1) Anxiety, my best friend
It felt really cathartic to write my post about my most recent anxiety attack. I’m glad I was able to give people a look into what it’s like to have one of these spirals because the more we know about how mental illness affects other people, the more empathetic we become. Plus, there are a few of you who also deal with these spirals and while I don’t wish this on anyone, I’m glad to know I’m not alone. Maybe I can carry that knowledge with me the next time it happens.
I stopped going to therapy earlier this year (or maybe it was the end of last year) because I felt like I had gotten my shit together and I was feeling pretty good about things. However, I’ve been having these anxiety attacks more frequently (this was my second in two months, which is not the norm for me). Someone commented on my blog that I may find it helpful to seek out exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy because it sounds like I may have OCD. (I really wish this person had left their name, but they commented with my name and email address so I had to trash the comment.) While I’m not sure if my mental illness would classify as OCD, I am willing to try anything so I started looking for therapists that specialize in OCD and ERP therapy. The first therapist I emailed wasn’t taking patients, so I’m hoping to spend some time this weekend looking up therapists and sending inquiry emails. Fingers crossed!
2) A scalp psoraisis update
I don’t think I ever updated you guys on how things are going with my scalp psoriasis after I got my steroid injections. I got the injections in mid-June and I could almost immediately notice a difference in my symptoms. The itchiness and pain abated rather quickly and I also noticed less dry skin, although the dry skin never totally went away. I had a follow-up appointment this week with my dermatologist where we discussed the dry skin and decided to do another round of injections on the right side of my scalp since it was feeling a tiny bit more itchy recently. (I have plaques on both sides of my head, right above my ear, but the left side was a bit calmer on the itchiness front.) Those injections are painful, but they work and I’ll take a few seconds of pain over hours and hours of itchiness.
The dry skin and plaques are still bothersome, though, so I’m going to try a new prescription-strength shampoo and also use my liquid treatment (I use calcipotriene) every day. I also have a handful of other treatments that have been prescribed to me that my derm said I can use on an as-needed basis, so I’ll probably try to use those a few times a week to see if all of this together helps with the dry skin.
All in all, I am so glad I went with the steroid injections. My scalp psoriasis was such a big part of my life and now I rarely think about it!
3) A CPAP update
Let’s continue the good news train. Things have really improved in CPAP land. In my CPAP post from last week, I talked about how I was struggling with the mask. It was irritating my nose a lot and it was just very uncomfortable to sleep with. What a difference a week (+ a moisturizer) makes! My sleep clinic shipped me a new mask to try, but I’m still waiting for it to be delivered (bah!). While I’m waiting on that, I’ve slowly become used to my nasal mask. While it bothers me sometimes as I’m trying to get to sleep, it isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. And the moisturizer I talked about on Friday’s post has been a gamechanger. Right before I put on my mask every night, I put a tiny bit of the moisturizer right under my nose and around my cheeks. After the first night, I woke up to no dry skin. Ever since, the dry skin on my septum has cleared up and I am feeling so much better.
Plus, my blood oxygen levels are continuing to improve. On Wednesday night, I even hit 100% at one point during the night! I haven’t seen those numbers above 95% since I started tracking my blood oxygen levels, so that’s exciting. (The average is still around 95% but even that’s better than the 91-92% average I was seeing.)
4) An ode to my HIIT trainer
One of the things I know about myself: I am not going to push myself hard in workouts. I am always going to take the easy way out and do the bare minimum to get the workout done so I can say I did it. Thankfully, my HIIT trainer seems to understand that about me, which is why he takes it upon himself to push me way beyond where I think my limits are. For example, if he sees me doing a workout with easy weights, he’ll kindly take them off my hands to give me much heavier weights. (Like when I was doing deadlifts with a 10-lb kettlebell and he replaced it with a 25-lb kettlebell.) Or when he sees me doing a wall sit and makes that motion with his hand, as if to say, “You can sit much lower than that.”
When I started taking his HIIT classes, he gave me all sorts of modifications and didn’t care if I chose a lower weight. But now that I’ve been going to his class for five months, he knows I can do more and he pushes me to do it. And I really, really appreciate that! It makes me feel powerful when he hands me a heavier weight and strong when he makes me do workouts the way he asks the “elites” to do it. It shows me how far I’ve come since I started these classes and that I am way more capable than I believe I am. While I hope that one day, I can find that extra gear to push myself when I feel like quitting, I am glad I found this trainer who has no problem helping me do that.
5) Weekend plans
I have another pretty low-key weekend ahead of me! I’m not complaining. Low-key weekends are really nice. Today, I have nothing on the agenda so the plan is to eat pizza and watch a couple episodes of Suits. Tomorrow, I have a writing date with Mikaela, some errands to run, and then another night to myself. And Sunday is a gym workout with my mom and then football!
What are your weekend plans?
