It takes skill to injury yourself the way I do

March 27, 2018

The other day I woke up to find that I had wrenched my shoulder in my sleep. It felt like it was partially dislocated. Sometimes it felt fine, and then I’d try to put on a shirt or reach for something and there’d be searing pain. I didn’t fall. I didn’t pick up something heavy. I slept wrong.

Everyone hurts themselves from time to time. A stubbed toe or a paper cut are the hazards of daily life. No big deal. But then there’s this other level that shows up when your body is out of whack. Being out of whack makes me more prone to these kinds of injuries, and sometimes they make no sense.

Like the time I wiggled my toes and injured a tendon. That was a month ago. It still hurts.

I’m skilled, I tell you. Totally skilled. I mean, it’s not the average person who could give themselves a long term toe tendon injury, with daily pain, just by wiggling their toes!

And do I go to the doctor for any of these injuries? No. Of course not. Because I’d be going All. The. Time!

Don’t get me wrong. I do take big things seriously. When I dropped a chef’s knife on my foot a couple years ago, I went to the emergency room for stitches, and later had surgery.

But no, I don’t see a doctor for every injury. Just like I don’t see a doctor for every new gastrointestinal symptom or new pain or new type of fatigue. What’s the point?

So I’m waiting these out, hoping they’ll eventually go away on their own. They often do. Like the time I finally went to the doctor for the unmistakable nerve pain, to be told I had a pinched nerve and should go to physical therapy. I didn’t have time. I asked if not going would cause long term damage. She said no. So I didn’t go. Eventually it fixed itself. If it hadn’t, I’d have gone.

So many of us have far too many medical issues already, so we try to ignore the little ones. But it sure would be easier to ignore them if we weren’t so skilled at creating new ones constantly!

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Posted by chronicrants

The things we do for our health

February 26, 2018

As I sat on the bathroom floor scooping poop into a plastic cup with a wooden stick 2 hours ago, I thought about how some people can go their entire lives without ever having to do this. Lucky them. I’m not so lucky.

I really really really didn’t want to do a stool test, but much more than that, I really really really couldn’t stand to keep having these episodes. I can handle the gas, the bloating, the constipation, and the diarrhea. I don’t love them, but I can handle them. But I can’t handle the nausea. It just does me in emotionally.

I have had these kinds of episodes since my teens. When I removed gluten and corn from my diet in my early 30s, they became much less frequent. Instead of 2-4 times a week they were *only* 2-4 times per month. Still, that’s far too often. The symptoms changed, too. Some got worse and some got better. And over time, I accepted it, to a certain degree. At least it was less often, right?

The thing is, the nausea, the fatigue, the rest of the symptoms all come on together. I never know when it will happen. Is it my diet? One night I feel fine and another I’m a mess, even when I ate the same thing both times. Maybe it’s something else? I have tried diets, so it’s time for the next step.

Someone suggested this particular test to me. I asked my doctor and was shocked to learn that insurance will actually cover the cost (a rarity for many of the tests I ask for.) His office gave me the kit, and I put it off.

First I needed to do an adrenal test – the fatigue was a more concerning symptom. Mentally and emotionally, I could only handle doing one at a time. It took a few weeks before I could schedule that test, since I had to change some things about my medications to prepare for it.

I gave myself a week, then decided to do the stool test. I read the instructions and learned I had to be off probiotics for 2 weeks before the test. I stopped taking probiotics. 2 weeks later, I was sick. I waited. I finally felt better but my schedule was a bit busy. I knew I needed to be home and not rushed for this. My schedule cleared and I went to take the test. I read the instructions again and saw that I had to be off another of my supplements for 2 days. I went off those. I felt sick again. Then if I did the test, I would finish on a Saturday, and it has to be mailed Monday-Friday, within 24 hours of finishing. I waited a couple more days.

FINALLY it was time! I was nervous and not wanting to do it, but I did it. Because I had to. Because I need answers. Because each time I have one of those episodes, I start to wonder if I would be better off dead. The only times I feel at all suicidal are doing those episodes. I don’t know why. They last for hours that feel like weeks, but never more than a few hours. The pain can be so much worse and last for so much longer, but it never makes me feel that way. These episodes have to stop.

So I did the test. It was a 3 day test. For 3 nights I had stress dreams about the test. The first day I realized it wasn’t fun, but not nearly as bad as I’d expected. But still, I had the dreams. They woke me up at 5:15am today. I want to believe it was worth it.

I finished the test just a couple hours ago. The samples are sitting in my refrigerator (carefully packaged, of course) and ready to be mailed when go out this afternoon. And then I wait. And wait. And wait. It will only take a few weeks to get the results, but it will feel like so much longer.

