The Joy of Madness

Little Earthquakes

Has it been only a week since I posted? I thought it had been a month. No kidding, I feel like I've been coming off of a bad acid trip. That's what I've heard it is like. Like you pass the freeway sign and you go didn't I pass that offramp already? So yeah I have lost all concept of time lately. I did that when I was manic and hospitalized for psychosis. I didn't realized that I had been in for three weeks. I was shocked when I was discharged and they were telling me. They were saying hey it is about time that you asked to go home. I had been allowed to go stay on minimum security and so I had full grounds privelidges and I guess they were just waiting for me to get fed up and say I'm out of here. I was surprised. You mean I have a say in this? When I was committed I had no say. Then they tricked me into signing myself in for another 72 hour hold. That pissed me off. I went to the payphone and started calling lawyers. They probably get those calls all the time from psychotic people in mental wards. So my brain was fried. When I got out and they sent me to the pharmacy to pick up my pills they gave me a pill Prolixen which makes you sleep between meals. They also gave me Prozac.

So I don't even know where I have been this last week. I am having to go look at the calendar to verify when a certain event occurred so that I can reconstruct a situation. Like I was wondering how long it has been since a good friend flipped out about me being ill and stopped calling me. I realized she had flipped and then she never called again. I never expected someone to walk away from a friendship because the other friend is suddenly physically ill. I thought should I call her once I finally get a diagnosis and I have a label to brandish like a trophy? Then I finally just said no, it is not worth it. Why should I have to qualify for illness? So I haven't quite figured out how long ago it was been; but if I had to reconstruct it if I looked at the calendar and saw when I first saw the dr. It was September 23 or 25 I think the dr. informed me of yesterday. So I managed to give blood and got some results over the phone last Thursday and I had an appointment to go in at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning but I didn't make it and rescheduled for yesterday at 4:30. So I had a falling out with this friend who I had been friends with on and off for about four years and basically she flaked out on giving me a ride to the dr. on Monday morning. So I ended our friendship yesterday when she renigged on her offer to drive me on Tuesday. See she is high maintenance, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, a gold digger, manipulative and demanding. I have been ignoring her constant complaining for a long time. She is a bulemic woman who is on a mission to rid the world of fat women. She has been fat and is now too thin and openly criticizes fat women in public and says let me give you a workout. Here I am a plus size woman and she doesn't even try to hide he food addiction/repulsion and obsessive compulsive behavior. She is disgusted by food and doesn't keep any in her house and if we have ever eaten take out at her house she asks me to walk the brown grocery sack down to the dumpster in the basement. She freaked out when she spilled some smelly sald dressing in her car last Saturday night and then I saw her briefly Monday morning and she was really disgusted by the awful smell of food in her car. So she disn't repay me when I went out with her on Saturday night. She owed me $60 and basically my bank account is empty until they refund the money that was taken out with the fraud. She was aware of that sistuation and I was on my way to the dr. on Monday morning and realized I had no cash to take the bus. So I called her on her cell and she called me back and I was very sweet and said could you drop the cash by or drive me? She acted all put out but we started to drive down there and got stuck n a little traffic and she said oh, can you reschedule? So she offered to drive me on Tuesday and we set up a time that was convenient to her personal training job and she flaked out. She left me a message that she would have to see if she could still take me. When I called again I was pissed. She asks me for all kinds of favors which I have done at least four jobs for her for free and I have never complained. She does this to everyone. She expects the world to revolve around her. So today she had asked me to be her GPS system and guide her to this bra shop that is supposedly the best high end place to go and she just had to drive down to Monrovia. Of course she doesn't know how to navigate from her gym to my apartment. She gets lost and calls me and I have to figure out if she is headed north or south and what street she has just passed according to the business she is looking at. So there is no way this lady could make it to some strange town that I was going to have to map and tell her where to change freeways and stuff. I mean she asked me to do this a week or two ago and I said did they give you the name of the business? No. Did they give you a street number? No. I know you take the blah blah blah freeway and it is by this street... I go call your coworker back or we can't go find it. I do this for two other friends too. I ride along and act as the GPS. Anyway she tells me she can't drive me Tuesday afternoon and she starts saying I'm getting a little pissed. You are pressuring me to drive you and I have a job and I can't cancel or I might lose this client and she might sign up for a package deal. She complained that I had made her late to an appointment Monday morning and she could have lsot out on the package deal and she needed that to make money. I just lost it. I went off on her. I brought up the time that she strongarmed me into staying overnight at her apartment to change the icepacks after her last boobjob and only bought me a little veggie meal. I knew she was pissed the next morning. She had stayed up all night with insomnia and was blasting the radio in the other room all night. Couldn't her dad have forked out for a visiting nurse after that surgery he paid for? So she said yeah that really pissed me off that you went to sleep while you stayed over that night. Like I hadn't fulfilled my end of the contract. Oh, I didn't know I had agreed to this. I didn't know you were my employer. She asked me to come assist her in her move and so I got there and she ordered me around the entire day, didn't lift a finger herself and I had to organize the move. SO she didn't bother to order food for me at lunch. We are all done and I'm thinking surely she going to pay me something. She took me out to dinner and bought me a 10-15 $ meal and took me home. I had reccomended my friend and his crew who charge less than big companies and they were giving her a good deal because the were just moving her to an apartment downstairs. So complained about how this or that was scratched. I was so upset with her. Duh. Why did I continue to allow her back into my life? Then we began speaking again about a month or so ago and we we hung out a few times and spoke on the phone and she decided that I should be willing to ride shot gun to MOnrovia and of course she wasn't going to pay me. Like what am I going to do at a high end bra shop. I was going because I wanted to get out of the house. But I started realizing that I wouldn't be able to buy a meal and she never eats. So I was like you call up the day before I'm supposed to take you to Monrovia and you scream at me for being demanding because I finally asked you to reciprocate? We began calling each other names and I called her all the terms I printed above and she didn't want to hear the truth. I had two other friends who pulled me aside seperately and said that they do the same behavior to her. She kept denying that she has a silver spoon in her mouth and her financial stress is delusional and that her minimum wage training job wasn't going to make her get eveicted if she cancelled one appointment. I said whenever you have a need for something you call up daddy and her forks over a big fat check in the mail. Sorry hon that is the truth. Said that I don't work what difference did it make that she had me doing work for her with no reimbursement. What am I her slave? Her daddy is like I bottomless goldmine. He just says send me the receipt. Send me the dr.s bill. She has fights with him when he doesn't provide anything she demands. She is 45 years old and her dad is 70 or so. I don't know how he deals with her. So she was saying I guess this is the end of our friendship. She wanted to continue screaming at me. I eventually just hung up on her. She will never call again.

