Andrine Olson Crisis Aversion

Hello, everyone! I am posting this fundraiser for someone near and dear to many. She's frankly too proud, embarrassed, and ill to do so on her own. The incredibly daunting series of events that have befallen Andrine over the last year or so would truly flatten any one of us. Our gal has always been a tough one, a real fighter come hell or high water. These recent events literally took the wind out of her proverbial sails. (And my how that woman loves to sail!) The domino-like sequence of misfortunes have nearly destroyed her mind and her body. That is NOT a typo nor is it an exaggeration in any sense. Earlier this month she reached such a low point that suicidal ideations became the norm. It was a very, very dark time for her as well as for a tiny circle of caring confidants. She was ashamed and who can blame her? Folks suffering from mental illness are still ostracized and misunderstood, even in this oh-so-modern age we live in. After trying med after med after med with absolutely no success (BTW hats off to her positively wonderful therapists and physicians!) Andrine entirely bottomed out. She could not eat and could not sleep. Her over taxed mind and body said "enough is enough" and just caved in. What I suppose was referred to in days of yore as a complete nervous breakdown took place. I happily and willingly became her caretaker. The suicide intentions became more and more real and were constant. She lost the ability to care for herself. She even lost the ability to communicate verbally, only able to stutter out mere shadows of thoughts. Her joy and love of life, of art, of nature, of people all gone. It was heartbreaking, to say the least. With her permission I had her admitted to Fairfax Psychiatric Hospital for her own safety. She spent six long days there and hated every single damn minute of it. But she came out of it minus the suicidal tendencies, ready and willing to move forward anew. 

When a person is struggling with ADL (activities of daily living - showering, meal prep and eating, taking their meds, communication management, community mobility, financial management, health management and maintenance, home establishment and maintenance, meal preparation and cleanup, shopping) they need real help. They need someone there to help them get those things done. If this isn't able to happen, the person's life is in danger, either from neglect and decline, or from suicide (because the person in need knows there is no help available). In early October, I shared on Facebook that my executive functioning was derailed due to autistic burnout, which in my case includes chronic severe insomnia from adrenal exhaustion and nonstop rampant cortisol overflow.In our society, the needs of people who lose their ADL abilities are most often met by family, friends, and neighbors, or a housemate. Or the help is provided through paid agencies to people with the financial means to afford the care. There is some help through local county and state agencies, but those systems are stretched so thin that only a relatively few people are able to obtain help this way. This leaves many more people alone and vulnerable when they need care. I know I have people who love me. I'm so very fortunate that way. I have friends that I've known and loved since junior high and high school. And many more since then. My current needs are a burden on others, and I've played all my friend cards over the past couple of months. So here I am. How did I get here?In May 2022, I had a house flood requiring reconstruction of 2 rooms of my little house after the water heater gave out. The cost of labor and materials was more than insurance would allow. I used my savings and still the job wasn't properly completed. I burned out hard trying to project manage this and deal with all the things as a neurotypical person would who didn't have CFIDS and fibromyalgia on top of the autism. There was enormous brain fog/drain and body fatigue from trying to do all that while being on call 7 days a week; you have to be available when the contractors can fit you in.  The work dragged on for nearly 5 months, after the first contractor did little work beyond demolition and roughing in the subfloor and replacing the laundry room floor tile. Out of pocket I paid an electrician and plumber big money to place the water heater two feet from where it had been so it was in the laundry room rather than behind a wall panel in a bedroom closet. I had more than 16 people working in my house from May through September. The first contractor was surly and usually showed up for 5-30 minutes before leaving, and quit via a scathing email, making off with most of the insurance payout, telling me he was shocked that I didn't praise his work every day, and that the checkerboard floor pattern I carefully laid out was "crazy and stupid". He caused damage to items in my house with his carelessness, and glued some of the floor tiles with the undersides facing up. I didn't have the strength or energy to go after him for the money he took without delivering on the work. So I tapped my savings. Simultaneously, there were things going on with my family and my car (needed a new transmission), and I paid $950 for 2 cords of wood, delivered and stacked. The wood turned out to be around 1 cord, and punky, with half of it newly split and not even seasoned, so it's not burnable this year. I hadnt had to use my furnace since 2008; it's now in use and seems to be guzzling power. I'm wondering if surly contractor #1 did something to a duct while he was sawing up the subfloor. There's