Month: July 2020

Bugger!

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

Well I didn’t think I could hate 2020 anymore than I did last week and bugger me it had some more treats in store for me. Sometimes even I find it hard to believe the stunts my body pulls.

I managed to have my first migraine with a proper full blown aura in 6 years on Friday morning which takes some beating. I was reading the newspaper online when I became aware of the fact that my left eye was struggling to see the words on the screen, in fact words were missing and the screen seemed ultra bright. I knew straight away that it was probably a migraine but I thought, it has been so long. Maybe it is the sun shining through the window hitting the screen and that’s why I can’t see? I struggled on for a few more minutes the weird thing was when I was looking at the screen my vision was fine. Then I looked across at Mr Myasthenia Kid and half his face was missing. At that point there was no mistaking this was a good old fashioned migraine. The last one of this type I had on my 40th Birthday how’s that for timing?

Hubby immediately sprang into action and got my migraine grab bag so I could take all my meds and then go back to bed. I absolutely hate the aura stage of a migraine which for me can last up to an hour before the headache begins. During that hour the visual disturbance just gets worse and worse, even with my eyes closed in a dark room. There is no escape from it and it leaves me feeling terribly disorientated. I am so grateful to have finally been prescribed sumatriptan, it is my wonder drug as it really does just halt the migraine in its tracks. Some days I feel as rough as a badgers arse, for those of you outside the UK this is what a badgers arse looks like. Other days I may feel a wee bit groggy but after a few hours I can do some bits and pieces and I am not totally wiping out a day. It really has been life changing. However the number of migraines I have been having lately has been averaging around 2 a week and I am heartily sick of having them. Of course it is now leading up to the window that always means migraine time the 18-22nd of each month. I am hoping ( god loves my optimism) that this month I wont get it but who knows? I have had more than my fair share these last 4 weeks.

So that was Friday, which was then followed by an eventful Saturday. About an hour after I got up on Saturday a nice bout of Vertigo started. The room did one spin every so often and when I walked / stumbled really anywhere it felt like I was on a boat. Thankfully I always have a stash of meds nearby for this and to be fair it has been quite a while since I had the spins. I sat down with a coffee and tried to relax and let the medication do its thing. After a while I was bored so I decided to go and sit out in the garden. Big mistake as I went arse over tit over a plant pot ( concrete ) that Mr Myasthenia Kid has so helpfully left in the middle of the patio. Had it been a normal day I may have been able to right myself but with vertigo? Not a fucking hope – apologies for the language today it is just happening. So I tumbled across the patio all the time trying to right myself without success. I realised at this point that I was going to end up crashing through the fence and falling 4ft down onto the patio in front of our shed if I didn’t stop staggering, so with the fake turf on top of the gravel I aimed my dive onto that figuring it would hurt a lot less than landing on the gravel.

Gracefully I hit the deck and if you believe that, you will believe anything. Immediately I was in a world of pain, both wrists, my left shoulder, my left knee, my left buttock and all along the left side of my back.

The only reason I didn’t scream obscenities out loud was because the neighbours children were playing in the garden and I didn’t want to teach them anymore bad language than I had already. Most of it was aimed at Mr Myasthenia Kid for being so stupid as to leave a bloody plant pot right in front of the patio doors! When he knows my vision is a bit dodgy and I can lose the sight in one eye if my ptosis strikes and I can’t open my right eye.

So all my plans of sewing etc went out the window. Instead I spent the day dosing myself up on pain killers and sitting on hot water bottles. My ankle blew up like a balloon, i had to take my slipper boots off because it got so large it was starting to feel constricted. I was bloody furious because I needn’t have fallen and I hate feeling vulnerable like that. I forgot to say the minute I landed on the artificial grass Dembe came rushing over showering me in kisses checking I was ok. Initially he wouldn’t let me get up until he had checked that I wasn’t seriously hurt.

Sunday was spent doing crochet very slowly as my wrists were still throbbing from the fall and my left leg was elevated all day due to the swelling. I still hurt all over but at least nothing was broken. 

Thankfully the vertigo was gone by Sunday morning, my leak is still causing me problems. It is still there and some days the head pain is worse than ever. I am still attempting to pace myself by lying down every few hours but it is difficult when I get absorbed in something to remember to. I only remember when my head starts feeling like it is crushed in a vice and all screens seem to be burning the back of my retinas.

As I am the worlds worst person at pacing myself due to the fact that giving up work due to my disabilities has made me feel like I contribute nothing at all to society, I push myself constantly beyond what is sensible and then end up paying for my stupidity. I feel that everything I do has to be better than everyone else so that people don’t feel sorry for me and that I don’t look weak or vulnerable. The fact that the falls and faints have become much more regular occurrences is making me feel very vulnerable and it is doing a number on my mental health. I have always struggled with never ever feeling anything I do is good enough and probably also a bit of impostor syndrome (find out more here. ) People can tell me that what I have sewn or embroidered is the best thing ever, my blog could be awarded a Nobel prize for literature but I would still be waiting for one person to say that my work is shit. It is hard to live with the constant fear that people will discover that what you do is actually crap. Add in physical disabilities and you have a wonderful mixture of weird ideas running through your head, not only are you not good enough creatively but you can’t even do the stuff normal people do. It makes you feel less than. Which is why I probably do push myself too hard to prove I am worthy of my place within society.