Another one bites the dust. When push came to shove and I am at death's door she lashes out and does this passive aggressive thing.

So I still have a few close friends. One is still in Texas until this Saturday. I spoke with her last Saturday and everything is going great there. One friend wants reassurance that the dr can fix this. It isn't anything serious is it?

So I went to the dr in the afternoon and I thought that since the weather was cooler that I would go a little early and go the the library and read the rolling stone. They didn't subscribe to it and I gather some newspapers and set out on foot for a while. I was almost hit twice by two different women drivers who were surprised that I a pedestrian was actually crossing on a crosswalk at a green walk sign. Hello! Pedestrians have the right of way in California and I always follow the traffic laws; but drivers here when they are making a right or a left turn they often don't have a turn arrow and they get really aggressive and impatient and basically see you and gun the gas. I was so pissed. The first Lady was making a left onto my crosswalk and surprise surprise I was beginning to step out of of the curb and she was hanging out in traffic and she met my eyes and hesitated and then floored it right in front of me. I leaned over into her window and said you're really rude lady! People looked at me funny. So I'm continuing walking in the next block at a green light crosswalk and I've got a person trying to turn left into my crosswalk and the lady trying to turn right thought she could just run righ past me. I started to put my foot off of the curb and I looked to my side to see if she would stop and she looked like she was going to have a heart attack and she slams on her brakes and her car skids and her tires squeel. That was scary. I looked at her and I said you stupid f.ing b. then people really looked at me. This goes on daily. I guess people who drive need to be where they are going yesterday and figure if you walking around you better just move your a. out of the road. So you have to walk defensively.