After many months of procrastination, then another 6 weeks of mostly legitimate delays after I received the kit, I finally feel SO CLOSE to potentially having some answers. I don’t want to hear I have parasites or infections to deal with, but those might be better than a lifetime of these episodes that make me literally want to die, that I can’t predict, and that continue to get worse over time.

So yes, I scooped my own poop into plastic containers multiple times. That’s something most people never even consider doing. But maybe, hopefully, it was worth it.

 

Leave a Comment » | Expectations, Frustration, Gastrointestinal, Healthcare, Rants, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Please don’t take away my physical therapy

January 25, 2018

For most of my life, my posture has been lousy. My shoulders hunch forward, I never sit with my legs down properly (in large part because I’m very short, and I can’t comfortably sit that way, since my feet won’t be flat on the floor), and of course, there’s the scoliosis. Two different forms for scoliosis, actually. Thanks to all of that, and a doctor who majorly screwed up (she measured my legs wrong, and for years I wore a lift on the WRONG FOOT!) I have a lot of neck and back pain. And that’s even before you consider my mis-aligned kneecaps, which have worn away most of the cartiladge on the outer sides of my knees.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that I have been in physical therapy for neck and back pain a bunch of times over the years. I’m doing it now, too. But this time it’s really helping. Probably because I’m not getting cut off after a few short months, like all of the previous times.

If you’ve ever done physical therapy, I’m guessing this will sound familiar. I would go in 1-2 times per week for a few months, be given exercises to do at home each time, and then at the end, told that if I go home and do the exercises, I’ll be fine. And when I wasn’t fine, when I came back for more help, I was treated like I failed.

And yes, I admit that I wasn’t as consistent with the exercises as I should have been. But even so, it felt like something else was going on.

That brings us to 2017 when, for the first time in my life, I went to physical therapy appointments for the entire year. Sometimes I would go 2 or 3 weeks in a row. Sometimes I would miss 2-3 weeks. But always, I went back. In between, I did my exercises at home. Sometimes I was consistent and sometimes I wasn’t, but I always tried.

And it helped. A lot! So you can imagine my disappointment when I went to physical therapy yesterday to be told that Medicare has lowered its coverage limit.

Oh boy.

On the bright side, this might not effect me. She had checked and last year I would have just squeaked by under the 2018 limit. Still, it’s disconcerting. We will need to be careful.

We talked about having me come in less often. Or maybe skipping a few weeks here and there. Or maybe coming in for shorter appointments, since the limit is on the dollar amount covered, not the number of visits.

Not for the first time (not even the only time that day!) I came up against the problem of having to manage my health in the face of insurance limits.

On the one hand, this is totally fair. After all, they need to set limits, right? On the other hand, this is my health, and isn’t the whole point of paying into the system so that it will cover me when I need it to? What good is it if it won’t. I’m not the cheapest person on the insurance’s rolls, but I’m far from the most expensive. And damn it, I want my physical therapy! Without physical therapy, my pain and posture will get worse and that will harm me in a lot of other ways, limiting my ability to work, meaning I will need even more benefits.

After all, I am losing a bunch of my benefits this year (yeah, that’s a topic for another post) because I earned more last year. Don’t they want to keep me off those benefits? They should want me to be healthy, if only for financial reasons. They should consider that more physical therapy will actually save the system money in the long run.

But no one worries about that. They certainly don’t worry about the human being behind the numbers. The human being who simply wants to be in less pain, who wants to stick with the thing that works, who tries so hard to feel better every single day.

My physical therapist warned me that Medicare changes its limits every year, and she implied that future changes would not be in my favor. I am not surprised. But I am horribly, sadly, painfully disappointed.

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Posted by chronicrants

Struggling to endure

December 6, 2017

Last week was a really good week. And that made Sunday so much harder to deal with.

2017-11-29 15.05.34

First I took a long walk around beautiful Walden Pond (and took this photo), stopping a bunch of times to admire the view. It was unseasonably warm, and sitting down to watch the water was lovely. I was able to clear my head and figure some things out.

I made plans. I worked through ideas that had been weighing on me. I made some tough decisions about my finances and my health. By the end, I was super excited to get started! I walked about 2 miles total and felt ok afterwards. I rested that evening, but that was it.

A few days later my mom came to visit. After a lovely lunch, we took a walk in a wooded area. The sign said it was a 1 mile loop, and that seemed ok to us. Well, I don’t know what went wrong, but the path never looped. We eventually made it back to the car, but we walked about 4 miles. I was surprised I felt so good afterwards. Tired, but good. Hmm. Maybe this was a new trend?

