Advice between chronic illness folks

October 16, 2019

I don’t know about you, but it took me a looooong time to figure out how to handle flares. The truth is, I’m still learning. But over time, thankfully, I have found some things that help. Sometimes I take the learning process for granted; after all, I have had symptoms for almost 30 years now. A phone call a few nights ago changed that.

A friend was in the middle of a flare, and having a rough time. They were dealing with both the horrible physical symptoms as well as the emotional fallout of having to miss a much-anticipated event that night. There was also the all-too-common self-recrimination, wondering what they did to cause this. Maybe they should have done less the previous week when they felt so good. Maybe they should have rested more. Maybe maybe maybe.

I’m the queen of “what ifs” so I really get that. I do that to myself all the time, as much as I try not to. I’m getting better, but it’s still a struggle. This time, though, it was someone else who was struggling, so I was able to step outside of my own issues and help them.

My friend was only diagnosed last year, which really isn’t that long ago. It takes a long time to learn how to handle chronic illness. I wish I had had someone to guide me, but unfortunately, there was no one in my life at the time with that kind of experience. Now, I am glad I can be that person for others.

First, I talked my friend out of the emotional spiral. Sometimes our bodies are going to flare, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Maybe they did overdo it, but there was no way to know in advance. And maybe they didn’t overdo it, and there’s no way to know that, either. Maybe they could have done less last week, and they still would have had the flare, right? The weather was terrible; not only are we going through a seasonal change, but it was a very stormy day. There’s a good chance the weather was at fault more than anything, and what can anyone possibly do about that? Besides, once you’re in a flare, blaming yourself won’t help at all. And as much as we think we can figure out the cause and prevent the next flare, we can’t. Ok, sometimes we can, but to think we can do that every time is just unrealistic. That would imply there’s a way to prevent ever having a flare again, and we know that isn’t true. We only wish it were.

Once my friend was feeling a bit better emotionally, we talked about how to handle the current situation. I suggested some fun tv shows to watch, etc. But here’s where we get to the part I most want to share with you. Without thinking much of it, I mentioned some things I do that my friend thought was brilliant and it got me thinking, maybe not everyone does this? So let’s share our tips!

I know I will have more bad days. I don’t want them, but they are inevitable. So I prepare for them. Just like I have bandaids at home for the inevitable future cut or scrape, and acetaminophen for the inevitable future headache or fever, I also keep things around for future flares. Here’s a short list:

  • Fun, lighthearted movies saved on my Netflix and Amazon Prime accounts, plus a few old dvds.
  • Easy to watch tv series saved on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
  • Chocolate and other comfort food.
  • Frozen leftovers of healthy meals I have previously made.
  • Low-energy hobbies on hand. For me, this is currently knitting and crochet, which I enjoy on all but my worst days. I also like to read and listen to audiobooks when I feel up to it.

These work for me, but you will have your own items. On top of this, several years back I read a tip on Chronic Babe to make a list of things to do during a flare, since we can’t always remember these things when we’re dealing with tough symptoms. One problem I have found is that when I feel especially bad, I don’t even think to look at the list! So I recommended that my friend make a list, and tell several close friends and family members about it – anyone who they might talk to during a flare. That way, their friends and family can remind them to check their flare list, where they will find a list of things to do and ways to think.

My current list has fewer items like the ones above, which have become second nature at this point, and more items around my thought process, mostly recommended by my therapist. These help me to stop blaming myself or assuming things will get exponentially worse. I keep the list in the Google Keep app on my phone, so it’s always handy. Even if I don’t have the energy or am in too much pain to cross the room to my desk, I always have my phone on me. That’s key – keep your list where you can easily find it when you need it. Keeping it at the bottom of a heavy box on a high shelf is definitely not the most useful place for it!

It sucks, but we all know that we will have bad days, so we might as well prepare for them when we’re feeling ok. What do you to to prepare for the bad days? Do you have a flare list? What’s on it? Please share in the comments, because I’m certain you will have ideas that I and others haven’t thought of, and we all need to learn from each other!

8 Comments | Educating, Expectations, Fatigue, Frustration, Isolation, Limitations, Pain, Raves, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Support, Symptoms | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Reminded that my body can feel good

July 12, 2019

It’s not that I intentionally try to think of my body in negative ways, it just happens. My day is focused on which pills to take, how to moderate my activity enough to not cause fatigue, but so much that I don’t get enough exercise, how to sit and stand to lesson musculoskeletal pain, and being super careful about my diet. That’s before I research symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments. I am frequently aware of aches and pains, fatigue, nausea, and other symptoms. I don’t look for problems with my body, but I think about them constantly anyway.

