My dad:

His surgery went fine and should be out in time to vote straight Republican. They are going to put the second stint in next Monday. Things are looking good and he appears very willing to give up cigarettes.

Me:

I do not have Behçet's disease (with about a 95% certainty). However, he was cautious about the" ulcerations" on my tongue and suggests that I get a biopsy after I get a teeth cleaning. He did not have a suggestion as to what they might be looking for with a biopsy. I've had the ulcerations on my tongue for as long as I can remember, the one dentist I asked said I must be biting my tongue in my sleep. I accepted that then, but now am questioning that assessment.

Of course, since the doctor I saw today is an Behçet's expert and outside my normal insurance it would make sense to attempt to find the care in-network. I'm not even sure if this is where I want to put my energy: if the weird tongue issues are not connected, I'd rather concentrate on the vertigo.

I've been getting out more, which is good. My cycle of vertigo episodes appears to be waning, but I am still not free of this wave. If I keep improving at this rate perhaps in a week I'll stop carrying a staff or cane with me when I go out.

My primary care nurse has yet to produce the referral to the neurologist I wanted. I have given up on her being of much use and have located on my own a doctor of oral pathology who is an expert on Behçet's Disease as well as a sufferer himself. He should be able to rule in or rule out Behçet's as an explanation for my symptoms. Unfortunately, I'll have to pay for the appointment out of pocket, which will definitely be a strain on the coming month's already tight budget.

I caught a couple huge scrumptious snowflakes in my mouth!

I thought it was candy. But it wasn't. I have no idea what it was, but I can't get the taste out of my mouth. And now the perfume is drifting up my nose.

I didn't do it today. As I said, if I wasn't successful today, I'd give up on the idea. So many people pointed out that more small meals might be a better plan. So, maybe 4 small meals a day would work better. I need a new achievable goal. It is so much easier giving up eating entirely than to diet. I've done both. I was able to completely stop eating. But I can't diet. Once I get the taste of food in my mouth, I'm ravenous, all day. I'm not going back to ed land and stopping eating. Thus the need to come up with an achievable healthy meal plan.

Just got back from therapy. I must say it's been the best session with her so far. I took 2mg of ativan (to calm me down) and drank a cup of coffee (to keep me awake) before the session, and I think the combination worked well.

We talked about many things, but our conversations centered on methods of stress management I use. I use a lot of them, including using the psych emergency room, going to purpleglitter or merryperseis, taking klonopin or ativan, smoking pot (which at first she was against, but saw my use as positive at the end of the session). and many other positive things I do..

We also talked about goals. One problem is that I'll come up with too many goals, try to achieve them all, and end up achieving nothing. The two most important health goals we agreed on were cutting out junk-food and not drinking to get drunk. The drinking part is pretty easy. The problem is with junk food. I'm completely addicted. I can't eat one chip, I must eat the whole bag. She suggested popsicles as an alternative for junk food. She said that many who have had a problem with cutting find the cold popsicle against the lips a very helpful sensation. I can't afford that many popsicles, but I'm going to get some. If I eat them as treats instead of always having one in my mouth, I should be able to afford it with the money I'll be saving off junk food. I'm going to get the sugar-free kind purpleglitter gets.

She also thinks that we should have more system discussions. Not necessarily with Cyndi, but we used to take walks and have conversations within the system. We'd usually use the voice, as that helped the conversation along. Sometimes the conversations would get quite heated, and people would stare at us, which i imagine looks quite like an insane woman arguing with herself, which is what it is. We haven't really been having those system conversations of late, and she thinks we should try them again. Maybe not this week, as we already decided upon the two goals for this week. But again. We were much stabler when we had the conversations regularly. Gets everyone on the same page. I don't know how to get one going, maybe we'll talk more about that next week.

I missed my pdoc appointment. I had prodded a very tired purpleglitter out of bed to drive me. I thought it was at 11:15am, but it was actually at 10:15am. I am just really bad at making appointments. To punish myself for bothering purpleglitter and still missing my appointment, I bought some chips and some hot salsa. I bought hot salsa because I know hot salsa is sucky to purge. When mixed with stomach acids, It burns the back of the mouth painfully. I wanted it to be an unpleasant purging experience, because I did it to punish myself. So I ate the chips and salsa and purged them. I really needed to do something self-destructive. I hate myself.

I went to the Lesbian Avengers tonight. Tonight was the first fire eating night for this year. Max thought those of us who stayed around to learn to eat fire. Each time, before we eat fire, we say "The fire will not consume us. We take the fire and make it our own". The whole exercise is about a person who was burnt alive for being queer. The saying symbolizes that we will take hate, transform it, and build something positive from it

The kerosine flame looked really intimidating. In fact, the first time I tried, I put it inside my mouth, held it there, but couldn't close my teeth over it. But on the second try, I was able to eat it. It felt so empowered after eating the fire. I was beaming. I could see in the other first-time fire eaters' faces the same empowered self-amazement after eating fire. It was wonderful. And the third try felt just as amazing. Facing the fear of putting a large flame into my mouth, then closing my mouth over the flame, is such a mental boost. I'm still shocked that I did it. It's been a couple hours, and I'm still am amazed every time I say in my head, "I ate fire". I can't wait to practice again next week!