Hope

Goodearly morning all. Things are getting back to normal a bit...I hope. Normal sick anyway.
I have travelled a rough winding road the past few months with my albatross.
That I am posting at 5am and been awake since 3 means that normal sleep patterns are returning too. Not great sleep patterns but they are mine and familiar. I. The past few months I have been asleep nearly constantly. Mind you it felt good to sleep and sleep hard, but I knew it wasn’t for the right reason it’s because I was really sick.
With Lupus among other dx’s, normal sick is pain, stiffness, fatigue....but this business of searing thoracic and cervical pain, cranial pain and a almost non-functioning gut is not normal. The battle to be heard by medical care (I use their term care loosley) becomes an impossible mission so I go to my tool box and do my best to heal myself and just thank my God to wake up another day and pray he will allow it to continue. Sad isn’t it!?
Perhaps the worst part is that even though what-ever it was I will never know, I learned nothing from my medical team so that I can put it in my tool box in case the same symptoms return someday and then know what to do.
I believe I had some kind of infection, deep in my ear. It caused allot of inflammation in my cervical spine which fed inflammation to the nerve root ending which not only is excruciatingly painful but run pretty much all bodily functions. Pinched nerves or “cervical radiculopathy”.
It’s still tender in and behind my right ear. But I can feel my hands and fingers again, and my balance is back. The ice pick head ache at the base of my head and in my ear are tolerable now.
But my vision and hearing have not yet returned to normal. A small price to pay? I wonder.
The frustration, anger and anxiety of “why won’t these people who are paid gobs of money to care for me, help me”, has lessened.
It is what it is, I am chronic, and “I am supposed to hurt” seems to be their montra.
The fact that because I am chronic seems to eliminate the fact that I too, like the rest of the population could catch something or become acutely ill with say an ear infection, or that I just twisted or lifted something the wrong way and hurt myself.
I learned the end of last week that the paper work for an MRI has been in the works since March 8! But doesn’t seem likely to help me over a month later, nor does it seem likely that at this point it will show anything at all. Talk about wasting healthcare dollars.
Doesn’t do much for a chronic patients sense of security for now or the future either.
Sigh......tuffymason