life's topsy turvy upside down days...
So here I am again, my friends, to tell another part of my story. The winter here in Illinois was long, and hard, and very very cold. This is not a good combination for me. My fibro detests the cold, and my Bipolar does not deal well with the lack of fresh air and sunshine.
I had to switch p-docs again because mine was seriously ill, and terribly overworked. The new one was very intelligent, but forgot his listening ears. From December through April I tried to tell him in was more urgent to treat my depression than my lack of sleep. I have been sleep depping most of my life. He did not heed my urgent warnings, and I slid into a bleak winter of my own mind.
Situationally, nothing much positive was happening either. The fibromyalgia had taken over my life with a fierce grip powered by the icy cold. I was in invalid. I hated it. I could not keep working, I had trouble doing my volunteer work, and my first semester homeschooling our youngest son was fraught with trial and error and near disasters. I sprained my ankle and pulled tendons badly enough that I could not walk, even on good days. I became a shut-in. I shut everyone but my family out...
However, I have a new church where we are becoming involved. It is like having cousins you actually like. I had the courage to strike out on my own with my crafts, and it is ok, lots less pressure. I (just barely) passed my classes this spring. And things are growing again, so life is looking up.
I had two graduate from high school in May, one is headed off to college in the fall. The other has many special needs and is visiting her father so that he can see where she stands.
I made it into my Master's program at Liberty U. online, but got little credit for all the work I had done towards it at Capella. And Liberty has very short 8 week terms. It does not go well with Bipolar...and ADD...and Fibro, ect. So I was stressed. More than I knew.
Last Tuesday, I went to our weekly craft night at church. It is about 8 ladies, and a relaxing blast. Usually. Last week, this guy just wanders in off the street, begging for money for a tow. He looked rough, and I was scared. My PTSD took hold quickly and I had a full-blown panic attack right there in front of the church ladies...I was upset and embarrassed. I resolved to put it behind me. But I had flashbacks and nightmares and slept little that night.
Wednesday dawned and I simply buried it and started over. But apparently I am running out of burying room.
Thursday, I had the attack. A searing pain shot through the crown of my head, literally blindsiding me. I was crouching down so I did not fall, but I could not get up. Tendrils and chains of dizziness instead insisted that I try the impossibility of sinking through the floor. My son helped me careen to the kitchen sink, where I braced my arm outstretched on the rim with my head down. I found I could not move. My limbs were poured cement, ignoring even the smallest command to move a finger. My head felt weighed down by stones, and the slightest upward shift would activate the evil forces of overwhelming dizziness.
Finally, I was able to catch my breath, an realize my vision was as disturbed as my sense of balance. My head felt as though someone was persistently trying to etch a crevasse in my skull. My son, luckily strong and tall, helped me to lie down after bearing most of my weight on the harrowing but mercifully short distance to my room.
I lay down, flat on my back, struggling to swallow yet desperately seeking air. Again, the weight of my limbs was leaden, and I was unable to move. The carver continued his decoration of my head. Finally, thankfully, I slept. My husband came home, and could only insu=ist to him that he take our son to his first job interview and worry about me later. I am very stubborn, and he reluctantly did as I asked. They returned about three hours later, and I continued to be ransacked with tidal waves of dizziness and a bone weariness that threatened to drown me in its own right. Again, I slept.
My husband went off to work early Thursday without waking me. I did not rouse until after 11. I went shakily to my computer, feeling like a poor impostor of myself, and fired up the machine. My darling had texted from work, asking if I was ok. I said maybe. He said he thought something might be wrong, and he headed home. Unfortunately, he works an hour away from me. It was a horrendously long hour. In that time I discovered that my legs would no longer obey me, nor carry my weight. My sight was blurry at best, and double vision was so often trumped by treble that I welcomed the double. My thoughts collided and warred among themselves. I called to see the doctor, but could not remember my address, our phone number, the simple items you hold so closely in memory that you take them for granted. They said to go to the er. I agreed with the idea. It felt like and sounded like a stroke. My speech was that of a man who knows libation all too well, and I could not even understand myself. I was appalled, yet at the same time calm because I knew what was going on and that it could be treated.
Then the world slipped out from under me. A CAT scan declared there was no stroke. Immediately, I reasoned it must be a reaction to one of my medications. They gave me Benadryl. I slept. I woke, and could walk and talk much easier. The shakiness was manageable; and I felt I had dodged a bullet. But the symptoms returned after we had been home awhile. It became a pattern...Benadrly, sleep, an easing of symptoms and their creeping return.
