious or societal expectation or imperative to do so??? It makes no sense! And you know I could never admire a creature that is out of it’s wits!
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Cold hands… warm heart… dirty feet… tiny mouth?!!?

Posted on March 23, 2009 by borysSNORC

Big Food pisses me off! 🙁

You see I’ve got a rather small mouth… (waits for the titters to die down)… and whenever I try to eat Big Food I feel like a snake trying to dislocate it’s jaw in order to eat it’s prey. Problem is that most food items that are normal size for most people are just not daintily proportioned enough for my delicate mandibles and I end up doing my dislocated snake jaw impression rapidly followed by an unattractive and ungainly squirrel cheeks imitation.

When we go to the Sushi Station (or similar) I always pick the items that are small bite sized things because if I choose some of the larger items then I risk wearing half of it because I can’t eat it in one bite. If we go out for steak sandwiches at the Hoggies or just a panini sandwich down the local cafe for lunch, I end up dropping half my sandwich on my plate as I try to wrestle with the two inch thick slices of bread. Even when I make hamburgers at home… just rissoles on a regular bread roll with some cheese and salad maybe… I seem to struggle to get around those too.

It’s really annoying. My dentist says that I do indeed have a little mouth and one of the reasons I hate going to the dentist so much is that it feels like HE is trying to dislocate my jaw so he get get a decent look. Having a little mouth has resulted in very straight and gapless teeth which is good thing I guess but it kinda sucks being unable to eat anything larger than a chicken nugget if one wishes to maintain any outward aspect or appearance of decorum.
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Abandon the search for truth and settle for a good fantasy.

Posted on March 22, 2009 by borysSNORC

I don’t have an overly vivid fantasy life. I don’t mean I’m not imaginative or creative because I am both these things. What I’m referring to is sexual fantasies I guess. I’ve never fantasized about specific people, places, things or situations. I’ve never really dreamed of being with a certain celebrity or distant and unobtainable acquaintance. I’m not into porn and usually react with curiosity rather than arousal when confronted with it. I’ve never created elaborate scenarios in my mind that turn me on. I’ve never even imagined myself with someone other than the person I’m with… just nothing like that at all really.

I know! How boring am I?

Mostly I don’t give a shit and I think it stems from the fact that I’m just too damn grounded in reality to waste engery waxing lyrical about unlikely or purely hypothetical crap. I have maybe one or two flights of fancy floating around in my subconscious that no doubt stem from seemingly innocent things in my formative years that have somehow taken up residence in the ‘Hey.. I think that could be kinda fun ;)’ neighbourhood in my brain… but ultimately it’s nothing worth writing home about.

A few people I know have very vivid sexual fantasies that become so integral to who they are that they seem to define their entire beings by them. You know what I mean? This person doesn’t just say ‘I’ve got a bit of a foot fetish’… no this person says ‘I’m a foot fetishist’ like that is so large a part of who they are that they feel they can sum themselves up entirely with just that descriptor. I know people who have incredibly creative fantasies… Rule 34, people!). They nurture their fantasies, they embellish them, they vocalize them, they write them down and many often set about turning them into realities.

“If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies” – Fran Lebowitz

I’ve had quite a few friends ‘confess’ their secret fantasies to me over the years. ‘Confess’ is the word we – and they – tend to use especially if it’s about something out in Sprinkle Territory. You know Sprinkle Territory… yes? It’s not totally mainstream or Vanilla but it’s not so socially unacceptable or illegal that they won’t discuss it at all. So it’s mostly Vanilla but sometimes they secretly want some interesting little Sprinkles on their Vanilla…. maybe also with cherries, latex, chocolate chips, red ribbons, lattes and buttplugs. Some of my friends (who shall remain nameless to protect the extremely perverted 🙂 have very surreal and sophisticated and sometimes surprisingly specific fantasies and fetishes and they’re prepared to expend all sorts of energy and resources to incorporate into their lives.

Being one of those friends that people find it easy to discuss personal things with can be a bit of a double edged sword – it’s a good thing if a friend really needs to talk confidentially about their inner desires without fear of reproach but it’s also a really fucking bad thing if a friend turns out to be some sort of fucked up, delusional, self aggrandizing drama queen who wants to draw you into their own special little nightmare and suck the very life blood out of you.

Apparently I am one of ‘those friends’ that people find it easy to talk to about… ‘stuff’. Which I think is weird given that I know I’m not always that easy to get to know. I know come across as a bit aloof or prickly sometimes (Yes… and THAT will no doubt be understatement of the year). Anyway, I think people talk to me not because I’m an especially good listener (becuase I’m not – I think talk too much and am way too opinionated for that tag) but rather because I’m generally not very judgemental. Well not judgemental of others… judging myself is another therapy session entirely. I’ve always seemed to just accept people as they are and based on how they interact with me personally. I don’t tend to make rapid kneejerk judgement calls and my usual response to someone telling me they’re way off into some uncharted and unfamiliar plot in Sprinkle Territory is curiosity rather than condemnation or discrimination.

I’ll research and Google stuff (always with a certain amount of trepidation) so I can maybe try to understand their particular proclivity and what motivates them but it’s always a purely academic exercise and I’ve yet to see anything that has me thinking… ‘Oh hells yes!’ and every now and then I find mysef a little envious of those friends and their very vivid and explicitly erotic imaginings and I think to myself…

‘Hey! Where’s my Honey Smacks? How come I don’t seem to have any Sprinkles?’
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