In other news, I wanted to update on my health. I forgot whether I mentioned this previously, but I sustained a pretty painful back injury while at work. I ended up taking a hit and falling backwards. Luckily, I fell into a chair instead of hitting the corner of a wall right behind me. I ended up leaving my job for a month to collect worker's compensation. My chiropractor told me I shouldn't be paying out of pocket for treatment of an injury that happened at work, so I contacted my HR department and supervisor at work. After a couple weeks of paperwork and interviews I finally went out and started my worker's compensation leave. It was a nice break at first because my job is so stressful and physically demanding. However, after the first week or so I started getting a little stir crazy. I started cleaning and organizing my room to give myself small goals for the day to feel a bit more productive. I would take my ADHD medication and work for a couple hours while watching/listening to true crime YouTube videos. I eventually did go back to work for the last week so I could collect my normal paycheck over the summer instead of getting worker's compensation pay (which is awful). I've been dealing with my back injury for almost three months now and haven't shown a ton of improvement. I ended up having an MRI and x-ray done, and they found I have two bulging discs impinging on my spinal cord. My doctor explained that this upgraded my injury from minor to a more moderate level given that the disc bulges are atypical and likely to be harder to deal with. According to both my chiropractor and orthopedic surgeon this type of injury is difficult to keep under control and is likely to have flare-ups if I push my back too hard. For right now I'm doing consistent chiropractic visits along with physical therapy a couple times each week. All of my physical therapy is done in a pool to ease the pressure and weight on my spine, so that's been fun. Being in a warm pool makes physical therapy much more enjoyable. Point being, I've become even more fragile than I already was. This kind of relates to the next topic.
I've been feeling really down and depressed lately because of my physical condition. I genuinely enjoy working and keeping myself busy but I'm physically unable to do a lot. My teaching job is out for summer break and I've been medically excused from my retail job for a while. So besides the relationship issues I've been having, the lack of work has also been stressful for me. For a short period it's nice to have a break, but long term is a disaster for me. I start feeling useless and worthless and like I'm not contributing anything to the world around me. I start back up at my regular job in about a month but until then I'm just trying to find things to occupy myself with. I'd love to do some work outside in our yard but it's been much too hot for any outdoor work to be done. Basically, I'm wrestling with some depression and general anxiety.
Another quick factor I'll touch on is my dad's health. We've noticed some changes in his stability so he saw a neurologist that ordered an extensive 5 hour MRI. That was a couple weeks ago now and I haven't heard anything about it since. I don't know if that means they have the results and are hiding it from me, or they just don't have the information. I'm hoping it's the latter because if they're keeping it from me there's a reason why, and I don't want to entertain that idea much further.
So there's everything out on the table for you guys to know. It might seem like I'm depressed for dumb reasons like being out of work for a while, but it truly is affecting me. I've been thinking about seeking therapy again since I stopped a few years ago but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm sure I'll make it through because I've had a 100% success rate thus far so it's purely a matter of will. Below are some fun songs per usual. I'll also include a little fun fact since I haven't done that recently.
Fun Fact of the Day - I can't stand orange juice. It makes me feel nauseous and I hate it. I drank it once as a kid while sick and threw up after, so now my brain associates orange juice with feeling sick. This being said, I do still love orange flavored things and even orange soda. It's just juice I can't handle. Funny how the brain works isn't it?