So I go to a thrift shop where I got two cool books for a dollar apiece and I had to leave sooner than I wanted because I started getting dizzy and knew what was coming next. I was all sweaty and they had no air in the store. I made my way to the medical building lobby and sat down on the bench in the hall and downed a couple of bottles of water and relaxed getting fresh santa ana winds in the hall. Then I saw a friend who attends meetings in the office next to my dr and he stopped and explained in a protracted way that someone at his board and care had passed away. He was telling me because I visit a good friend there and I know the people there. He has trouble producing his language because sometime Schizophrenia makes impossible to be verbal. So I kept having to guess what he was trying to say. But he is very intelligent and laughed his way through it. He knew that he could get out of watching the boring film they were trying to make him watch if he kept going out to the bathroom down the hall. SO of course it is upsetting to know that someone else died. I have to call my friend there and ask who is was. The guy who lives with them that had stints put in his heart is doing fine and was at home that day.

I ran into the Lexapro pusher in the hallway at the medical building and I was getting my nerve up to say hey you know that pill your here to peddle to all the dr.s in this building today the one your making plenty of bucks off of? Well I'm on it and I am trying to get off of it and I can't just stop taking immediately or I might have withdrawal symptoms like some heroin addict. And by the way I shouldn't have been allowed to take this drug along with the pain killers I have been having to take because there is a drug interaction and well they both cause internal bleeding and synergystically I'm a walking time bomb. Yeah so thanks alot you idiot. He was giving him looks and her was wearing the badge that had the Lexpro on there and her got up and went around the corner and went up the elavator. So I missed out on telling him a thing or two. I looked for him later when I was leaving and exiting the pharmacy.

The dr saw my feet. He is a comedian. He makes fun of you while he is examining you. But it was obvious that he was upset by my feet. He goes are you diabetic? I said no my fasting glucose here was normal. He goes oh it is just the sandals it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I was laughing. He is shorter than I am and he wanted to look in my ears to see if I had an infection. He goes bend over I'm not a giraffe or anything. He was trying to figure out why I have been having fever. Everyone of my blood results were good except for the potassium. It is sky high and I have to redo it tomorrow fasting at a lab nearby. I told him that I had just had heatstroke for the second time in a short while and my eyes were dilated, I was dizzy, and my blood pressure was low. I have healthy blood pressure. It is never high. He was blown out of the water when the nurse told him what it was out in the hall. The nurses and the dr were cracking up because they checked a chart and my blood pressure is that of a 16 year old. I was laughing. My cholesterol was a shocker too. The bad one was really low and the good one really high. I am not your typical plus size person. That was a shock to him. But he was upset when I told him that my lungs were still painful and that I still had a cough after the antibiotic. So he was freaked out and went out and talked to his staff and wanted to order a test and they told him that they would demand a diagnosis for the test. He said my diagnosis is chest pain that is good enough! So he came back and he listened to my lungs on my back and we was scared and said if the pain and cough don't go away by Friday then you have to come back and have a chest x-ray. He gave me the Levaquid again in a higher dose that I will probably be finishing up right around Friday. So I'm starting to worry about using up my six slots for perscriptions for October. I think I might have to go pick one psych med before the end of the month and he gave me two creams for my feet. I might wind up with two slots at the end of the month. See we are very ill and they refuse to fill more that 6 perscriptions per month. If you need it you often go without because it takes a long to get a treatment authorization request approved by medi-cal. The pharmacy fills out a form and faxes to the office somewhere out in outerspace and it goes into a holding pattern and no one knows where or why but often they say no. So if it takes them too long then the whole transaction is cancelled and you go into the next month and get new slots opened up for you. So last spring I went without an inhaler for a while because I knew I wouldn't be able to get it. Medicaid is terrible. I was sitting in my therapists office after she had spent an hour with a chain smoker exhaling in her office and all I could do was move over to the other chair in her office a foot away and gag my way through the session.

