For my new followers, I apologize if I seem “normal”. You can skip this post if you want and re-join me again after my rant. No one asks for problems that I am aware of, so let me start out by saying that. If you are holding your hand up in the back saying you do, then slap yourself with that hand. On New Year’s Eve of 1998, most of my health issues started. I won’t go into those old posts, but if you are interested, you can find them on here. I have hereditary hemochromatosis and porphyria cutanea tarda to start out with. To date, I have never met a person face-to-face with these two diseases together. For the rest of my life, every six months, give or take me forgetting a month, I have phlebotomies, or pints of my blood taken. For those of you who are lost, my blog includes a tab onhemochromatosis.
A few years ago, immense pain in my joints started. It was without a doubt the worst thing I have ever felt in my life. I could not move my shoulder. I could not sleep. I could hardly get around without wanting to cry. I still went to work everyday. I was not always pleasant, but I know who my real friends are. If I offended someone during that time, I really didn’t give a damn. Pain sucks. You start to turn off some portion of yourself just to get by. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t care. I went to doctors for 6 more months before we found a link that one of my dear friends helped me find. I knew there was a connection, but no one would believe me. I had developed Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
At the beginning of this year, a lump was found in my left breast. I almost lost it. Maybe for a while I did. I was in pain again, only this time it was my breasts and I thought they were trying to kill me. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to tell a few people as I had to take off work for the biopsy. It came back that it was a benign cyst and the cause appeared to be fibrocystic breasts. In the meantime, during all of this, I had also developed severe stomach pain and decided to go gluten-free to see if that would help.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to know that when I write about moving forward, thinking positive and staying motivated that there are days I want to give up. There are days I want to move to the top of a mountain and live out my life by myself. Yes. By. My. Self. Then my van won’t start like yesterday and I am standing in the cold with a friend who is willing to wait and see if we can get the damn thing started (we didn’t). And I am carpooling with my husband and we get into a erm, discussion about money, and I get mad at the start of my day. Then I have to deal with multiple tiny issues at work that lead me to have even more stress, so that by the time he picks me up from work I want to scream. We have to stop by the store and I see a man with a sign sitting in front and my eyes well up with tears. Why can’t I have more money so I can give him some? Why does this have to be one of those times when I feel like I can’t help anyone? If I let myself cry now, I will not be able to get out of the car. I want to save the world, I always do, but right now, I can’t help anyone until I am in a better place and it’s okay to realize that. So this is my acknowledgement of that. I will move forward and so will you. If you are in this place with me right now, we got this. Keep paddling, and if you don’t have a paddle, swim.
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.“
~Thomas Paine