Tag Archives: sleep

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Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This.

One night last week I had the worst sleep in recent memory. I was in bed at 930pm and turned the light off about an hour later. I was trying to wear my CPAP, but it has this habit of revving its pressure up incessantly which pumps air into my belly and lifts the mask off my face. Even if I can drift off with the belly bloat, the mask lifting and the increased pressure always wake me. It finally dawned on me that the machine thinks I’ve stopped breathing, so it is increasing its pressure to open my airways. This occurred to me after doing a breathing meditation where the woman said, after this certain period of time, most people have taken 12 to 14 breaths. I had taken 6. So, now, thinking my respiration is uncommonly slow, I try to speed it up and that seems to stop the CPAP revving… But I feel like I’m hyperventilating and it’s anything but relaxing.

This is what was going through my head that night. I did fall asleep for about 15 minutes, but then awoke with my sinuses swollen shut. Not the safest thing when you have tape over your mouth. So, I took the mask off and tried to sleep. And tried to sleep. And tried to sleep. The air in my guts was painful. My neck was hurting. It was too cold in my room. Something was clicking out in the hallway. I turned my heater on, I put Tiger Balm on my neck, I went to the loo, I sat in the hallway for what felt like an hour waiting to hear the click and find the culprit, but it never happened. Back in bed, I tossed and turned for hours. It felt like someone had attached jumper cables to my toes. My whole body was amped up and electrified. There was some sort of generator hum in my room, coming through the floor boards, vibrating the bed. It felt like a spaceship was idling in the garden outside my window. It felt like I was sleeping directly above the engine room in an ocean liner. It felt like the world’s biggest TENS unit had its electrodes attached to the bed frame. I tried to convince myself it was soothing, like falling asleep while being driven in the car as a child. But it wasn’t working; I was growing more and more desperate and agitated with every hour. Midnight, one, two, three, four… I finally went downstairs to where my husband was sleeping and woke him up in a panic. In all of the lonely, sickly, desperate nights of the last two years, I have NEVER woken my husband because there would be nothing he could do. But this night I was about to unplug every appliance in the house and then I was going to bang on the neighbors’ doors and ask them to unplug everything. I was wild. He threw the breaker on the hot tub while I turned off the wifi and all computer things. He told me the clicking was the thermostat (why had I never heard it before?), so I turned the heat way down.

I finally fell into a fitful sleep from 530 to 830am after taking a quarter of a Unisom, but the vibration/hum was still there. The next day, we surmised it was the outdoor garden lights. My husband pulled the plug and it seemed to remedy that particular problem. It turned out something different was going to happen every night.

Another night I awoke drenched in sweat, my body so hot I could have happily jumped into a mountain of snow. I got up and took my temperature… 97.7 degrees. How is that possible? I took it again. 97.2. Maybe it’s my blood sugar, that’s what Dr. Myhill thinks. So, I clattered around the living room until I found my tester kit. 89- totally normal. My room was 68 degrees… I know the sweats have nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with ME/CFS, but I still try to search for a better answer. I was able to get back to sleep after putting on a t-shirt, oddly. It seemed to trick my body into regulating itself.

Another night I fell asleep at 11pm and woke up at midnight with terrible pain in the center of my chest. I sat up and immediately vomited – actually, more like regurgitated – into my mouth. In the bathroom, more came up, but I didn’t have an upset stomach at all. Is this acid reflux? Every time I lay back, the pressure in my chest came back. It felt like all my nighttime magnesium pills had ruptured in my esophagus. Which is maybe what happened. I wound up sitting up until 1am when it felt like whatever had passed on down. My potential 7ish hours of sleep became 5.

Another night I woke from a nightmare where my dog, Bowie, was injured and it was up to me to save him while the bad guys were trying to find me and kill me. And I was too sick and weak to run or carry my dog. I was in a mild sweat- face and chest. This is a recurring dream of mine. I went to the bathroom to clear it from my mind and, on the way back, I tripped over the step the dogs use to get up on my bed. It HURT. My stumble and hard-hitting recovery with both palms on the floor woke my husband below and he texted my phone to ask if I was all right. I didn’t answer because I knew his healthy, peaceful brain would go right back to sleep. However, my sleep was at an end. My throbbing shin and the resulting adrenalin rush insured that.

