#and then once a couple years back i got bell's palsy a couple days after finding a tick in my room? somehow?

[eggsistential-basket]

Also!!!! Rarer symptom but if you ever have sudden onset facial paralysis/weakness (eg bell's palsy) and especially if you're from a Lyme endemic area there's a good chance it's Lyme disease

so i got diagnosed with lyme disease a few days ago!! thankfully, we caught it early enough and i'm on a 45-day treatment plan (im lucky i even got diagnosed & perscribed) that the infection is responding very well to (THANK GOD) 💞💞

CHECK FOR TICKS!!!!!! ESPECIALLY if you're in the northeast. lyme disease is really painful and dangerous, and its super common up here!! my whole life we've been good about tick checking but the ONE time we didnt check (we were so exhausted from kayaking and weathering a freak thunderstorm in a tent😭) was the time i got it.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT LYME DISEASE BELOW:

- there's more to lyme than a bullseye rash. the rash doesnt always appear, and even if it does it might be in a spot where you won't see it. always check really hairy areas, like your armpits or scalp!!

- lyme ticks usually need about 36 hours to infect you, but dont trust that, get checked out anyways. take the tick's body in with you to the doctor's if you can.

- symptoms can begin anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks post-bite. pay attention to any unexplainable soreness in any joints, especially if there's no way you could've hurt yourself and no bruising!! affected wrists and ankles will feel EXACTLY like serious sprains, i swear on everything. dead giveaways are when multiple different joints are affected, or when you have redness on some of your knuckles.

- NO fever does NOT mean you don't have lyme!! fever and other symptoms beyond joint problems are caused by coinfections, which are common. coinfection symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, emotional instability, paranoia/panic attacks, etc.

- lyme is extremely painful and rapidly gets worse. the longer you wait, the slower and more painful recovery will be. untreated lyme disease can lead to long-term physical disabilities and sickliness, among other problems, for years or even decades. be very proactive about getting antibiotics!!!

[kyliaquilor-archive]

3, 14, 30, 33, 36, 41, 49, 62

3. The person you would never want to meet?

Probably that person that blocked me that I was complaining I couldn’t block back the other day (and for some reason their posts were showing up in the search for me) or maybe the other person I couldn’t block that day. I won’t name names, but damn those two are some unpleasant people.

14. What is your current desktop picture?

This Faimy aesthetic made by @mayorwilkins. 

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

I’d say my laptop because that has all my video games on it, but probably my Chromebook, since my laptop’s hinge is broken and is barely holding together (I got the Chromebook when said laptop broke because Chromebooks are cheap... and they show that :P ) and most of my important documents are on google docs these days because of Chromebook

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

Probably my Uncle Cheeseball (the nickname is a long story). My various grandparents that died - all but one of them - died old and after long lives and such, or very infirm, so might not be as good for them, but my Uncle was basically work-stressed to death by his awful bosses (and admittedly his died didn’t help, but seriously, those last months before his death were reputedly evil) and was only in his early fifties, so he had a lot of life left.

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

Couple times. Once when I was really young for some kind of stomach issue, once when I got a growth on my leg cut off because there was a small (very small) chance it could develop into cancer and they figured better to get rid of it now (I remember that stay mostly for being able to play Super Mario, back in the days before I got good computer games and so super Mario seemed so amazing) and just a couple years back when I got Bell’s Palsy and they gave me a CT scan to make sure it wasn’t being caused by a brain tumor or whatever.

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

Vanilla

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

Bat and lizard, to create a minature dragon

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

Who has a favorite letter of the alphabet?

