Needing a change

September 21, 2016

I’m in a rut. I guess that’s to be expected since:

  1. My health limits what I can do.
  2. I’m totally a creature of habit.

Still, it’s bugging me. A lot. I used to travel all the time. It was rare that I was in my town for more than 2 months at a time. I’d go away for weekends, or long weekends, or week-long trips. I traveled locally, across the country, and abroad. And I miss it.

I did other stuff too, but travel was a great way to break out of the work-home-work-home-work-home-socialize-work routine.

So now I’m wondering about traveling again. I’ve written about it before, but this time I think maybe I should try it. I don’t feel quite ready, but I have a feeling that I never will.

I’m trying to decide where to go. My first choice is Sweden. I was planning a trip there when I became ill, and I’ve always wanted to follow through on that. With any luck I could use my frequent flyer miles and at least cover the airfare.

Or I could visit a friend in the U.S. That would be a lot easier and definitely less expensive. The problem is that the people I most want to see are in places I don’t particularly want to go. Either I don’t have any interest or, more often, I’ve already been there so many times. I’d rather go someplace new and different. After all, the point is to make a change, right?

I’m going to make other changes, too. I hope to move in the near future (I’ll let you know when that gets worked out.) And after that I’m going to try getting a dog again, and this time I’m hoping it works out better. But then what? I need to do something else. And I don’t know what it will be.

I want to get out and meet new people! But I’m an introvert, and going to events full of strangers feels unpleasant and exhausting. Plus, they’re so often in the evenings, and by then I’m not really up to going out. Or they’re on weekends and involve things I can’t/don’t want to do like kayaking, eating out, hiking, etc.

I need to find the right group of people to hang out with. And start doing new things. I need to get out of my comfort zone.

What do you do to get out of your comfort zone? Do you travel? Where do you go? Do you meet new people? If so, how? Please comment and give me some ideas!

4 Comments | Decisions, Fatigue, Frustration, Isolation, Medication, Rants, Raves, Symptoms | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Should I tell my doctor the truth?

September 15, 2016

Oh my, that headline could apply to so many situations! In this case, I’m talking about test results.

It happens a lot when you have fractured healthcare. Instead of one central system, each img_20160915_110637doctor’s office/hospital network uses their own database. That means that I’m often the one responsible for sharing information. Sure, every specialist sends test results to my primary care physicial (PCP). But they don’t send results to each other, and my PCP doesn’t send results to them.

Which is why I now find myself in a sticky situation. I try to be honest with my doctors. I try not to exaggerate too much about my exercise habits (or lack thereof.) I do it because I know it’s super important for them to have all relevant information. But right now I really don’t want to.

A couple months ago my PCP adjusted my thyroid medication. I wanted to try a higher dose to see if it helped my symptoms. He ran a blood test and it was borderline – the numbers were ok and didn’t suggest that I needed a change in dose, but they also didn’t show that a change in dose would be problematic. My naturopath wasn’t convinced. She thought that my results showed I shouldn’t increase the dose. Lucky for me, she wasn’t the one writing the prescription. My PCP wrote the new script and I started it immediately.

6 weeks later it was time to repeat the bloodwork. And damn, the numbers weren’t great. They were out of the lab’s “normal” range. Based on the research I’d done, I knew I might need to lower my dose, but I also knew that a lot of patients feel their best despite having numbers like these, so a change might not be completely necessary.

My PCP, who I love for this very reason, asked about my symptoms. I wasn’t showing any symptoms of being hyperthyroid. I know to watch for them, because that would be bad. On the low end, I’d feel anxious and jittery. On the high end, I’d be at risk for a heart attack. So yeah, you want to catch it at the low end. And I haven’t had any of those symptoms, despite test results that show I could be borderline hyperthyroid. Since he mostly doses based on symptoms, he said to keep it as is, for now. But we’ll change it if I show any symptoms at all.

So what’s the issue, you might ask. Well, the issue is that the practitioner I see the most frequently, and who I work with most closely, is my naturopath. Given her reaction to previous test results, I know she’ll want me to change my medication dose when (if?) she sees these. And she won’t be entirely wrong.