My periods of normalcy grew shorter and farther between. By Sunday, they were almost completely gone. We sought a second opinion at a more advanced teaching hospital. Another CAT scan, and MRI, a spinal tap...and nothing. Nothing was wrong with me. Yet the symptoms were there, real and documentable. The hospital sent me home to recover from my fatigue, with a heavy heart and a mind empty of the answers we had gone seeking.
Monday I saw my primary doctor to follow up. Someone else saw me, since she was out. He was a kindly doctor, whom I had seen before. So he knew my current presentation was not my normal one. He covered the same ground, pushed pulled and prodded. He asked if anything stressful had happened lately, and I said not really. I was not thinking clearly, after all. At that point I could barely put an intelligible sentence together and coherent thoughts skipped past me as if they wanted to play tag. My gait was labored since I felt I was walking on marshy ground at all times, constantly seeking balance and solid purchase. I was shaking like a tipsy teen doing the twist. Then he hit me with it- he wanted to bring in psych.
As anyone would do, I protested vehemently. "This is not all in my head", I told him. "I know how I react to stress. I break out. I have panic attacks. This is different". He merely stated since we had already planned to see my p-doc, why not bring in a fresh set of eyes and ears? How could I argue with that?
The fresh set of eyes and ears was a pretty lady with dark hair and bright blue eyes. It took her less than five minutes to let me know exactly what was going on. I have conversion disorder. My mind had too much stress to handle, so it gave it to my body, in the form of these symptoms without a discernable cause. I thought I was allergic to stress before, but it seems that was a mere prelude to what was in store for me now.
The time table varies. The symptoms could last a couple of weeks, or years. After they are gone, they are likely to recur. Goody, goody, another chronic condition to manage.
I am doing well. It has been a week, and I can walk and drive. The headache is finally gone and my vision is (mostly) normal. My thoughts and my speech, however, are another matter. It sounds as tough all my words are being run under water then filtered through my nose before exiting my mouth in a halted fashion. I am still hunting words and phrases that I would usually have waiting before I even needed them.
But I am stubborn and resilient. I have my church family at my back and my family by my side. I will overcome this. Or I will adapt. Either way, it will not win.
I had to switch p-docs again because mine was seriously ill, and terribly overworked. The new one was very intelligent, but forgot his listening ears. From December through April I tried to tell him in was more urgent to treat my depression than my lack of sleep. I have been sleep depping most of my life. He did not heed my urgent warnings, and I slid into a bleak winter of my own mind.
Situationally, nothing much positive was happening either. The fibromyalgia had taken over my life with a fierce grip powered by the icy cold. I was in invalid. I hated it. I could not keep working, I had trouble doing my volunteer work, and my first semester homeschooling our youngest son was fraught with trial and error and near disasters. I sprained my ankle and pulled tendons badly enough that I could not walk, even on good days. I became a shut-in. I shut everyone but my family out...
However, I have a new church where we are becoming involved. It is like having cousins you actually like. I had the courage to strike out on my own with my crafts, and it is ok, lots less pressure. I (just barely) passed my classes this spring. And things are growing again, so life is looking up.
I had two graduate from high school in May, one is headed off to college in the fall. The other has many special needs and is visiting her father so that he can see where she stands.
I made it into my Master's program at Liberty U. online, but got little credit for all the work I had done towards it at Capella. And Liberty has very short 8 week terms. It does not go well with Bipolar...and ADD...and Fibro, ect. So I was stressed. More than I knew.
Last Tuesday, I went to our weekly craft night at church. It is about 8 ladies, and a relaxing blast. Usually. Last week, this guy just wanders in off the street, begging for money for a tow. He looked rough, and I was scared. My PTSD took hold quickly and I had a full-blown panic attack right there in front of the church ladies...I was upset and embarrassed. I resolved to put it behind me. But I had flashbacks and nightmares and slept little that night.
Wednesday dawned and I simply buried it and started over. But apparently I am running out of burying room.
Thursday, I had the attack. A searing pain shot through the crown of my head, literally blindsiding me. I was crouching down so I did not fall, but I could not get up. Tendrils and chains of dizziness instead insisted that I try the impossibility of sinking through the floor. My son helped me careen to the kitchen sink, where I braced my arm outstretched on the rim with my head down. I found I could not move. My limbs were poured cement, ignoring even the smallest command to move a finger. My head felt weighed down by stones, and the slightest upward shift would activate the evil forces of overwhelming dizziness.
