My brain is spinning out because I just remembered to take my medication (I normally take it much earlier). So, instead of concentrating on the pain, I’m just going to stim by typing and see what comes out.

When my brain is unmedicated (as in, haven’t taken a fresh dose in a while, not off meds completely), there’s a hum that plays in my head that is not unlike tests of the Emergency Broadcast System. I have to ride the waves of the sound until they dissipate, which can take from 20 minutes to an hour. And even then, they don’t go away. They just become background noise. The hum is always there, and I don’t drown it out unless I was going to do it, anyway. I don’t run away from it. I sit with it. Get to know that pain. Why is it in my ears? Why is there sound attached to my medication at all?

The only thing I can do is go deeper into meditation, and get used to the sound of the tones grating on one another, which is not painful. It is persistent and exclusionary. It is loud enough that it demands my attention. Imagine if you could hear a bee buzzing in the back of your skull. I am lucky that medicine is advanced enough that I know a bee is not really in the back of my skull. This would not have been true in past centuries- an apt description for a feeling that sounds like witchcraft…..

It’s all due to my brain chemicals rebalancing after sleep. I just didn’t do that thing where I try to take my medication before the first dose wears off, and I’m really regretting it now.

I haven’t had breakfast, per se, but I managed a snack. I had some chocolate covered pretzels and a bottle of water. I only needed enough in my stomach not to make me sick when I took my medication and drank a cup of coffee. The jury is still out on the coffee. I may or may not partake. The water seems to be handling me fine all on its own. Plus, I think I’m going to have to do Sudafed later and I don’t enjoy doubling up those two things at all.

It’s not as good a latte if you mix it with Sudafed and then faint into it.

Now, I’d say that my brain chemicals are starting to even out. That it’s starting to feel less and less like spiking into pain and now constant discomfort. Tylenol would be a good thing about how- hold please. I see some at the end of my bed right now.

Thanks for waiting.

So, it’s definitely some sort of side effect, because if it was a symptom of anything I’d have heard of it. It’s not a hallucination because I don’t start seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. It’s as if there are two frequencies running through my brain at pitches my ears cannot stand. Everything else is normal. My thoughts don’t become darker or lighter, nothing. It is unwanted noise, like tinnitus.

I don’t have to deal with it. I can put on headphones and drown out my own head. But, when I do that, I can’t hear myself think. It’s a balance. Do I put my headphones on so that I can drown out the buzz, or by drowning out the buzz, am I drowning out the rest of me? I tend to think the latter is true because I don’t write with music on. Right now it’s silent and there’s just a box fan going in terms of company. David has left for the day, and Jack (who is also a dog) is taking his morning nap to get ready for his afternoon nap.

And as I’m typing all this out, the buzzing gets more slight in my head. I’m focusing on Jack now- the way we walk together, the way we take care of each other, the way we have a separate relationship than he does with David and I think that’s great. If I was doing something vastly different than him, I’d want him to do it for consistency, but we aren’t that different. Jack is allowed to be a lazy bum that owns both of us most of the time.

I am only strict with him about certain things, all of which have to do with leash training because I have to be able to trust him in the neighborhood. Right now, he is trying to pull me all over the place. I cannot LEAD him anywhere. He also doesn’t know which side to be on when we’re walking, so I’m constantly having to adjust him so that I’m on the traffic side. I keep him on a short leash, constantly, because David says he’s hard of hearing and I do believe him. I just think that Jack plays it up for sympathy because he actively decides what commands are worth listening to and what aren’t.

Learning goes both ways. I learned that Jack stretches before he goes up the stairs. It seemed like a good idea. Now I stretch before I go up the stairs. it helped.

With Jack, you’ve got two impossibly smart breeds trying to one-up you at all times, so I’m trying to train him with touch and sign. Even if David is not right that his hearing is very bad now, he is right that it will deteriorate if he’s already showing signs. He already knows the sign for “sit,” but right now I’m working on a way to get him to stay with me when we’re walking. Even on a leash, he’s just pulling too far ahead, and when he poops, he’s just big enough to throw me off balance if he wants to run before I can get a bag open. We have had words over that many times.

I’d really like to get an electric fence for our backyard if Zac and David would use it (Zac, my boyfriend, owns Oliver, who is a dog.). Those kinds of shock collars are controversial, but Bryn and her family have used them on their dogs at their farm for years. It really doesn’t take more than once or twice being shocked for a dog to catch on. However, I would not think it was a viable solution to dog owners that were opposed to the idea.

Zac does not live here, I just mean when he and Oliver are here.

Our yard is just a circle, put together by beautiful paths. Building a fence would look nice, but leaving it open would be nicer. Or, better yet, just putting a dog run between two trees so we can “tie them up” while we’re out there and not have to worry that they’ll escape from the backyard. I would be more worried about Oliver in that situation, because Jack lives in this neighborhood. I don’t know how fast Oliver would pick it up.

It’s all about possible solutions. One of the things I like about the backyard now is that since we can’t just let Jack out into it, it’s always clean. He’s always on a leash, so neither one of us fail to pick up the crap even if it’s in our own yard. It might get us out of the habit of keeping everything so neat.

Speaking of keeping everything neat, I have chores to do. So, thank you for sitting this one through with me. I just needed to talk about nothing while my brain figured out what frequency it’s on, and it takes longer because my name is Leslie and not Kenneth.