It's been quite a few years, but looking back at my old posts made me smile. I'm definitely the same silly weirdo I was back then! I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I've since overcome a bunch of my gaming challenges.
Guess who has a max level tank character in the Elder Scrolls Online and has even successfully tanked a veteran dungeon? THIS GAL RIGHT HERE! It's still daunting at times, but also immensely satisfying. My best friend, Matt, was instrumental at helping me through that. He's a healer in game and a therapist in life, so I really couldn't have asked for a better friend to help me through my nerves. In most MMOs the hard part of getting a random group together is finding a healer and a tank. DPS (damage per second) players are a dime a dozen, so being with Matt took all of the "Oh no, if I suck the healer will get frustrated and leave" thoughts out of my head. After years of feeling like I wanted to play that role but couldn't, actually getting to do it successfully gave me some crazy endorphins. For days after I felt like a beast on my runs (real running outside), unstoppable in Beat Saber, and generally like a freakin action hero.
It still makes me nervous, but I'm going to keep pushing through that, because the other side of the tunnel is so much fun. Another struggle I've since overcome is the remapping of my brain to stop keyboard turning/clicking in MMOs. The solution that worked for me was to get a Razer Naga mouse with the numbers 1 through 12 available as keybindings on the left side of the mouse. My left hand handles WASD movement, jumping, and in game shortcuts not bound to numeric keys. My right hand handles attacking/blocking, camera movement (since in ESO mouse movement allows you to look around your character), and all of my abilities using the numbered side keys. My brain loves this setup and now it's like second nature. I definitely can't go back to a regular mouse without number keys.
What else what else, I guess I've just been trying to listen to what my body wants. I haven't really used this blog since being diagnosed with endometriosis, but I feel like that messed with so many things in my life. Chronic pain, surgeries, being told it's all in my head and psychosomatic, or that being stressed about the pain is causing the pain!?!?! being put on Lupron (forced menopause to try to help with endo pain, but really it just makes your joints hurt, gives you hot flashes, and makes you feel like you're losing your fucking mind and doesn't do a damn thing for endometriosis), SNRIs to try to help with potential nerve pain, and crying way too much after having my feeling and symptoms ignored. I've learned a lot about it since getting diagnosed in Jan 2014.
This past year has been especially rough and included 2 ultrasounds, endoscopy, colonoscopy, CT scan, eventually an MRI, and then surgery that only really cleaned up adhesions from my previous surgery. I went to physical therapy for a few months starting back in April and that helped a lot, especially from a mental perspective. It helped me turn my frustration into determination, see some real results from exercise, and has at least bolstered me mentally. I might have some level of pain daily, but have you seen my arms and abs lately, lol?
It helps in so many ways though. I know that if I do need more surgery I'll be able to recover more quickly if I'm in excellent shape beforehand. Doctors take you more seriously if you're in shape (it sucks that this is true, but especially when you have endo so many doctors want to make it YOUR problem in YOUR head, so showing that you're already trying hard to take care of yourself helps). I was rear ended in May of 2016 and then fell off my bike two weeks later (landing on my chin) and needed stitches. PT definitely helped with some lingering issues from that, ones that I didn't even know I had! It has helped me better categorize my pain - pains I can fix with physical activity (car and bike stuff), and pain that requires light stretching and ice or heat (endo stuff).
I feel like lupron, different attempts at birth control to manage symptoms, and trying SSRIs and SNRIs to make things better mostly only made it harder to hear myself. Things started to feel flat. I'd wake up and imagine another day like the one before, bereft of highs and lows, just trying to get through the pain. Sometimes it was excruciating, sometimes dull and heavy, but no matter the type it was constantly draining. It was especially difficult because to an outsider all of this was invisible. I kept feeling like I was failing everything because all of my passion and determination just evaporated.
It's still not perfect, but keeping myself physically active helps, and my wonderful wife is helping me reach out to a fantastic doctor. I found a great group on Facebook (Nancy's Nook) that has a ton of endo resources and a list of the best excision specialists. I'm going to have what I'd call an endo "grandmaster" check things out, and continue to do what I can in the meantime. Endometriosis and gaming, yep, that's what we do here :)
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