Today

D.I.D. in Pictures

Did this once before and the blog got messed up so I deleted it.

It's a very simplistic explaination of what DID is like.

Growing up, it was like this:


There were many me's, all separate from each other, unaware of the others' existance. Only one alter could be in control of the body at one time.

Once I started my healing journey and became aware of all of the others, it felt like this:


I became aware enough of the adult me to see the others when I was in charge of the body. It felt like I had hundreds of people within me trying to get out.


Once I began to meet all of the alters and make some of them aware of me, the adult me, it became more like this:


I now understood there were no separate people living inside of me; it was all just ME, stuck at different points for different reasons, holding memories and emotions that I had been unable to handle during the present when they actually happened. It still did seem that each alter was so different from me; they all have different names and very few look like what I see in the mirror. We were still very separate and I could not typically remember what happened when alters were out.

And yes, it did seem that some of them were out to sabatoge or even kill me to silence us and keep the secrets.

I think where I am now is this:


I know the pieces are just me, and we will one day be one whole person who exists only in the present. It is like the puzzle pieces that make up Alli are all out of place and glued down to the table in the wrong spots. Each day, they seem to be easier to move into the correct position so that I can keep moving step by step from:





And just be

Return to Normalcy

Or would be if I had the slightest idea what that meant.

I am headed back to work tomorrow; Friday was one week after the surgery; we'll see how I do. I am more sore now, actually, around where my gallbladder actually was and am trying to get my blood sugars back on track. The week before the surgery I hardly ate at all, and then who knows what all the meds did to them. Actually did eat four times today; am well on my way back to six.

In the meantime, I am grateful I missed some of October, but have to come back to it now. It is true that it gets a bit easier every year, but it still is very hard and I am already battling the agoraphobia. I would like nothing more than to lock myself in the bathroom for the remainder of the month. Thursdays cannot come quickly enough.

Gallbladder Fun

Took this pic last Friday unaware that the food I would eat that weekend would trigger an attack of what was already a diseased gallbladder. It started Friday night when Allen's boss told him to take me to dinner on the company (good call too, I was getting really sick of late nights, early mornings and whatnot) so we went to my favorite restaurant of all time; HB Steakhouse. It's one of those Japanese places where they cook the food at the table. I LOVE it! Asian food is my favorite by far; Japanese, Chinese, Hunam especially and Thai. I also get Mai Thai's at HB,so that makes the night even better. Even got all dressed up and cute, which is why we stopped by my mom's to try out her new digital camera.

Saturday came around and we were lazy and decided to do the Olive Garden never ending pasta bowl deal for lunch since we had a little in the restaurant fund. Still not too bad.

Saturday afternoon rolls around and Allen's mom calls and says his sister drove in from school for her birthday and SHE didn't feel like cooking either. SO we headed to Red Lobster since his parents were paying. (Three HOUR dinner, I'll have to tell that story later).

SUNDAY comes around and after church, some of our friends who we hadn't seen in forever wanted us to grab Mexican food with them, and we didn't want to say no.

That adds up to a LOT of eating out, which I am not used to. By Sunday afternoon, I felt like a muscle across my stomach was cramping. It was a very weird sensation. I didn't feel nauseous and was able to eat fine. As the evening progressed, it got worse and worse. Getting ready for work Monday morning was so painful it made me see spots, so I called into work and called my chiropractor, still thinking it was a pulled muscle and I could go into work after getting adjusted.

Everyone in the office that I described my symptoms to asked me if I still had my gallbladder. My younger sister had hers out last August when she was only 21, so I guess it wasn't that weird for them to think mine was acting up at 26, though it is still very young. An adjustment helped, but my doctor told me my back was not what was causing the pain and to see my regular doc that day.

I made an appointment for 3:15 and hung out with my mom some. She has just gone from working 60+ hours a week to only part time (at our chiropractor's office as a matter of fact) and I have thoroughly enjoyed her being more available. As the day progressed, the pain worsened by the hour. It felt tight continuously and would cramp up so bad I would break out into a sweat. It felt pretty much like labor pains and contractions, just up higher on my abdomen.

Allen took off work to take me to my appointment. By that time, the pain was so bad that when the doctor pressed on me, I literally screamed. If you have read any of my other posts you know why that is a big deal; I was conditioned all my childhood to deal with pain and to deal with it silently. After only a few minutes examination, she told Allen she was calling the nearest ER to tell them I was on the way.

The call from the doc got me in fast. About 15 min after arrival, I was through triage and in a bed with IV fluids going. The doctor ordered an ultrasound, and since they were going to have to push pretty hard on my stomach to get a clear view, ordered me some pain killers. First good news all day. When the nurse injected me, I asked if it would make me sleepy. She doubted it, but said it all depended on my tolerance to drugs. Well, there was my answer. I barely had time to wave to Allen and slur out "Good night" so as not to freak him out before I was GONE. I never fell asleep, but just felt warm and happy and didn't care what else happened. I remember my mom and sister arriving as the silliness wore off a bit. I got some more pain killers before the ultrasound (different kind though, not as fun) and of course had to wait forever to get results. Found out after awhile that we were waiting for my urine analysis to come back. Thing was, I hadn't done one. SO we got that taken care of and the doc says there's sludge in my gallbladder and it needs to come out. I get pain killers to take home; yay!

