WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

When is enough really enough?  A question I often pose to the fates.  I throw it out there all the time.  I am serious when I say this isn’t quite the life I signed up for. I am tired, in pain and fatigued and at what I believe is the beginning of a state of distress and I often wonder if I was born under some bad sign. 

You see, I was a very sick child. Suffering from yearly bouts and hospitalizations due to pneumonia and extreme hay fever with weekly shots at the hospital (which thankfully I have outgrown) along with asthma, eczema and an aptitude for complete klutziness and it is amazing that I did not cause my poor mother premature greying. In my last year of high school, I was suffering from a constant state of “flu like” symptoms and after repeated requests from my doctor asking me to take a pregnancy test, I finally stopped with his nonsensical diagnoses and quit going for check ups.  Eventually, I just lived with the “flu like” symptoms for many years to come.  And finally, ten years later, several hospital visits and many physician changes, I found a fabulous doctor who sent me for one simple blood test that confirmed that I had hypothyroidism. She also confirmed that she caught it in the nick of time.  She said that everything was running so slow on me, I had about a year of life left.  It was scary to say the least.

During this time and years to come, I would suffer more weird health issues from a doctor who lost several of her family members and unconsciously gave me two sample drugs that interacted with each other causing me three days in the emergency followed by two years of numbness in one arm, to developing hives daily for seven long years, to an ulcer, to a broken ankle, to a broken leg in three places, to several car accidents that left me with a dislocation of two ribs and a clavicle and created the need for a breast reduction, to my all time favourite: the blood squirting eyeball that could have secured me a job in a Stephen King movie.  These are just the tip of the iceberg. Luckily for me, I am not a hypochondriatic, and every thing I suffered from had some medical explanation here or there.

Through it all, I had my very weird sense of humour to get me thru the day and I could spend a lot of time looking at every incident and finding the humour in it and it always made me chuckle.

But these last couple of years have taken their toll on me in terms of strange medical problems from dry eyes, to trouble swallowing, to unexplained rashes to swollen joints, to days where I can barely move because the pain is so bad, that putting one step in front of the other is all I can do and it is getting worse.  My life has been segregated into two groups: tolerable days and bad pain days and I am hating how it is dictating my life.

After several mis diagnosis, I finally had a partial answer.  I am suffering from connective tissue disease or diseases.  Apparently I have many symptoms from many forms of it and my inflammation levels are off the chart.  Of course, I did the worst thing possible and did an in depth search and what I read freaked me out on all levels.  I could have Lupus or Sjogrens or gawd forbid Scleroderma.  They ruled out Rheumatoid Arthritis although I have a dormant gene, lucky me I suppose.  Now, my life has become a waiting game.  I see a specialist in August and will undergo several tests and have already been told that the tests that I had already done are so complicated in what they showed that it could take up to five years to pin point exactly which one I have and start me on a proper course of treatment.  What they could confirm with me is that I will never have a pain free day again.

So I ask the question again: when is enough really enough.  Today, for me, at this moment, I have had enough!  I am sick of it (no pun intended).  I cranky, bitchy and miserable and am starting to take on the personality of my crotchety 95 year old grandmother, which puts me into a whole other level of freakiness.

This is not the life I wanted or imagined and no matter what you say, today the rainbow is covered by clouds and my face is swollen from how much I have cried today.  And as I type this, I wonder why I am sharing it with the cyber world.  I suppose I am just hoping that someone out there will read this and say “it’s okay Tracy, I know what you are going thru”.  In the meantime, I suppose you could say that I am suffering from a bad pain day that has taken hostage of the logical side of my brain and unleashed the monstrous emotional side which I am having difficulty controlling.

In any event, you will just have to forgive me, I am presently visiting pity city.  And even though I like the architecture there, I don’t plan on staying for too long, just a short visit and then I will be back to crazy old me.

As for tonight, I am thinking that a nice glass of wine followed by a great big jar of my favourite pickles is really what the doctor ordered, followed by me laying on the couch with my ice pack, some advil and my lovely pooch who will be more than willing to slather his love all over my face.  And no matter how miserable I am today, that is a prescription I can’t wait to take.

Until Next Time.
Smooches from the Queen of Pity.