This is what I recounted on my calendar about another night:

“woke multiple times, flexing muscles painfully, clamping jaw. Wore nasal pillow for while, scared of not breathing, switched to nasal mask, woke up with weird throat closure and odd sound being made by me, switched to full face mask for part of night, finally took 1/4 unisom, got to sleep at 345am. Woke up feeling very tired, very groggy, horrific headache, feel like I have water in my right ear. There is pressure and it’s clogged. DRIVING ME NUTS!”

That’s a glimpse into a week of my sleep. I appreciate that you are willing to read about the deranged mundanity that is my life! I will fight for better sleep and continue to try different tactics and different drugs and, one day, I will sleep, I will heal, and I will live again! I have faith. 🙂

Gratitude: No allergic reaction so far to my new nasal steroid. Also, tomorrow I have an appointment with a new (expensive) doctor. He was recommended to me by someone in a similar health situation and calls himself an “environmental doctor”, but seems to have some success with chronic fatigue and will consider out-of-the-box tests and treatments. Fingers crossed!

Title Credit

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30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know

Well, I’m a few days late (and more than a few dollars short). I’ve been working on this post for a week while not feeling well, but I’m determined to finish. Invisible Illness Awareness Week was last week and, in an effort to raise awareness, invisibleillnessweek.com has put together the “30 Things About My Illness” questionnaire below. The website offers support to patients and caregivers through articles, podcasts, illness lists and links to associations and resources. You should check it out!

30 THINGS ABOUT MY ILLNESS:

1. The illness I live with is:

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. I have other conditions, such as mast cell activation disorder, thyroid disease, dysautonomia, hypoglycemia, IBS, dysmenorrhea, and chronic intractable migraines but these are speed bumps in relation to the Mount Everest that is ME. Undoubtedly, all these problems are connected in some way.

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year:

I was diagnosed about one year ago.

3. But I had symptoms since:

ME hit me one night like a freight train around 11pm on Halloween night, 2011. One hour I was fine, the next hour I was in the grips of what I thought was a very bad virus. Chills and drenching sweats lasted all night and… the rest is history.

Years before that, I had dealt with thyroid goiters, anaphylaxis and vasovagal syncope, but they were just blips in my otherwise healthy, normal life. ME changed that.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is:

I could say losing my career, my social life, traveling, my income, the future I envisioned… But, really, the hardest adjustment has been a life with minimal energy expenditure: the loss of walking, running, talking exuberantly, emoting, gesticulating… I hate this still life.

5. Most people assume:

Most people assume I’m being antisocial. Most people assume that I worked too much, hit a wall and walked away and am just uncommunicative. Only my family and closest few friends know the extent of what happened to me.

6. The hardest part about mornings are:

The distressing, sinking realisation that I’ve woken up too early (and won’t go back to sleep) and had a bad night. Feeling dizzy before I’ve even opened my eyes. Being greeted with a headache and neck pain before I’ve even sat up.

7. My favorite medical TV show is:

House!! And any real life medical show like Trauma: Life in the ER. I’ve loved that stuff my whole life. They used to show real operations, graphic and unedited, on some show in Ireland when I was young and I loved watching. I’m not squeamish; I always thought I’d be working in an ER.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is:

My smart phone. It’s my lightweight connection to the rest of the world: news, blogs, emails, texts, photos, videos and calls. Plus, it has all my meditation CDs on it.

9. The hardest part about nights are:

For the first year I was sick, nights were lonely, terrifying, desperate, viral horror shows. There are not adequate words to describe what my nights were like. Now, the hardest part is the fear that I will not sleep well and will wake the next morning feeling worse.

10. Each day I take __ pills & vitamins.

I usually take about 26 supplements a day (double that for the number of actual pills). Currently, I’m on a vitamin and supplement hiatus, so I am only taking probiotics, magnesium, melatonin, Zyrtec, nasal spray, topical antibiotic cream, and a few times a week, when I have a headache or can’t sleep, I take Tylenol, Unisom, and Tizanidine.

