It’s Sunday afternoon and my back pain is making me nauseous.

It’s 4:16pm and all i’ve had is a Red Bull and a Chobani Flip.

Quite a stark contrast from the last few days.

I hurt.

My lower back feels like it’s bruised down to the bone.

It aches, stings, tingles and burns too.

My knees have been hit hard yesterday and today too with pain levels.

It really hurts to stand.

But it almost always hurts to stand.

It hurts to bend at the waist – to pick something up from the ground.

I don’t know why I hurt so bad today.

Only thing I can think of is that I’m off of Prednisone and it has left my body as of today.

My burst was up not yesterday, but the day before.

It really, really helped my pain levels.

So I guess I’m not shocked that my pain levels are high again.

It’s now Tuesday and I’ve been hearing some voices on my walks with Bruce the last few days.

Neighbors talking about Bruce and I.

About how I’m not picking up after him.

(when I do, everytime)

About how I’ve gained weight.

(which I have)

About how I walk so much being disabled.

(I walk a good amount, but not too much)

I know it’s all hallucinations.

But this is the same shit I’ve heard my whole life.

Off in the background.

Sounding like an actual conversation that’s taking place (spatially) about half a block away, but with regular volume voices but somehow I can hear crystal clear, like they’re standing right next to me.

For some reason I can hear them clear as day from a ways away.

But I know that’s not possible.

I know that it’s probably not happening in real reality.

I don’t see anyone outside when I hear this shit.

Even if I do I can’t trust that either.

I’ve hallucinated entire conversations face to face.

And I’ve been surprised my voices didn’t get super terrible with my intense pain levels the past couple of months.

It’s just been the last week or two that I’ve been hearing them enough to have them be annoying again.

On a good day, it’s a sentence or two here and there on a walk.

One or two “comment voices” – I call them in my mood app.

Or “murmurs” is another category I use.

But I usually use “comment voices” when I can understand what’s being said about me.

And the “murmurs” are more just the sound and I can’t tell what’s being said.

The “murmurs” are always a lot closer sounding than the “comment voices” are.

Though both can sound eerily close, but far away.

It’s tough to explain.

And sometimes I can hear someone talking through the wall or door, and I call those “comment voices” too.

But there’s no one really there.

It just sounds like there is.

It’s all just hallucinations.

I have been a little stressed lately.

This political climate has me scared and stressed.

That’s all I’ll say about it as I don’t really want politics to enter this space of my life.

It’s too much.

I don’t want to divide people.

I want to over come mental illness stigma, and educate folks by writing about how my list of disabilities impact my life and behaviors.

And politics plays into all of that just in the way that it’s so scary.

And politicians thrive on fear.

And I have to click myself out of the political world every so often and in this little corner I’ve created.

I don’t want the ugliness of politics to overpower anything here.

So that’s as far as I’ll go.

So to totally change the subject, I’m not staying on Pregabalin (Lyrica).

I’m already coming off of it with one tab today, tomorrow and Thursday and then I’m done with it.

The side effects looked terrible when I looked it up.

And I read thing after thing about people not being able to come off of it.

So I’m over it.

It honestly didn’t seem to be working or doing anything anyway.

So I’m over it. 

I’ve been logging my actual food intake starting today.

Even if it’s over the max calories I wanted to eat that day.

I’m just making sure I track all of it.

Maybe it’ll help to see when and where I overeat.

I did good today.

I did good yesterday too.

So I’m hopeful.

I know this is the millionth time this year, but I’m coming off Prozac again.

My vision is blurry again.

I noticed it had surfaced again on Sunday, so I stopped it for like the third time in a month.

Not ideal.

I feel like I’ve come off and on an SSRI three times in a month.

But I have gotten no direction in that area with Alex, my psych NP.

And my appointments with him are practically pointless.

I have one on Monday though.

Next week.

I’m going to try to set something up with a new psychiatrist soon.

I had one set up for next week but they got ahold of me and told me they don’t take my insurance.

Annoying. 

Oh well.

I’ll move on.

I had the Radoifrequency Ablation on my lower back today too.

I was really looking forward to it.

My back pain has been out of control this week.

I’ve been dreading walking because of it.

But I just now got home from the ablation and I’m feeling good.

My back feels achy, but in a different way.

Like, it feels more like a muscle knotty than a joint issue right now.

That pinching isn’t as intense already either.

My L4-L5 facet joints usually feel like they’re going to pop out.

Right now they just feel uncomfortable.

Not intolerable.

Which is a huge step in the right direction.

I’m hopeful for when the procedure aches will be gone now too.

I want to go for a walk, but I don’t want to push it today.

So I’ll just sit here for now.

– Keren