It’s not clickbait. I wish it were. To give some backstory, I had Covid in July (again, 1st time was July 2021) which led to a horrible sinus infection which led to a horrific trigeminal nerve flare-up. That brings us to last Thursday when I was finally beginning to feel better and I decided to eat some ice cream. I don’t know what I was thinking – or maybe I wasn’t. Let’s call it temporary memory loss due to drugs. I am lactose intolerant so I literally poisoned myself, or that’s what it felt like. I was extremely sick for two and a half days. It wasn’t fun. What led to my diagnosis several years ago was my eating ice cream and getting extremely sick.

To backtrack, and I will insert a link to the story, I got very sick in November of 2019 and had to purge my body of the drugs I was on in a last-ditch effort to figure out what was happening to my body. My doctors couldn’t figure out why I was sick.

The first time I got sick, before I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance, my stomach pains were so intense it bruised my insides so badly that it took a few weeks to heal. Fortunately, although the pain was bad, it wasn’t like the first episode. I do have some Lactaid but I just can’t bring myself to take more drugs than I need to.

The trigeminal nerve flare-up was a beast this time. But, I needed to brush my teeth. I can’t use my electric toothbrush during a flareup so I resorted to using a manual. It was working ok and even though I only used a small amount of toothpaste, I still ended up with a horrible episode. I accidentally got toothpaste on my pallet. I thought I had died and gone to hell. I was paralyzed with pain. I was beside myself. Everyone loves toothpaste. We all love fresh breath and the cool mint feeling we get from using it, except if you have TN. The toothpaste triggered the nerve and even if I could have swished water in my mouth, which I could not, it would not have stopped the cool minty effect of the toothpaste. I’m here. I survived and lived to talk about it, but that was bad.

Also, during July (and the past few months) the rooster next door decided to take up residence in a tree next to our bedroom. I need my uninterrupted sleep. If I don’t get it, I get sick so I am diligent about getting a certain number of uninterrupted hours of sleep. Between the hurricane in August and coyotes, all the neighbor’s chickens have disappeared, one by one, and he killed the last one because it pooped on his tractor. Yeah. Some people don’t have much sense. So, that left a rooster, the Pimp as I referred to him, with his whores (his chickens). If you spent any amount of time watching that rooster strut around with all the chickens following him, you would have chosen the same names.

I think the rooster chose my front yard due to all of the birds that live in the azaleas that border my front porch. That is when the commotion began. At first, I noticed the birds were chattering a lot, but they seemed to quiet down as the night wore on. Then, night by night, it got later and later until the chatter got louder and louder and longer and longer. I had not slept by this time in a week. They would chatter all day and I was unable to nap and then chatter all night. And, you could tell it was warning chatter, answering back and forth. I finally texted the neighbor and asked if he could lock the rooster up at night because it was crowing all night, did I mention that? He was crowing all night. He ended up giving the chicken to a neighbor a few houses down and we had a few quiet nights.

Then, hubby came in one afternoon and said, “Guess what I just saw walking across the backyard?” I was baffled. I didn’t know the rooster had been given away at that point. He said, “the rooster”. The first thing that flew out of my mouth was, “you didn’t kill it? It was in our yard. You could have shot it!” I’m telling you, that rooster was the bain of my existence. I almost cried. The crowing began again. The bird chatter began again. After three days, I told my husband that if he didn’t do something, I was going to get my gun and take care of the problem. There were no chickens, no reason for a rooster in my opinion and the neighbor didn’t want him.

The next day hubby and another neighbor caught the rooster in a net and hubby brought him fifteen miles away to a friend of ours who has tons of chickens and said he’d take the rooster. When hubby dropped him off, he told him the story of how the rooster was rehomed and then came back and our friend said, “Don’t worry. I’m gonna fix that. I’m gonna clip the wings.” I wasn’t aware of this for a few days. I told my husband that I kept looking out by the highway expecting to see that dang rooster strutting down the highway on his way home. I didn’t think it was far-fetched. Dogs have found their way home from states away and that rooster found his way home from the first rehoming. That’s when I found out about the clipped wings. Bless our friend’s heart. He solved the problem.

After all was said and done, and the birds stopped chattering all night long, I realized the birds felt the rooster was a threat to them so they did what birds do. They are happy and quiet, and I am happy. All is well. I also purchased an air purifier for the house and it now acts as a sound machine as well so if they are chattering, I don’t hear them.

So that has been my last month plus. Hope yours has been much better.

 

https://mylifeonestoryatatime.com/2020/05/31/the-trigeminal-neuralgia-chronicles-my-week-in-review-may-31-2020/