11. Regarding alternative treatments I:

I have tried most of it: acupuncture, massage, craniosacral therapy, reiki, energy healers, meditation, breathing exercises, diet, stretches, Chinese herbs, supplements blah blah blagh. I don’t know what constitutes “alternative”, but I would do anything to get better.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose:

I have a half-written blog post called “Visible Illness” because I look sick ~ or, at least, I look different than I used to ~ and I have caught myself feeling jealous of the “healthy”-looking ME patients I have seen online. However, my illness is invisible in the sense that nobody can see just how bad it is by looking at me ~ especially during the first year, when I pushed through everything to go to work.

Which would I prefer? Neither. Illness is evil and, ultimately, nobody can ever comprehend a sick person’s suffering, regardless of how bad they look on the outside.

13. Regarding working and career:

I never stop dreaming about my next career. I have a different idea every day. I miss working, I miss having responsibility and helping people, I miss being good at something, I miss having the security of an income.

14. People would be surprised to know:

Those that haven’t seen me in a while would be surprised to see that I have gone from an energetic, talkative, happy, demonstrative, busy person to someone who moves very little and doesn’t leave the house. Those close to me might be surprised to know just how black my blackness was this past year and how often I thought about suicide (it took all my guts to write that word. It’s shameful and scary, but true).

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been:

That I can’t exert energy. That’s it. It rules all else. I can’t find a new job, I can’t make plans for a different life than the one I had imagined, I can’t socialise or cook food or deal with banks or disability or do anything to adapt and move on. I only feel ok if I am flat on my back, not moving. But I keep trying to make progress and those endeavors always cause me to be in pain. And I’m intolerant to painkillers. So it’s a continual try-to-gain-ground-get-knocked-down cycle.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was:

Admit it – admit I was a sick person. Also, there was a time when I wondered if I’d ever laugh again. When the headaches ease up, laughter returns. It’s glorious.

17. The commercials about my illness:

There are none, but there are commercials about fibromyalgia and, of course, they show women able to move freely if they take Lyrica. Imagine the only symptom being achiness! Imagine a pill taking care of it! Sign me up!

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is:

See this post. Dancing with my dogs on the beach, eating whatever I want, staying up late, talking nonstop, getting excited, getting angry, having a career, dreaming up future plans, driving myself places, traveling, having financial security… See the recurring theme?

19. It was really hard to have to give up:

I want to say everything in #18, but I’ll change it up and say getting dressed and feeling pretty. I miss a great pair of jeans and make-me-feel-tall boots and thinking my eyes look bright and generally feeling attractive.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is:

Meditation. I couldn’t live without it now.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would:

Only one day? So not enough time to go to Europe? Can I plan this day in advance and get my loved ones to come to me? Ok, I’ll assume that’s a yes. Then I would get everyone I love to Seattle in advance and on The Day we would hike, talk, laugh, play games, eat a lot, get rip-roaring drunk, never have to rest and then sleep soundly, deeply, peacefully ~ without a cpap and with my husband and dogs.

22. My illness has taught me:

How under-equipped society is to help the disabled, sick and elderly. It is astounding and harrowing to realise how difficult and time-consuming it is to drive, park, get to a doctor’s office, get home help, get financial help ~ everything! And, when you’re sick, everything costs more, so what happens when you can’t work? I worry about old age all the time.

23. One thing people say that gets under my skin is:

When people say nothing. When friends don’t want to “burden” me with their own problems or don’t contact me because they don’t want to “impose” or don’t text me because I haven’t responded in days/weeks and they think the ball’s in my court or that they don’t want to keep “bothering” me. It is incredibly comforting when someone asks questions about my illness or vents to me about their hardships or gossips about work or continues to let me know they are thinking about me. Once in a while, I would love my husband (and family) to take a break from being the strong caregiver and wallow in a bit of mutual mourning: “This is so fucking unfair! We had dreams and plans! We had only just stopped living paycheck to paycheck! You were so alive and I am turned inside out to see your life force disappearing…” Maybe it’s selfish, but, someone else screaming at the sky would make me feel a little less alone.

