Chronic Illness Part Two: Healing is Hard When Your Body Hates Everything About You

Okay, so this post should wrap up the whole reason that I'm writing these. But to start, I need to finish my list of problems. Yay!

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

This is the big one. 

Simply put, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (or IBS) is the diagnosis that they give you when there is literally nothing else that you could possibly have. If all of the millions of tests that they try on you come back negative, you have IBS. If no medicine or treatment helps, you have IBS. It's great.

When I was 8 years old, I started to feel sick every day. It started out with nausea. I never, ever threw up, but I felt nauseous constantly. Over the years, more symptoms appeared. Light-headedness, head aches, chest pain, weakness, etc. And every time a new symptom appeared or an old symptom felt different than before, we would always go back to the doctor because I must actually be sick right now, right? Wrong. It had just morphed. So sometimes the nausea felt different than other times. And sometimes the headaches or chest pain were different. And sometimes I would get awful stomachaches along with the nausea. And sometimes I was constipated, but other times it was diarrhea. Or it was somehow both. Cool, cool.

From the time that I was a little girl, I would spend A LOT of time on the toilet every day. As a kid, I would just sit there and play school by myself. As I got older, I would get really bored. This is still an issue. I am often late to things because I had to go to the bathroom and ended up on the toilet for 30 minutes constipated/having diarrhea. I remember my mom being confused as to why I never seemed to know whether I had to go number 2 or not when I was younger. But that's because I usually didn't feel like I had to until I was on the toilet. The same often applies today. But I also have to run to the bathroom sometimes because it hits all of a sudden. Which is great when it hits right in the middle of work.

IBS also meant that I missed A LOT of school growing up. I would wake up super nauseous and weak, so the thought of trying to walk around school with a bunch of books and sit through classes while trying not to pass out made staying home seem like a much better option. My mom and I actually had to go to court after my first year in Pennsylvania because the school system didn't care that I got good grades despite missing so much school, all they care about was my attendance record. They didn't care that I had a note from my mom- and often from doctors -to excuse every single absence. They decided that my mom- who was doing all that she could to figure out why her daughter was sick all the time -was being a neglectful parent.

Fun fact: I started my first ever period sitting in a court room.

As soon as the judge looked at my medical record and saw that we really had been seeing doctors and doing tests and everything, she decided that the whole case was stupid because obviously my mom was being a stellar parent by trying to figure out WHY I was sick all the time instead of just ignoring it. The case was almost immediately dismissed. 

Speaking of seeing doctors and doing tests.... From the time I was 8 until I was 18, I saw ALL of the doctors. I went to gastroenterology, rheumatology, and psychiatry departments. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, anxiety, an aneurysm, and a million other things that I don't remember, only for them to decide- after the medications for those things didn't help -that that wasn't it after all. I've done ALL of the digestive tests; colonoscopies, endoscopes, capsule endoscopes, barium studies, one where I had to eat radioactive eggs, one where I had to drink two giant cups of who knows what. Most of them required either fasting for X amount of time and/or a colon cleanse. I've also had CAT scans and MRIs. I've peed in so many cups, had blood drawn SO many times, had IVs, drunk weird things, etc. And everything always came back negative. 

And the doctors would tell me that like it was a good thing. "Everything looks great!" Great. Really great. I'm glad that I still look like a crazy person for feeling super sick all the time even though all tests show that I'm in tip-top condition! I'm SO glad that I still don't have a diagnosis, which means we still have no course of action to make me feel better so that I can live a normal life. Thanks so much for that Doc!

It's not their fault. But I can honestly tell you (and this is really embarrassing to admit) that I got the point where I wouldn't have even cared if they told me that I had cancer because at least then we could TRY to make me better. At least there would be a name for what I have and a treatment plan. Yeah it might not work and I'd die, but at least I would know. I know how awful that sounds, but that's what having an unknown medical problem does to you. 

I can't tell you how many times doctor's have thought that I had appendicitis only to come back to "Everything looks great!"

