December of last year I began getting “sick”. At first it was a migraine that lasted a week. Then after I was in urgent care to have an infused IV for the migraine I began having a stomach bug that landed me in the hospital a few days later when I couldn’t stop vomiting and having diarrhea. For 3 weeks I couldn’t get anything down other than toast, broth and tea. I got a week’s break before I got the “flu”. The “flu” never left. Blood tests happened. I had an ultrasound for my tender abdomen. More blood tests. The results weren’t good, I was told to come back in 4 weeks. I went to an immunologist. I had allergy tests. She gave me an antibiotic (the first one in 4 months) it cleared up only the congestion in my head. But the symptoms I was having at that point were: Extreme fatigue, chills, night sweats, poor appetite, loss of weight, I was always cold, head cold, body aches, muscle weakness, joint aches, back pain and tenderness in the abdomen. She gave me allergy medicine for my allergies and told me to see an infectious disease doctor. They don’t see you without a diagnosis. I went back to my GP and then the chaos began.
From there it’s been a shit show circus of more doctors and negative, positive, negative blood tests that mystify many doctors and more and more referrals. My list of what’s gone wrong today is ever growing, all of the symptoms have taken on super speed to becoming increasingly worse fast. I’m trying to stay positive but when you are in really intense chronic pain it’s very hard to distract yourself from it and keep onboard the happy train. I try to keep a morbid perspective of what people in concentration camps survived through. I’m not looking into the face of death, plagued by famine, extinction and terror. Compared to them this is a cup of tea, but still I find myself crying by myself wishing there would be a diagnosis just so my spine would stop feeling like a pressurized spring and my hand would cease it’s aching and I would be able to at least walk for a while on the beach and feel the ocean waves around my legs.
So I have been doing the worst possible thing I can possibly do for myself this week because I just think that if everything keeps coming back that I’m healthy there really must not be anything WRONG with me. Fake it until you make it, right? I’ve tried to go on this week as I used to do. I have played it all out, business as usual, as I would have in October or November of last year. But it doesn’t feel like “Mind Over Matter” is working. I feel like shit. I have this ferocious headache that came on yesterday and isn’t going away, despite water and Tylenol. The Celebrex isn’t even giving me that 6 hours of relief it normally does. I’ve began sneezing and I have a sore throat and earache AGAIN. My mouth has sores inside and out. My back is killing me. My hand is all swollen, and for the first time my ankle has now jumped into the shit show and it’s now swollen as well. Oh, and I’m dead tired. Absolutely dead tired. Let’s not leave out that on a scale of 1 to 10, I’m a solid 10 at this moment as far as being in pain.
But all the tests say that I’m healthy so why is my body being stupid? Shouldn’t I be all sorts of good if they can’t find anything wrong?