no money to hire someone to troubleshoot that. By late July, I was noticing issues with my brain function, finding I was easily overwhelmed, and I was having episodes of confusion and forgetfulness. I also began having trouble following the story in any books I tried to read. I got more and more intolerant of certain pieces of music while listening to various stations in my classical radio app - I had to keep changing the station trying to find music that didn't annoy me. And I was not feeling like myself. Over the summer, I'd lost my ability to enjoy my beloved beach walks. My sense of smell was diminishing. My singing voice failed me after a lifetime of loving to sing - I'm having a hard time carrying a tune now. My eyesight has changed rapidly, and most of my hair has fallen out in gobs so I have very little left. I was developing a food aversion and having trouble chewing and swallowing it. I'd been depending on protein drinks for the past several months because all my energy was going to the contractors - bad idea. The drinks were so easy to get down, but they have bad ingredients in them, even Orgain. Between those and a bout with antibiotics for a skin issue, I destroyed my gut flora. I've been trying to build it up again, but it doesn't seem to be working. By the end of August, the brain issues were becoming more pronounced, and the reconstruction job dragged on. That's when I stopped being able to sleep through the night. I'd fall asleep and then wake 30 minutes to 4 hours later, unable to return to sleep. Moving forward, this became 30 minutes to 2 hours. I'd fall asleep fine, then the cortisol flood gates would open and I'd wake instantly with my heart banging against my chest. I'd spend the rest of the night trying, hoping, praying to calm my heart and get to sleep. Melatonin didn't help. Hyland's Sleep formula and Calms Forte didn't help. Meditation, breathing exercises, walking during the day and riding my exercycle didn't help. Sleep hygiene didn't help.I was prescribed several sleep aids, one after another as this progressed. A sleep aid would work one night and I'd be so relieved. Using it another night merely caused my brain to recognize it and override it. So my body would feel effects of the medicine, but my brain wouldn't let sleep happen. I'd lie there with my heart pounding like a racehorse, banging against my chest, beating 90 to 125 bpm. More breathing exercises and guided sleep meditation. My sleep doctor just kept stressing sleep hygiene, breathing and meditation, and exercise. He frowned on melatonin or even the homeopathic remedies I was using. I was so exhausted, exercise happened but not regularly, except for my chair exercycle at least every other day if not daily - at least 30 minutes of cardio. Then my Fitbit started registering cardio when I wasn't exercising. It was picking up my constant rapid heartbeat.House reconstruction dragged into September with work going so slowly. I tried to socialize with friends and peeps here and there to keep up my spirits while juggling my house needs. I went to Strawberry Festival, and First Friday, and Stupid Bike Night, and a play about Vashon during WWII called Winghaven. The pattern of insomnia was now the norm. I tried different CBD products - but it seems the small amount of THC in all of it sabotaged the sleep. THC, though I only bought indica, made me wakeful while making my heart race more. (It's always made my heart race.) I tried a tincture called Zonk, which is a couchlock indica. It helps many people I know get a great night's sleep. It only left me wide awake and uncomfortably high. By the end of September, the reconstruction ground to a halt. I was out of money and it wasn't quite done, and some of it was really slap-dash. The friend who finished the laundry room did a beautiful job, but the den (done by others) looks like hell and is definitely not finished. At that time, I realized I just can't remain in my house any longer and need to sell it and move to an apartment. All the things I'd done for years to keep the house running now seem undoable. Feeding the wood stove day and night (something I'd done happily and fairly easily since 2008) presented a problem since I tore my other rotator cuff splitting kindling in April. The lumbar vertebra that got shoved forward out of my spinal column in December 2020 was making it even harder for me to lift and carry firewood.By now, I was beginning to notice serious changes not only in my brain function, but in my personality, from sleep deprivation. My sense of humor was mostly gone, and the hobbies I loved didn't mean anything now. My housekeeping had gone halfway to hell after rotator cuff surgery in 2020, and got worse after the lumbar injury and then with this new tear in the other shoulder, and my lack of sleep and ongoing depression, my housekeeping and meal prep went completely out the window. A friend invited me to her house for a night or two to see if I could get some sleep there. The bed was super comfy. I had a prescription sleep aid to try. But I was rewarded with the same sleep pattern, where it didn't work on a second night, so I went back home to be an insomniac there. Night after night of trying different things to get back to sleep after an initial short nap was like a Groundhog Day of torture. In early October another friend brought me to their place. A new sleep aid, Seroquel, gave me one night of fairly decent sleep. I was hopeful. But the next night my brain and the cortisol flood did their dirty work again. Plus there were noisy renters in the bedroom across the hall. 