When I was 16 or 17, I started bleeding when I pooped. It had no correlation with when I felt nauseous or got stomachaches. It just started happening one day and then would happen every so often. Taking stool samples is disgusting. 

The blood is what kept me from going on a mission right away. 

I knew that there was no way that they would let me serve a mission with an unknown internal bleeding problem. I mean, that's one of the questions that they always ask you in the ER; "Have you had bloody stool?" Yes indeedy, three times this week! But I feel totally fine otherwise, thanks for asking!

Sorry, as you can tell, the sarcasm is strong in this post.

After even MORE digestive tests, we finally figured out that my intestines were bleeding because of my constipation. I remember prepping for this test actually. The last one that I did before my mission. I had to drink two huge cups of who knows what and have an IV stuck in my arm. The nurses were shocked when I slurped down cup #1 super fast and decided to go ahead and put the IV in while I chugged the second one. At this point, drinking mysterious liquids and having needles stuck into my body wasn't really anything new. I just wanted to get it over with. And this one finally got results!

We still didn't know why I was constipated all the time, but we knew that that's why I was bleeding, so I was finally able to turn in my mission papers after about 8 months of doing medical tests even though I had pretty much already done all of them in middle and high school. 

And by then I had started to feel better more often, so I thought that I was finally getting somewhere with this mysterious illness. 

HA.

I was in the MTC for 12 days and went to the ER twice in that time. I spent most of my mission sick in bed and was almost sent home a couple of times. Being sick all the time did nothing to help the severe depression that was going on while I was a missionary. It was actually on my mission that I was diagnosed with IBS. The doctor told me that basically if everything comes back negative but you're still crazy sick all the time, then you probably have IBS. He told me that it's triggered by stress. But listen, it doesn't matter if you're handling your life just fine mentally/emotionally or not, your body will still react poorly. So even regular, totally manageable stress can and will make me super nauseous. Even if I don't feel stressed out at all, my body will still get nauseous. But if I DO feel stressed, then everything goes to pot.

IBS also makes it really hard to figure out if I have an actual virus/flu at times because the symptoms of IBS are also the symptoms of many illnesses. So every I seem to be extra sick I get to play the "is it worth it to go to the doctor" game. Because why spend money to see a doctor when you feel like crap but know that he/she'll probably just conclude that your IBS is acting up? But then, what happens if I do get seriously ill and I don't see a doctor because I figure it's just a flare up?

Anyway, we're getting close to the point of all of this, but really quick, let me go over PTSD with you again.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

My current counselor told me that what I went through with my ex's abuse and felony actually gave me a brain injury. So when they say "trauma" they mean that what happened actually hurt my brain.

Symptoms of PTSD include- but are not limited to:

Nightmares, panic attacks, being triggered and having flashbacks, trouble concentrating, being extra jumpy, issues sleeping, feeling keyed up, loss of appetite, headaches, experiencing sensory overload, anxiety, twitchiness when you try to fall asleep, puking, and chronic fatigue.

I only listed ones that I have personally experienced, but there are more here and here that go more in depth as well.

As you can imagine, having PTSD on top of chronic sleep issues and chronic digestive issues is no walk in the park.

And this is the crux of this whole Chronic Illness post:

It's taking me longer to heal because of my chronic illnesses than it would if I didn't have them.

Let's look at some of the things that would help me to heal mentally and emotionally:

Exercise, proper diet, good sleep, counseling, and keeping busy/feeling productive.

All of those things are excruciatingly difficult to do when you're not only dealing with PTSD (and the anxiety and depression that's wrapped up in that), but you're also extra nauseous and extra light-headed. 

I lost my job within about two and a half months of my ex being arrested. Not because I wasn't doing my job well still even though I was majorly depressed. No, not that. I lost my job because I had to call off too much. Because I would wake up feeling so weak and nauseous that I could hardly get out of bed. Because I would try to get ready for work and almost pass out because I would get so dizzy. And so I would call off. 