24. But I love it when people:

Remind me that, even in this diminished capacity, I am still vital and worthy of being a friend.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is:

“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Also, my mother once told me she had read that if you have one pain-free day, there is the possibility of being permanently pain-free. I think about this all the time on days like today: Just because I’m having a bad day today, it doesn’t mean I will always have bad days. There will be days again without headaches. There will be days when I can move more freely.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them:

You will improve. That was the first line of an email someone wrote to me and I didn’t read any further, I just closed the computer and wept. I needed to know that life could and would be bearable one day.

Also, I caution anyone recently diagnosed to not read all the horror stories about ME. It is good to raise awareness about the severity of this disease,  but, after doing tireless research for months, my fear drowned out what my body was whispering. Stop pushing yourself, rest, listen to your body and believe you will improve. 

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is:

How many of us there are ~ in every country, of every age, ethnicity and socioeconomic standing. I am amazed and grateful for how many of us are online, sharing advice and giving support to each other. Sometimes, you lot are all that gets me through.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was:

Not leave me. My husband, family and a few friends have wrapped themselves around me ~ physically and virtually ~ and given me the security that I have SWAT team back-up in this war.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because:

I’m quoting Linds: “I think it’s a great way to bring much needed awareness to the struggles others endure. The illness is invisible, not the person.”

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel:

Honoured. Or honored, depending on where you learned to spell. 🙂

Also check out my other blamily members’ answers to this questionnaire: Jess, Marie, Christine, Luminescence, Trisha… Who have I missed? Let me know if you posted this questionnaire to your blog and I will link it here.

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Surgery and ME/CFS

After two weeks of wonderful, solid sleep with few awakenings, I was beginning to see the light. Over the long weekend I started to feel more normal than I have felt in months ~ maybe a year. I could do so much more during the day and I was still feeling alright before bed. I didn’t have any periods of utter exhaustion or flu-type feelings and my brain was firing on more than one cylinder (not all cylinders, but obviously more than usual). My physical therapist and I always talk about movies, tv shows, music and books and I can never come up with names or titles: “Oh, you should read… I can’t think of the name… it’s written by what’shisname… you know, the American guy that was living in England…” I get so frustrated. There have been many times I wish I could text him after I get home and can look up the ten things I was reaching for. Yesterday, my brain was a smooth operation. It truly felt like somebody had lubricated the synapses. There was a sense of physical spaciousness. It was a well-oiled, humming machine, almost like my healthy days. “Edward Norton was great in Primal Fear. I loved him in American History X… Yes, I adore Kevin Spacey. He was so good in American Beauty. And Seven! Oh, and the David Mamet play… Glengarry Glen Ross ~ so good! And Swimming with Sharks. I’d love to be able to see him in Iceman Cometh on stage…” All those names! They just came to me! No searching, no hard grinding mental gears, no giving up in frustration. It just illustrated the limits with which I’ve been living.

Anyway, last night I didn’t sleep and I feel dreadful today and my head hurts and my brain hurts and I fear the worst for a downhill turn. I got 4 very broken, very uncomfortable hours of sleep because, in the middle of the night, I woke up with a terrible pain in my abdomen. It is a recurrent sharp stabbing in the upper right quadrant, which has me grimacing and sucking in air every few minutes, trying not to gasp or moan so my dog doesn’t panic (which he does when I’m in pain). Throughout the night, I did everything I could think of: walked, sat, breathing exercises, massaged, drank water… Nothing helped and it is still with me now, nine hours later and definitely has me worried. I assumed it is a issue in my bowel because that is where all my problems lie, but I spent the night lying in the dark quiet, worrying that is my appendix (also, I had a bowel movement and nothing changed). I’m not vomiting and I don’t think I have a fever, so I’m not jumping to see a doctor. But the pain hasn’t dulled at all and I am so, so tired. If it continues into tonight, I won’t get any sleep again.

