helen-louise's journal

I haven't written much lately because I don't have a lot of spare energy with which to say anything. I am spending 2-3 afternoons a week in the lab, which wipes me out for the rest of the week. My chronic fatigue is such that 4 hours in lab requires the rest of the evening and the entire next day to rest. I don't even have to stand or walk much - I'm working in a tiny little microbiology lab smaller than the top floor of my house, where it is entirely normal to sit to do experiments because it's the only way to reach your arms into the laminar flow hood. But having to use my brain and my hands for several hours at a time is enough effort that I'm pretty much useless afterwards.

So I have been working, and making a ton of mistakes, and having to redo just about every experiment twice. Pretty sure this is entirely normal though, since they have been mistakes of inexperience. Like the other day I ran the PCR machine and didn't screw down the blue dial on the top to make the lid extra tight, so some of my samples evaporated. They're the kind of mistakes that a person who learns the way I do needs to make once in order to not make again. But it means that my progress is immensely slow. It really feels like two steps forward and one step back.

Other than that, I'm working for UESP. You can watch me on video most Monday nights from 9-11pm EDT (Tuesday 1-3am GMT) on the UESPodcast. (Broadcast live on Twitch and later on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages YouTube. It's also available audio-only on various podcast services.) Although it's a voluntary thing and I don't get paid (except for the occasional free meal), I realised that I'm picking up a ton of Transferrable Skills which will be useful on my CV when I eventually try to get a Real Job.

Grant arrives on Monday 10th June for two weeks, and then I will have Both my Men in my house.

My brain is fried. My body is fried too.

The anxiety and depression seem to be better but I have EPIC levels of chronic fatigue instead. I slept from 7.30am until 3.30pm on Wednesday, then from 8pm until 1am on Thursday, then from 7am until 2pm on Thursday, then from 5pm until 11.15pm. All times approximate.

I am attempting to do work for my degree after not having been well enough for some time, and I'm doing a very good impression of this meme right now:



Next week I have to make do without a Richard because he is being sent to Munich for work. I have no idea how that's going to work, either. (Volunteers who can come to Kingston to feed me will be welcomed if I'm not asleep. The being asleep at awkward hours is going to make that really tricky.)

Last night I spent about 3 hours filling in my Disabled Students' Allowance forms and wanted to die. There is nothing quite like detailing EVERY WAY in which you are medically broken to make you feel like a non-person.

I had to fill in three years' worth of forms in one go, because I need some funding for 2015/16 to cover 4 x sessions I had with my disability support mentor before deciding to go on a break in studies, as well as the current year (2016/17) and next year (2017/18), which made the whole experience extra tedious. Although virtually all the questions were the same, so I could copy and paste stuff.

The worst thing was that my name - "Helen-Louise" was too long to fit in the boxes of the older forms because apparently a first name should only have 10 characters in it?! I mean, what?

In other news I am slowly continuing to move people over from their old livejournal usernames to their new Dreamwidth usernames for access and subscription purposes. If you think you should be on my access list and are not currently (can you see this post?) feel free to leave me a comment here.

Yesterday and today, I've been wanting to talk to people but I have absolutely no spare energy with which to do so. I have reverted to taking 2000 iu of vitamin D per day as of today, because I'm shattered and not convinced that the 400 iu tablets are doing enough.

I'm supposed to be going back to College in 10 days or so, but I haven't sorted out any of the paperwork yet because it involves too much effort, and circular situations where I need a form from A to give to B and a form from B to give to C, but I can't get the form from A until I have the form from C. Gah! And right now, I am sufficiently exhausted that I am not even sure if I'm up to going back for this term. I really can't go back and then immediately have to take time off again, but I do need to get things like Disabled Students' Allowance in place again if I am going back.

Mental health has not been good in my little family this past week. We have all been depressed for no particular reason. Richard has been anxious, Grant has been tearful, I have been having nightmares. I know that I need to have my next trip to see Grant arranged as soon as possible, so it's settled and I have something to look forward to, but I just don't know when will be convenient. Since this year is a round-number birthday, I was hoping to do something special for it, but I am increasingly feeling that my original plan (go to Iceland again) isn't what I want to be doing this year.