And my boss tried really, really hard to work with me. He knew the situation and knew that I was going through some really intense crap and so he was more lenient with absences than he normally would be. But when it came down to it, I didn't make it to work enough to viably stay on. I wasn't fired per se, but I didn't really quit either. We kind of just mutually agreed that I didn't work there anymore. He put me down as re-hireable and said that he hoped to see me back in a few months.

I didn't work for almost a year.

And school? Man oh man, I hate when people ask me how long I have left. *Shrugs* "I might graduate......... Someday...."

Because the PTSD makes it really hard for me to focus, making getting homework done SUPER difficult. And the IBS makes it really hard for me to get to class as much as I need to. And so ever since my ex started abusing me in Fall of 2016 (before he was arrested, mind you), I've had to drop at least one class per semester and have failed some of the others. And you have to understand that I had never failed a class in my life before then. Even with missing school constantly growing up, I always made up all of the work and ended the year with all A's and B's (except for the one C that I got my entire grade school career).

I've only been able to take a few credits at a time, and even then I have yet to have a semester where I actually kept up with the classes. Not for lack of trying. Not for lack of desire to learn. On the contrary, I've had to drop some of my favorite classes. And I've failed classes that I'm fascinated by. I WANT to be in class learning. I don't really want to do homework, but I sure as heck want to succeed in college, so in a way, I do! This past Fall semester, I sat in front of my laptop trying to focus on an English assignment for a good TWO HOURS before finally giving myself a break because I clearly wasn't getting anywhere.

I want to be able to take full classes again. I want to graduate someday. But for the last two years, that has been a real struggle.

I finally have a job again, but I'm still having to call off CONSTANTLY. I've maybe made it to work every day in a week about four times since I started in April. Four. If that.

And this semester, I've been feeling sick even more often than the last couple of semesters, which means that I've also been missing more church. And I LOVE church. And I've been missing Tuesday devotional. And I LOVE devo. 

Which are two more things that would really help me to heal mentally/emotionally. I'm trying so hard to lean on the Savior through my difficulties, but I feel like I'm not doing very well because I struggle to focus when I study the scriptures each day, and I'm lucky if I make it past sacrament meeting on Sunday. I've been to Relief Society maybe three times this semester. If that.

Feeling sick constantly makes it really hard to progress in this whole healing process thing. Because there are things that I want to do and that I try to do that I know would help me, but I physically am incapable of doing them. And because I feel sick so often, when I get a day that I don't feel sick, I end up doing way too much and exhausting myself, making it a lot more likely for me to feel super sick the next day. 

And everyone keeps telling me to "Take care of yourself. Don't push yourself so hard. Be nice to yourself." and I'm so sick of it because taking care of myself means missing out on everything important. It means missing work and missing church and missing class. It means not doing fun things with roommates and friends a lot of the time because I'm in bed. But then if I do push myself, I end up feeling way worse. So where is the line between pushing myself so that I make some kind of progress, and being nice to myself so that I don't go backwards? I'm still trying to find it and I don't seem to be getting any closer.

I know that I've talked about this before and I'm sure I'll talk about it again, but I still really struggle not to compare myself to who I was when my ex fell in love with me.

That Anna was taking 13 credits, working 20 hours a week, working at the temple every Saturday, volunteering with the Disciple Leadership Council every Wednesday night, and doing it all on four hours of sleep a night because she was also doing long distance. Then that Anna was in a bike accident and added physical therapy to the mix. And she still did everything else. And she ended the semester with straight A's. She did have to drop ballet because of her injuries, but she did everything else. With no sleep. In extreme pain.

And now I can't even take six credits and work. I still work at the temple and haven't had to call off too, too much, but it's also the only thing I ever have planned on Saturday because I know that I can't handle anything else. 

My life has become a daily game of pick and choose. If I go to work, then I feel too awful to go to class. If I go to class, then I fell too awful to go to work. If I stay for all three church meetings, then I won't make it to my evening meetings. And most of the time, I actually don't end up making it to any of the above because I feel too awful to do any of it.

