You may be asking yourself, why is April all of sudden sharing so much, and also things that are so personal and private? Well, believe me, I'm asking myself the same question. I think my Manic state started around mid-March when I started to feel better, and I started making travel plans, then it progressed when we were on Spring Break in St. George, and I was having my insomnia issues. But also our family was experiencing something we haven't done in a long time! We were reconnecting with family and friends, and it felt so good to do! It highlighted how lonely I've been over the years, the pandemic just made the isolation worse. Part of what is causing my insomnia right now, is if I start waking up, even just a little my brain just starts thinking about stuff. Random stuff more often, but a lot of introspection on my life lately, and how in the world I went from my "Normal" self to, to a very depressed self for a couple months, to now four months later I'm kinda a Manic self. Manic self feels really good, almost too good at times. I have more energy, and I get a lot done, but my thoughts just keep racing in my brain. I talk A LOT more, especially to my family which is because I'm mostly around them. It's A LOT at times, and they are not used to this Manic self. It feels completely opposite of the depressive self I was at in Dec/Jan. I was talking to the kids a bit about it, because I know I'm not my normal self right now. Although, Manic self decided to live her life again, and plan some family trips! That has been a positive.
Let's talk a little bit about my deeply depressed self that started shortly after I found out I was Covid +. This was on Dec 2nd 2022. I remember this date so well because Walgreens sent me an email saying I was +. Our family had avoided Covid for nearly 3 YEARS, so even though I knew deep down it was unavoidable forever if I wanted our kids to go to school, and for us to try to return to our previous lives, it was still a bit of a shock!
Liam got pretty sick for a week, and I got sick too, but thankfully it wasn't too bad...All things considered, I was glad we were current on our vaccines, because it could have been worse. Mike stepped up and he took care of Liam and me! He made meals, and basically took over taking care of the home and kids. After I tested positive, Mike tested himself and he was negative. He decided that he still wanted to avoid getting it, so he and I both wore masks around the home, and he made up a bed in his office. Personally, I felt like he was already exposed to Liam for several days, so if he's going to get it, it's going to be hard to avoid it. But, he is what you would call, a kinda high risk person because of his Asthma...So I agreed that I would try to be careful around the home. Liam ended up losing his sense of smell, but still had most of his sense of taste. Thankfully his appetite was normal while he was sick. I too lost my sense of smell, and my taste ended up quite strange to explain. My taste was messed up a little bit. I had heard of other people talking about how their food tasted like gasoline, and weird stuff like that. Thankfully, mine was not that severe, but it was enough to mess with my appetite. I knew logically that I needed to force myself to eat, so that I could get better. So that's what I did. (November 30th I found out that I had missed an important bill). I will go into more details about that in a following post. So the combination of having Covid for the first time, worrying about my husband getting it, and how his lungs would react to it, and the missed bill, I started having problems sleeping through the night.
I've always been a pretty good sleeper, unless I had some alcohol the evening before. When I got sick with Covid, I didn't drink anything that whole week+. When I'm sick, I just don't feel like a drink...then the NOT sleeping through the night started happening after Covid, after the missed bill. It kept getting worse each night. The taste issue continued as well, so I was not eating as much as I was used to. I was also not well hydrated. One of my symptoms early on when I got it was I was extra thirsty for cold water. Liam was the same way! I could not quench my thirst. Then I went back to my normal way of always being slightly dehydrated. Add on top of that, Mike has been having some health issues. For now, I will be vague about it, but it's something that has caused me a lot of concern, and with everything else it added to my stress and anxiety about life, and our future. These are things that continued to keep me up at night. I am not exaggerating my insomnia during this depressive state. I honestly feel like I didn't sleep for at least 3+ weeks straight. I would try to sleep, but I could not get there. I would lay there in bed and close my eyes, but I could hear every little sound in the house. At the time it was very cold outside, so there was a creak sound coming from the bathroom. And our stationary bike kept cracking too. When the furnace turns on, it changes the pressure in the home and it makes a bit of a sound too. Once in a while, I heard an explosion sound. It sounded like either an earthquake or like a bomb going off. This sound I felt like was not a real sound because the dogs NEVER reacted to it. I heard that sound a few times during those few weeks. If my mind started to fall asleep, my body would jump and wake me up. Kinda like if you are driving and nod off. That happened every night! Once in a great while I would actually fall asleep, but it was not very deep sleep or for very long. One of the nights, I had this strange dream where it felt like I was falling in space, and I woke up thinking I was dying from dehydration because I wasn't drinking a lot of fluids by then.
I gradually started to feel like I couldn't think straight. My thoughts felt very foggy and disjointed. My memory was really bad, and I couldn't really express myself very well. It scared me, and my family. I would try to watch shows with them in the evening, and I had a hard time following what was happening. I had this vacant look to me, and it scared my kids so much, that one night one of them started to cry. Mike took them into his office and tried talking about what was going on with me. I did a lot of worrying about dumb things, and I started pacing a lot. By this point it was around Christmas time. I fidgeted a lot too. My behavior was very off! Because of that missed bill, I started to worry about other bills I might have forgotten. I have a bad habit of making piles with our mail around the house. So I gathered them up, and kept questioning myself if it was paid or not.
This is getting long, so I think I'll stop this post, and continue with it another time....
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