What's happening inside my head and heart is a bit tougher. The
missing memories are starting to be a real problem. Whenever I think
I've gotten used to the gaping holes in my memory, it's time for
another treatment and it gets worse. They also doubled the
electricity dosage today (and the treatment is going to continue with
the bigger dosage from today on), so that has some clearly visible
effects, both physical and mental. I mentioned my infernal headaches
at the hospital and they decided to try to fight that with
intraveneous pain medication, which seems to have worked pretty well.
And it's a good thing it did work, as today there appeared a new
physical effect following the larger electricity dosage, which
would've been absolute agony combined with the headaches: the muscles
in my jaw are completely frozen up and I can't open my mouth
more than a few millimeters, and even that's painful as all hell.
I can't really speak. Yawning makes me want to cry.
The memory stuff isn't exactly getting easier either. Today I've been excavating my memory for stuff that it should be impossible to forget (but I've always enjoyed doing the impossible, haven't I), for example how and when I met some of my closest and best friends. I sure hope that stuff comes back to me at some point, because right now I can't find a bloody thing, and that's slightly worrying. Even the things I do remember feel like they've happened to someone else.
I'm also experiencing a very special kind of general anxiety that's very hard to shake and which probably has something at least partly to do with the memory problems. When I had made my way home today (with the lovely assistance of my Mother, once again), I tried to get some sleep but couldn't right away, since my heart kept trying to jump out of my chest. It took some serious budoka / yogi / singer skills to force my heartrate down so that I could nod off.
What made sleeping even more difficult was the barrage of emotions I experienced in addition to the general anxiety. I tried to calm myself down by watching some animal videos and photos on Facebook (thank you, my lovely Eläinvideokerho, the best available therapy) but the effect was pretty much entirely the opposite: every fucking thing made me cry. Aloud. With big, wet, tears. Every status update, every link and sure as hell every picture and video of an animal was for some reason so damn touching that I started to weep, especially the ones that were actually happy. I had to give up on that after a while, as when it comes to calming myself down, that was pretty counterproductive. What made sleeping even harder was the fact that every single little noise I heard made me almost jump out of my skin.
Well, little by little the exhaustion overtook me anyway, so I fell asleep. That's when the real strangeness started. The dreams were once again so bloody weird that I can't even describe them very well, but let it be said that all the anxiety, panic and jumpiness I felt while awake had nothing on the feelings I was drowned in while asleep. Another strange effect of this whole thing is that my nightmares create terrible half-memories which mingle with the sad and odd remnants of my actual memories: the end result is a bunch of terrifying, anxiety-inducing and so very, very sad memories, which feel very real but a closer look tells me that nothing of the kind has probably ever really happened (my little sister hasn't been abducted by aliens as far as I know and my child is alive and well and playing in the other room right at this very moment, etc.). The vividness of the nightmare memories combined with the fogginess of my thoughts in general creates a solid mass of very authentic-feeling but infinitely nonsensical and confusing memories, which I have no way of telling apart from actual memories.
Well, it's not all pain and terror: the cats have once again been glued to me, all of them, all the time, and somehow I feel like the kid has been an angel today (not that I remember how he usually behaves, but nevermind). I also have the most amazing friends and loved ones a person could ask for: really, you guys are terrific and a true blessing. I hope I can one day pay back all the support I'm getting - I sure as hell intend to try.
