safety net

On one level the fact that I've already spent over $1000 on medical bills in six months this year is kind of upsetting. But one great thing is that I've finally reached the Medicare Safety Net threshold. This means that now although I'll still need to pay the $80 and $110 bills, I get all but $8.40 back from my Medicare claim. Woohoo! Yay for Medicare!

braiiins

This is what I look like on the inside.

So I realised I hadn't updated people on the situation with my head and some are wondering whether I'm okay. Well, yeah kind of and no not really. Yeah I'm fine in that although the 'artefact' in my brain is still there, it hasn't changed or grown or made me telekinetic, so that's good. And no, I'm not okay in that I still have chronic headaches that seem to be almost constant now, occasionally migrainey but usually just thrumming away in the background. The specialist is sending me off to a neurologist "just to be sure" that the artefact isn't anything serious (I may have had it all my life, apparently, but it's better to be sure).

In the meantime, I'm continuing with the acupuncture twice a week which does seem to be helping alleviate some of the symptoms in the short term, at least. I've also started counselling again and we're working on decreasing my stress / adrenalin levels. Apparently I have been running on a high adrenalin level constantly for some time now, which isn't a healthy way to live (and probably has something to do with the headaches). It would be very nice if I didn't have to resort to drugs to get a full night's sleep, but it does become tempting when you wake up every night at 3am with a pounding head.

Anyway, that's where I'm at! I'll update you when I know more.

beware the ups

...for there is always a down.

I think with any sort of condition you have your good days and your bad days. Sometimes the goods are very good, which invariably means the low that balances it out will be very low. The thing that I'm aiming for is to make the distance between the peaks and troughs shrink, so that yes, there will be bad days as well as good, but I won't swing so wildly in between the two.

On Saturday, as I mentioned in the last post, I had Word by Word. It was a great day, hearing Guan's talk on reviews and reviewing, having lunch at Gourmet Pizza Kitchen and then doing some good writing and workshopping on Undragon Stories. Guan and I then went to see Iron Man - just as awesome the second time around, and I'm starting to think Robert Downey Jr might just be the perfect comic-book hero actor. And it was just such a nourishing day, with lots of creativity, time with friends, and a general, all-round positivity that was hard to beat.

On Sunday, I went along as moral support for mum to hear a minister they might be nominating for St Martin's. It's an unpleasant job, being a nominator; you have the weight of the church on your shoulders, you have to be objective, but you also just want to pick someone so your church isn't floundering without a leader. And then there's the awkwardness of turning up to a church (especially a tiny one like the one we went to yesterday) where it's obvious you're not a member of the congregation and people wonder what you're doing there.

The Anglican system isn't perfect by any means, and it's like a nasty game of tag, where you poach someone's minister and then they have to go through the process to poach someone else's minister, etc, etc. The diocese hasn't been overly helpful either; they don't give the nominators any help with working out who is eligible to be approached (generally someone who has been in their current church for at least five years), and don't give any recommendations, but are quick to tell them 'no' when the nominators suggest people. Why they can't just say 'don't consider these people' in the first place, I don't know. And surely the diocese would be more familiar with which ministers would be good fits for which parish, and be able to give suggestions. Maybe it's different in a more high-profile church, but for a smallish, struggling church like St Martin's, I would think they would need just as much help as some of the big guns. But anyway.

So we drove out to this church, about an hour from where we live, and mum had printed out directions from WhereIs that seemed pretty straightforward. But even though we followed them to the letter, we think there was either a mistake or we majorly misinterpreted one of the directions because we got lost. Thankfully mum has a pretty decent sense of direction (because I don't), and we eventually found our way to the church. We were about 25 minutes late, so missed the beginning of the sermon, but caught most of it. It was quite interesting, actually, part of a series about Catholicism, and looking at the whole Mary issue. We had communion, which was also good as I have missed the (infrequent) communion service at Wild St. Then after a brief chat with the minister and his wife (both very friendly), we left pretty much straight away so we wouldn't have that awkward thing of having to answer questions as to why we were there. It felt odd.

We went on to Berrima for lunch, and I bought some more fat quarters for my new quilt at the lovely patchwork shop there. But a nasty headache had crept in and by the time we headed home it was full blown. I almost fell asleep driving at 110km/hour on the freeway - very scary! - so mum took over. Then the car almost overheated so we had to stop and let the engine cool down for a while. Thankfully we got home, and we praised God for keeping us safe.

I wanted to go to church but by that time I just had to lie down in a dark room. We had dinner and watched Gilmore Girls and then I just had to call it quits, couldn't even keep my eyes open. Today hasn't been much better, I've been in bed, migrainey and queasy all day. Had a brief jaunt out to North Sydney to pick up my MRI scans (and am very grateful to Guan for driving me), and am now horizontal again with my loving cat curled up beside me.

I wonder if two very full days was too much for me. Partly I think it's because I've had a few days in a row where I've been feeling good and positive, I therefore started being more active again, and maybe I just tried to do too much while forgetting that there would be an energy crash coming sooner or later. Guh. Bring on those resurrection bodies, I say!

TGIF

I am so glad it's Friday. It's been quite a big week actually.

• Work was a bit up-and-down for me, with a lot of pressure and the initial freak-out of how I was going to deal with all that pressure. I think I've managed to get my head above it and work out how to move through it all without imploding. Have actually managed to get a lot of things ticked off my list, which is immensely satisfying.
  
• Had the MRI, get the results this weekend.
• Had two acupuncture appointments for my headaches.
  
• Saw a new counsellor for the first time. I think it's going to be very helpful; she seems lovely and the conversation flowed freely. We'll see what comes out of it. But as always, when you have to go over the story of your life and how you got to this point, it can be quite exhausting and can drag emotions out of you that you weren't expecting.
  

But now that we've finally gotten to Friday, I'm glad to report that I'm feeling better than I have all week, well enough to embark upon a new creative project. I've started to make this quilt which might seem a bit hokey to some of you, but I think it's going to be interesting to do. It would be a great quilt to do in a church craft group; you could do one block a month and do a study on each part of the Bible the block represents. My godmother and I were thinking of starting a quilting group for Christian women in the area, but we've not managed to get in sync with our timing yet (it's mainly me and my busyness, I'm pretty sure she'd be excited to do it anytime). It might happen one day, you never know.

I've almost finished the Walls of Jericho block tonight while watching Gilmore Girls season 7 with mum. I don't have a sewing machine, so am sewing it all by hand, but I'm in no rush so it doesn't bother me. A few days ago I was in such a mire of blackness I couldn't even fathom how I would start a new project. So this is a Very Good Thing indeed!