#i recently had a migraine that lasted all night and nearly went to the er

[thatwitchrevan]

I got my migraines and my depression both from my parents, it's my anxiety that makes my stomach pain worse and keeps me from sleeping, I've had days and weeks that the stress has been so bad it physically broke me, I live in a cycle where I'm too tired too sick too in pain to do things that make me happy and then become too sad and burnt out to fix any of it.

There's a time and place to remind physically abled people with mental illness that they can still be ableist. Anyone can be ableist whatever type of disability they themselves have. But mental illness and physical disability are not two separate spheres. Mentally ill people are very very frequently comorbid with physical disabilities and even those who normally aren't do suffer physical complications from their mental illness which is itself a disability.

If you're tired of able bodied people or people who appear able bodied mistreating or ignoring physically disabled people I understand and you're right to be. But if you just want to edge them out of conversations and shared experiences then I can't sympathize with that.

[deliriouscomfort]

8,760 hours later

A year ago today I woke up, grabbed the fifth of vodka that was hidden next to my bed and took a big gulp. That was how I had started the past 3 days after 407 days without a single sip of alcohol. I began getting ready for school, still taking sip after sip and washing down pills until my head was perfectly woozy and my sight a little blurred. I poured the remainder into a plastic water bottle and left for school. I drove drunk. Something I had sworn I would never do, yet had done more times than I could count.

I don’t remember much about class except that I began to shake uncontrollably, a combination of hypoglycemia and withdrawals. At break, I decided it was best to leave. I had devised a plan - I would go to the ER and tell them I relapsed and was suicidal and needed help. Simple. I could do that.... except not sober. Who would believe I’m an alcoholic/addict if I’m sober?

The plastic bottle was long empty by this point, so I went to Jewel at 1 in the afternoon, strutted my way through the aisles in my 4 inch heels (a skill I had mastered at all levels of intoxication) , and grabbed a half gallon of captain morgan (my “go to” drink). My thought? I’m either going to die or get sober again, so I might as well enjoy my last drink. I then proceeded to go through the McDonald’s drive thru and ordered a large coke (the drink • I know, shocker). I poured most of the coke out & filled the rest of the large cup with my beloved spiced rum. It burned going down. I loved it and I hated it. I felt warm and confident and lonely and pathetic as I drove to the ER parking lot. “I’m just going to get drunk enough so they believe me and help me” I kept telling myself. Around 2pm I pulled into the ER parking lot, parked my car, and drank all that was in the cup, quickly refilling it after.

My thoughts were fuzzy and my body numb so I began making phone calls. The desperate kind. I called my then very-recent-ex, not expecting her to pick up, but when I heard, “hello?” the flood gates opened. I tried to tell her what was happening, interrupting myself to drink, cry harder, and drink again. Between my inability to complete a sentence and the worry in her voice, I knew I wasn’t in a good place, but it was exactly where I wanted to be. I remember thinking her voice may be the last voice I would ever hear. I was ready. I was miserable and I was ready. I had made my choice.

What happened next I do not remember, I only know what I have been told by others. I blacked out, as I always did, and several other phone calls were made. I was found in my car 2 hours after arriving with a bottle of rum as dry as a desert. I was unconscious and unresponsive. My front window was smashed into thousands of tiny pieces - pieces I still find to this day, I believe, as a reminder. I was pulled out of my car, dislocating and bruising several ribs. I was hypothermic and apnoeic so I was intubated and put under a special warming blanket. They placed a foley, several IV sites, and restraints on me. Not a single moment of this will I ever remember. It was like I got my wish to die, but only temporarily.

I came to after 7pm that night, my sight still blurry and my head pounding. Almost immediately I realized I was in the ER -again. “I’m a failure. I failed. Again.” I began to cry silently to myself as I pulled out my IVs, disconnected myself from the heart monitor, and prayed that without fluids and monitoring I could drift away. But the nurses came in, hooked me back up, and told me what had happened - their version, anyway. “You forgot the part where I didn’t WANT to be rescued”, I thought. I laid there, my heart beating too hard against my chest, my lungs aching from grasping for air, my mind exhausted from trying to escape, my body cold and worn out after fighting to stay. Those hours I don’t remember are ones I’ll never forget.