And not only am I comparing myself to who I used to be and what I used to be able to do, but I find myself comparing myself to other victims as well. I have a few different friends that have been victims of severe abuse, whose husbands have been adulterous or severely demeaning, and while I know that they have their own struggles, I watch them succeeding in school. I see them working and socializing and being functional. And most of them started recovery quite a while after me. And yet they seem to be so much further along than I am.

And so I'm left feeling thoroughly useless. 

Two years later and I still can't succeed in school, work, or life in general. Two years later and I've still made such little progress. And that kills me. It kills me to see my friends (who in a lot of ways have been through much worse things than me) moving forward in life while I seem to be stuck. Not because I'm not SO happy for them, but because it has made me feel even more inferior, even more pathetic. Why is it so hard for me to move forward when they seem to be making huge strides?

And something that I have had to come to terms with recently is that 1- they are struggling more than I am seeing and 2- they aren't fighting their physical health along with their mental health to the extent that I am. And that honestly makes a huge difference. Because they aren't dealing with severe nausea and light-headedness, major back pain, and asthma, it's a little bit easier for them to take the necessary steps to recover. Not to say that they aren't also incredibly strong and working through a lot, but it is important for me to realize that we are dealing with very different things. And so my healing process may actually be a lot slower than their's. Not because I'm weaker than them, but because I've got an extra layer of difficulty due to me illnesses.

Not that there aren't really good things going on in my life. I am so freaking extremely blessed that Jonathan somehow fell in love with me in the midst of all of this. My ex fell in love with me when I was at my very best. Jonathan fell in love with me when I was at my worst.

I am so incredibly grateful to have such a loving and patient fiance. I am so grateful that he wants to marry me with full knowledge of my lack of functionality. But honestly, it also kills me. Because he is the literal best person for me. But I feel so awful that he is picking up so much baggage. That he is going to have to do so, so much for me. 

Granted, I also do a lot better with everything when we're together, so I honestly think that the healing process will progress a lot better once we're on the same side of the country again. 

But for right now, with him being in Ohio while I'm in Idaho, it's been really rough. 

And you have to understand; I already felt like no one would ever want to marry me because of all of my medical problems. And that was when they were under better control. But now that I've added PTSD into the mix- which has exacerbated all of the problems that I already had -I thought that there was no way that anyone would want to be with me. Who would want to be with someone that can't hold a job? Or who struggles to do well in a single class? Who would want to be with someone that is sick in bed half the time and sobbing and having anxiety attacks the other half?

Apparently Jonathan. Bless his heart.

And I could go on and on about all of the good things that he sees in me and why he wants to marry me, but that's not the point of this post. 

The point is that chronic illness is the worst. And it really does do a number on a person. It makes life really hard even without adding trauma (AKA- brain injury) into the mix. Because being chronically ill already makes me feel useless on it's own, but PTSD has also given me fairly severe anxiety that I never had to deal with before on top of everything else. So every concern is blown way out of proportion. Even if I know in my head that something isn't a big deal, my body and emotions still run away with me and leave me sobbing uncontrollably, hardly able to breathe. It doesn't matter that I'm doing what I can, it never, ever feels like it's going to be enough.

So if you have a (or multiple) chronic illness(es), please know that you really are trying your best. Even if your best literally feels like nothing at all. And know that there are people who will recognize that you really are trying your best. There are people out there who will see that where you currently are isn't because of a lack of effort or desire. That sometimes you literally just can't do the thing at the moment. And that doesn't make not being able to do it feel any better necessarily, but it's at least nice to know that there's someone that doesn't just think that you're being lazy or pathetic.

Because being chronically ill isn't lazy or pathetic. It's being sick. Hopelessly, constantly sick. And that's seriously rough.

And if you know someone that has a chronic illness, please know that they are probably trying a lot harder than you think they are. Having a sickness with no cure is really taxing. It's exhausting, it's discouraging, and it messes with EVERYTHING. Try imagining going through every day of your life with a giant tumor that no one else can see. It still hurts and it still messes you up, but no one else can see it. That's chronic illness.

