After-effects

So I mentioned a few posts ago about my having TTP. It was sleep-deprived ramble, but the basics were there. For future reference, the following are all side-effects I still live with as a result of my blood trying to destroy itself. I will probably add to this list, because catch 22, I can't remember shit easily:

1. In order to function as a person, I need to write lists. When I first got discharged, these lists included 'get dressed' 'brush hair' 'change boy's nappy' 'get boy dressed' 'eat breakfast'. I kid you not, I couldn't get through the basics of a day without my lists. My lists these days aren't so bad, but I still have them, and a memo board on my wardrobe door with reminders. I remember things better when I write them down. This is how I cheat people into thinking I'm semi-decent at my job, I'm meant to start with a checklist, and a cleaning list, and a stock list, and a list of things I need to check off before leaving, and basically, my first hour at work is lists. If I'm without even one of these lists, shit doesn't get done. People might say I was ditsy or whatever, but no. I need written confirmation that I need to clean out the hot chocolate machine otherwise that shit is gunged up and gross another day. I actually cannot think without lists.

2. I can't hear you if I'm writing. I can't do both any more. I can concentrate on my writing, or sort-of concentrate on you. Fun experiment if you know me, have a conversation with me. I could maybe participate and give you some opinion or insight, if I'm not doing other stuff. Wait an hour, and ask me my recollection of that conversation. Did I refer to it as last month or some time ago? Was I vague in the details? Was I tired? I'm wondering if something happened with how my brain communicates with my ears because I can take a little while to understand stuff.

I'm interrupting the list a second. My mother just reminded me to get a nap before work. Regardless of this list, STFU. I've been doing nights for months and I know how I function best. It's lunchtime. Go do one.

3. (Back on it) I don't like reminders, despite the above. I need to be able to think for myself. I need to get more independent in any way I can. My mother got told stuff by my doctor and she goes overboard way too much (basically, they said I shouldn't ever be alone. Which, for the kid of hers who valued alone time so much she spent entire days in a local park buried in the trees and daydreaming, is way too fucking unfair. Hence her breathing down my neck with stupid fucking reminders I don't need because ATM I'm still so tired my head hurts) ... neatly bringing us to another point actually ...

4. Sleep is a real thing for me. Like, when I first got discharged, I would have 12-14 hours at night, wake up and be a pitiful excuse for a human being, go for a 4 hour nap, wake up, eat dinner, put my kid to bed, go to bed myself. Even now, I need a good ten hours. When I first went back to work, I requested only day shifts (my doctor was like 'you're the first person I've met with this thing, we'll play it how you want. Even my doctors at the hospital were like 'you're the only real judge of this thing') and my boss said no. He said my doctor hadn't put any medical caveats in, so it was full time or nothing. My biggest regret is giving in, but I was so unwell even then that I couldn't get the words or the confidence to argue, and if my sense was still with me I would have left that job and sued the fuck out of him. Anyway, that's gotten worse and now I'm facing 6 nights in a row at work, starting at 10.30 at night. They are actually fucking killing me right now. I feel like I'm going through a lot of the same stuff I went through just before my diagnosis because of all the nights I do, and I don't know if I genuinely am or if this work is causing a set-back that's not as bad. They are masking the symptoms of an illness that can kill without any treatment. When I said I hate my job? This can be attributed. I do not want to die while my son is so young, while I'm still so young, while my writing is still unfinished. I do not want to be trapped like this.

I get headaches on lack of sleep. Lack of sleep being less than 9 hours a night. But you know what? Sometimes, it just doesn't matter how much or how little sleep I get. Because when I wake up I hurt, like I ache everywhere and it's like I've been running for months. I'm not that tired when I go to sleep, but waking up is a real bitch. Way back when, some days I couldn't get out of bed. Not in the sense of 'my bed is so warm, I don't want to leave' but in the sense of 'can I move my legs today? They feel so heavy and worn out. I ache in my bones'. I'm not yet thirty, how is this even okay? When I first went back to work, it had lessened out, but still, there was maybe one bad day to three good. Now, I wouldn't be able to tell you, I don't have a good sense of one day compared to the next.

5. I can't concentrate on more than one sound. Back to the hearing thing. If two people talk to me at once, it feels like everything stops and goes blank. In a job where sounds are important and five different machines beep at once as everyone hollers back and forth, this isn't good. I've learned tricks in the last 4 years of being back there to cope with it (I had seven months on sick leave) like the person closest to me will get my immediate attention, but even then, I have to pause a lot while I think things through. How people can't tell that there are problems in my head is beyond me sometimes with this job.

6. I have delayed reactions. It took me about three years to take my driving test, because I was rubbish at reacting to problems on the road. My instructor knew something of my blood problems (not as much as I'm putting on here, but enough to know how close I came) and he worked with me to improve them enough to pass. Technically, I wonder if I should even now be allowed to drive, since you're meant to declare before applying that you've had a stroke, but since I only had the initial signs of a stroke that was kept back with the miracle of science, I never had to declare it. Anyway, before I got ill, I could see things happening before they did (good logical thinking, I'm not a psychic) and try to prevent them with good foreplanning. And after? I could watch a cup of coke drop to the floor and spread out, and just say 'I knew that was going to drop' but I would still be standing there looking at the cup while someone else picked it up and cleaned it, and all I could do was repeat 'I knew that was going to drop' while not doing a damn thing to stop it. I can't make my body respond to brain signals like I used to, and I can't always get my brain to understand what it's seeing or hearing straight away. I used to do this trick, I've stopped it so much now, but someone would speak to me, and I would repeat them (parrot trick) and while repeating them, I was giving my brain enough time to hear, then understand what they were saying. They might have repeated it again, thinking I was a moron, thus buying me extra time (and I might have repeated again while the words fell in place in my head). I couldn't answer a straight question. I still can't, but instead now you just get a sleepy pause.

7. I get irrationally angry about the tiniest things. I can't explain this one, except I know I was more mellow before. I have a theory, like in The Eye (the Japanese one, since that's the one I watched) where some of my blood donors attributes may have come into who I am now, since for some reason I can tolerate both popcorn and pepperoni which I couldn't before, and I like steak pretty rare (and like I said in a previous post, I was once borderline vegan).

8. I don't have my memories any more. Not really. You know when you have a vivid dream and you tell people about it, but then your memory of the dream is recounting it for others? That's what 23 years of my life looks like. I don't remember being a child, a teenager, university, my son before he was 1. TTP took all that from me. Even now, my friends will be like 'remember the time ...' and my answer is no, not to be a bitch, but because I can't access that any more. Do you know what I can still access? Facts. The typical human adult has enough blood cells to wrap around the world three and a half times (though obviously, not mine). Humans are one of the few species with an aposable thumb. It is should Have, not should Of. Zac Efron is the sexiest male on this planet. The Simpsons were originally a short on some TV show not in the UK. Cat was Zoe's mother, not her sister. My son's first steps? I think he took those when I blinked, he was in stealth mode. That's what mum says. Someone I went to school with reminded me recently of making her dance to steps in front of the entire school. Sounds like something I would do, and I remember what the school looked like, so maybe?

I know there's more, but I can't really concentrate since my mother's helpful advice, sorry. Maybe this should be number nine, concentration is fucked once someone talks to me.