Word for this week is Bugger!

A lovely photo of Dembe to lift your spirits

 

 

I hate 2020

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

I hate 2020 with a passion not just for Covid-19 and not being able to see anyone but I also hate it because it has been a year of non stop health problems. It is driving me insane and I am starting to feel that “normal people” / “well people” or even people that don’t know me that well are thinking that I am either a) exaggerating the impact on me or b) I’m attention seeking. I rarely say much on social media about my health due to this. I am probably more honest on Instagram than I am anywhere. But a few times i have mentioned health issues on my own account on Facebook and now I am left doubting myself, worrying that people will think awful things about me. Believe me if I wanted attention there are a million and one other ways I could get it, being sick wouldn’t be the one I would use!

So this year I am struggling with Migraines, Menopause ( I am just 4 months away from officially being in it although technically I could have been in it at any point in the last 5 years, with the pill stopping my period I can only properly count from last December), bowel adhesion’s, ptosis and now my absolute favourite my CSF leak is back. I’ve had two good, well reasonable years with minimal symptoms. My symptoms when they have shown up have been in the evening with a dull headache and light sensitivity. Suddenly out of the blue last Thursday, my head started hurting and when you have had a spinal fluid leak you know that headache there is no confusion, the pain is like nothing else.

To describe a CSF leak headache is difficult, purely because there is really nothing else in the world that feels like it other than a post lumbar puncture headache or meningitis. I am extremely lucky at the moment that it is mild, strong enough to have me lying flat but not hugging the toilet bowl waiting for death. I was on my embroidery machine when I lent forward as I moved back my brain felt like it had been slammed between two bricks . Then my eyes were struggling to cope with the LED lights on the machine. I finished up as quickly as I could and then lay down on the sofa. Slowly over the space of an hour the pain eased. Although that was a good thing, it also chilled me to the bone as only a CSF leak headache eases so quickly on lying down. So my worst fears had been confirmed.

When Jay got home from work I spoke to him about it. He replied with “well don’t panic just yet you get days where it plays up more than ever”. Whilst he was right , this was different, this was stronger than it has been before. I could hardly blame him for trying to be optimistic maybe I would have been had I not already suffered two migraines that week and forgotten to write a blog post. It hadn’t been a good week and now it was getting worse. I replied that yes he was probably right and maybe a good nights sleep would help. I really hoped that it would be but I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t.

On waking up on Friday morning, I didn’t get the electric shock like feeling like I would back in 2016 when it was at it worst. I managed several hours upright before the pain started. I am afraid I pushed it and stayed up longer than I should have done. I did exactly the same on Saturday, staying upright and not resting like I should have done. I don’t know why I did it. Probably I was in denial and I was determined I wasn’t going to let a “little” thing like a leak get the better of me. There were things I wanted to do, I refused to go back to the dark place I was in, during 2016. 

However health problems don’t work that way, when things are bad you can’t pretend they aren’t happening. There is no distracting yourself from the pain when you have a CSF leak as the longer you try to ignore it the worse it gets and it wont stop until you lie down. If you push it too far eve lying down won’t stop it. From Friday I had increased my salt intake upping my salt tablets back to 10 a day, I had also increased my caffeine intake. Both caffeine and salt increase CSF production.

With the Menopause involved this time increasing caffeine has the added bonus of triggering hot flushes. The more caffeine I consume the worse the hot flushes are getting. Which is just fucking fantastic as caffeine is the only thing that helps quite quickly. So I spend the whole time stripping off due to getting overheated and then no sooner has the flush started I am then freezing cold. Hormones have a lot to answer for.

By Sunday I had completely blown it, my head felt like it was in a vice my eyeballs felt like they had been set on fire every time I looked at my phone, used my laptop or watched the TV. I ended up spending all day lying down either in bed or on the sofa. But as like in 2016 and 2018 ( my first re-occurrence of the leak), my back due to EDS wouldn’t let me do more than 12 hours flat. I felt so down about the pain being so bad and I really felt like maybe I had been an idiot fighting against it for three days . 

Thankfully 24 hours of lying flat has got it to a better place but I am still having to lie down much more than I want to. I managed 4 hours upright on Monday and 3 hours on Tuesday before lying down.  I was much more careful on Tuesday ( today) as dog training is re-starting . With it being held in the evening which is my worst time for the head pain, I am having to rest a lot to ensure that I don’t end up having to battle through the pain whilst there. 

To add a little variety into the mix at 6.50am I woke up in agony with bowel adhesion pain. I keep getting bouts of it out of no where. I ended up having to wake Jay up so he could get me a drink and a hot water bottle as I couldn’t move without making the pain worse. I took some Buscopan, Oramorph and thought there would be no way I would get back to sleep and then the next thing I knew it was 9am and Dembe was snuggled up beside me. I can’t work out what the hell is going on with this year. It is exhausting me with all the plot twists. If my life was a TV drama most people would be complaining it was unbelievable, no one is that unlucky….I’ve also lost my hospital consultant as the health authority he works for has decided that he is not allowed to see patients outside his catchment area. The hospital I used to go to before him, has no PoTs clinic at all as the consultant has retired. So basically if you are outside Plymouth you have been thrown ti the wolves.

But apparently my health needs no consultant input, as I am such an easy patient to manage! I hate 2020!