So I’m just going to jump right back into my life as an ongoing medical nightmare. Three months ago I was required to start taking a great little medication called Reglan four times a day to help cope with the fact my stomach sphincter does not close and so I refluxing stomach acid non-stop AND I can’t get surgery to fix it because I’m too high-risk due to my clotting disorder (12 TIAs, 4 strokes, and a dissected artery to my brain no one wants to surgically touch me). However, it appears that my wonderful Reglan has decided to tell my pituitary gland that I’ve just GIVEN BIRTH AND AM NURSING!!! When Boobs and Glands go bad!!!!! If I had a baby than elevated prolactin would be fine, great even! I’d be a milk-producing Mama! (Ok, not great in my case just because I could never breastfeed without poisoning a baby with the 28 pills I take daily, most twice to three times a day).
So I don’t have a baby, but what I do have is non-stop sweating, constant sleepiness followed by sleeplessness when I’m meant to sleep, agitation, stomach problems, and an overall feeling of wanting to die now. Seriously, I never thought I could feel more miserable than I do on a daily basis with Lupus. But alas the human body can go insane in even MORE ways! Yay!.
This morning while wrestling with an GI virus (no explanation of symptoms needed here), my prolactin levels added profuse fatigue and sweating. I laid down on my bed with my dogs and didn’t move. All I could think was I didn’t want to be alive if I had to live like this. My ex-husband called me up and I told him that I thought I’d have to take myself to the hospital I felt so awful. I can’t even begin to describe how awful I felt in those moments lying on the bed unmoving. It was like every ounce of life was sweating out of me and I thought, I’m never going to feel better. And when you get chronically ill you have these moments of extreme hopelessness when you feel like you’ve been run over by an 18-wheeler and then backed up on. They are moments when you feel like your illness has worsened permanently and you don’t know if you’re going to be able to cope with it.
I’ve struggled with depression for the first time in my years of illness, nearly 20 years now. I used to get through it with the perspective of I can cope. My mantra was “I think I can” of the Little Engine That Could. It’s been my mantra to cope with all my daily worries since I was a kid. I believed I could cope with everything. Nothing was past my capacity. This year starting with Christmas day of 2016 I learned I have end points. Now I’m at the end of what I can adjust too at the moment, I’m sure if things stay stable I’ll get used to things again. But 5 hospitalizations, another stroke, 2 TIAs, paralyzed GI system, a mild heart attack, and a dissected artery—and now this prolactin, ugh. I’m at an end point.
This morning I thought I had passed it. And with that Chasing Zebras: The Reboot is born.
