Moods

I’ve been in a bit of a mopey mood lately, and it’s certainly not something I enjoy. It started when I went to a neurologist to find out what was going on with my right leg. I used to call it my good leg, but haven’t in quite some time due to overcompensation issues but more and more recently it’s seemed as if the RSD might be spreading. A common test for RSD is the EMG which is basically sticking needles in the painful area of your body and electrocuting you.

In short, the neurologist didn’t find anything wrong that he could “see” and refused to give me a script for hand controls. At that moment in time, I had felt that hand controls, while not a necessity, having random spasms in my driving foot did not bode well for future safe driving. Of course, directly after the EMG and the denial of any issues whatsoever, my driving foot had completely lost it’s ability to be a driving foot. Whenever I try to move it, it shakes quite spectacularly. In fact, it shakes a bit more than when I try moving my definitely RSD leg which is quite interesting and also quite aggravating.

Luckily, I soon went to my GP where he was very helpful in writing me a script for a driving evaluation and hand controls and I found an outpatient rehab place who taught me how to drive using hand controls and found a place where I could get hand controls installed on my car.

During this, however, I had what I thought were double ear infections, where I would wake up with the room spinning around me. Recently, I learned that I am apparently having some issues with inner ear infections and/or benign positional vertigo. Which quite honestly, sucks. I haven’t been able to sleep a full seven or eight hours in over two weeks. I haven’t been able to lie down flat without the room spinning for over two weeks. The combination makes me a rather miserable person. And that’s not even accounting for the possibility that this vertigo mess might not go away…

And for the last month and a half, I’ve been depending on family members for rides and when you’re twenty-two and living alone it basically means you’re stuck inside and/or waiting on other people’s schedules. Now, I certainly appreciate the family members who have been giving me rides and coming to visit while I’m effectively housebound, but the inability to go where I need to go independently is not something I enjoy.

I had also just started job hunting again and have been in the awkward and unpleasant position of turning down job offers and interviews. After sending out quite a few resumes, this has been quite depressing.

The thing about moods and emotions is that while you can’t just will yourself to change your moods (if we could, we’d all be pretty happy people) we can control how we choose to deal with them. Although probably not the best way to deal with my mood, I’ve been buying lottery tickets and fantasizing about new cars and sports wheelchairs. I’ve also decided that I want to take up tennis and I have an entire list of things to buy if I ever win the lottery…Well okay, I’ve always had a list, but I’ve never gone so far as to buy tickets!

But today started out a bit differently than the past few weeks. Perhaps it’s because I actually slept well for more than two hours. But I decided that I’m not going to let a bit of dizziness stop my life. How ridiculous is that?! I’ve refused to let CRPS stop my life but all of a sudden add a bit of vertigo and I feel like I can’t function at all? That’s completely and utterly ridiculous. Do I want to be dizzy? No way in hell. Do I hope it will go away? Definitely. Am I going to mope and be miserable about it and do nothing with my life? Hell no.

Of course, this decision was easier to come to when I found out that I’ll be able to drive my car again by this weekend…which is pretty freaking sweet. I can start job hunting again, actually make it to scheduled interviews, and do all the basic things on my own again.

It’s pretty exciting.

And I’m pretty happy today.