And then this week I was aware of good sensations, and it made me realize just how much I think about the bad stuff. The good stuff came in two forms. First, there was physical therapy. That often makes me feel good, and I appreciate it every time. Still, it doesn’t make me aware of the juxtaposition as much as I was this week. The other thing that happened was that I had sex. I hadn’t had sex in a while, and when I did, it was just a fun night with a former boyfriend who I fool around with whenever he’s in town. This time, he was in town for a week, and while we didn’t have sex every day, we still had quite a good time. He’s very understanding about my health issues. One night he was in the mood and I didn’t feel up to it. No big deal. Another night, I felt really sick, and he simply held my hand until I felt well enough to go to sleep. He knows what will hurt me and avoids those things. Having that level of trust and understanding makes all the difference for me. It allows me to simply enjoy myself.

Now let’s face it, even healthy people often feel more positively aware of their bodies after good sex, so that isn’t unusual. It’s just that I became aware of the fact that the good feelings were displacing the bad ones. In the afterglow of a particularly good orgasm, I was too focused on the good feelings to notice any pain or fatigue. I knew those would likely hit me later, but for a while, they were held at bay. This wasn’t new. In fact, there were a few times when I was dating this same guy that I specifically said I wanted to have sex because I was in a ton of pain and I knew sex would help, thanks to the lovely brain chemicals that are released. Unfortunately, my dating life is pretty much nonexistent, so that hasn’t been an option for me lately.

When I went back to physical therapy at the end of the week, I paid more attention to how good I felt afterwards. She had spent a particularly long time working on my knees, and I noticed how different they felt now that they were full extended (something that doesn’t yet happen without her assistance.) I felt the lack of knots in my neck. My body was relaxed and, while not pain-free, definitely pain-lite.

Most days I won’t be at physical therapy or enjoying sex, and I won’t have those moments with few symptoms. But this was a good reminder that when I do occasionally notice my body feeling good, I need to revel in it. For as long as it lasts, feeling good is important, and something worth savoring.

Leave a Comment » | Expectations, Milestones, Raves, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Symptoms | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

I don’t know what to hope for

March 21, 2019

I read a lot of stories about patients improving to the point of their symptoms going into remission and even being able to take a jog or get a job. Of course, I also read stories about those who get much worse are are unable to care for themselves. Right now I fall somewhere in the middle, and I very much want the former but worry about the latter.

It’s hard to be involved in the chronic illness community and not hear these stories, I suppose. I read blogs and follow various Facebook groups. I imagine I would see a lot more if I was on Instagram on Twitter, but that’s more than I can manage right now. So often I worry about getting permanently sicker. It’s one of my biggest fears. But every now and then, I wonder, could I get better?

Now I’m not fooling myself. I will never job – my knees are permanently unable to support jogging. I can’t imagine how my symptoms would ever go fully into remission. But what if I could still get significantly better? Is that even possible?

When you sprain an ankle, your expected outcome is to completely heal. When you get a cold, your expected outcome is to completely recover. But when you have chronic illness, there simply is no “expected outcome.” I read stories by thyroid patients whose symptoms went into remission, but they usually caught it early on and immediately treated it properly. I did not. I read stories about folks with adrenal insufficiency who recovered completely, but they usually caught it early on and were able to remove the offending stressor. I did not catch it early on and my stressor is my chronic illnesses, which will never go away. So what is realistic for me?

There are no answers. I know that. But that doesn’t make it easy to wander through this maze of diagnoses, doctor appointments, and tests, constantly striving for better health but not knowing what to aim for. On a scale of 1-10, the year after I started this blog I was probably at a 3. Now I’m probably at a 5 or 6. I know I will never be at a 10, or even a 9. But is an 8 possible? Is a 7 possible? Already I wonder if I have reached my maximum possible health. But at the same time, I keep trying.

I keep trying because I see the possibility. I have given up many times over the years. I stopped trying to get better because I didn’t know what else to try. Now I have a list of things to try. I don’t know if any can help, and some may even hurt, but how can I not at least try? Some are obvious, like my upcoming infusion (yes, I’m doing it) for anemia and low ferritin. Increasing my pregnenolone makes sense, because blood tests show it’s low, and it’s necessary for progesterone and cortisol production. But should I take Cortef to treat my adrenal insufficiency? Or maybe my fatigue isn’t from adrenal problems at this point but from something else? I continue to find and elimination sources of corn in my diet, most recently realizing that my calcium and vitamin C supplements contain corn. I stopped those a couple of weeks ago and already feel much better. Maybe there’s more corn sneaking into my diet? I have no idea how careful I need to be and don’t want to go overboard, but eliminating corn seems to help. I want to try LDN (low dose naltraxone) which some patients report has helped with their autoimmune disease.