While organising trips to various places, I have to decide if I am going to BiCon this year. I feel that it would be beneficial to me to be in bi space considering that I currently appear to the outside world as straight twice over, but it involves energy and organisation which I don't quite have right now. The deadline is apparently pretty soon though. Who else is going?

In other news, I have found some mysterious photos on my computer. I mean, they are patently photos of me and Richard hanging around in our hallway in January 2012, but it is mysterious as to why we took them. They are all exceedingly yellow and would require considerable correction in Photoshop to fix. I thought maybe Richard had bought a new camera and we were testing it out, but the numbering starts at IMG_6562.jpg. Weird!

Viva went swimmingly. The examiners had already decided that my upgrade report was good enough to pass, so it was an hour and a half of how to improve it before the final thesis and thoughts about what the rest of my PhD research should look like. Nice and relaxed.

Now I need to sleep because I utterly failed to do so last night, despite many hours lying in bed.

My theme for the day is Being a Responsible Adult. Look at me deciding to not buy Pokemon Alpha Sapphire until after my Big Deadline at university! Look at me booking a doctor's appointment at the contraceptive clinic to get my coil checked! Look at me sitting down to do homework for tomorrow's class, even though I'm not taking it for credit!

Now, if only Being a Responsible Adult stopped me being so damned tired, I'd be delighted.

I am having a horrible, no good, shitty day.

Woke up after 8 hours of sleep, but was still so tired that I almost put my phone & train ticket in the bin instead of my used paper cup.

Went to College. Dealt with a series of idiots. You see, I discovered at the end of last term that my Library account expired on 30th November. The Library's records claimed I was a "dormant student, not in contact with the College", which is interesting considering that I have completed Enrollment and paid fees!

It is sorted now, but only *after* some twat in Birkbeck admin managed to fuck things up worse than they already were. At one point, not only did the computer think I wasn't enrolled, but it also thought I owed money for the two terms last year when I was on a leave of absence! And it wanted me to produce £314 out of thin air!!

Stressed beyond belief. Funny, that. Was ready to kill someone, possibly myself. Not even joking. I don't know if it's "normal" to get so stressed by minor administrative cock-ups, but I have an anxiety disorder plus another disorder which makes my body produce too much adrenaline, and I just didn't bloody need some twonk trying to fix the problem and making everything worse! Nor accusing me of not enrolling on time! (How would the College have known where to take direct debits from if I hadn't enrolled?!)

Then I tried to go to Camden. Discovered the bus was on diversion because Upper Woburn Place is being dug up, but half the stops didn't have any explanation of the diverted route. Eventually found a 168 stop at bloody Holborn - so far south that I'd have been better off walking to Euston. The worst thing is, I even knew about this diversion. I'd just forgotten.

Still trying not to beat myself up. The problem of the last two days has been stupid biochemistry textbooks.

Yesterday I was suffering from a disagreement between Wikipedia and the textbook I was using. The textbook claimed that the reaction which converts pyruvate into acetyl-coenzyme A was catalysed by pyruvate decarboxylase. Wikipedia said it was actually catalysed by pyruvate dehydrogenase, and that these are two separate enzymes which should not be mistaken for each other despite their similar names and functions. Normally, one would generally believe a sourced textbook over Wikipedia, but the wiki was so insistent that I thought it was worth double-checking.

I found the 2012 edition of my textbook on Google Books, and that section was identical. I did, however, find a much more comprehensive textbook on Google Books which had more than 750 pages, which made it clear that it's pyruvate decarboxylase for the reaction that makes ethanal and pyruvate dehydrogenase for the one that makes acetyl-CoA, or in other words, my textbook is wrong and Wikipedia is right. That wasted... I don't know, 20 minutes of my time?

