Disability

Dystoni What?

Because of what I mentioned about death, I would feel amiss if I didn’t bring up what it has done to me. Past posts have told you that I have Major Depressive Disorder that I received from my mother. That was the only hereditary thing I hope I received from my parents. I also have General Anxiety Disorder which has been dropped or added at different points and Social Anxiety Disorder, which I didn’t know was a real thing, but makes sense. I rehearse and have to think extra hard about the beginnings of sentences and sometimes wing the endings of sentences because it takes too long. That causes me more anxiety, but people get impatient. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which isn’t keeping everything neat, but I did alphabetize everything growing up or had them sorted by color or height (not kidding). I’m sorry Mike Fobair for alphabetizing your DVDs that one time. It pissed you off, but I asked the wrong person before I did it. When I’m overly stressed, I wash my hands until it feels right or until I burn my hands…literally. And even then it doesn’t feel right and I feel stressed. I feel like I’m getting a brain tumor or always afraid I’m going to get someone sick. I’m afraid I am a sickness. You can laugh at that, but it’s a literal obsession. Changes take time for me to reprocess in my mind because I rehearse things a certain way in my head, so if a room changes or plans change, I have to reimagine it in my head. That was probably too many words because I have to make sure everything is explained thoroughly. I also have PTSD from the car accident involving my dead coworker. It’s not as bad as it once was, but sometimes I think we’re going faster than we are when we are supposed to be breaking, but I have to trust the driver instead of what I am seeing. I have freaked out my driver on more than one occasion with what my mind saw with what was actually happening.

Physically, a few years ago because work stressed me out, you know how your brain wants to explode? My eyes started blinking. And they didn’t stop. You might try to imagine how silly it looked, but I was walking to my apartment and suddenly I could only halfway see what was going on because my eyes were blinking in tandem really quickly, obstructing my eyesight. It went away after a few minutes.

I went to see a neurologist. They called it blepharospasms and said I would need Botox for it. Botox. For blinking? Not cosmetic? For medical purposes? I was just trying to wrap my mind around the idea. Every three months I would need needles around my eyes to inject Botox to stop these blepharospasms. Several years later, I’m still going every three months to get Botox. 

After my coworker died in Pennsylvania a couple months ago, I reached another point of stress where my body couldn’t handle it anymore. My hands started to tremor. I went to the neurologist again and they diagnosed me at first with essential tremor and then with dystonia. Nobody’s ever heard of dystonia, right? But tremors, pain, remind you of anything? Maybe Parkinson’s? Yeah, it’s a somewhat distant cousin of that.

I had to quit my job. Laid in my bed with 8 out of 10 pain for about a week before starting a Partial Hospitalization Program for the second time in my life, and now I can sit in a chair, stand for a few minutes at a time, and am searching for a part-time remote job! Most days, on a scale from 1-10, my pain level is a 3, which is manageable. I can move around (sitting down most of the time) for a few hours), but I feel like I’m getting more used to my new limitations. Therapy has helped immensely. And if I can help just one person with my blog, it will be worth it!