WOW!

Time simply flies.

I thought I had been away for only a year.  It was when I returned to this blog that I realized that it is far closer to two since my last post.  (I just went back and double checked the dates and…no its only been about 13 months.)   I just don’t have a proper sense of time as it passes.  This felt much more like a long day had passed even though I thought it was maybe a year.  This blog, all of my projects really, call to me, begs and cries but life has plans of its own.  A lot has happened and I am having  hard time sorting out just what to write about.   I think though it has been closer to two years and this site has changed quite a bit.

How much to say?

Well…  Meta and I finally got a new Psychiatrist about  a year ago last January I think.  That was a bit bumpy.  The first thing, really the only thing our new doctor did was take us off of our Benzos…  I never can say or spell that name.  We will just say nerve pills.  .  Meta use to take Xanax and I use to take Ativan along with our other psychiatric medication.  It seems that he does not like those types of medications.  I can’t hold that against him as doctors tend to have medications they like or trust and medications they don’t like nor trust.  Surprisingly I made that adjustment, with time, without any big bumps.  Meta on the other hand has had a much harder time.  Her nervous condition is much worse than mine and she is getting older.

She found herself trapped inside the house.  This was hard for her as she had a presence in the downtown where we live.  She would visit the various shops and the local library often.  She has what the doctors use to call an anxiety condition.  This isn’t like an anxiety disorder.  I have seen other people shake like she does on you tube.  It was old footage of men from World War One that had suffered from shell shock.  In the beginning she mostly relied on stress eating to cope.  Now Meta smokes weed.  People have a variety of views on marijuana  but the anxiety and the physical shaking is too much for me and I’m just watching.  She also has the feeling of bugs crawling all over her body which provokes scratching.  She had suffered from this before and our last doctor prescribed the Xanax in response.  It had been so long that she had largely forgotten what this was all like.  This has been hard for her to adjust to but she had managed thus far.

I have been picking up more of the house hold chores during this period and in these last few weeks she has finally started to come around and begin doing more around the apartment.  I think this is good.  I hope this is good.

My home state has medical marijuana but that is so expensive.  We have found that we still need to go to the street if she wants it which strikes me as strange.  I was under the impression that the whole medical marijuana thing was to reduce the trafficking of street drugs yet the legal stuff is so expensive.  Well, I think most any one would understand what I am trying to get at.

The staffing problem at the clinic has finally been solved by the addition of two nurse practitioners.  Maybe the word solved doesn’t quite describe the situation.  Improved is probably a better term.  Meta and I are lucky.  We have each other and a few family members that do help.  I know what it is like here.  The lack of funds prevent more people, therapists, case Management and MDs/NPs but there are a lot of people in need and the system still appears to me to be over loaded.  I sometimes wonder what it is like in other community mental health clinics across our fair country.

On top of this over these last two years Meta has lost three close family members.  I do what I can but I fear I might be some what emotionally stunted.  I know this has been hard on her.  I fear that I am not much when it comes to offering comfort for these kinds of losses.  Its hard to watch the world you were born in dwindle around you.  It is in these times that I feel the most like a space alien.

I hope all has been at least as good for all of you out there and that today is a better than average day.