I was taken by ambulance to the psych hospital in the early hours the following day. I arrived with nothing but the gown I had woken up in and 9 blankets trying to keep my body temperature up. I spent 4 agonizing days on CIWA as I detoxed. I was hooked up to constant fluids and had so many drugs being pumped into my system that I could not get out of bed or even remember my name. I was having nightmares, hallucinations, flashbacks, tremors, migraines, and all I wanted was to die.

When I finally got taken off CIWA and 1:1, I was put in a wheelchair because I was weak and unstable. I spent a total of 16 days in the mental hospital, 16 days in a wheelchair, and 16 days getting away with using behaviors that only made me sicker. My family and friends told me they didn’t even recognize me. My diseased mind took that as a compliment.

I was released late evening on Thanksgiving Day and the next morning I flew to California where I spent the following 2 months in residential treatment. I had to leave much earlier than planned due to insurance cutting me off. When I arrived back home I immediately knew I was not ready to be on my own so I admitted myself back into the mental hospital for another 2 weeks. This time I was on a much more strict protocol and was not given nearly as much freedom. As much as I hated it, I needed the structure and the tools I learned to be able to ease myself back into regular life, something I hadn’t been a part of for years. The transition back into a life I had tried to end was not smooth, seamless, or easy, but somehow I managed.

Today, exactly one year from when I overdosed and prayed I would not wake up, I prayed to thank God for waking me up this morning. I am not recovered. I have not fully healed. I struggle daily, but I also choose daily. I choose to fight for a potentially happier future. I choose to keep going in hopes that one day the voices will be silenced. I have chosen for 348 days to not pick up a drink or drug. I choose to give myself another chance every single day no matter how many mistakes I make, no matter how many behaviors I use, no matter how shitty I feel. God kept me alive Tuesday, November 7th, 2017 and I think I want to live to find out what She has planned for me.

If you are struggling, please reach out and seek help. You are more than worthy of living, experiencing love, and of being happy. From the bottom of my heart, I love you.

[researching01]

Pregnant Wife Gets Migraine & Stops BreathingBut Her Husband Refuses to Send the Text the Doctors Tell Him To

New Post has been published on https://headacheshelp.com/must-see/pregnant-wife-gets-migraine-stops-breathingbut-her-husband-refuses-to-send-the-text-the-doctors-tell-him-to/

Pregnant Wife Gets Migraine & Stops BreathingBut Her Husband Refuses to Send the Text the Doctors Tell Him To

I couldn’t finish the text message, I couldn’t send it…”

Sasha Belcher and her husband, Nathan, were just glowing with excitementover the anticipation of welcoming their second child into the world. Atfour months along, the expectant mother was nearly halfway through the beautiful journey that would soon bear their brand new bundle of joy.

All signs indicated that she was happy, healthy and stablebut one morning, a single piercing pain down the middle of her forehead changed everything.

Sasha had experienced migraines since she was about 11 years old, but something about this one was different. Concerned over his wife’s unusual headache, Nathan urged her to go to the hospital. Though the symptoms may not have seemed ER-worthy just yet, his intuition told him something was wrong.

And thank God, because his gut instinctwas dead on.

Photo Credit: Sasha Belcher

By the time they got to the hospital, Sasha was already unconscious, and her heart stopped just moments later. Before Nathan could even process what was happening, his wife was flown to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences where they immediately started emergency surgery.

They had already cut her hair, they had all the tubes in her, I was terrified out of my mind,” said Nathan. “I didn’t know what was going on.

He was informed that Sasha’s surgery was supposed to take approximately eighthours, but just one hour into the procedure, doctors came out with gut-wrenchingnews. They spotted a tangle of burst blood vessels in her brain that had formed a two-inch clot, and Sasha was too unstable to have it safely removed.

By medical standards, it was unreachable. Inoperable.

There was nothing more they could do.

