A New Low

"This thing" has become intolerable.  "This thing" has entered a new phase.  No one really believes in "this thing" except for me and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm better off dead.  In fact, I'm beginning to feel as if I am dead already.

Enter pain mode...

I went in for surgery on the day before Thanksgiving (minor surgery to remove a skin lesion).  My legs were shaky and I felt weak.  I brushed it off as the jitters: I didn't really want to have surgery, especially surgery with only a local.  I'd fought against it, then I'd had to fight *for* it when my physician countered with the "c" word and scared me all to hell.  Point in case: I was upset and nervous.  But it didn't start there.

All summer, I've felt wrong.  My hands tremble when I reach for something, or when I hold a glass.  I feel tired, confused, miserable.  By Halloween, I felt like I had the flu, but I'd just had the flu two weeks before, so it must be nothing, right?  By Thanksgiving, I was experiencing lower body muscle fatigue, trembling in my legs as if I'd just finished a rigorous workout, weak feeling in my lower back with heat, as if... well, as if I was coming down with the flu.  Then the surgery.

Pain, like you wouldn't believe.  I was freaked, convinced I had a bloodclot though I wasn't discolored.  Swelling.  I couldn't sit for the pain but I couldn't walk for the weakness.  My legs weren't my own.

That passed-- yay!-- mostly.  Then the tingling began.  I felt as if my entire lower body from my belly button to my knees had gone to sleep, and it crept up my right side to my armpit, down to my elbow like Novocain.  In fact, my pubic bone was so numb it was painful, and it felt as if someone was hitting me repeatedly with a wire barbeque brush.  Finally, I had an appointment with a new doctor.  Finally, maybe some hope...

He hadn't even a clue what it might be.  He suggested that, since I was able to ignore most of my symptoms, maybe I should just ignore this.  His only suggestion was an antidepressant, which I abhor.  But I was just that desperate.  On my way home, resolute to just move on, determined to get past this, I actually considered it.

Then I realized, like the old joke, "A man goes into his doctor and says, 'Doc, it hurts when I do this,' and the doctor replies, 'Stop doing that.," I'd stopped doing that.  Rather than "ignoring it," I've simply stopped doing the things that are uncomfortable.  In short, I've stopped doing so many things that I'm barely alive anymore.  I'm barely a wife, barely a mother, barely a human being.  And now, if I stop doing that, I will be giving up the very last thing that makes me real: my writing.  I owe it to myself, my family, my husband to start fighting back, despite my pessimism from years of doctors who simply tell me to stop doing that.

Other than the possibility that this is indeed Fibromyalgia and I should just buck up and take the damned antidepressant, I am running up against two new possibilities.  MS or Lyme.  Yes, my doctor who sent me home without a clue seemed to overlook the fact that all my symptoms fall into those categories, so why not test for them?  Maybe I was tested for Lyme years ago.  If so, I'm sure it was negative, but from what I'm learning of the infection, many tests return negative when a person is, in fact, infected.  In addition, even an MRI often comes up negative even in confirmed sufferers of MS.

So why don't I get retested?  Answer: I will.  I'm done turning belly-up to this thing.  I will not let it rule me.  I'm tired of pretending and protesting that I'm fine and letting folks think I'm lazy, hypochondrical or just plain apathetic.  If all else fails, I'll take the damned antidepressant.  But guess what?

I just discovered that an experimental therapy for Fibromyalgia is the same antibiotic as used to treat Lyme (doxycycline).  So what have I got to lose???