I’m swollen and my meds are making me sick in new, fun ways. Ironically, I look pregnant. I’m so uncomfortable and normally I can get myself through the bad days by feeling like there is some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. For some reason, this time I’m having a harder time convincing myself I can outlast the pain.
I’ve resorted to doing whatever needs to be done to give myself a little relief.
I wanted to make this post a good one. Positive. Grateful. Optimistic.
But I just can’t right now.
Today was not a bad day. I woke up to a lovely breakfast of truffle crab ramen noodles. Picked up some organic fruits from the farmer’s market down the street. Mocked hubby relentlessly for his resuable shopping bag with a baguette peeking out the top. Got a pedi downstairs with the hubs. Finished cleaning out all my clothes from the old apartment.
Then took a nice three hour nap.
But I spent far too many minutes of the day staring off into space. Trying not to cry. Thinking about the future and the current and all the things I could have done differently. Wondering, why me? Wondering if I will ever be a mother. Knowing that I am not even close to accepting the fact that I may not be. I imagine all of this would cut so much more if I were a few years older and was faced with the reality that time was running out in more ways than one. I am still trying to figure out what to grieve at this point and how to. How much grieving vs how much hope to pour into this. I’m leaning towards hope for now, grief perhaps we can save for later. But preferrably not.
The breathing issue is still frightening. When I woke up from my nap today I was having sharp chest pains, I rolled over and they went away which leads me to believe they were just gas pains. But still, it’s weird to wonder at what point gas pains could be ER worthy pains and to have no clue where the line gets drawn. The hubby asks me what’s wrong everythime I take a deep breath because he thinks I’m sighing. Nope, just trying to fill these darned lungs with some air is all.
Where do I begin? Do I start with all the small, good things I have found the ability to be thankful for? Do I begin with the feeling of complete and utter failure and disappointment in my body? Or do I talk about how I’m not sure anymore what to do next.
I suppose I could just talk about the fact that my arms sort of resemble those of an IV drug user since I’ve had six different needles stabbed into various parts of my arms over the last seven days. Did I ever mention how much I hate needles? I managed to successfully avoid all blood tests for twelve years and then karma bit me in the ass and I’ve had too many to count in the last five and a half (!) years.
How do I feel? I still feel like crap. My anemia is not getting worse but it’s not improving at this point either so I am teetering at the edge of “blood transfusion” territory. I’m really hoping to avoid that if at all possibile (see: fear of blood and needles) and my doc is optimistic that my current treatments will work at slowly bumping my numbers back to where they should be. Being aware of just how anemic I am is oddly comforting because it makes me understand why I’ve been so completely exhausted and the brain fog I’ve been experiencing these last few weeks. I thought I was just losing my mind, it’s kind of nice to know there’s a biological reason for it.
In the coming weeks I’m going to have to carefully balance my health with my career. I am at an interesting stage at work. I have proven myself, I am starting to be given small opportunities. I’m not sure how the inevitable sick days or leave-work-early for doc appt days are going to affect all this but I guess I can’t be overly concerned about that right now. If I don’t have my health, my career won’t last long anyway. It’s just hard to have worked so long and hard for something and to have your own pathetic health be the thing that gets in the way.
But I’m trying not to think of it that way. Next post will be dedicated to all the things I’m grateful for despite all this.
This was the first song of the three that set me off the other day. I really don’t think I could get through times like these without a belief in a loving, Heavenly Father. I’m not strong enough on my own.
Fee – Everything Falls
You said
You’d never leave or forsake me
You said
This life is gonna shake me
You said this world is gonna bring trouble on my soul
This I know
When everything falls apart
Your arms hold me together
When everything falls apart
You’re the only hope for this heart
When everything falls apart
And my strength is gone
I find You mighty and strong
You keep holding on
You keep holding on
When I see
Darkness all around me
When I see
Tragedy has found me
I still believe
Your faithful arms will never let me go
Still I know
When everything falls apart
Your arms hold me together
When everything falls apart
You’re the only hope for this heart
When everything falls apart
When my strength is gone
I find You mighty and strong
You keep holding on
You keep holding on
Sorrow will last for the night
But hope is rising with the sun
It’s rising with the sun
There will be storms in this life
But I know You have overcome
You have overcome
When everything falls apart
Your arms hold me together
When everything falls apart
You’re the only hope for this heart
When everything falls apart
And my strength is gone
I find You mighty and strong
You keep holding on
When everything falls apart
Your arms hold me together
When everything falls apart
You’re the only hope for this heart
When everything falls apart
And my strength is gone
I find You mighty and strong
You keep holding on
You keep holding on
I just wanted to say, I’m having a really hard time processing everything that’s going on right now. I am so tired. I’m physically uncomfortable. I’m on the precipice of falling into a dark, dingy, pit of depression. It’s literally hard to breath sometimes (which by the way, is scary as hell).