I worry about all of the things she’d worry about. Being hyperthyroid is bad. It will raise my risk for all sorts of problems. And on top of that, I need all of my systems to work together. I need to make sure I don’t strain my adrenal glands or cause other problems. But at the same time, I want -no, I need – to feel as good as possible on a daily basis. I can’t feel crappy now just because it might prevent some hypothetical problem down the road.

Or can I?

And this is where I’m stuck. I know that I should share these test results with my naturopath. She can’t force me to do anything. She can’t change my prescription. But she can reasonably point out all of the reasons that I already know a change might make sense, reasons I don’t want to be reminded of. So maybe that’s the real problem. I don’t want the reminder. Because I feel that I’m taking a risk, but one that’s worth taking.

If only I felt more confident in that decision.

2 Comments | Decisions, Frustration, Rants, Symptoms | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Doing too much and not enough

September 13, 2016

I miss you. I’ve been wanting to write and I just haven’t had the time. I’ve been too busy, but I don’t feel like I’ve been doing anything.

I want more time alone, but I’m lonely and miss hanging out with friends.

I need more time to work on my new business, but I’m working too much.

I have a million and one things around the house that need to get done. I can’t find time to just sit and do them, yet I feel like I do nothing but sit and work on chores.

Why is this? If I had to guess, I’d say that my fatigue is worse and it’s throwing everything out of perspective. I don’t feel like it’s necessarily worse, and yet, I’m tired. So tired. Much more often.

I’m constantly busy, constantly doing things (during my feeling-not-completely-like-shit hours, that is) and yet, nothing seems to get done. Is some of that because I spend too much time on Facebook? Sure. Does computer spider solitaire get in the way? Definitely. But it’s not only that. That might account for short bits of time, but that doesn’t explain why I still haven’t gone over last month’s bills, picked up a video at the library, or put away the laundry that’s on the drying racks.

I feel the pain, but it shouldn’t be stopping me. It must be the fatigue.

Because even though I resist it, even though I feel like that can’t be the case, I know it is. Whenever I feel like I’m constantly doing stuff but nothing is getting done, it’s the fatigue.

Damn you, fatigue!

2 Comments | Expectations, Fatigue, Frustration, Isolation, Limitations, Rants | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

P.A.I.N.

August 31, 2016

It’s one of those days. Well, it’s one of those weeks, actually. For now. Because of course I don’t know how long this will last. It could be months or years.

The thing about chronic pain that a lot of people don’t understand is that it isn’t necessarily consistent. For me, I have different kinds of pain to different degrees in different parts of my body at different times.

Maybe one day my knees are brutal but the rest of me feels ok. And another day my toes hurt so much I can hardly stand up and my wrists are just sore. Maybe my knees are on fire while my neck is throbbing. Some of it is predictable and some of it isn’t and that’s just the reality.

For several years now, the variation has always fallen within a certain range. My toes hurt up to a certain point in a certain way, my knees hurt up to a different point in a different way, etc. I got used to that. I knew how to handle that.

I don’t know why, but something changed. My knees have hurt a lot more lately, and in a different way from before. There’s a sort of stabbing pain followed but what feels like a loss of structural integrity, though I usually manage to not fall but shifting my weight briefly.

Even worse, my wrists have started to hurt in an all-too-familiar way. This is the pain that I had 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 9 years. It isn’t quite as severe as it used to be, but it’s the same type of pain. Occasionally (maybe 1-3 times per hour) it gets worse for a few minutes. The only thing that ever helped was a medication that I’d rather not take, but I will if this continues. But it did help. That was 15 years ago (the first time I took it) and 7 or 8 years ago (the second time I took it.) It’s only been about a week, so I’m hopeful it will go away.

Maybe it’s the weather? Maybe I did something to trigger it? Is it a coincidence that my knees and wrists got worse at the same time? Are they related?

All I know is that I’m in a scarier type of pain than I have been for a while now. That’s the thing: it’s emotional. The pain in my knees is bad, but I can walk through it. The pain in my wrists isn’t much worse, but for some reason it’s limiting what I can do. And for many years it limited my ability to write, to type, to cut my meat, to brush my hair, to wipe my ass…. I’d understandably rather not go back to that place.

So now I wait. I wait and hope. I hope that the pain diminishes.

Because I accept that I will be in pain, but I don’t want to be in this level of pain, in this type of pain, in this part of my body.

3 Comments | Expectations, Frustration, Pain, Rants, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

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