So I started cutting my Lexapro in half a couple of days ago. Who wouldn't in my shoes. The psych had said that he would begin that in November. But I started thinking that I really resented swallowing the pill every morning knowing that when I take Naproxen that I am playing Russian Roullette. But the shrinks don't walk around with pdas at the county clinics and no one caught it. The pharmacy never caught it either. They are a mom and pop pharmacy and they are contracted with the county and it is mandatory that you choose the pharmacy in your area that is provided. SO They have at times handed me the bottle of Naproxen and the bottle of Lexpro in the same brown sack. No wonder I am jaded. I had to figure it out on my own on medline. It spits out the drug interactions.

There was some good news yesterday though. I called my mom and she said that they are struggling with affording their big house payment since my mom retired and they want to sell their house and scale down a bit. It is a lot of work. THey hired a housekeeper to clean once a week and they have a pool guy that comes routinely and then of course there are the gardeners who come weekly. Then the air conditioner never really coolsa the entire house. If you sleep at their house upstairs they balst the central air all night and still it is miserable. They live in a hotter area than I do. So they are sick of all the hassle. They don't want to buy a home with a pool. They want a jacuzzi though. They said that they are starting to clean out the garage and discard things. They said that they are moving to the Long Beach/San Pedro area and they want me to join them. They finally realized that I am in a hellacious situation and after the manager let the wacko plumbers in and they stole my checkbook I was screwed. THey saw that because I had to have my mom wire me money from Texas while she was there. So I wrote a letter to the management company about all of this b.s. here and they probably received Friday. I know that my neighbor or someone told her about the phone call and she was in the hall outside m apartment screaming Her!? She... She left. She knew I could hear her. I have been so intimidated by her husband for all this time and she has never been around to let maintenance workers repair things. So I crossed his path while I was leaving yesterday and he just gave me this look. I just kept going.

I still have to call Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office and report that although the No Ho Commons Luxury Apartment building has slots for affordable housing advertised specifically for disabled people they are screening each disabled person through some 800 number in Texas and they are scripted to say that they are still looking for they application and they are still not sure that they can give you the application and they go on with questions that are digging for what type of disability you have and whether you have a pet or not, how much rent you expect to pay, why you are planning to move, did you know that we have all these luxury amenities at our complex? and DO you know where we are located and that the building is still under construction? I said to the Lady from Texas yeah I saw your ad online and I tried to contact your company by phone and left a voicemail and an e-mail and it was hard to get through. She got it. She goes I understand ma'am. She was becoming uncomfortable with her job rather quickly. I'm wondering how much money they save by hiring workers in Texas. So the whole while she is supposed to be convincing me that she is at the office in L.A. she is mispronouncing Tunjunga avenue and doesn't realize that the complex is within walking distance of the metro redline station and near Lankershim and Magnolia which is the heart of NO Ho. Every local knows those things. So I got off the phoen with her last Wednesday afternoon thinking that I had cleared all of their hoops and she even took my e-mail and street address and said she would mail it. Here it is a week later and I haven't received it. I haven't checked my e-mail since maybe Sunday; but I am pretty sure that when I go through there it will be missing. How convenient. They only accept you if you are in a wheel chair or whatever and don't have a service animal. Also apparently it is not enough that they tell you online how much there low income housing is they ask you what you can pay. They must think we are idiots. They are required by the city to give us these units.

Posted by Butterfly Emerging at October 18, 2006 08:07 PM