The next day I hung out with friends and had a wonderful time. I got home later than I expected and was too tired to go out to a friend’s house that night like I had planned. Too bad. I really wanted to go, but I knew that resting was the right move.

It had been such a fabulous week. I exercised, got fresh air, got clear on a new mindset, spent time with friends.

And then it all changed. I spent all day Sunday feeling run down. I never left my apartment. I cancelled all of my plans for the day. This sucks, but it isn’t unheard of. And I did a lot this week, so I couldn’t complain, right? I trudged through the day, mostly reading a novel and wishing I could do more.

That would have been ok. It would have been disappointing but totally fine. If only that was it.

Sunday night I got really nauseated. Sometimes I know what causes the nausea, but usually I don’t. I tried Pepto Bismol, which usually helps, but this time it didn’t. I tried medical marijuana, which usually helps, but this time it didn’t. The nausea was really bad. My pulse was racing (114 while I was still sitting) and I felt bad all over.

Over the years, nausea has because an emotional trigger for me. I don’t know why it has, when the pain hasn’t, but it just has. So as usual, I started thinking about how horrible this is, and when will it end, and why won’t it ever go away. Yes, I have these episodes a lot less often now that I’m off gluten, corn, and a couple others triggers.

But why does it still happen? Was it something I ate? Something I did? A delayed reaction to the 4 mile walk 2 days before? How will I handle another 50+ years of this? Why did I bother to make plans? Obviously it was stupid to think I could ever get off of benefits and support myself. I should just stop trying. Then I started thinking about how it might be easier to just kill myself and end this. Except that would be very upsetting to my family and friends. I couldn’t do that to them.

I started having those thoughts a few years ago. I know it’s temporary. I’m not too worried, because I only have them when I’m curled in a ball on the floor, too nauseated to do more than stagger to the toilet occasionally. I have never gotten to the point of really wanting to kill myself but even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to until the worst of it had passed, and I never think about wanting to die except when I’m in the worst of it.

So all these thoughts were floating around in my head, and then something strange happened: I started to cry. And cry. And cry. Before I knew it, I was sobbing. Big, ugly sobs. I couldn’t stop crying. I thought I should call someone. (If you’re new to this blog, I live alone.) I ran through a mental list of awesome people in my life, and finally decided to call a friend who lives in my apartment complex. I asked him to come right over and he did. I didn’t explain, but he must have heard it in my voice, because he showed up with his dog, saying the dog was for therapy.

The dog, of course, immediately started to nuzzle me and lick me. He’s that kind of dog. Very sweet. But what I really needed was a hug and some understanding, and I got that.

We sat on the floor while I cried and talked. I always sit on the floor during these spells – for some reason, it just works for me. I cried myself out and we just sat there for a while. Then for some reason, I started crying again. Still, having someone there was extremely comforting.

Eventually I wore myself out. My friend and his dog left (he mentioned leaving the dog, but I was too weak to care for him.) I fell asleep on the couch to an old movie that I often watch when I don’t feel well. I woke up less than an hour later and found the nausea had subsided enough that I could drink a little water. Lots of diarrhea and lots of crying can really dehydrate a person. Then I stumbled to bed. I slept fitfully, but got through the night.

Monday was a bust. I cancelled plans and ate almost nothing. But it didn’t get that bad again. Tuesday was better, and I even left the apartment. And today is better still (though it’s after noon and I’m still in my pajamas, so it’s not fantastic – I try to get dressed by noon every day when I can.)

So why am I sharing this? I’m sharing it for a few reasons. For one, amongst my friends with chronic illness, I’m often seen as the strong one. Strangers online (both through this anonymous blog and under my real name) say that I’m a role model. I have my shit together. I’ve got a good handle on all of this. I work my butt off to take care of my health, research new treatments, find the best doctors and practitioners. That’s all true. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have really bad times, too. I think we all need to remember that the people who seem to be great probably have bad times behind closed doors where we can’t see them. It’s important not to idealize people, but to see them as they are.

It’s a reminder that we all have our struggles. We struggle, and then hopefully we have better days, too. We don’t need to assume someone is perfect in order to have them as a role model.

I’m not perfect. I’m still continuing to fight every day for the best health possible. I want to believe that one day those episodes will end. Until then, I will just keep on trying. Because what else can I do?

4 Comments | Expectations, Fatigue, Frustration, Gastrointestinal, Healthcare, Isolation, Limitations, Pain, Rants, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Support, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

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