That night, lying awake, an image began superimposing itself across the center of my vision in the dark  Eyes open or closed in the dark, there was an intricate building blueprint right in front of my eyes, but I wasn't able to make out any of the writing because that was too small. In time it went away, only to come back again and again. On the morning of my third day there, my resting heart rate in bed was in the upper 90s, and it shot to 135 as soon as I stood up. My chest was feeling weird and tight. I was dizzy and unsteady on my feet. My friend took me to the fire department. They suggested a hospital visit via ambulance.Bloodwork at the hospital showed my heart was releasing cardiac enzymes (which is something that happens with a heart attack). The next morning, the nurse told me I'd had a heart attack. WTH?I told the staff about the blueprint in front of my vision with my eyes closed. It was happening there in the hospital too. I told them I'd begun to think about ending my life while lying awake night after night since I'd been without real sleep for over a month with no relief in sight. After they heard that, they gave me a babysitter in my room. She was wearing clothes steeped in heavy laundry chemical fragrance, which made me feel sick. When they realized I wasn't going to stab myself in the juggular vein with a plastic fork, (a rare implement, since they didn't give me food two of the three days I was in the ER), they allowed the babysitter to leave. The doctor said I hadn't had a heart attack after all - the cardiac enzymes were an indication that something was going on - likely from my heart beating so hard and fast for so long. The heparin drip they gave me apparently thinned my blood, just in case case. Yay - no heart attack. But lots of bruising, which is still happening over a month later. That second night they gave me an Ambien CR. I got a few hours more sleep than I'd gotten in weeks - about 6 hours total. That was a gift. They released me on Indigenous People's Day and popped me into a Lyft to get to the ferry dock. My dear friend again offered to house me at her place for a respite. She picked me up on the other side and took me to her house to try to get some sleep. On our way there, I picked up an Rx for 7 days of that Ambien CR, which the hospital had phoned in. It didn't work that night. Just like other sleep aids, it had worked one night and then my brain and the cortisol flood overrode it. I spent 2 weeks at my friend's house resting and trying to get some sleep. By this time, I was struggling to get food down, and was preparing smoothies for myself. I was barely able to tolerate the Netflix shows my friend wanted to share in the evenings. I'd get all antsy and anxious. Was okay in my room watching Grace and Frankie, and Emily in Paris. During those 2 weeks, I tried CBG for the anxiety. I found some CBN (costly AF) with terpenes and essential oils, supposed to work like magic for sleep - nope; neither of those helped. I did try some high CBD tincture, and also tried some Zonk. Neither one helped. Next, a friend from Chelan had an idea to take me over there to see if distance and intensive friend care would help. They also suggested microdosing psilocybin, which they had access to. Before we went over, we met with a real estate lady who had a plan to get my house cleaned out and sold. I signed the paperwork and am now under contract to do that. Staying in Chelan with my friend in a tiny basement studio under a house on a remote road, I tried so hard to make things work. My personality changes continued to occur. I was having a hard time putting words together for coherent conversation. The sleep pattern was now one of getting 1 to 3 hours of sleep, then remaining awake. The upstairs landlady got up at 5 every morning. A tiny lady who stomps like an elephant, and her dogs running on the hard surface floors woke me if I'd been able to get back to sleep for a small while. Then she'd go back to bed and get up again around 7:30 with more stomping plus banging and machine noise. It's her house and her right to live her schedule  it was just hard for me. 

