Week of December 8, 2003

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Tuesday

December 9

“Be you still there?  You've not updated in a month!

“Looking forward to a new entry!” — Rainhawk

Which gives me a perfect excuse to blow off work for a bit and try to make some sense out of the past several weeks.

What have I been doing?

Other that the mundane, it falls broadly into three categories: Health/Welfare, Work/Business, and Drama.

Health/Welfare

I never really fully recovered from being sick back in early October. Yes, the cold symptoms are long gone, but I continue to feel drained. Most days it’s an effort to do much more than stare at the monitors or out the window, count the hours until my next nap and berate myself for being lazy.

Ordinarily, I’d write it off as depression, however, my mental state, when I’m not berating or feeling sorry for myself, is not consistent with depression. I feel fine—which only adds to the frustration of being so dragged-out.

Back in October I gave it two weeks to go away before going to the doctor. I called and on short-notice was able to get an appointment with a nurse-practitioner. I went in with a whole list of things that weren’t right that I couldn’t put together into any sort of recognizable set.

It’s like a Chinese menu of symptoms, only without the columns. Two from column A, one from column B and another from column C would add up to something.

There’s the tiredness and complete lack of stamina, vision troubles, continuing urological problems, continuing, worsened and brand-new gastrointestinal issues, rashes, things that could only be classified as general neurological weirdness, equilibrium, sleep issues, moods and emotional instability (and the difficulty assessing if it’s cause or effect), but worst of all by far are cognitive dysfunctions.

It’s all over the map.

The nurse ordered a urinalysis and the usual suite of blood work, gave me a flu shot and sent me on my way after writing down four diagnoses:

  1. Fatigue
  2. Prostatitis
  3. Fibromyalgia
  4. IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)

The earliest available follow-up I could get was for November 21.

Fast-forward to Monday of that week. I tried to write about it on November 17. This is what I wrote, unfinished, unedited:

Self-delusion is a wonderful thing.

When it works.

Which it doesn’t for me any more. At least not for long. It’s one of the things that recovery, depending on your viewpoint, either takes away from you or cures you of.

It doesn’t keep me from trying sometimes. It’s still an automatic response learned in the past.

These past few weeks, since my cold last month, I’ve worked, and worked trying to catch up. The harder I’ve worked, the further behind I seemed to get—one of the classic symptoms of burnout. You’d think I’d be more familiar with the territory since I take myself there so frequently.

Still, self-delusion takes over. I think my capabilities are great than they are. I estimate the time required to do this or that by what I think other people can do, rather than meself.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me to accept in recovery, is my diminished capacity. I run up against it in some form nearly everywhere I turn. I remember being this huge intellectual accomplishment machine. There was nothing I couldn’t conquer.

I remember being able to learn new things instantly, almost through osmosis. I have to work so hard at it now, many times I just give up in frustration.

I remember writing database code sot tight and elegant that it was like poetry. I wrote minimalist stuff, sort of database haiku, I wrote epic stuff like Homer and Dunne. Sharing my work with peers, astonishment was the usual reaction. They’d look at what I had to work with, look at the results, shake their heads and mutter to themselves, “You can’t do that. It can’t be done. How did he do that?”

My computer department literally sang an ethereal chorus of data processing. I thought in eight or nine or ten dimensions as easily as others make out a grocery list. I reduced it to related two-dimensional tables and melodious code flowed from my fingers linking it all together.

And I did it for 12 to 18 hours a day for years—completely blasted out of my mind.

I lost that capability in my first recovery in 1991.

It didn’t seem to effect my ability to learn other things, even with computers and technology. I simply couldn’t understand, let alone write, code in any manner. Still can’t, nearly 13 years later.

I look back at the early years of this journal and all I see are the abilities I lost during my second recovery. Sure, it’s not great prose, it’s the rantings of an insane person, but I could sit down and write what I wanted to whenever I wanted to.

Yet I complained of great difficulties with getting things out of my head. Difficulties I laugh at now, given how hard it is to get them out lately.

Although I’m only 46, “senior moments” come with increasing frequency. It’s become difficult to carry on conversations ,with my thoughts dropping into the void every few seconds.

I can’t even say it’s ADD distraction or scatterbrainedness. It’s not that I bound off in other directions, everything disappears in an instant. I can even see the hole where my thoughts went. Albeit only after the fact.

It would be nice to know what’s happening and why. If I could just attribute it to something it would be a start, even if it wasn’t very pleasant. If it’s the drugs, it sets me up for a lot of self-blame, but at least I’d know the damage is done, not continuing.

If it’s early-onset Alzheimer's—which runs in the family—that’s just plain depressing, particularly given the longevity also prevalent on that side of the family. I can't even contemplate 40 years of further such decline.

My greatest fear, even larger than Alzheimer's, is that I’ll be told it’s a normal part of aging. Perhaps it’s paranoia, but I’d be suspicious that people are lying to me to “make it easier to deal with.” Doctors, friends, family always lie to sick people.