Tues was spent finding a surgeon who could see me before next leap year. I know gallbladder removal is not emergency surgery by any means, but the attack had not stopped at all and I knew I couldn't get back to work until it was fully taken care of. Finally found one that came highly recommended that would see me that day. He did, but the presence of sludge was not enough for him to do surgery. He ordered a HIDA scan and asked me to be admitted to the hospital, but I declined. I preferred to go home so I could rest better; I know you get zero sleep in hospitals.

The HIDA scan Wed was not painful and was the only IV stick I got all week that didn't bruise terribly. The other three are still nice and yellow and gross. There was some slight discomfort as the second half of the scan actually triggered my gallbladder to release bile to see if it was functioning properly. I got some pain then, but nothing like the weekend had been.

The scan proved my gallbladder was NOT functioning at all and we scheduled surgery for Friday.

Pre-op stuff Thurs, paperwork, blood work, yadda yadda.

Friday morning they gave me my first meds and wheeled me back at 8:45 and I was fully awake in recovery by 10:30. I remember helping them get me on the operating table and that's about it until I was sitting up in the bed and asking the nurse to take off my oxygen mask. By the third time I asked, she consented and by the third time I asked if she had let my family know it was over yet, she was just laughing at me.

It was this part that I had dreaded, being with my sister last year. She had been terrible when she came out of it and in dreadful pain due to the gas they use to inflate the abdomen area so they can see. I somehow escaped all this and by the time they let my family come back to see me, I was sitting on my own, on my second glass of juice and asking for more to eat. (Found out from a family friend who is a nurse that some people react that way to the drugs. I seriously had the munchies for the crackers they were giving me.) When the doctor had come to tell Allen that the surgery was over and went well, he said he had not opened my gallbladder to see if there were any stones (my sister's had some, though sludge was all that had showed up on the ultrasound) but that it was inflamed and had junk growing on the outside of it; it was obviously diseased and infected and we made the right decision to get it out.

SO, that was my week last week. Recovering is going well. I am still very bruised, but my incisions look good. There are four; one below my belly button, one higher on my chest, and two on my right side. I am backing way off on pain meds already but still get soooooo tired soooo quickly. I have my post op check with the surgeon tomorrow, so we'll see what he says.

Now since you read that whole thing, here are some more cute pics we took Friday night before the whole thing happened.



Aren't we adorable? Ten years together, five and a half years of marriage.
Love him more every day.



My family, Mom, sister, me, Dad
(good dad, not the one you have read about on this blog)



The best man on the planet

Back on the Planet

Fell off for awhile, it seems, but am back and want to write again, even if it is for my own purposes and no one will read it.

I guess the first thing I need to update on is Hurrican Ike, which ran right over us a few weeks ago. I had Thursday off to go get a second glucose tolerance test (which turned out worse than last year, gotta start being careful again) and then we shut down Friday to get ready for Ike. We had no idea how bad it would get, so we just stocked up on flashlights, batteries and water. By Friday afternoon, all of the grocery stores were completely picked over, but strange items, in my opinion at least. There were plenty of bottles of water and batteries, but the entire wall of paper towels and toilet paper at our local HEB was completely empty!!!

We lost power at about 1 am on Saturday morning and Ike came ashore on Galveston Island at about 2:15. The cell phone service was shaky at best so from 2 on we communicated with family mostly by texting, which often took hours to come through, but at least let us know that everyone was still ok. Allen and I moved to a makeshift bed on our bathroom floor at around 4 when the wind got really bad to get away from the windows on either side of our bed. My claustrophobia attacked up for awhile (amazing how darkness can make you feel as trapped as walls) but I managed to calm down by sleeping perpendicular to Allen with my feet in the bedroom and my head next to his side. For whatever reason, that made me feel a little less stuck. I knew the last thing I needed at that moment was a full scale panic attack, so I didn't care why it worked, just that I was calmer.

By 7, I was up and couldn't sleep any longer. Allen got up with me to survey the house and from inside, everything was fine. We couldn't tell about roof damage yet, but there was no water in the house, and looking into the yard, we hadn't even lost any trees. We just had a lot of mess we would have to clean up in the coming weeks.

Allen went back to bed for a few hours, while I still kept the texts going to make sure our families were alright. Got a disturbing text from my sister at 10ish saying that it wasn't over and a tree had just fallen on our parents' house, where she was staying for the storm. Once Allen got back up, we were stir crazy, so we packed up the dog in the jeep and decided to go see what we could find.

The jeep was helpful for getting over all of the debris and high water. The scariest thing we experienced was driving over a Sonic sign when the nearest Sonic was miles away.

We made it to Allen's parent's house where they had a generator out in their workshop where we were able to recharge our cell phones and get enough signal to get in touch with my family to find out they were ok, though they had a tree on the side of their house, one of the garage, and one on a power line in the back yard.

Following are some pics of my mother and grandmother's homes.
















Needless to say from the pics, we are glad to all be ok and that nobody lost more in property than they did. We did not get our power back for 13 days. We obtaineed a generator that could run the frige and some fans overnight, keeping the food cold enough to make it through the day. Everything we started with got thrown out. Thankfully, two small cool fronts came through, allowing us to live slightly more comfortably even though we had no ac.