Despite the fact that so many things are going well right now (grades turned in, having fun planting flowers and kitchen herbs, thoroughly enjoying my new media set-up and connecting with people online), I've been having a very hard time with my health recently. I ran out of one of my medications and had to manage without it for about a week, I saw an immediate increase in my overall pain levels and fatigue, my hay fever symptoms are dragging me down, and menopause has meant some minor but really annoying digestive changes. Worst of all was the inability to focus, a loss of short-term memory, dizziness and confusion. I kept dropping things, saying the wrong words, forgetting important appointments. It was scary. I had to ask someone to get something heavy down off a high place in a store, something I would have been able to do without a second thought just a week earlier. I was afraid I would drop it as I have been fumbling and dropping everything else.
I continue to struggle with the idea that I am dependent on medications, even as I know that I need them. It's weird how much I've internalized the stigmas around addiction. I'm taking a medication that has legitimate uses for specific symptoms, (although I'm not self-medicating and exceeding my dosage!), but that is seen by many only through the lens of habituation and abuse. So in some ways I guess it's good that these last few days have been a sharp reminder of how miserable and uncomfortable my life can be if I don't manage my fibromyalgia symptoms aggressively, and that includes refilling my prescriptions with plenty of time to acomodate unexpected delays.
The incessant wind and dryness doesn't help--I get a static jolt every time I get out of the car, and I feel a kind of positive ion malaise. But summer means a slower pace.
Life is good.
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4 comments:
Sorry to hear that, sweetie. I suffer with chronic pain myself - so I understand. Here's hoping we both feel better soon.
Oh, boo!
I'm sorry you're in pain.
I hope it didn't inhibit your enjoyment of SYTYCD!
Though I missed it, I look forward to sharing your enthusiasm here online. I like your updates.
I noticed the wind really got under my and other people's skin, bad. I'd read that during the harmattan in North Africa people get really cranky, and I'd just thought it was annoyance, but you've mentioned ionization--does that factor in? I know nothing about it.
I cannot sleep or focus in the town I live in without Xanax. It is very difficult to get people to comprehend that this is really true since I drop it the minute I leave the parish. It couldn't be really necessary then, could it, they say, blah, blah, blah, and don't I realize I should move, blah, blah, blah. My point is that if I am disabled while I am there by not having medication that works, I will not be able to get it together to move. People really hate to hear that, too -- too challenging for them, apparently.
If it isn't abuse, it isn't abuse, no matter what other people may imagine.
P.S. positive ions. They were why I refused to go to college in Southern California. It was my contention that I would not be able to study to par with all those ions weighing on me. I think it is true (although it was also true that it would be better for studies to get out of the family orbit, of course -- which I wouldn't have said then, and/but I still think the ions were a big thing and real).
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