Ah, it must be that time of year again. The last 3 months of the year, when I find myself getting a bit frantic. The sunshine is slipping away (ok, so we had a heat wave here in California last week, but still!) the days are getting shorter...the holidays are quickly approaching, which is tough when you're broke and can't do much about it. History shows that this time of year can be a frantic struggle for me to hang onto my sanity. I start losing hope, depression begins to creep in, and I want to be well, YESTERDAY.
This year, time has slipped by so fast that I'm half dazed when I try and accept that it's nearly halfway through October...but I feel the crisis creeping in, in the form of a scarcely controllable urge to stuff my face! What's more, I hardly even care. I'm SO anxious so much of the time, and it manifests itself as an urge to eat. Which yes, I can recognize, which seems like a good thing, but I think it might be making me even more anxious!
I suppose a big factor is the kitty. As I mentioned before, my fur-kid of 15 years has developed Chronic Renal Failure. It's been quite a fight to get her stable (not sure if we're truly even there yet) the last month or so. I've had to do lots of research, since I couldn't afford any more multiple trips to the vet, but I found myself in good hands, as apparently, many cats live well with this disease for years, and there is a wealth of information on the Internet about how to manage it. By pure grace I've been blessed to be clear-headed enough to mostly digest it well, though I've still had to re-read it multiple times, I am truly grateful that the fog mercifully lifted enough for me to take advantage of that.
I haven't been sleeping well, and I suppose that's a first sign; when I start waking up early and not being able to get back to sleep, it's a sure sign of extreme stress. I've had to give her pills, hand/force feed her food, stick needles in her to hydrate her...She is the closest thing to a child I have, and hard as it's been, I had no choice, and fortunately, I still have a little bit of that part of me that takes charge in an emergency. Actually, I'd been feeling gracefully calm and relaxed (finally!) before she got sick...so maybe my adrenals had begun to replenish themselves. But it's been exhausting. To be feeling sick and exhausted and know you have to hand feed your cat wet food, despite her razor sharp teeth and lack of cooperation...Or steel yourself to stick a sharp needle through her skin, and keep her from wiggling away as water leaks from it under her skin? Yikes. Ha, as I write this I begin to realize why I have been feeling SO stressed and exhausted. But the reward is, there she is, happily napping away on her meditation pillow, if not as healthy-looking as before, pretty close enough.
I guess the gaining the extra pounds back won't be the end of the world, especially since it's not like I'm dating at the moment. I've given up on the gym as well. (My shoulder's still recovering from giving in to the temptation to vent my frustration on the arm cycle, and the last time I was going to go, by a fluke, checking out an erroneous theory, I found out I had a fever...didn't want any infection being driven towards my heart, I have enough problems already!)
So anyways, what's this about Magic Mushrooms? Well, no worries, they're not hallucinogenic. They are magic because they are said to restore the balance between the Th1 and Th2 parts of the immune system... Ganoderma Lucidum, aka Reishi Mushrooms...Crazy, frantic girl that I am, I've begun taking some tea, and the results were nearly immediate. Within hours glands in different parts of my body were swelling and tender...This is a good thing, I believe, because as my doctor and many articles have explained, my immune system, if it were normal, would have fought off the Enteroviral infections I have. So if I'm getting all sore-throaty, swollen glandy, that means it's making it work properly, no? I sure hope so...
Incidentally, it also seems to have a very subtle, relaxing effect on me, much like Ashwagandha...Not quite enough to ease my binge-inducing anxiety, but it's definitely taken an edge off...More on those later...
Now, my mission is SLEEP. I'll let you know if it's successful...