I wish that I could tell you all that I knew that everything was going to get better soon, but I can't. Because with chronic illness, you never really know. But I DO know that being sick doesn't make me a bad person. I know that it doesn't mean that I'm just not trying hard enough or that I'm lazy. Being sick doesn't mean that I deserve love any less than anyone else. It just means that things are harder for me right now than they should be. It means that healing is going to take longer for me than it might for others. Because PTSD irritates my IBS and IBS makes me sick which makes me more stressed which irritates my IBS and on and on and on. 

Being chronically mentally ill at the same time as being chronically physically ill just really sucks. A lot. But I know that I'm going through all of this for a reason. 

I saw this on Elizabeth Smart's Instagram recently and it really spoke to me: 

I ran into the teacher of the class that I had to drop this semester and we were talking about my situation. She told me that she thinks that healing is being so difficult for me and taking so long for me because I'm going to be able to use my experiences to help other people, so I have to go through extra pain so that I can understand and sympathize with others even more. And going through extra pain isn't my favorite thing that's happened in my life, but I hope that it does mean that I will be able to be more understanding of others in all different situations because I've been through all of them. Simultaneously. For a long time.

When I was younger, I would sometimes pray that since I was sick all the time, other people wouldn't have to be. And that I would take some extra trials if it meant that others didn't have to suffer so much. I don't know why I thought that that was a good idea, but those prayers are being answered. And I hope that because of the suffering that I am going through now, I will be able to help prevent others from going through similar things. 

Like Elizabeth Smart said; I would would never want to go through all that I've gone through again. But I am grateful for all that it's taught me. I'm grateful that I've been able to help people through sharing my story. And if I have to suffer so that I can help others, then I guess that makes all of this worth it. 

Does that mean that I won't still hate every second of trying to recover? No. Does it mean that I won't still get frustrated at myself and feel pathetic and broken? No. But it absolutely means that I'm going to keep doing my best to reach out to others so that they can have the help and support that they need. And so that they know that they're not alone in feeling sick, and anxious, and broken. 

Healing is hard. Healing when your body is doing all that it can to prevent you from healing is harder. But living with no hope is hardest. I know that things will be okay. Not necessarily that they'll be a ton better anytime soon, but that things will work out the way that they need to as long as I keep trying and as long as I keep trusting that God knows what He's doing with me. Those things may not have gotten me to full recovery yet, but they did bring me the greatest blessing in my life (Jonathan), so I can already see that persevering is going to be worth it.

Hang in there. I know that chronic illness makes everything really, really hard. Like you're living your life on difficult mode while everyone else is on medium. But the harder things are, the stronger you'll become. I promise.

Chronic Illness Part One: Being Sick Sucks

This post goes out to everyone with a chronic illness. If that applies to you, you're awesome and I am so sorry.

I've kind of skirted around this topic for some reason, but I decided that I needed to not do that anymore because this is another one of those kind of taboo subjects. It's something that SO many people struggle with, and yet no one talks about it. And so no one really understands what it's like.

Which I think is part of the reason that I've been afraid to talk about it. Because I don't want to talk about all of these health problems and the take away be "Wow. That girl's got even more issues than I thought." Even if that's true. But people have been really understanding about my life being a mess because of a felony. I can only hope that they'll be understanding of my life being a mess because of invisible illnesses that have plagued me my whole life.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

Ever since I was a little girl, I've struggled with feeling sick ALL. THE. TIME. And I'll tell you what. It really, really sucks.

It sucks because feeling sick sucks. It sucks because you question every bodily function, unsure if you're body is supposed to do that, or if it's another thing that's abnormal about your body. It sucks because people think that you're faking. It sucks because you feel like you should just be used to it by now and be able to push through it. It sucks because there is SO much that you want to do but can't if you feel like death. It just sucks.

I have multiple chronic illnesses. One that I've had for as long as I can remember (insomnia), and some that developed more around 2nd grade (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, depression), some that I developed in high school (asthma, hypersomnia), and then some that I have more recently acquired (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which means that semi-severe anxiety has been added to the mix). Oh, and I also have a back injury that seems like it will never go away. And then there's things that I'm still not really sure about that are wrong with my body.