But thankfully, God wasn’t finished yet.

The best the surgeons coulddo to alleviate pressure on the brain was to remove the fluid around the mass, but they had no hope left for her survival. They regretfully informed Nathan that his wife would likely not last through the night.

“I told them I didn’t think she would survive the night. I had done everything I could to help her, but the rest was up to God at that point,” said Sasha’s neurologist, Dr. Abla. I remember talking to people who were in my operating room that day who went home and criednurses in our operating roomafter this surgery.”

They tearfully told Nathan he needed to make the dreaded “call.”

It was time for friends and family to say their final goodbyes.

But Nathan just couldn’t do it. Sasha would survive against all odds. He knew it in his bones:

I couldn’t finish the text message, I couldn’t send it… Because it felt like, if I would have told them that my wife is dying, then that was me giving up on her.

Photo Credit: Sasha Belcher

Nathan couldn’t bear the thought of losing not only his wife, but his best friend.

“We met in tenth gradegeometry classshe told me I had horrible hair… She kind of gives me direction, she’s made me a much better person.”

Miraculously, Sasha survived whatthe doctors sworewould kill her. One week later, she went back in for one more operation.

“Just like the first time, they came back after an hour, we were terrified,” said Nathan. “The last time they did that they told us she wasn’t going to make it, but it was the polar opposite.”

Sasha bounced back remarkably and fully recovered.

Photo Credit: Sasha Belcher

However, her unborn son was still in peril after being without oxygen for so long.

Dr. Abla is convinced that this warrior mama bear’s will to live kept her and her baby fighting:

This is someone who definitely has a will to live, who subconsciously is thinking about her baby, as soon as she came around, you could tell that she was touching her stomach. You could tell this was someone who was fighting not only for her life, but for the life of her child…

Afew months later, the adorably perfectJack Grayson was born.

He suffered no ramifications fromhis mom’s recent health scare.

Photo Credit: Sasha Belcher

For the Belchers, this beautiful baby boy’s face will forever be their reminder of the saving hand of God and the sheer will of a mother to create living miracles.

Read more: http://www.faithit.com

[penname-artist]

Emergency - Chapter Three

Chapter Title: Spikes Like These

Rated T for violence

[Planes fanfic]

-----

The young helicopter paced in his hangar. His head was buzzing with thoughts, too many of them too real for him to fully process. He’d just gone through possibly the most agonizing thing in his life, sitting quiet and listening to two hooligans talk shit about the only person in his life that ever mattered to him, like they knew him - which they didn’t.

He wanted to tell them. No, they didn’t deserve to be told. They already passed a threshold into unforgeability. Maybe he’d be better off sending a bullet through their windshields. He just wanted them to regret what they’d done. Or pay for it. Or maybe they were right and he had been wrong. Maybe everything was too far gone now to be repaired. They probably wouldn’t even bat an eye if he up and-- Wait. He suddenly paused his frantic pacing, dead silent, like he was listening for something. He glanced over at the pile of boxes that he’d brought up, remembering something the other pittie had left on top of them. A single, small item, laying precariously on the top of the unopened cardboard containers. ‘They won’t notice.’ He wanted to deny his own thoughts, but he couldn’t. ‘They won’t care.’ Nothing else in his life seemed to be in his control anyways. ‘It only hurts for a moment.’ What the hell did he have left to lose?