I found I was unable to figure out or articulate what I needed or wanted. I was super anxious and fidgety around my friend's peeps. I was having serious trouble trying to communicate my thoughts or make decisions about anything. I also found I wasn't having trouble walking in a parking lot with moving vehicles - I was like a 3 year old in the road. I just wasn't aware while the cars were moving throught the parking lot. There was a very early snow. I didn't have the right clothes for that. I was claustrophobic inside the apartment, as sweet a space as it was. My friend was ultra kind and very helpful and attentive. The microdosing wasn't working because my brain was already stuck in a pattern of anxiety; it also went to fear. The CBD, CBG, and CBN weren't really helping. I started having raging heat spells where the center of my chest would become an inferno and the heat would radiate out. My palms and soles started sweating profusely. My face started breaking out in some kind of rash while my skin produced copious amounts of oil on my face and scalp. I was able to tolerate only a narrow selection of music or Netflix shows. I tried to communicate with my 85yo father over the phone and my words devolved into gibberish. I finally had to end the call. I could tell he was disgusted with me. There was a plan hatched to go over the mountains and look at some 55+ rent controlled apartments in Shoreline. The snow ended that. I tried to work with the real estate lady over the phone about clearing out my house to sell. That fell apart. Night after night, sleep evaded me. The blueprint hallucinations in the dark at least started to change and offer me different images, all in shades of dark green on black. Still it was disturbing because I couldn't blink and make it go away. More snow came. There was around 18 inches. A tree fell on the house above us one morning. The snow was too heavy and the trees still had a lot of leaves. I felt trapped in the apartment though we had developed a habit of walking up and down the road nearly daily. My walking wasn't very stable and my friend frequently held my hand going up and down the stairs and the driveway. I felt like an 85 year old. The day before the first snow, we went to Wenatchee so I could get acupuncture in my ears - something that helped another friend overcome serious insomnia. The practitioner was good, but didn't put needles in my ears, instead opting for adhesive BBs on specific pressure points on my ears. One fell off on the way back to Chelan. Oops.While in town, I bought some shoes and boots that should have worked well for walking, but I didn't realize they needed insoles, and I also didn't have proper socks. I don't have all-weather gear to layer like everyone who lives there has. I tried to remedy that with a trip to Costco The Costco trip yielded me a wool pullover, a fleece pullover, and a puffy long parka. Which didn't address my lack of warm pants - jeans just didn't cut it. Turns out the fleece is so thin you can see light through it. The wool pullover is thin as well. The parka is bulky and makes loud swishes when you walk in it. (Autism fail) Still I tried walking the road in the snow. So I was more of a shut in. And still my friend was gracious, gentle, and kind. Hearing the news of an Arctic blast expected was messing with my claustrophobia even more. Two weeks after I arrived, on a day when there was a break before the big blast, we packed up and my friend brought me over the mountains and home again before heading out to drive back to Chelan that same night. That night, I laid awake in my bed in my house that doesn't feel like home anymore, and I thought of ways to end my life. I wrote to friends and told them my thoughts. They urged me to get help. One of my best friends came over to Vashon the next day from Tacoma and brought me to Tacoma General. At the hospital, I was shaking uncontrollably and had some pains behind my left shoulder that radiated through the front of my chest. I told them that due to chronic extreme insomnia, I felt like I needed to not be alive.They asked me if I had a plan. I'd spent countless hours awake alone in the dark over the past few months trying to think of a way that was the least messy and least hurtful to my loved ones. I told the hospital people that and mentioned the three ways I'd come up with. I told them I felt I needed inpatient help to deal with my severe insomnia. They said they could only send me to a facility with accommodations for a CPAP machine - that because I have a CPAP, it had to go with me to the facility - I didn't have it with me - didn't know it was required. A friend from Vashon went to my house and brought the machine to me in Tacoma. Then I was transported to a facility in Monroe. Such a long way away. Once there, I learned they had no treatment options there for severe sleep disorders. That other places do and they could make a referral, but that the place I was at was only a quick fix band-aid to get people out of crisis and avoid suicide. My wanting to die was because of something they couldn't address. And there's no guarantee that the places that address my needs have openings or even take CPAP patients. While I was in the facility, I missed my final appointment with my sleep doctor before his retirement. Currently, my brain is unable to parse anything technological. I don't believe my brain works well enough for me to be able to drive a car now. And I'm not able to carry firewood and build and tend a fire, even if my firewood weren't punky and half of it not seasoned. My house is a mile down a dirt road. My mailbox is a mile away. Town is 9 miles away. And the ferry boats are still wonkier since the pandemic. So here I am. Needing help and everyone has their lives and their families. They love me and I've been a handful. The friend cards have been played. My therapist came today to visit. He said I really am stuck. I have dried and canned goods here. And some milk and cereal and mandarin oranges. But I'm not self sufficient at this point. And my brain is scrambled. He said the odds are not in my favor. That there are a number of things that need to be checked on with my health, and we agreed that there is no easy way for me to get to doctor appointments, either here or on the mainland, since I'm not currently able to drive. If the power goes out here, I'm not sure I'll be able to heat my house with the crappy wood I paid so much for. I don't know if I'll be able to keep the pipes from freezing in the cabin and possibly under the house if we have a hard freeze like we've had the past two years or more. I feel so unable. And I have so much to do before the real estate lady and the liquidator come on Tuesday."

GOD BLESS ANDRINE OLSON