One Of My New Kittens - Pema

My new kitten Pema named after Pema Chodron the Tibetan Buddhist Nun I follow.

 

Update After Over A Month's Absence

Hello Everyone, I hope you all have been well. It’s been over a month since I last wrote and a lot has changed for me. About a month ago almost all of my voices have gone after being with them for 27 years since I was 36 years old. There are a few, but very few and they say some supportive things and then are quiet, so 98% of the time it is quiet in my mind. I have not been taking the anti-psychotic medications except for a few days a while ago and intend not to take them for now.  

I do still talk to myself and record it and listen back, more than before because I spend most of my time alone and it helps me to feel less isolated, closer to myself and Higher Power. I still wanted to adopt some animals for more company and connection to my heart. While I was in psychosis I was going to adopt two kittens and two puppies, Huskies. When I came out of the psychosis I knew I couldn’t take care of puppies, especially puppies that would get big. I had thought I would be living with people who knew about dogs, but that was just delusion. Cats, on the other hand, I had lived with all my life and I had raised quite a few kittens, so I settled on adopting four kittens. 

It took a little while but I picked out four from the Humane Society nearby, contacted my vet and got three friends to give recommendations and I have had them with me for over three weeks and they are wonderful and are getting along with my two older cats. Today a friend from town came over and started putting together a cat house I bought on Amazon. It’s going to be five feet tall with about three levels with different places to hang out and a scratching post. It also will be on wheels and a cool thing about it is that I can roll it outside the back of my house with them closed inside it for them to enjoy the outside when they are ready because they are indoor cats. Some people set it up to be connected to a window so they can go out, so to speak, and in at will, but I don’t have any windows I can do that with.  

But after the voices stopped and before I got the kittens my home was a filthy, cluttered mess, which during most of the years of my illness it has been to my great shame. I knew it was not fit for the kittens, so I decided to hire some junk removal people to come and clear out some of the main space where we would be living. I worked really hard for a week to gather up all the stuff I wanted thrown away including a kitchen table, two large chairs and a chest of drawers. I also went through my entire kitchen removing things I didn’t want and putting away things I did want. My refrigerator and stove hadn’t been working for years though I did have a refrigerator downstairs and used a hot plate and a large toaster oven upstairs, so I bought a new refrigerator and stove and the day the junk was removed from my house they delivered the appliances and the kitchen has been great to work and cook in ever since.  

The main areas that we live in are the kitchen, dining room and living room which are all open, no doors and now it is so very nice here and I am taking care of myself, them and my living space in a way that I was not able to when I had voices. I am so blessed. 

While I was in the psychotic state I became physically ill with two things, a persistent stomach ache and hot flashes. I think I have figured out why this has been. I had been smoking marijuana with high concentrations of THC which I had not been doing all the years that I smoked marijuana and I saw in the news that there was some kind of syndrome that people who smoked high concentrations of marijuana daily were developing  - stomach pain, nausea and vomiting. I did not have nausea thank goodness but I decided to stop smoking marijuana for at least a month and it has almost been a month and my stomach feels much better. I intend to try smoking it again at the THC level I was smoking all these years without problems next week. I will test it out and see. The voices said that marijuana was a lung protectant for people who smoke and I smoke a lot. I had a lung scan done last year and my lungs were fine after decades of smoking cigarettes and marijuana, so just in case it is true, I will smoke unless I develop symptoms again. 

The hot flashes I found out through online research have been because I stopped taking my anti-depressants suddenly after taking them consistently at 40 mg for 27 years, since the beginning of my psychosis. Luckily I had plenty of the medication and I have been back on it for about two weeks and the hot flashes seem to be lessening but it might take a little longer for my body to adjust.  

Anyway that’s my update for now. I plan to try to write a couple of times a week and maybe include an audio link to a site called SoundCloud where I might try talking for five to ten minutes per blog. I’m not sure yet.  

Stay well.