----------

“You think he’ll stay here?” Paul asked absentmindedly, putting away tools and cleaning up for the night. “We’ll have to wait and see,” Maru answered. “The kid’s obviously stressed the hell out.” “What makes you say that?” He questioned. “Engine rate.” He answered. He was silent for a moment. “I think..you should probably leave him be about anything CHoPs. We all should.” The other pittie froze in thought, clearly not catching onto what the older forklift meant. “How can you tell that bothered him with an engine rate?” Maru just sighed and shook his head, pulling up the data from this afternoon on the old piece of junk they called a computer and having a physical copy of it printed out, and then handing him the graph recording. The print was still warm in his tines as he peered over the image of the red line as it weaved across the page. “Oh,” Paul answered, “That’s how.” Maru hadn’t seen spikes like that since their last chief’s recent divorce. He’d made a lot of bad decisions since then. A lot of them involved alcohol, even during work. They fired him flat-out because of it. Maru had inwardly hoped the old gruff would come to his senses, but it would seem he hadn’t. The last they had heard, he wasn’t long in ending up in a psych ward. Paul was stacking oil cans, about to ask Maru another question, when he heard the metal ‘clank!’ of whatever was in the other’s tines hit the floor. But instead of picking it up, the half-tug half-forklift hybrid suddenly blitzed out of the garage like he’d seen a ghost, headed for...oh. Oh. Paul had the mind to grab one of their small ‘ER’ kits before he took off after him.