As I lay there last night, I was tormented by the thought that it would suddenly get more serious and I would need surgery for something. I thought about all the info that I would want doctors and anesthesiologists to know in an emergency situation and decided I had to get up and write a doc that my husband could produce if I were incapacitated. Below is what I put together and I thought it might help someone out there. I wrote my own list and, afterwards, I read Dr. Cheney’s and Dr. Lapp’s advice online (to make my list more thorough) and it is incredible how closely I fit the ME/CFS mold. After two years it still amazes me when my health history PRE-ME fits all the symptoms and idiosyncrasies. For example, vasodilators are problematic to ME patients and I already knew this was a problem for me before becoming sick because of my history with idiopathic anaphylaxis and alcohol causing collapse. Also, the doctors mention sensitivity to epinephrine and I have always told my dentists not to use epinephrine in my shots ~ it has been a nusance for them because they have to give me injections over and over again as my body metabolizes the anesthesia so quickly without the epi. And I had low blood pressure and experienced vasovagal syncope decades before I came down with ME, so reading that Dr. Lapp says “Up to 97% of persons with CFS demonstrate vasovagal syncope” amazes me … still.

I would love to know if anyone has any more information for safe surgeries and/or hospital stays. I’m hoping preparing for emergencies can mitigate long-term crashes.

Here is Dr. Cheney’s advice for surgery and here is Dr. Lapp’s (they’re very similar). I also took Sue Jackson’s advice and made the first sentence: “The most important considerations are…”

The most important considerations are IV fluids, avoiding vasodilators and histamine-releasing agents, and my hyper-sensitivity to medications.

I have a history of hypoglycemia, idiopathic anaphylaxis, autoimmune urticaria and angioedema, Hashimoto’s, vasovagal syncope.

I am allergic to NSAIDS and CODEINE/HYDROCODONE and have other presumed allergies which may have caused tongue swelling (see attached list).

I have orthostatic intolerance (OI) and vasovagal syncope: low blood volume, low blood pressure, high heart rate when standing/moving. Please give me extra saline IVs. Care should be taken to give me adequate hydration prior to surgery and avoid drugs that stimulate neurogenic syncope or lower blood pressure. Syncope may be precipitated by cathecholamines (epinephrine), sympathomimetics (isoproterenol), and vasodilators (nitric oxide, nitroglycerin, a-blockers, and hypotensive agents).

I am extremely sensitive to drugs, usually taking ¼ doses or children’s doses. Please use all drugs sparingly until my reaction can be assessed and do not over-medicate me.

Vasodilators, such as nitrous oxide, should not be used because of my history with autoimmune angioedema, anaphylaxis and orthostatic intolerance.

Use anesthesia that does not release histamine: Histamine-releasing anesthetic agents (such as sodium pentothal) and muscle relaxants (Curare, Tracrium, and Mevacurium) are best avoided because of my history of idiopathic anaphylaxis and allergies.

Use a non-hepatic anesthesia: Potentially hepatotoxic anesthetic gases should not be used, such as Halothane.

BEFORE SURGERY: Serum electrolytes, magnesium and potassium levels should be checked preoperatively and these minerals replenished if borderline or low. Intracellular magnesium or potassium depletion could potentially lead to cardiac arrhythmias under anesthesia. A liver panel and a random serum cortisol should be checked prior to any general anesthesia. 24-hour urine cortisol is recommended before and after surgery.

I have a sensitivity to Epinephrine. For local anesthesia, perhaps use Lidocaine with no epinephrine.

I have a cervical spine injury. Please be careful and gentle when intubating!

It would be wise to keep me on oxygen the entire time I am in the hospital.

Prescription and over the counter medicines and supplements: Please see attached list.

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Doctor follow-up: symptoms, sleep, diet.