Then I was having trouble with FAD/FADH₂ and NAD⁺/NADH redox reactions. Even my enormous Organic Chemistry book OF DOOM doesn't bother to write the mechanisms! They're just classed as a black box of "in here a miracle happens". I'm aware that there are different theories for how they work (1 x 2 electron transfer rather than 2 x 1 electron transfer), but I just wanted to be able to write a mechanism because I'm a chemist and I like to know where electrons go. (It's the only way I can learn structures). I ended up with something that looked entirely plausible until I saw what I thought was a hydride ion attacking a benzene ring - totally impossible since it would be a negatively charged ion attacking a region of high negative charge. I then proceeded to freak out and try various rearrangements of molecules and curly arrows for 2 hours, until I bothered to consult the enormous Organic Chemistry book OF DOOM and discovered that pyridine and benzene reactivities are actually really different. Duh.

Now I have to not beat myself up for forgetting something "basic" in organic chemistry, pun not intended. I'm doing fairly well at reminding myself that if you don't use information for 18+ years it drops out of your head and that doesn't mean you're stupid, just that you need to revise - but cheerleading from friends might help with this.

Mostly, I'm pissed off with the biochemistry textbook I have. It was the least awful one available in the library (i.e. it actually shows every chemical structure rather than glossing over them whenever possible), but it has an innate assumption that you started at the beginning and are working through it sequentially to the end. That might be appropriate with a small tutorial text of, say, 150 pages - but it doesn't seem appropriate for a massive course textbook of over 500 pages! I like to be able to delve into a textbook, find what I need, and get back to my work, NOT be forced to flick through previous or subsequent chapters because "You will see later that...". I would be so annoyed if I'd bought this book, rather than simply borrowing it from the library.

stellarwind has been awesome in helping me make sense of random biochemistry. Every home should have one.

Also, my sleep patterns have been as bizarre as usual, but I've simply been doing work when I'm awake, sod what time the clock says it is. This works right now, but might be a problem when I have to start going into College more regularly.

Deeply and profoundly stressed. Dealing with stressors now. Have failed to enrol at uni because the College website is currently down. But I have filled in my Disabled Student's Allowance form, and found and photocopied all the new medical evidence for it. I have also dug out all my overdue library books and found some photos of myself to get a new library card. (I go to Birkbeck College but also get library books from University College London as well, and their library card expires at the end of each academic year. The books are overdue because I couldn't renew them).

I still need to claim back all the receipts from my DSA for this academic year, and photocopy all the evidence for a Freedom Pass, but I can't deal with any more stress tonight.

I have no idea when to attempt sleep. I slept from 5pm to 11pm or so, waking up because I had a headache from not taking my meds. That was after having been awake since, er, 9pm the night before? And I need to be awake by 1pm today. I'll, um... worry about it later.

I'm feeling well enough to restart my PhD again this term. Spoke to Philip on Friday about changing my project to something more manageable with my physical limitations, and that actually went remarkably well. I'll write more about it when it's all been approved by the Graduate Committee.

There are various Things to deal with this term: the Graduate Symposium and the Retreat, both of which terrify me. I still don't know how exactly I'm going to get to Mill Hill for something that starts before 10 am, or how I'm going to manage for a whole day in a strange place without anywhere to go and collapse if necessary, but I'll work that out later. The Retreat is in Cambridge and involves an overnight stay, and is no doubt fully catered, which fills me with utter horror. I have a long-term phobia of Other People Controlling My Dietary Intake. It started when I was a teenage vegetarian and people thought I would eat chicken, or chilli with the pieces of meat fished out (eww). It's only got worse as I've developed quite genuine food intolerances. Traces of dairy make me really very unwell in the digestive department for an alarmingly long time.

Perhaps in preparation for this, I am doing something on Wednesday which terrifies me. They picked six random students and invited us to lunch with the visiting speaker at College. I'm not sure if it was random or if they looked for people whose work was vaguely relevant to hers. I wrote back and said that it isn't that I *can't* go, but that I have lots of food intolerances; but apparently there is no prebooked menu, and you can choose anything they sell. So I agreed to go because I've become way too good at avoiding things which make me anxious. At a time of mental health crisis, it's reasonable to avoid extra stress, but in the long term it isn't healthy - you can't get through life by avoidance.

I will no doubt regret this decision multiple times between now and Wednesday afternoon, but what is the actual worst that can happen? That there's nothing I can eat apart from a bit of salad and fruit? No one ever died from missing one meal! I have to keep my fears in perspective.