It’s becoming almost a yearly thing now, that in June, I take a last-minute, spontaneous, emergency leave from work so I can get some fucking rest. A bit early this year, as it’s starting May 31st. And I expect this to be a short one, just a week or so.

When you find yourself sobbing uncontrollably to a bewildered, but very kind Nurse Practitioner at your neurologist’s office, repeatedly saying “I don’t know what to do,” and “I can’t do this again. I can’t go through all of this again,” it’s time to take a fucking break. So that’s what I’m doing.

I have been searching my mind for the past two weeks trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was doing so much better. My job is great! My coworkers are cool! My veggie garden is coming along! My marriage is going well! My health sucks, but other than that, things are good! So why am I so exhausted all the time? Why can’t I focus? Why can’t I sleep through the night? Why do I never feel like the sleep I get restores me at all? Why am I stuttering? Why am I hallucinating? Why am I crying?

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I woke up at 2:20 Tuesday morning and saw a baby dinosaur on my nightstand. I was not frightened because

1. I knew that it was not real
2. It was clearly not a threat to me. It was an adorable baby dinosaur.

I googled to see if I could figure out what kind of dinosaur it was. It was a Parasaurolophus. They look like this:

And that’s very much what the baby dinosaur on my nightstand looked like, but thinner and smaller.

I joked about it. On the internet, and to friends, I joked about the baby dinosaur on my nightstand. And then, around midday Tuesday, I realized I was doing The Bravado Thing where I pretend I’m fine, that it’s all a joke, that I’m not fucking terrified that I had a full-on hallucination.

I didn’t see a shadow and think it was a cat. I didn’t see papers ruffling in a nonexistent breeze. I didn’t see an image and wonder if it was moving, which often happens to me since my injury. I had seen something, fully formed, in living color, that was not there. I had blinked, I had looked away and looked back, and there it still was.

I thought about it, really thought about it, and then I burst into tears.

I contacted my neurologist’s office and he said yes I should definitely come in. And that’s what I did– yesterday, now, I guess, since it’s almost five in the morning on Friday. But I haven’t yet slept.

There are two main suspects as to what might be the direct cause of my hallucinations, and they might have worked together. The first is exhaustion. The second is a muscle relaxant I take to help me sleep. Both can cause hallucinations. Both have, in fact, caused me to have hallucinations… but never before at “baby dinosaur” levels.

But the bigger factor, the actual mastermind behind the crime… this metaphor is stupid… is that two weeks ago I put on a beautiful navy blue dress with a lemon print and emceed an event for my workplace. For four hours I worked the crowd, called out raffle numbers, dispensed prizes, mingled with vendors and guests, and collected booty from the various booths. I was charismatic and I looked adorable in my dress and I was told by multiple people that I did a wonderful job and they’d love to have me emcee again next year.

I told my boss the next day that I was exhausted but had had a lot of fun. Actually, what I said was that I felt like I’d survived an exorcism and a cocaine binge both in the same night and still had to work the next day.

I didn’t know that I would still be exhausted two weeks later. I didn’t know. I did not count on that at all.

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A year ago I was working a job that I had once loved, a job that I had once seen a bright shiny future in, but by that point in May 2023 had gotten so effed-up and twisted that I was on the verge of killing myself. I have written about it, but I cannot put into words the despair I was feeling.

In October, I moved on to where I am now, and it took me months to relax and realize that it’s pretty unlikely that my current coworkers are going to turn on me with knives out (although with my current Health Bullshit, it’s more possible than I’d like.) I’m in a good place, and I FINALLY started getting better. The headaches decreased in severity if not in frequency. I wasn’t under such an enormous amount of stress. I no longer wanted to die. My marriage got better. I unclenched. I started listening to music again. I started noticing nature more. I started trusting people, just a bit, but it felt nice. My brain was healing.

And I felt like I was finally, finally, out of the woods.

So when I started losing my words again, when I started stuttering worse than I ever have, when I saw an adorable baby dinosaur… well, this isn’t even past tense. I’m scared.

The upside is that I have a plan now. I have 10 days to try to get some rest, to tend to the garden, to pet the cats, use the rowing machine I insisted we buy, to clean up my office, to try to learn how to make oatmeal interesting, to maybe learn to crochet. I have 10 days to breathe and try to let my brain heal a little bit.

The downside is that I now know I will have to be exceedingly careful going forward about what responsibilities I take on, because four hours of calling out raffle numbers and working a crowd is apparently enough to make me very, very ill.

So ill that my neurologist made me promise to contact my psychiatrist to loop her in, and the nurse practitioner practically begged me to take leave from work and let my brain rest. So ill that they both assured me that they care about me and want me to do well and asked me to keep them updated. And I know that they meant it.

And now it’s 5:11 in the morning and I didn’t take the pill that knocks me out, so I’m awake. I will be awake until exhaustion makes me fall asleep. I am going to have to reset my body to fall asleep naturally without the tranq darts I’ve been pumping into myself. I’ve been too terrified to give this an honest try, because I remember when I first got hurt and I was averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep a night and sincerely believed that my brain was melting. I spent my days just trying to stay awake and feverishly playing Sudoku and doing other kinds of puzzles so that my brain would not, in fact, melt. I memorized the presidents in order. I did logic puzzles. Trivia. Anything to keep my brain active and not-melted.

When my doctor prescribed a muscle relaxant to treat my whiplash injuries (the head injury, which is the sexy part that gets talked about, came along with some pretty severe whiplash) ANYWAY I took a half a pill on a Friday night just to see how it affected me and I basically tipped over sideways on the couch a half hour later and realized that this little pill was the answer to my prayers. Finally! Sleep! Except that little pill is dangerous. And I cannot sleep without it. And I’ve now been taking it for three years. And it took me, oh, about two and a half years of knowing it’s bad for me to finally commit to getting off of it because I am so damn scared of the terrible insomnia I had when I first got hurt, and how lost I felt when I was so addled and all I needed was rest but I couldn’t fucking sleep.

But if it’s getting off the pills or dying… I’m going to white-knuckle my way through this. I have Mtn Dew, Adderall, several pot shops in the vicinity, a good hot water tank, lots of tea, a rowing machine, a garden, and ten days to figure this shit out.

And, in case you didn’t know, I am Kate the Great and I am a fucking badass.