----------

Maru never questioned how he knew these things. He never had so much as a shred of evidence most of the time to know something so suddenly. Maybe it was just a gift. Or a curse, depending on who you’d ask. But he trusted it like instinct. Mechanic’s instinct is what he’d call it. He always knew when someone was hurt, even if he hadn’t seen it. He knew when someone had died, before anyone else knew it. And he knew when someone was about to make a decision against the act of living, even if he had only been in their vague presence a mere half-day. He’d never seen spikes like these. The hill to the entrance of the hangar was one he cursed over - why did it have to be made so steep? Racing up them was giving him so little traction, he nearly fell backwards. Thankfully his tires dug in deep and he managed, working up a sweat in the process but that could be dealt with later. He was already aware of the sound of the helicopter on the other side of the doors as he forced the latch open - the kid probably never knew they had no outside locks for a reason. There weren't any words in the next part. There wasn’t need for them, nor was there time for them when the tug half-breed went after that orange boxcutter, tightly secured in the other’s jaws. He’d made a garbled, mangled form of a growl in defense, but the other didn’t care as he grabbed the other end of the stick - unfortunately it was the sharp end, but in a way that was better. They ensued in what was basically a tug-of-war match, a forklift hybrid against a sixteen foot tall, fifty-four foot long and roughly fourteen thousand pound Agustawestland AW139. But at least the forklift didn’t also have a gaping hole in his side. It looked fresh. Not much yet had managed to spill out, so that was good. The forklift was already making mental notes to work around the possible wiring he may also have gotten through to while still fighting the helicopter. He hadn’t backed down from the fight when the sharp blade of Blade’s blade had cut across his tine, leaving a sizable scar across it. Just grunted a bit and yanked the boxcutter to the side, hoping to wrench the back of it out of his tightly-clamped back molars where he was strongest. Already, he could tell the other was getting weak, fighting and pulling back but also dipping unusually low on his landing gear, fighting survival instinct to curl up and address the undoubtedly massive amounts of pain in the side of his frame. Maru also couldn’t tell if the shaking was from the tension of the pulling or because he himself had begun to out of the sheer volume of the situation. Or both. Then one of them slipped up, and the fight was over. Blade tried to yank back and to the side, and as Maru pulled in the other direction, his front landing gear began to slip from under him, and in his panic his jaw gave just that tiny amount of release over the boxcutter, and then it was gone from his being. Maru’s victory was short-lived, however. He’d just fought against those razored teeth already, but now he suddenly faced them up close and personal, and they were...sharp, he’d say that. “You fucking-- ow!” Blade fought back savagely for the boxcutter, attempting to mangle the tug half-breed in the process. Well, until he all but stuck a hard metal tine jaggedly down into the side of his throat, causing him to gag harshly and tear off of him in an instant. “That’s what I thought!” Maru snapped, holding his side. He had saved himself from being entirely crushed, but not from a few noticeably dented in teeth marks in the corner of his plating. It was a good thing Paul showed up in time, before the helicopter got another bright idea like literally chewing the mechanic out. “I already hit the alarm so the others should know--” Paul began saying, until the blue and white chopper, gash starting to bleed, interrupted his informing. “I’ve had enough of your crap! You can’t stop me! I’ll throw myself off the damn cliff before I hear you bastards talk shit about my partner again!” “We weren’t, we didn’t know!” Maru tried to reason. “Like hell you didn’t, I--” “We weren’t trying to make you feel like crap, and we weren’t trying to say anything against your partner. I’m sure he was a great guy,” “And you don’t know the half of it, you don’t know what fucking hell I’ve gone through, just to come here and deal with your shit!” Blade’s tone started to waver on shaky and hoarse. “Look, just calm the flip down and we’ll get this sorted out. We can talk this over.” Maru tried to offer. Blade was obviously beyond the point of just talking it out, but maybe if they could let him calm down half a degree they could still try to reason with him over his decisions. The most dangerous aspect of the fight was over now. If he could just get to fixing up that gash in his side before he lost any more fluids... Thankfully for the two pitties, they weren’t at this alone anymore. The combined yelling of the three of them had alerted some other members on the base, and a couple of them were just approaching the hangar now. The first ones there were two terrestrial vehicles and a roughly middle-aged Fairchild C-119, the same one Blade had seen taking off from before. They were a very large plane in fact, but even larger up close and on the ground. Without so much as raising up on his landing gear, he could look over the other two vehicles to the situation in front of them. A situation in need of explanation. “This is your field, not mine.” Paul said finally, though it was unclear whether he was speaking to Maru or the C-119. Presumably it was the latter, as he just sighed hoarsely, like it brought back undesirable memories. “Kid,” he started, Blade immediately recognizing his rasp over the radio from earlier that day, “Don’t try bowin’ out of the show just yet. You’re still here, and you still got reason to be. I dunno what happened but it sure as hell didn’t look like it ended well. But we’re all here to help each other, not hurt em.” “And what happened earlier wasn’t any personal jab at you,” Paul continued, “We didn’t know the situation.” Blade stayed silent, content to sit in the middle of the hangar and stay fixated on the cracks in the concrete floor. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. He’d done it before, many years back, back when he again had no reason not to. Between a new city and a new job and a whole new life from what he knew before, stress got to him a lot. It was the first time he started having migraines, and when they hit, they hit hard. And on top of that, he was dealing with trying to fit into a group of other actors he didn’t know, but obviously seemed to know one another. His co-star, he felt, was the worst of the bunch. He was flamboyant, loud, and had a thing for showing off. He never thought he’d ever be able to communicate with someone the likes of Nick. So it was surprising, and scary in the moment, that Nick had caught him then. He didn’t say anything then, neither of them did for a long time over the suddenness of it. The fact that he knew what was going on, and on the other side the fact that he knew what was going on. Even more sudden was the way the Hughes was always there for him from that point on, the memory of that silent embrace sealing the concept that someone else was looking out for him. They were never the same way after that night. Not after what they knew. Nick in particular seemed to come down from off his cloud for Blade specifically then, taking the time to get to know the chopper and form a deeper, more personal relationship. Blade, in turn, finally found a reason to stop. Well, until tonight. It wasn’t going to be the same, it never would be. Nick was too special to be replaced by anything. But, the people here weren’t like what he had expected them to be, what he had judged they would be. They weren’t snobby or condescending, or judgemental. They cared. They had no idea what was going on and they would never be able to understand the entirety of the situation, but they cared. As much as he wanted to push them all away, he wouldn’t be able to shake the thought from his conscious that they were here because they cared. Maru took the boxcutter away because he cared. The team showed up at the hangar doors because they cared. The C-119 made him realise that they really did, and he was about to take all of that for granted. He breathed deeply, sighing on his landing gear that had begun to ache. His side was still torn open, and now the remnants of the fluid draining out was dripping onto the floor, slowly but steadily. A migraine was beginning to buzz in the back of his mind already, but he ignored it. It was common ground nowadays. “C’mon,” Maru said, “let’s get you back to the garage.” Blade wordlessly followed the other back, along with Paul who trailed behind them. The others left, though the C-119 stayed watching the Agustawestland leave. Maru wasn’t the only psychic on the base, and it had been a very long time since he’d seen spikes like these.