The following day, I subbed for a guy at work. You may recall how I’ve said that just when I’m thinking about something or just when The Universe feels I need something, a book about it shows up on my cart.

That night, four days before the doctor appointment, a new book with the word “Fibromyalgia” in the title dropped into my hands.

Humph, I thought. I wonder if there’s anything new in the field. After all, I was diagnosed back in 1987, and except for slowly increasing the dose, have remained on the same treatment for years.

That night I flipped though the book before deciding where to begin reading, since fibromyalgia was only one of the “invisible diseases” in the title. I came across a self-evaluation checklist in the back and mentally started checking things off.

These are the ones I checked as being “most severe or frequent in the past 60 days:”

Pain

Eyes and Vision

Urogenital

Gastrointestinal

Other

General Neurological

Equilibrium/Perception

Sleep

Mood/Emotions

And yet, with all of that, the cognitive issues are the worst. Where in the others I’d been hitting anywhere between one and two thirds of all the symptoms on the list, here I hit almost all:

Cognitive

Not on the list but equally important, according to the text, is a waxing and waning of symptoms. I have good days and bad. (Today is a good day.) I never seem to have all the symptoms at the same time, (Eeek!) but experience different combo plates of them. Every morning when I wake up I do sort of an inventory trying to figure out what’s different today.

Anyway, some of these I’ve been complaining of for years, however their frequency and intensity have increased with time. Others things are just now popping up. Taken separately, or in small groups, even I can think of dozens of different causes.

But put them all together, and you get Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The full title of the book is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Other Invisible Illnesses: The Comprehensive Guide

Oh boy. Just what I need. Another untreatable, incurable disease for which there is no objective diagnostic test.

I’m not happy with the idea. Not happy at all. Yes, it’s a relief that so many seemingly unrelated things can come together in a single diagnosis. If nothing else, it means I’m not crazy, not hypochondriatic, and not slipping away into dementia. Knowing those things is an incredible relief.

I read as much of the book as I could before seeing the doc that Friday. I took my checklist with me and explained that until I’d read the book, which I’d picked up for a different reason entirely, that CFS had never crossed my mind.

We worked though the list and my medical history and he asked lots of questions. Finally he told me that it could take two years of ruling out other causes to firm up diagnosis. I knew this already from the book. However, on the form in the space for up to four diagnoses, he wrote, “Chronic Fatigue?”

I lumped welfare together with health for two reasons. First there’s my general welfare, which you’re beginning to get an idea of. Second, there’s DSS.

Before I went in for my October recertification, I gave a lot of thought to one decision. I’d given it months of thought as a matter of fact. I wondered if part of my problem was a lack of incentive, that I was too comfortable with the State paying for most of my rent and all of my food. Had I become “institutionalized” or dependent on welfare as a way of life?

Only one way to find out. I checked the box that said “I no longer want temporary assistance.” At the interview my worker was stunned, as if never in her career had she seen anyone actually check that box.

Regaining her composure she asked why. I explained that between my part-time job, part-time business and temporary assistance, I was very comfortable, thank you very much. I was wondering if my progress had been impeded by that comfort so I wanted to light a little fire under my lazy ass.

She looked over my pay stubs, bank statements and profit-and-loss statement, sighed, shook her head and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“But you still want Food Stamps and Medicaid?”

“If I still qualify.” I’m no fool. I’m not going to go hungry while I experiment and there’s no way I can afford any sort of health insurance and a pack of cigarettes at the same time, let alone food, rent or other expenses.

“Looks like it. Okay” and she processed the forms.

This was three weeks before I picked up that book which called into question whether it’s an issue of comfort/institutionalization/laziness or a genuine health matter.

Sigh.

Work/Business

Work remains my break from the rest of my life. With the exceptions of occasionally feeling weak—lifting heavy books sometimes exhausts me—and occasionally having problems with putting them in the right order on the shelves, not much else intrudes on my time there.

My first anniversary came and went with no fanfare. I’ve gained a confidence in my ability to do my job that seems to show. Patrons seem to flock me with questions on where to find something and for suggestions on reference materials or even what novelists to read. Although it’s not my job, I like being asked and I can field a surprising variety of questions.

I pick up as many extra hours as I can—the substitutions list is the first thing I check when I arrive. And when work has really been backed up deeply and for days, I’ve offered to come in for extra shifts. Added to the number of times I’ve had to work alone because someone couldn’t come in and couldn’t find a sub, and I’ve earned the title, Super Page.

My current project is shifting all the books in adult fiction. There’s tons of extra shelf space towards the end of the alphabet, say, from Danielle Steele on. The middle is just about right. But but the beginning, from the Browns through the Clarks, and clear through to King and Koontz, the shelves are so jammed you can’t fit a sheet of paper in let alone a book or bookend, and it’s damaging the spines of all the books.

And this is after the “dusty books” project, where those titles that haven’t circulated in 7 to 10 years got weeded out. (Excepting classics like Cervantes, Dickens, Twain, Stevenson and so on—things every public library ought to have, whether they circulate or not.)

