B12 is My Favorite and My Best

On the heels of yesterday’s rather downish post, I wanted to move back in an upwards direction. Not that life isn’t still a huge struggle, and not that I don’t constantly feel like I’m standing on a very scary precipice, but, I’ve worked through a lot, been through a lot of mental hurdles, and come to a better space in my brain.

As I have mentioned in past posts, I am a person who has to constantly deal with anxiety, triggers, and a sometimes testy and frustrating CPTSD. It can be a challenge because when I think I have a handle on one, another will rear its ugly head. I sometimes feel like I’m fighting a many headed hydra, where with each head I remove, two, or more, grow in their place. It is what it is. I’m still in a far better place now to buckle up than i was when I was in my younger years.

As my post yesterday said, I had a mental break. It was not a good time. I had been aware of my growing nihilistic attitudes long before that. I couldn’t say when it started officially, but I will say, my previous posts here certainly display that frame of mind in numerous ways.

Now, being nihilistic is not my natural state of being. I’m the one who sees the silver lining in every storm cloud. If there’s a positive outcome, I’ll find it, even if it is small. In the movie “Inside Out”, I heavily relate to Joy. She is like my alter ego. Ironically, I even have the same relationship with my personal Sadness, so…make what you will of that. Basically, over the last 5 years or so, I have been slipping more and more into this nihilistic point of view. It got to the point where I was almost surprised with the realization that I was perfectly okay with just never waking up. Almost.

Things were pretty grim for me at that point, financially and emotionally. Then, my physical side decided it was time for it to get up and head out. I had been trying to get some work done around the house that my daughter had said she would help with, but life is life, and inevitably, it was up to me. So I spent a weekend weed whacking parts of the yard that seriously needed it. That, in turn, made my arthritis act up. That, turned into a swelling that went to my neck, and aggravated my newly diagnosed degenerative disc disease. Within a week, I had intense nerve pain up and down my entire right side of my back to hand. It hurt to move, it hurt to not move, it hurt to sleep, it just hurt. My hand went numb, which was a real problem because my right hand is my dominant hand. I tried to crochet. I tried to embroider. Everything I tried to do hurt. I tried everything from aspirin, meloxicam, lidocaine, and even, yes, cannabis. Anything and everything and nothing was even getting close to relief.

I eventually went to my doctor after a month. (I had called the Teledoc, and they prescribed the lidocaine, which…didn’t work.)She didn’t offer a whole lot of solutions, other than to get x-rays and blood work.

The x-ray showed I had moderate degenerative disc disease. The blood work showed I was *extremely* B12 deficient. She suggested that taking 1,000 mmg of B12 should fix my hand right up. The pain…well…I managed to stumble across a local CBD store and that incredibly took care of the pain. At least well enough to function.

So, off I went to the health food store to find some liquid B12. Fun fact about me: I can’t take most supplement pills because they almost all have magnesium stearate in them. A substance my body will try to forcibly and painfully eject through my skin. I found some 5,000 mmg liquid B12, grabbed it and started in on it, hoping beyond hope it would do something for the pain.

Cut to the chase: It did not. It also didn’t bring back all the feeling to my hand. My index finger is still numb at the tip, but there are good and bad days, so I know it will heal. Eventually. I can now crochet and embroider again, so…I’m good.

What I wasn’t expecting was a complete attitude change. Within a week, I was back to old self. No longer acknowledging the future was bleak and futile, I started thinking about potentials, possibilities and the things I had long forgotten i enjoyed about life in general. Days got brighter. I started making plans, goals, dreams and ideas. Things I had done before, but not with a whole lot of positive reinforcement. They had been made to keep me from falling into depression.

That also changed. I had noticed myself falling into a pattern where I would be super hyper, getting tons of stuff done, excited about everything, then…that would start to wane. After a couple weeks, I’d be depressed, lower than low, sloth like and unable to motivate myself to do anything. It was almost like clockwork. To the point I had considered seeing about getting tested for bipolar personality disorder. (I apologize if that is an inappropriate phrase for that. I haven’t kept up with these things.) I was really starting to worry about my mental wellbeing.

Since on the B12, I have had a couple down periods, one of them when yesterday’s post was written. They are, however, few and far between. I have more anxious moments now, which, I’ll take. At least I can do things that are productive that help me switch my brain away from anxiety, or, I can micro dose if it gets beyond my distraction techniques and be fine for a while in my empty brain. Even my connection between lack of money and depression seems to be disconnected, though, certainly not to my anxiety. Now, I just make plans and get myself into a action frame of mind.

I will have to take B12 for the rest of my life now, and I’m okay with that. The balance it brought me back to is very welcome.

At my last doctor’s visit, I thanked my doctor for introducing me to the miracle that is B12. She said that she was glad things have improved.

I said, “Oh no. Things are still just horrible, but at least I’m positive now.”