I just realized that my sense that things will be ok eroded almost completely over the last year. I didn’t really notice until now that it’s starting to come back a little.
Can I lay that erosion at the door of bipolar disorder? Some. Not all.
Being hit by a truck that didn’t see my red car pulling out of the parking lot made the first half of last year difficult to say the least. Months of pain, fighting with doctors over it, surgery, PT, all the legal crap, people harassing me for payments I didn’t have until the legal stuff was settled. All that lasted well into October. And by September I had realized that though my knee is “fixed” it will never be right again. I will always have trouble and pain when the weather changes, or if I sit too long at a desk, or if I stand too long. And I can’t do a damned thing about the weather, so I’m stuck with a messed up knee until I exit stage left. This has not helped me feel things will be ok.
Bipolar disorder gets its fair share of blame for this erosion, though. The Trileptal that helped my bipolar symptoms so much ultimately gave me such bad gastritis we thought I had an ulcer. So that had to go. I tried Abilify, which worked nicely, but appeared to give me gut spasms not to mention the county would no longer pay for it and I sure couldn’t. So within a year I started up on a third bipolar med. Encouraging? Not particularly.
Then there’s the gut spasm abdominal pain itself. That’s gone on for months on and off. We don’t even really know what it is. That doesn’t encourage hopefulness. Nor does the rest of my health stuff over the past year. I’ve had bronchitis twice I think it was, once that lasted almost 2 months. I’ve also had colds and the flu.
Then there’s the financial problems. When you’re as sick as all that so constantly, working properly and consistently is almost impossible. So… severe financial problems just because I wasn’t able to earn as much.
Now that I’m looking at my eroded sense that things will be ok, when I stop to see what’s contributed to that, I realized I’m not so nuts. Most anyone would feel emotionally worn down after dealing with all this in just a year. Somehow that makes me feel a little more hopeful.
I’m still crossing my fingers and knocking on wood. But hey, two months ago I wouldn’t have bothered because I was convinced nothing could possibly help. I like having a little light at the end of the tunnel.
Babbled by Immi.
Tags:
bipolar,
meds,
my life,
sick