Thank God that I have Friday, Monday and Tuesday all off from work. It would probably have been a good time to be in the office and take advantage of some opportunities for growth but sadly I can’t even think about that right now. I just have to phsyically get better and somehow I don’t think work contributes much to that (beyond the kickass medical insu.rance).
Can I admit something here? I cried on the way to the doctors on Tuesday. I cried really hard as I drove myself down the freeway. It was the music that set me off…
How do we comprehend peace within pain?
Or joy at a good man’s wake?
Walk a mile with a woman who’s body is torn
With illness, but she marches on
Oh, cause sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
Sometimes the sky rains night after night
When will it clear?
But our hope endures
Through the worst of conditions
It’s more than our optimism
Let the earth quake
Our hope is unchanged
That was actually the third song which set me off. I will save the other two for another post because they’re good in and of themselves. Paul and I were supposed to go to Seattle this weekend but it seems like that may not be happening if I can’t fly. If not, I hope we can spend the weekend doing nothing but enjoying each other company. I just need some quiet time. I need to not feel like the complete and utter failure that I am. Or maybe I just need to be really fucking depressed and cry my eyeballs out about how life is fucking unfair. Maybe. Maybe not.
On the BART today, on my way to my regularly scheduled bi-monthly doc appt, I was mulling over a post about bitterness. It was going to be great. It’s still something I’m probably going to write about at some point because I find it absolutely fascinating. It’s completely useless and yet so many have mastered the art of bitterness with such ease.
Anyway.
Long story short, this post is actually about how my doctor hit the panic button as I rode the BART home from my appointment and I eventually ended up spending my evening in the ER. It’s never a good thing when you have two voicemails from two different doctors telling you to get thyself to an ER right quick and when one of those doctors leaves his personal cell phone number and tells you to call him back. Also bad when your doctor tells you he spoke with the Urgent Care clinic and they don’t feel comfortable having you come in because you should really just go to the ER. Like now. Are you still standing there? Go!
I admit it, I let myself cry a very little bit and thought to myself, good Lord am I going to die or something? Doctors have a very fine line to walk with conveying a sense of urgency and not totally freaking your patients out.
But anyway, it turned out okay. After an EKG, chest x-rays, copious amounts of blood drawn (which involved an IV being inserted into my arm – by the way you’d think after all the needles I’ve endured over the last five years I’d be used to them? But no, not so much) and some nasty medicine that is still doing things to my stomach (and toilet) that you do NOT want to know about, I was sent home with strict orders to “not exert myself” and follow up with my regular docs in the morning. And also of course, to come back if I felt like I was going to, you know, die or anything.
Which I don’t seem to be doing. So that’s good. And in the spirit of not dying, here’s a list of things I’m thankful for today:
– Calm, supportive, wonderful husband who did not feed my panic but also did not let me write off the seriousness of the situation by blowing off the docs instrux. And despite his phobia of wasting food, did not bat an eye about the Costco pack of yogurt which spoiled in our trunk since he didn’t want to waste 30min of speeding to the hospital time to go home and drop it off.
– I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I was treated at the ER and the staff was wonderful. I was seen immediately and was released in about three hours. This is the first trip to the ER that I can remember (I think I went once as a baby when I banged my head into a table, which explains a lot) but from all the horror stories I’ve heard, it seemed like a pretty quick turnaround time.
– My parents were in the car on the way to the hospital when I called to tell them I was going home because even though I’m almost 28 years old and married, I’m still their baby. They are so sweet. When I had to stay overnight in the hospital at age 22 my mom stayed on a cot in my room with me hehe. I have no doubt she would have done it again today.
– I have health insurance.
– I still have faith that God wouldn’t give me something too big for me to handle. I don’t love the hand I’ve been dealt, but I believe there is a purpose and some kind of meaning at the end of all of this even if I don’t know what it is yet.
So I will see the specialists tomorrow and see what the next step is. Obviously things aren’t going the way I hoped but I feel blessed to have doctors who are monitoring me so closely so as to not let this thing spiral completely out of control. Prayers and good thoughts are welcome.
Me: This is the happiest time of your life isn’t it?
Hubby (with a big smile on his face): I spent the whole day shopping, since I dropped you off [at 8:30am] until now [5pm]. What do you think?
Me: Omg, how much did this cost me?
Lately I feel incapable of putting thoughts into words. There are moments when I feel it’s fair to blame the brain fog, but mostly I think I’ve just lost the ability to think creatively. Or to think. Period.
Why will life not hold itself constant so that I can figure things out? I am stressed. I am tired. I am tapering my meds and I have no way of knowing how much of the pain I’m in is coming from the change in meds and how much is because I physically suck at handling stressful situations.