Strange Questions Meme

[itsabrendanthing]

I haven’t written anything on here in a couple of weeks. I have had ideas but I have been off my game a bit lately. Life happens and takes you away from some things. That is what has been going on for me lately. Life decided I wasn’t stressed enough, so it decided to throw a curve-ball at my head. A couple weeks ago, on a Thursday, I got this pain behind my left ear. It was very localized. Now I have had headaches start out like that many times. Starts in one spot and eventually moves to the rest of my head. This didn’t do that. It was just one spot right behind my left ear. I didn’t sleep well that night because of it. Friday was the same. It hurt all day and seemed to intensify. By the end of the day, I was miserable and a bear to deal with. That night again, little sleep. I couldn’t lay on that side. When I did, the pain got steadily worse. Saturday, same thing. I decided that if I was still in pain come Monday, I would go see my doctor. Saturday night was rough also. Didn’t sleep much. Sometime around 5 am or 6 am I was somewhat awake and vaguely thought something wasn’t quite right but I somehow dozed off for a bit longer. A few hours later, I can’t stay in bed anymore so I get up. I am exhausted and not fully awake as I go brush my teeth. As I am doing that, I noticed that I couldn’t taste anything on the left side of my tongue and I couldn’t really feel it either. Weird. Then I noticed my mouth wasn’t working so well on the lefts side. Ok, something is up. Since losing Brendan, I find that I pace a lot when I get stressed or I have something major on my mind. Sometimes I pace to blank my mind out. The repetitiveness of it helps that. The day we lost him, I remember walking laps around our in ground pool. Lap after lap, over and over for I don’t know how long. At the time, I was trying to wrap my head around what happened or maybe trying to wish it away as if nothing happened and Brendan was still with us. I remember pacing around the house, going from room to room in the darkness of the middle of the night. No lights on. No one else up. Just pacing because there was no sleep coming. Well that Sunday, I walked out of my bedroom and started pacing around the house a bit. I was doing a mental check list of what was going on with me. Pain still behind the ear, check. Can’t feel my tongue, check. Muscles on the left side of my mouth not working well, check. Muscles on the left side of my face not working so well, check. Hard to close my left eye, check. Fuck something is wrong. I walked back into the bedroom. Jen looks at me and instantly knows something is up. She says I look worried and asks me what is wrong. I tell her what is going on. She says we should go to the ER and I tell her I was thinking the same thing. We got dressed and off we went. Neither one of us saying it but we both were thinking I was having a stroke or something. Needless to say, I was worried. I am too damn young for crap like this damn it.