Finally, I was able to catch my breath, an realize my vision was as disturbed as my sense of balance. My head felt as though someone was persistently trying to etch a crevasse in my skull. My son, luckily strong and tall, helped me to lie down after bearing most of my weight on the harrowing but mercifully short distance to my room.
I lay down, flat on my back, struggling to swallow yet desperately seeking air. Again, the weight of my limbs was leaden, and I was unable to move. The carver continued his decoration of my head. Finally, thankfully, I slept. My husband came home, and could only insu=ist to him that he take our son to his first job interview and worry about me later. I am very stubborn, and he reluctantly did as I asked. They returned about three hours later, and I continued to be ransacked with tidal waves of dizziness and a bone weariness that threatened to drown me in its own right. Again, I slept.
My husband went off to work early Thursday without waking me. I did not rouse until after 11. I went shakily to my computer, feeling like a poor impostor of myself, and fired up the machine. My darling had texted from work, asking if I was ok. I said maybe. He said he thought something might be wrong, and he headed home. Unfortunately, he works an hour away from me. It was a horrendously long hour. In that time I discovered that my legs would no longer obey me, nor carry my weight. My sight was blurry at best, and double vision was so often trumped by treble that I welcomed the double. My thoughts collided and warred among themselves. I called to see the doctor, but could not remember my address, our phone number, the simple items you hold so closely in memory that you take them for granted. They said to go to the er. I agreed with the idea. It felt like and sounded like a stroke. My speech was that of a man who knows libation all too well, and I could not even understand myself. I was appalled, yet at the same time calm because I knew what was going on and that it could be treated.
Then the world slipped out from under me. A CAT scan declared there was no stroke. Immediately, I reasoned it must be a reaction to one of my medications. They gave me Benadryl. I slept. I woke, and could walk and talk much easier. The shakiness was manageable; and I felt I had dodged a bullet. But the symptoms returned after we had been home awhile. It became a pattern...Benadrly, sleep, an easing of symptoms and their creeping return.
My periods of normalcy grew shorter and farther between. By Sunday, they were almost completely gone. We sought a second opinion at a more advanced teaching hospital. Another CAT scan, and MRI, a spinal tap...and nothing. Nothing was wrong with me. Yet the symptoms were there, real and documentable. The hospital sent me home to recover from my fatigue, with a heavy heart and a mind empty of the answers we had gone seeking.
Monday I saw my primary doctor to follow up. Someone else saw me, since she was out. He was a kindly doctor, whom I had seen before. So he knew my current presentation was not my normal one. He covered the same ground, pushed pulled and prodded. He asked if anything stressful had happened lately, and I said not really. I was not thinking clearly, after all. At that point I could barely put an intelligible sentence together and coherent thoughts skipped past me as if they wanted to play tag. My gait was labored since I felt I was walking on marshy ground at all times, constantly seeking balance and solid purchase. I was shaking like a tipsy teen doing the twist. Then he hit me with it- he wanted to bring in psych.
As anyone would do, I protested vehemently. "This is not all in my head", I told him. "I know how I react to stress. I break out. I have panic attacks. This is different". He merely stated since we had already planned to see my p-doc, why not bring in a fresh set of eyes and ears? How could I argue with that?
The fresh set of eyes and ears was a pretty lady with dark hair and bright blue eyes. It took her less than five minutes to let me know exactly what was going on. I have conversion disorder. My mind had too much stress to handle, so it gave it to my body, in the form of these symptoms without a discernable cause. I thought I was allergic to stress before, but it seems that was a mere prelude to what was in store for me now.
The time table varies. The symptoms could last a couple of weeks, or years. After they are gone, they are likely to recur. Goody, goody, another chronic condition to manage.
I am doing well. It has been a week, and I can walk and drive. The headache is finally gone and my vision is (mostly) normal. My thoughts and my speech, however, are another matter. It sounds as tough all my words are being run under water then filtered through my nose before exiting my mouth in a halted fashion. I am still hunting words and phrases that I would usually have waiting before I even needed them.
But I am stubborn and resilient. I have my church family at my back and my family by my side. I will overcome this. Or I will adapt. Either way, it will not win.
Replies
wow, you have lots going on...I am sorry for all this....i sure hope things turn around for you... I do understand .....I do just horrible during the winter months I just hate that.....now its hard to get my stamina back...
I am glad we are friends.....alice