The mood is currently low and slow and I am somewhat annoyed by a satellite like spinning behind my left eyebrow. I am off balance. Physically and mentally. My lists have become too long and my sleep interrupted.
When I dreamed up this conversation and the various topics, the seed was my vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT). Up to now, I have chatted about various emotional things but today I intend to get a little academic. Predominantly because the last few weeks have plummeted me into unhealthy old habits and I realised that my lousy mood is being fueled by some old acquaintances, that needed to be put in place. A vague spinning somewhere just out of sight and a sensation that my bed has been washed out to sea. So I dug out the worksheets and started my rehab from scratch.
So some context to my situation currently: South Africa is still in a lockdown situation where we are not allowed to socialise, go to church, go to restaurants and our schools are still closed. We cannot see our families. I cannot go to my dance classes. I am therefore still a full-time boss, full-time employee and full-time mother to the three-year-old Lilliputians. I am tired and somewhat sad and feeling guilty about everything… that I am not spending enough time with the Lilliputians when I am working, that I am not working enough when I am spending time with them, that the housework is not perfect, that the Engineer never gets to see me with makeup anymore… I am sure you can see how this can spiral!
What I can however do now that we could not do at the beginning of lockdown is run… which we do and which I am grateful for.
Bluebottle, the hearing aid, had its one year birthday in May and had to go for his annual service. The first interesting thing that the audiologist noted was that my reaction time in the hearing test was overall, a bit delayed. When compared to the graph from 2019 it was lower and slower throughout. And thus my audiologist visit turned into a bit of a therapy session as well when she pointed out, immediately, that I must be tired.
This low mood was then pulled into the depths of misery when a cold front hit and took the sunshine from our otherwise mild winter. It was cold, I was cold and the Liliiputians could not play outside. They are not made to stay indoors. That Saturday morning found me not wanting to get out of bed because I could not stand upright and I realised that something was off balance… literally – me.
The problem was first picked up by my director who is also a medical doctor and noticed that my one eye was a little slow. He did what doctors do (even though not usually in a staff meeting) and started asking all the questions. My symptoms were:
I am not going to drag you through the whole process but what I can tell you is that I felt like I was back in school and could not do the most basic of things… follow something with my eyes and I have to admit that that realization was the hardest part of all. The rehab took me through a 3-month process with daily exercises that I had to do with a stopwatch and a few sticky notes. Stupid little eye and head movements that were, initially, impossible. After feeling like a complete idiot the first two sessions I at least started to laugh at myself which was half the battle won.
That was now a year ago. A year that brought more work and home responsibility, more pressure and a lot more stress. This pandemic also brought uncertainty and interfered with my bulleted, tracked, planned out routine. All these factors plummeted me back into my original symtoms and I realised that it was time to reset a few things. Starting with the stopwatch and the sticky notes. Today is day 7. It gets worse before it gets better. Or… I hope that is what is going on anyway because the alternative is that it is just getting worse. The mood is thus low and slow and I am somewhat annoyed by a satellite like spinning behind my left eyebrow.