We get there and check in. Within 10 minutes they have me in a room, taking my vitals and asking me questions. When did it start? How long ago? Doctor comes in and not long after they get my back there. I have never been taken so quickly. Now that really scares the crap out of me. Shit am I in trouble here or what. The doctor asks some questions and does some physical tests then orders a CT Scan. They get me in for that shortly after. After all is said and done, the CT scan comes back clear. Ok dodged a bullet there, no stroke. So what the hell is wrong with me then. The doctor comes back with a diagnosis of Bell Palsy. WTF is that? I never heard of it before. After talking with him and doing a quick search, I find that it is a temporary ailment. Basically, there is some kind of inflammation that affects the nerve going to you face. They have no concrete reason for why it happens. It could be some kind of virus in the system, it could be stress. Stress, ha, my stressed? Whatever the cause, for most people, they regain full functionality of their muscles in the face again. I t can last from a few weeks up to 6 months. 6 months? Really? Ok that sucks but at least it’s not a stroke, right?!? They give me a prescription for a steroid to help with the inflammation and I go home. We go about our day. At one point, there was something my mother had for me and she was at a party close to my house so Jen and I decided to stop and pick it up. Now I wasn’t going to say anything to my parents just yet. No sense worrying them needlessly. Now at this point, it isn’t too noticeable really so I figure I will pop in, say hi, get what I am there for, and get out. Unfortunately, I am an idiot and forgot to take the bracelet they put on my at the ER. I am standing there talking a little to my mother and a couple of my aunts. Once me my aunts notices the bracelet and asks my what’s that. Ah crap. So then I do a quick song and dance that it was nothing. I had a little something I needed checked out that morning. Nothing major and then I said my byes and got out of there before any more questions came. Of course I knew I would be hearing from my mother sometime later which of course I did. I also heard from my father. I assured them that I was ok and there was nothing to report and that I would let them know if anything happened. Monday hit after another rough night. I get up and my left eyes isn’t doing so well. I can’t really blink and my eye hurts a but from being dry so I am guessing it wasn’t closing all the way when I was sleeping. Great. In general, everything on the left side of my face is a little worse than the day before. Now I am flipping out in my head a bit and I’m happy Jen isn’t there so I don’t have to hide that from her though with half my face not working, I would be half way there to not showing an worried expression on my face. I decide I want to follow up with my doctor and call the office. I can’t get in with her that day but one of the other doctors has time so I take the appointment. I get to the appointment and tell the doctor everything going on. The pain that has behind my ear that doesn’t go away. What happened Sunday. I tell her about how some one close in my family recently had an inter cranial aneurysm and was told it could be a hereditary thing. She checked me out, did some physical tests, asked questions. The one that stuck out was do I ever get numbness in my hands or feet which I do but attribute it to some back issues that I always have from working at a desk in front of a computer all day.  Eventually, she says it looks like it is Bell Palsy but there are a couple anomalies that don’t fit neatly with it. So she wants to send me for an MRI and MRA. She wants to make sure it there isn’t something more serious that could be causing my problems. One of the of those more serious conditions being MS. Well hell, that one wasn’t even on my radar of what the things it could be. Really with the pain I was having behind my ear, the worst I was thinking was tumor or something like that. Then there is the aneurysm thing but I really didn’t put much stock in that one. MS though. That wasn’t even in the wheelhouse of my hypochondriac thoughts on the subject. I guess the numbness in my hands and the numbness I had in my face put that one out there as a possibility. Now I was really rooting for “just” Bell Palsy. It seemed like the lesser of evils. Sure it sucks and the face that half my face isn’t working right, drives me nuts but it should be temporary. Up to 6 months but still better than a couple of the alternatives. For the last week, I have had constant pain in the muscles in my neck and face on the left side. If that is all I have to deal with and it is temporary, I’ll take it. It makes me feel miserable but again it’s better than the alternatives.

Why the hell am I putting all this out there? There is a point to all this. At least I think there is one. I mean I was planning on having a point. Or maybe I just needed to get this crap out of my head. I have been going stir crazy in my own head over this. On one hand, it has been helpful because it put a damper on the feelings of grieve. Funny how a good old health scare does that. That isn’t to say it has taken it totally away though. It is just that my mind has something else to obsess about right now. Brendan is still there though. Nothing ever changes that. In the quiet darkness of my not so restful nights when thoughts are pin-balling around my head, he is there. An image. A thought. A memory. I regret. I wish to see him again. Brendan is there. The triggers they are still triggered at times. Like driving down the road the other day with Jen, on our way back from a counseling session, and a commercial for the great pumpkin farm comes on the radio. Now I have heard it many times already or seen it on tv, this particular time though stuck me. It was a trigger at that moment. We have taken the kids there a few times over the years. The first time comes to mind though. And since that trigger hit, I haven’t been able to get the images out of my head. Becca and Brendan still so small. When they were small enough that I could carry both in my arms. Their little smiling faces. I have images in my head of us crawling on the bales of hay. Picking out pumpkins. Just having a fun time as a family. And for some reason, I got the image of Brendan in his little yellow hoodie in my head. I don’t know if is an image from visits to the pumpkin farm or not. But I do remember his yellow hoodie. I know there is a picture somewhere that matches the image in my head.  And I can’t get those images out of my head. So yes, my mind was obsessing and worrying about my potential health problems but my mind is good at multitasking. The main thrust was my health but the other side was images of my kids at a time when they had no worries and the world hadn’t yet heaved its bullshit on them.