I haven’t taken vitamins or supplements in 19 days (except probiotics in the morning, magnesium at night and fish oil here and there). When I wasn’t sleeping, I decided to wash-out everything and, when I saw the Good Doctor last week, she wanted me to hold off on adding them back until I had challenged some foods. So, in the next month, I will be challenging soy and citrus, which I haven’t eaten in a month, and corn, dairy and eggs, which I haven’t eaten in a year. Honestly, I don’t know how I will identify symptoms ~ for no reason, sleep disappears and headaches hit me like a freight train. A few days ago I woke up with all over muscle pain: thick, heavy, stiff, achy, contracted muscles from tip to toe. I started waking up in the night again in a full-body tense stretch, jaw clamped down painfully, neck and back arched. It is coupled with daytime tiredness that stopped me writing, reading, talking… This wasn’t the bricked feeling of ATP running out in my cells, this was pure tired, like I was convalescing. It’s still with me today, but I want to write, so I force myself to sit at the computer.

I hate when old symptoms return. I thought perhaps spine pain and muscle aches were gone for good, but here I am with a new bottle of Tizanidine. I made a list of what could be causing it: Scooter? Adding back legumes? No supplements? Weather? Period? This week has also felt like awfully bad allergies, which shouldn’t be happening at the end of August. I actually had to take my inhaler and I couldn’t wear my cpap last night because my nose was plugged, even after multiple shots of antihistamine nasal spray. My headaches have mostly dissipated, only rearing up when I tweak my neck (which is about every other day; the nighttime muscle contractions don’t help), but I’m left with leaden cotton wool filling my skull and plugging my orifices. It feels like an orange on a toothpick, my neck too weak to hold the bobble head. I’m chalking it up to the weather. Seattle turned into a tropical rain forest this week. The temperature in my room is 74 degrees and the humidity is 74%. I keep saying, “It’s so close!” The only way to describe it.

Some good news: I’ve actually slept relatively well the last 7 nights ~ with only melatonin ~ which is miraculous. I have had a resurgence of mild night sweats for the first time in a very long time. But, we’re going to ignore that and the lack of deep sleep and concentrate on the positives: My current average hours of sleep, average time awake and average time to fall asleep:

An average of 8.5 hours sleep? First time ever in my life!

An average of 8.5 hours sleep? First time ever in my life!

38 mins awake, on average, when it used to be 2 hours!

38 mins awake, on average, when it used to be 2 hours!

A glorious average of 9 mins to fall asleep! (this was tipped by the unheard-of ONE MINUTE it took me to fall asleep last night!)

A glorious average of 9 mins to fall asleep! (this was tipped by the unheard-of ONE MINUTE it took me to fall asleep last night!)

Other things I talked about with the Good Doc: She doesn’t feel comfortable with prescribing saline IV infusions, she is thinking about digestive enzymes, she wants to get my vitmain D levels between 50 and 80 (they were 30 last March), and she doesn’t want to do a tryptase test to look for Mast Cell Activation Disorder (MCAD).

If anyone is interested in my elimination diet, she said she thought coconut sugar would be okay (I haven’t quit sugar yet; I’m a junkie) and she wanted me to avoid xanthan gum, guar gum and carageenan. This is virtually impossible using dairy-free products, so I’m not taking it too seriously. My husband spent half an hour in Whole Foods reading the labels of nut and coconut milks: if you want to avoid sugar, cane juice and soy lecithin, you won’t be able to avoid carageenan (if anyone has more info, please tell me!). The best bet seems to be Pacific Almond Milk (which has carageenan and “natural flavor”) and Rice Dream, if you don’t mind the calorie and sugar content (I love the taste, but it’s high-glycemic load causes my blood sugar to crash).

She also wanted me to watch the teas I drink, since this is the only thing I drink besides water. You can get all the info about teas from this FoodBabe blog. Basically, I am trying to stick with Numi, Traditional Medicinals, Rishi (which is even more expensive than the other expensive organic teas) and maybe Choice. I splurged and bought this yesterday: Rishi Turmeric Ginger Loose Leaf Tea ~ how good does that sound for what ails me?! (I reckon, in the good ol’ days, I would have spent about that much on one cocktail, including tip, so I deserve it. I ignored the voice that said, Uh, you have no income.)