Even though The Big Test itself is going to suck, I feel really relieved that at least it’s almost here and will be over after this Saturday. I should be flattered that everyone seems to think I am exaggerating my lack of prepared-ness and seems to think I will pass, but it just kind of bugs me. I know I’m not prepared and I am not being humble or coy when I say I will not pass. At this point, I’m sitting for the test because I have no other choice as they don’t allow you to cancel (I checked). If I do pass, it will be sheer dumb luck, but realistically? Yeah, I’m gonna fail.
Also stressing me out has been the whole loan closing process. We FINALLY signed loan docs today, since we were supposed to have closed today that’s not entirely reassuring but at this point we figure our seller is not going to back out after approving three financing contingency extensions and one escrow date extension (which we are technically in breach of now I guess?). The underwriting process has been an exercise in incompetence, I do plan on going into more detail about which bank we were dealing with once this process is behind us and our loan is fully funded, so if you are planning on getting a mortgage anytime soon, check back in on who to avoid like the plague. Supposedly there is a chance we will fund tomorrow, but with the way things have been going, I’m not going to expect anything until Friday.
So amidst all of this my arthritis has flared up to a degree it has not been at in awhile…aaand…my blood pressure has actually gone down back towards normal-ish (still high though) levels. I don’t know what this means. I honestly don’t feel confident that my doctors will know what this means, because after five years, I just don’t have that much faith in Western medicine. Sure they are good at figuring out what’s going wrong with you, but it doesn’t seem like they have an actual solution beyond trying to control the symptoms. But that’s a whole other rant for another time.
I swear, at some point, I will quit being such a downer. Maybe once this week has passed.
At this point I’ve pretty much given up on doing any meaningful studying before my test. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will literally be the most unprepared person on the whole planet who is taking this test (an actual accomplish-able feat since everyone in the world takes the test on the same day and since it’s level 2 the bums, other than me, have been weeded out).
I’m going to try to enjoy my time off as best I can but between the nausea, arthritis and our mortgage lender’s incomptence, so far today has mostly been a bust.
So the start to my weeklong staycation has gone even worse than I imagined.
Amount of studying accomplished? Nil. None. Zero. Maybe even less than that.
My excuse (and it is, mostly an excuse because none of this actually precludes me from studying) is that I am in pain. Not the most excruciating pain I’ve ever been in but it has been a blessedly long time since I’ve felt this way.
Sometimes I will see an elderly person slowly making their way across the street and I think it affects me a lot more than it does for most other people my age, or twenty years older than me for that matter. I know what it feels like. Today especially, I feel what it feels like. I started the weekend out with a sore right wrist/arm. Normally I don’t take my sleeping pills on the weekends but I could feel an outbreak of stiffness and pain coming my way so I figured maybe if I could ensure a decent night’s sleep I could head it off.
Nope.
I have been feeling so good lately that it only just occurred to me today that having hardwood (okay, so they’re pergo) is going to s-uuck on days like this. The joints in the bottoms of my feet (particularly the left one, no reason, just because my body hates me) are swollen and aching, walking on carpet hurts so yeah, hard floors? Sigh.
The thing about arthritis, for those of you who have never had the pleasure, is that you don’t realize just how many frickin’ joints you have in your body and how painfully often you use them, until it hurts like a mofo every single time you do. I am actually feeling sort of lucky today because all the pain seems to be in my lower half at the moment, so if I just sit here on the couch I might not even know anything is wrong. It’s a perfect excuse to have Paul wait on me hand and foot, other than those pesky trips to the restroom. Unfortunately, I still have to get up myself for those.
On top of the more overt pain I’ve been feeling, I have also been feeling totally nauseated and congested. I am just really uncomfortable and I kind of don’t know how I’m going to sit through a six-hour test next weekend, nevermind the complete lack of preparation.
I’ve really shot myself in the foot this time haven’t I?
Big sigh of relief. We FINALLY received final approval yesterday and are set to close as scheduled on Wednesday.
Work was sort of crazy yesterday for various reasons, a lot of which was related to me trying to clean everything up before my one week “vacation.” It sucks because I REALLY need this time off but if it goes as it should (studying) it won’t be very restful. Anyway, I went out for a couple drinks with some coworkers after our “early” day (by early, I mean we got to leave about 1.5hrs ahead of schedule, not exactly a half day) and I don’t know if it was the drinking or what but I felt horrible last night. I only had two drinks so I’m not really sure what happened, but I felt completely nauseous, headache, upset stomach and I’m still not feeling quite right this morning. Note to self, stop drinking. You idiot.
Actually though, I think it’s allergies/the coming of a bad cold. I hope.