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So a point. That’s right, I was getting to a point. My point centers around coming to some understanding relating to Brendan. Going back to what happened to me. First, I had the pain behind my left ear on a Thursday, followed by the loss of muscle control in my face and ER visit Sunday, and a follow up with my doctor on Monday where the possibility of MS came up. Originally the MRI and MRA was set up for Wednesday of the following week. That was the soonest they had at the place I was originally going too. Great so I have over a week to let that stew in my head. Good times. Lucky for me, we have friends that work at the doctors office and I have an awesome wife. She got in touch with one of our friends who worked to get me in at another place for the MRI/MRA on that Friday. I can’t thank that friend enough for doing that for us. Jen knew I would worry until I got the tests even though she didn’t know what I would be worrying about. I didn’t tell her about the MS part. And there starts my point. I didn’t tell her. I kept it to myself. I didn’t want her to worry. She was worried enough about me already. I didn’t want to throw that at her also. Her father had MS. We both know what it can do to someone. We watched her dad deal with it over the years. We watched his body deteriorate. To watch your own body betray you. To see yourself overtime being able to do less and less. Not being able to do some things for yourself. It is a hard thing to deal with. I didn’t want her to think about it unless I knew something for sure. The same goes for my parents. I didn’t tell them much of what was going on. I knew they would worry as it was. There was no sense in adding to that worry with things that were unknown. I just told them things were ok right now and I was getting checked out and if there was anything too serious, I would let them know. I kept things to myself. I wrapped it in the idea that I was protecting those around me. Let me worry about it, they shouldn’t have to needlessly worry. For myself, I told myself any of the possible things it could be were outside chances and if something did come of it, then I would deal with it then. Unfortunately it does play on you though. I was a bit of a bear to deal with for a few days. I snapped at Jen a few times which she of course didn’t deserve. She rolled with it for the most part and chalked it up to my frustration about not being able to control half my face. And she was partially correct in that assumption. It was frustrating and annoying me. The other part of it was worrying about the possibilities. But again, it was my way of protecting her. Is that right or wrong? I don’t know.

It does give me some incite into Brendan though. He was dealing with a personal pain. He hid it. He kept it to himself. He thought he could deal with it on his own. He didn’t seek help. He didn’t want to burden us with his problems. On some level I am guessing it was his way of protecting us. So maybe that is something he got from me. Maybe that is just something that we humans do in general. Is it right or wrong to do? It depends I think. Are you really protecting your loved ones or are you just trying not to deal with it with regard to them? Maybe it is a bit of both. For my situation, I think in the end it was better to keep some of it to myself until I knew more or had some definite diagnosis of something more serious. I know my wife disagrees with that. She thinks I should have told her so she could have taken some of the burden. I love that woman. Once I had my test results back and they found nothing indicating MS or an aneurysm or a tumor, I told her about the MS part. I still think it was better for me to keep it to myself initially. On the other hand we had Brendan’s situation. It was very different than mine. He was dealing with things that were overwhelming him. He was still so young. Too young to deal with what was going on with him. He didn’t understand it and didn’t have the right tools to combat his issues. He really needed help and needed to tell us what was going on. Keeping it to himself only hurt him. It made it harder and harder for him. Sure it kept us ignorant of the issues and kept us from worrying about his problems but we needed to worry about them. We needed to help him work through the problems. Ultimately keeping it from us didn’t protect us. It completely devastated us after losing him because we failed our son. Or at least that’s how it feels. Keeping somethings to yourself can be helpful and useful to a point. You need to know when it no longer useful. You need to know when the time comes to let others in on things and when seeking help is needed. Brendan didn’t know how much trouble he was in until it was too late. He didn’t realize that he needed help from us and others to get past the demons. He didn’t realize when you swing and miss some of life’s curve balls, that it ok to ask someone for help dealing with them. I wish with everything in me that I could have gotten him to understand that.

Life’s Curve-balls I haven't written anything on here in a couple of weeks. I have had ideas but I have been off my game a bit lately.