Lastly, I saw my endocrinologist for my yearly check-up. He increased my Levothyroxine to 37.5mcg five days a week and 25mcg on the weekends and kept my liothyronine at 10mcg/day. He also thought I should see an immunologist. I didn’t even know they existed. Not that I think they could find anything… except maybe help with my MCAD theory (that’ll be another post).

That’s my update. In a few days, my Mother is coming from Ireland for THREE WEEKS to help us out and take a bit of the burden off my husband. One of my brothers is flying across the country to see me at the end of September and my other brother, the pilot, has a layover here the same week. It’s so exciting! Gratitude today, once again, is for my family. They continually help me, encourage me and remember me.

My beautiful niece sent me this card. :)

My beautiful niece sent me this card. 🙂

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Hope for a great sea-change

One of the things I never realized about chronic illness is that it is easier to drive than it is to take a shower. If you see someone driving their car to an appointment, you might think they’re doing okay, but that person may have needed help to wash their hair that morning. And, by “morning”, I mean afternoon because it probably took a number of hours to get from waking to bathing.

I can drive myself to nearby appointments and I can talk for the whole time I’m there – half an hour sitting up with a doctor, an hour lying down with the physical therapist – but, if someone witnessed this, would they understand that I couldn’t write a blog post that day, I had to put on clothes in increments over the course of an hour, I had to rest in a dark, silent room immediately before and after the appointment, and, if I had slept poorly, I would have canceled?

My husband has been washing my hair lately. I sit on my seat and he leans awkwardly into the shower while I rest my forearms on my knees and hang my head. He also helps me dry my hair. I sit on the toilet in much the same position as I did in the shower and he stands above me with the hair dryer.

My sister comes over to help me with laundry. It’s been a long time since I’ve expended the energy needed to fold or hang clothes, so there are wrinkled piles of clean, dirty and not-clean-but-not-dirty-enough-to-be-washed items in various rooms. I never thought my husband would be scrubbing my scalp while I sit naked and motionless or my sister would be sorting my underwear while I am supine, watching.

It seems like a new low, especially in light of the fact that I’ve been housebound for a year, I’m walking under 1000 steps a day and it takes about 15 minutes of activity to wear me out. But I don’t think it is a low. I feel hopeful; overall I may feel healthier than a year ago. I’m more debilitated now, but less ILL. More chronic, less flailing, flaring, uncontrollable. A year ago, I was freezing all the time during the day and drenched in night sweats whenever I slept. I was in constant pain and felt fluish every day. I was still going to the dog park and grocery shopping, but I was scared and overwhelmed. Maybe most of the improvements have been mental– now, when the viral symptoms descend, I don’t panic. I understand that this could be lifelong and any progress will always be at a snail’s pace. I understand there may not be progress at all, it may only get worse. I know now there will be spans of no pain and I just need to take one day at a time. In fact, every single night when I go to bed, I am excited at the prospect of another chance in the morning– at the knowledge that a new day may bring a better day.

My husband says, it was a long road down, so it’ll probably be at least as long back up. I try to relax into the ride, do all I can to unburden my organs and facilitate healing. When my inner workaholic and constant student starts to writhe inside this straight jacket, I soothe her: You are working. You are writing, reading, learning about yourself and opening your eyes to suffering. I remind myself that I don’t have to talk to people that annoy me, drive during rush hour, meet deadlines or bow to bosses. When my night owl howls, I tell it nothing fun happens between 9pm and 2am. You’re not missing anything, go to sleep. I try to believe it. I remind myself that I never have to hear an alarm clock. I ease into bed with a solid routine and, when I wake, I lounge for hours. This is healthy, don’t resent it. When cabin fever and loneliness threaten to make my mind come apart at the seams, I pretend I am monastic. I am on a retreat. I am cleansing, enjoying solace. This is a temporary stillness. It is needed. Revel in it. I get to enjoy the garden and the sun. I get to spend every day with my dogs, even if it is lying flat on my back. I promise myself: The world will be there when your body is able to meet it again.

Maybe this low is where the slide stops and it’s all uphill from here. Listen carefully: “Believe in miracle and cures and healing wells.”

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney,
The Cure at Troy
R.I.P.