sick – Dystonia and Me

Archive, February 2023

Hide & Seek…

Posted on February 14, 2023 by dystoniaandme

What? You found me already?! Dang you’re good. Though I suppose being back here in my second home isn’t really the best hiding place. But hey I had you for a minute there 😉

All jokes aside, I was admitted last Friday back to my local hospital. It wasn’t a surprise. I’d been going down hill quickly since my last discharge; unable to keep down food, meds or fluids for more than a few minutes at a time. I was feeling incredibly unwell.

My local practice has an amazing Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) who takes fantastic care of me. She started doing regular tests to monitor me. My renal function was dropping fairly dramatically despite valiant attempts to sort the issue nothing helped so off to the hospital I was sent and have remained.

So far I have remained my usual medical mystery self. A Zebra to the core. Tolerating anything orally for generally mere minutes at best. Whilst urology have ruled things out on there side, my symptoms remain just as severe. Referrals have been made to the inpatient dietitian and gastro team so here’s hoping they’ll turn up at some point and they might have some fresh ideas..

Archive, September 2021

‘Learn to live with it’

Posted on September 23, 2021 by dystoniaandme

After over a year of my follow up gyny appointment being rearranged and cancelled repeadedly by the hospital due to Covid, I finally saw the consultant. I arrived with high hopes, a notebook full of the requested data they’d asked me to log, and a very grumpy daughter who would have preferred we’d stayed on the bus.

After reassuring staff that I’d contracted Covid at the start of the month and hadn’t escaped isolation, they took my temp which was border line high. Feeling thankful that a quick round of begging and reassuring them that I felt fine, I was allowed to stay. Two hours later, I was seen with grumpy toddler who was vocalising her unhappiness in tow.

Normally when I have a female gyny the appointment goes slightly better. I explained that my periods were getting worse 48 days long on average but 73 was getting more frequent. That they left me physically sick and due to the change in hormones increased my eds symptoms. She brushed it to one side.

“You will have to learn to live with it”. I’m pretty my face was a picture. My emotions were not in check as I was desperate for this appointment to go well, having last time discussed albation with me. Meds are no option for me due to my EDS, I understand that, hell we had even tried that. I queried the more radical surgical and was told not untill I’m forty, at the moment I am 28.

I can’t get my head around it really. I’m lucky to get more than two weeks between each cycle. It leaves me in pain, sick and exhausted. But yeah sure “learn to live with it”.

Archive, October 2016

Duvet Days

Posted on October 2, 2016February 24, 2022 by dystoniaandme

Today is the last day of Invisible illness week 2016. I had had good intentions all week to blog daily, however readjusting to uni life meant that I was coming home from lectures and going straight to sleep. For this week I had planned to blog about achieving despite illness, and general spoonie hacks for coping with day to day life. Instead I’ve decided to leave these topics for another day and address the reality of what happens to someone with chronic illness when they catch an ‘ordinary’ bug.

I have spent the majority of today curled up under my duvet feeling frankly rather pathetic. Having caught a sicky bug and then developing a kidney infection I’m not feeling overly fantastic. Instead all my joints have been in a constant state of flare up pain, I have struggled to remain sitting upright for any length of time because my back feels like I have Snow White’s 7 dwarfs performing an irish jig on it; to walk the measly few steps from my bed to the bathroom has involved me gripping on to my walking sticks as I don’t trust my dodgy joints not to slip out of place and add to my already elevated pain levels. This is my reality every single time I catch some sort of acute bug. It sucks. Whenever my partner or my housemate has asked me what they can do to help, I’ve asked for a new body. It’s a silly retort and a bittersweet one at that. For a brief moment I’ll smile, as I know how unattainable that is, and then comes the downwards spiral because there are nowhere near enough words in existence for me to express how much I wish I could just have a new glitch free body.

Image result for spoonie life — credit: Pinterest – Spoonie Awareness

My mental well-being always takes a blow when I feel ‘iller’ than normal. So finding positives in each moment helps. Today I’m celebrating the fact that I recognized I needed a time out from life, I’m thrilled that I actually managed to change into a fresh set of pyjamas, that hell yeah I managed to walk through the pain with my stick, and sure I only managed a wee while but I still managed to accomplish some revision.

Sure I may be moaning and feeling rather sorry for myself, but I’m over the moon that I still managed all these positive moments. Tomorrow I’ll wake up to a new sunrise, and hopefully experience far less pain.

Archive, December 2015, September

But You Don’t Look Sick

Posted on December 18, 2015February 24, 2022 by dystoniaandme

Well first off thanks for the compliment! I work hard on making sure that I don’t look completely awful. The more my body is playing up the more care I take with my appearance; it cheers me up, and that’s one step towards having a good day. Mr judgemental Taxi man, I may not look as ill as you would like me to, but I was on the way to the Drs this morning because on top of all my chronic health conditions I had contracted yet another chest infection along with sinusitis. Yeah my immune system sucks. Infections on top of my pre-existing conditions are always detrimental and not something my body copes with well. I needed to get a prescription to nip it in the bud!

What do you deem as sick? Do I need to be wheelchair bound, using a walking stick or screaming in agony? Some days that is me. There are days when my meds are not strong enough to control my dysfunctional body, where my body contorts and contracts into positions that you could not imagine. Would you believe I was sick then? Not everyone does. There have been healthcare professionals who have stood by debating over which symptoms are real and which are fake in an attempt to get drugs. This is simply because they do not understand my conditions, I do not blame them, it’s not like my brain has developed the common ailments after all. However taking a moment to listen to someone before making a judgement is not hard.

Next time you see someone who isn’t stereotypically ‘sick’, pause and think.