There are more specialists I want to see, supplements I want to try, dietary changes I am considering. Each of these takes ages, and can easily be derailed. I was going to try increasing my pregnenolone this week, but then I found out my compound thyroid was made as a slow-release version, which no one told me (and the doctor didn’t order!) and that explains some of my current problems. I am going to start the correct version of the medication in a few days, and by the time I have adjusted to that, it will be time for my iron infusion. I will need to wait a few weeks after that to see how I’m feeling and if I need a second infusion before I consider other changes.

Any time I make a change, I wait for weeks, sometimes months, to make sure I still feel ok. And so often, some other symptom or reaction gets in the way and I need to delay my plans. That means it will probably take me 2+ years to get through my current list of 9 things I want to try.

It would be so much easier to give up. I’m in a pretty good place, and maybe I should just be happy with where I’m at. But then I think about having to miss my very close friend’s surprise party last weekend because I didn’t feel up to going. And I think about the pain several days ago that was so bad, I had trouble functioning. And I think about those days that the fatigue wears me down unexpectedly. And I think about what happens if one day I want to get married, and I can’t even have the kind of wedding I want because I won’t have the energy for it. And I think about how much I want to spend the entire day with my nieces and nephews but I don’t have the energy for it.

And then I decide to try again. Because maybe I won’t get any better than where I’m at right now. Maybe this is as good as it gets. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe I can nudge my way up to a 6.5 on that scale, and wouldn’t that be worth all of the effort?

2 Comments | Decisions, Expectations, Fatigue, Frustration, Healthcare, Limitations, Medication, Rants, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

I wish I could stop my fake smile

July 21, 2018

Even at 12 years old, I knew not to milk my situation. If I exaggerated the pain I was in, cried unnecessarily, or complained too much, it would come back to bite me in the butt later. I was right, of course. Even without all of the theatrics, some doctors and teachers suggested my pain wasn’t real, that I was just trying to get attention. Assholes. The thing is, this idea that I shouldn’t exaggerate anything boomeranged, and soon I was pretending I was ok even when I wasn’t.

Sometimes that’s a good thing. For me, faking it until I make it can help. And I hate having people constantly ask me what’s wrong, so looking like nothing is wrong can help to prevent that.

But then, sometimes it’s not so good.

Today a friend stopped by unexpectedly. I was NOT in a good place. I’ll probably right about that another time, but basically, I’m in rough shape. The pain has been worse lately, and it’s spreading to more parts of my body for some unknown reason. I’m worried about the future. I might have to move out of the apartment that I love. I’m frustrated and overwhelmed and, mostly, very scared.

I started to talk about some of this with my friend. I could feel the start of tears in my eyes. But I didn’t want to get too far down the rabbit hole. If I tried to explain everything, it would just lead me to focus more on the thing I’m trying to get off my mind for a while. So I said I needed to stop talking about it. And a second later we had changed the subject and I found myself smiling.

Now don’t get me wrong, smiling is a good thing, especially when you’re happy. But I wasn’t happy. I was smiling because I am used to plastering that smile on my face, even when I don’t want to. It’s what made the LTD and SSDI trials so hard: I was supposed to let them see how I really felt, and I didn’t know how to do that anymore. After so many years of fake smiles, how could I stop?

Before my friend showed up, I was definitely not smiling. I wasn’t smiling after he left, either. But with him here, I smiled. I thought to myself, “I should stop smiling. He knows I’m scared and in pain and he’ll be here for me. I want to stop.” But I couldn’t.

When my grandmother died just a few years ago, I cried during the funeral. Later, at the shiva (a Jewish tradition where friends and family gather to console the bereaved) I found myself smiling a lot. One relative I didn’t know very well even commented on how great it was that I could focus on the good parts of my grandmother’s life and remain so cheerful. Little did he know. I wasn’t cheerful. It was an act. I was smiling, I had a bounce in my voice, and I was miserable.

My fake smile was helpful today at the grocery store. I looked and acted normal, so no one asked any questions. But with my family and friends, sometimes I want to stop smiling.

If only I knew how.

2 Comments | Expectations, Frustration, Isolation, Pain, Rants, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Symptoms | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

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