On Friday, I started at the Zs shifting books and filling the space to make more room at the beginning. I’m up through Sidney Sheldon and I’ve freed 2½ complete shelf units—floor to ceiling—and I can tell already, it’s not going to be enough. So it looks like I’ll go back to the Zs and fill the shelves to ⅞ instead of ¾ to see how that’ll do.

Businesswise, I’ve been able to keep up with client work, although this week and next are really busy and I’m wondering from which orifice I’m supposed to pull the extra time. Where I haven’t been able to keep up is in working on my business website, online ordering and general business development.

The only commitment to myself that I’ve been able keep is writing the bi-weekly customer newsletter. The next issue is due tomorrow. I still need to come up with a second topic and maybe a third.

It’s been the only thing that’s kept me from mentally regressing to toddler stage. My clients enjoy it and since it’s archived online, Google likes it and, thanks to Google, I’ve picked up subscribers who aren’t clients.

Other than that, well to give you an idea, only half the portfolio pages are moved over and three of the seven menu choices don’t do anything. Pretty sad and considerably less than impressive. It’s probably driving people off instead of attracting new business.

You know how they say that if you want to be inundated with credit card solicitations all you have to do is get a mortgage? I’ve got one that’s better. Get a credit card merchant account. Since I’ve become a merchant account holder for VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, I’ve singlehandedly become responsible for the destruction of acres of rainforest.

American Express alone can’t decide what color to give me, so they want me to choose. I’ve had multiple solicitations for green, blue, gold and business platinum ($50,000 credit line guaranteed!) Everything but black. When they solicit me for black, I’ll take them up on it.

Meanwhile, the VISA and MasterCard pre-approved solicitations pour in. I may just burn out Mark’s shredder.

If they only knew that (until recently) I’m on welfare. Without it? All my earnings and even my business’s gross billings (let alone profit) keep me comfortably below the federal poverty level. But there it is. Amex alone wants to give me enough plastic to buy a house. A small house. In a poor neighborhood. But still…

And did I mention the Credit Bureau of Rochester sends me collection notices every month?

Geeze, I remember when my ex applied for a merchant account only ten years ago. We had good credit, a mortgage and a ten-year-old business. We still barely go it.

In contrast, Discover and Amex each approved me over the phone in about ten minutes. MasterCard and VISA were an online form I filled out. I clicked “Submit” and had the approval the next morning. They can’t wait to line people up on the gravy train.

I hope it doesn’t hurt their feelings that I’m perfectly content with only cash and my debit cards.

Now if only I could finish the remaining work on the web site…

Then the server upgrade hit. I lease space on two different servers. Scenic Route and a bunch of experimental stuff is on one, all my clients and my business site on the other. It’s the other that was in for the upgrade.

Something that was supposed to go in three days for all servers in the facility, will take 30 days instead. Where there was only supposed to be ten to twenty minutes of service interruption per client, it was a week.

It wasn’t until Friday that I was able to nail down the last issue because concurrently with that, the friendly local DSL provider decided to block all outgoing email, except that sent through their own server.

I’d spent days trying to figure out why certain customers couldn’t send mail. Then I had to explain why they could no longer use mail.theirdomain.com but had to switch to smtp.frontiernet.net instead.

To quote a client, “Those bastards!”

I still may lose a hosting client because of it. The first thing I learned when I moved into corporate PC support was “Don't fuck up email.” Perhaps they’ll cool down and accept that the email bit genuinely wasn’t my fault or that of the people doing the upgrade. Perhaps they won’t figure it out until they go to another hosting provider and still can’t send mail through “their own” server.

It’s not a big thing, which server handles your outgoing email, unless you have a laptop. Then, it’s best to have your own outgoing server so you don’t have to fiddle with it in Outlook every time you go to Starbucks or whatever. These guys, all they have are laptops.

And it was convenient for me when it came to troubleshooting. If it didn’t work, it was my problem, no question. Now it looks like I’m fingerpointing.

Drama

My life has been so far removed from drama I’m amazed I can still remember how to spell it. Yet suddenly, I find myself embroiled in a fresh outbreak of it.

There’s a bit of back story to fill in—I can copy-and-paste one part of it from an email I sent—and then the explanations of how it all blew up and how I’m handling it and the prognosis for the future.

But, this is nine pages now, I’m nearing the end of my energy for the day (at noon for christ sakes) and as you may have noticed in the past three years, I very rarely mention other people, let alone write about them.

So I’m going to quit here, rest a while and reflect on how much I can say to tell the story without going over the line in the area of personal privacy.

For now, I can tell you that I’m handling it all very well. Even the combo platter of health/welfare, work/business and drama is going down more smoothly than I ever dared hope. Three-and-a-half years of recovery have made a significant positive change in my ability to handle what life throws at me.

While it certainly would have been nice if the shit hadn’t hit the fan in three areas simultaneously, beyond that wish and the need for an occasional time-out, I don’t feel overwhelmed nor am I looking for places to run and hide.

It’s all good.

Or at least as good as it could be now that drama has returned.

 

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