I haven’t had the heart to start rewriting it because just a few weeks after that happened I had a multiple sclerosis relapse that I am yet to fully recover from and I haven’t been feeling quit as positive about my outlook on having a chronic disease.
This explanation is going to be a long one that I think I’m writing more for myself than for anyone else to read so please bear with me if you do read all of this.
This all started about 6 months ago.
I have a long history dealing with anxiety and depression, I had been relatively anxiety free for a few years and had been off of antidepressants for the past two years. Out of no where I started getting strange out of the blue anxiety and did not want to let it lead back to the constant anxiety I used to deal with. I wanted to nip this in the butt quickly and went to a random doctor I had never seen before and asked them to put me back on Prozac. They agreed to give it to me and I started it right away. Now the first time I started Prozac was so long ago I don’t remember the initial side effects, but man I don’t think they were as bad as they were this time. After just a day of taking it I started having almost 24/7 panic attacks that continued for a week. I couldn’t take it anymore and had to stop taking it. I also learned to maybe not go to random doctors I don’t know and convince they to give me medicine.
This is where the multiple sclerosis nonsense starts happening. Sometimes when I get stressed for long periods of time weird things just happen to my body. Something that often happens is I lose feeling in one of my feet, usually my right foot. So as predicted, that’s what happened. Now normally this clears up after a few days and I have a day or two of minor discomfort as the feeling starts to come back. Oh boy, not this time. This time my foot stayed numbed for what I think was weeks and when the feeling started coming back the pain was in a whole different ball game.
I dealt with the horrible pain for days before deciding to contact my neurologist. By horrible pain I mean waking up in tears daily from how badly it hurt. I don’t want to get into details of what happened with my doctor because honestly it’s not worth it, but essentially after a few days of calling and being ignored by their office I was eventually told they couldn’t see or help me despite me crying on the phone for help. After they told me this, my boyfriend (who has been an absolute loving and amazing saint through all of this. Really words can’t express how thankful I am for him) took me to the emergency room in hope of some finding some answers.
They ending up deciding hop me up on pain killers and admit me for testing. After an MRI showed a new lesion on my brain they kept me in the hospital for five days to administer two daily doses of intravenous steroids. This was a super boring five days but the pain and the numbness in my feet slowly started to disappear. I couldn’t wait to get home.
The happiness of being home quickly wore off within an hour of getting there however. My mom picked me up from the hospital and brought me home to my apartment. The first thing I wanted to do was shower. I had ordered a shower handle to stick to the shower wall to help steady myself since the feeling in my feet was still a bit off. I tried for five minutes to attach it to the wall and the moment I gave up in defeat, I just lost it. My mom was waiting for me in the living room and I hobbled down the stairs as best I could bawling my eyes out to come find her.
My entire body ached (I’m sure from laying still for five days), I was furious about how long this healing process was taking and I was just completely physically and mentally exhausted. I had hardly slept during the hospital stay out of the anxiety of hating being in the hospital and also the annoyance of a nurse, who I know was just doing her job, coming into the room every few hours in the middle of the night to poke and prod at me. I calmed down eventually and was thrilled to finally sleep in my own bed.
The next day though started a whole other nightmare. While I was in the hospital I was never alone. My amazing parents, boyfriend and friends were always visiting me and took turns spending the night with me. I took two days off work when I left the hospital and it was my first time being completely alone. I thought I would enjoy finally having some alone time but damn did my brain have other ideas.
I fell into a horribly deep depression, I honestly don’t even feel comfortable saying how deeply it ran. But it made me terrified of being alone. I was at the time living with my boyfriend and a roommate, so between the two of them there weren't huge gaps of time I would be alone at the apartment. But during those short gaps, or god forbid long gaps, I was just frozen. I really don’t even know how to describe what would happen, but it was awful.
After a few days or weeks the pain in my feet started coming back. We did a follow up MRI which showed no further lesions, which was great news to hear, but that news did not stop the pain. That’s when the great medicine hunt of 2018 began. It was a few months worth of trial and error as my neurologist, who was just great, tried to find a medication to help with the nerve pain. This was an extremely difficult process for me. Each medication would take a few weeks to fully kick in, so I would often have to wait in pain for a few weeks only to find the medication wasn’t going to work for me.
But eventually we cracked the case and everything started to fall together. We finally found a combination of medications that have now nearly eliminated the nerve pain I was feeling in my feet. I was put on Lyrica for the nerve pain and Cymbalta as an antidepressant. Cymbalta actually also helps with nerve pain and the combination of the two have been amazing for me both physically and mentally. Speaking of mentally, I started seeing a psychologist and a psychiatrist and both have been amazing. I was so hesitant to start another antidepressant after the nightmare I had with the Prozac previously. But the Cymbalta had no side effects and I think it has really helped with my anxiety.
I know I have said it before and I’ll say it again, but I think everyone should see a therapist at least once in their life. It’s just such a great relief to speak to an objective third party about your life and thoughts. I don’t usually like to talk a lot about being sick because I don’t like to feel like a burden to anyone. I know this is entirely in my head and no one is being burdened by me talking about it but it is still difficult for me. It has just been really great being able to dump all of my “medical baggage” on someone guilt free.
I have gone through phases in my life where every five or so years I feel the need to see a therapist. It is usually a long battle of finding one who first accepts my insurance and also is someone that I like. I think it’s such a waste of time to continue seeing someone who you just don’t connect with or feel comfortable with. As frustrating as it can be, the hunt for a therapist is always worth it to me, I don’t think that’s something you should ever just settle with. I got lucky this time around though and the first therapist I saw was right off the bat someone I really connected with. I still have some things to work on but I think I have finally found the perfect combination of medication and therapy for my anxiety and depression.
So, there is a happy ending to this story. Things are looking up for me both physically and medically. There have been a few speed bumps but damn it, I’m getting there.
Oh and I’m getting married.