Okay, let's break these down, shall we?

Insomnia/Hypersomnia

For as long as I can remember, it's taken me longer to fall asleep than anyone else. I started having sleepovers when I was about five or six, and I noticed that my friends would fall asleep in a matter of minutes, leaving me to lay there in the dark for another few hours. I didn't think that there was anything wrong with me, just that some people fall asleep faster than others and I happened to be the only person that I knew that took all night to fall asleep.

I was kind of sneaky about it too. I would always tell me friends to "feel free to wake me up if you wake up first!" because I knew that they would then tell me the same thing and I knew that I would always be awake first.

When I wasn't at a sleepover, I spent most of my hours in bed reading. My dad would come in and the lights would still be on and he would ask "do you know what time it is?!" and I would honestly tell him no. Then he would tell me to turn my lights out and go to sleep. But I knew that I wasn't going to be able to just fall asleep, so I usually just kept reading until all of the words started blurring together and I knew that I could actually fall asleep finally.

Not trying to sound like a disobedient little toerag, but I had to do what I had to do. Anyone that knows me knows that I HATE being bored. And there are few things more boring than laying in bed- in the dark -for hours on end trying to fall asleep. So I would read instead.

When I was a kid, my body still somehow functioned on very little sleep. As I got older though, this became a much bigger problem. So- sometime in middle school I think -I was prescribed sleep medication that I have taken every night since. With the medicine, I could (generally) fall asleep and stay asleep better, but for some reason I was still crazy exhausted the next day anyway.

It didn't matter how many hours of sleep I got, how early I went to bed, etc. I still would be dead tired all day every day. And so I did a second sleep study (I did the first somewhere in the process of getting me onto sleep meds and such) and was diagnosed with another sleep disorder called Hypersomnia.

Insomnia is when you can't fall asleep and/or stay asleep at night. Hypersomnia is essentially when you can't stay awake during the day.

Which, obviously if I'm not sleeping at night, I'll be tired the next day. Duh. But... I was usually sleeping through the night at this point. But I couldn't stay awake for the life of me even so.

(It's not narcolepsy; I wouldn't fall asleep all of a sudden while I was walking or anything. But sit me down in any situation for very long and I struggled. A lot.)

I tried EVERYTHING to stay awake during school. I tried pinching myself, putting my leg on the cold metal part of the desk, sucking on mints, etc. I remember my Psych teacher telling me one day that he's never seen someone try so hard to stay awake in his class. He told me that usually when he saw people falling asleep, they clearly were just giving in to it. They'd lay their head on the desk and just pass out. But he watched me bob up and down for probably most of the 45 minute long class, trying desperately to get something out of the lecture.

I also remember one particular day when I started to fall asleep while taking my AP English test (you know, the one that you PAY to take?) and I was like "Uh-uh. Not now. I can't." And so I started rubbing this horrid sunburn that I had on my shoulder in the hopes that it would wake me up. No dice. So then I was panicking about falling asleep, falling asleep, AND in a crap ton of pain. Yay...

The doctor tried putting me on a stimulant to help me stay awake during the day, but it had a really horrible effect on me and made me super groggy and out of it. So I had to stop taking that pretty quickly and we just never figured anything else out.

The hypersomnia isn't quite as bad now as it used to be, but it still really gets to me sometimes. It really sucked on my mission because I almost never made it through personal study, no matter how hard I tried. I would even try studying standing up, but I'd still be so sleepy that the result was me feeling super lightheaded and nauseous. Good times.

Asthma

I've never had the greatest lung capacity in the world, but things got really bad my junior year of high school.

I got really sick about halfway through the school year. It started out as a cold, became really severe bronchitis, and then just didn't go away. I developed what we call "The Cough." Imagine coughing so hard that you literally feel like you're going to cough up not only your lungs, but every organ in your body. A cough that wracks your entire body. That tears up the back of your throat, gives you a massive headache, and makes your whole body sore. Now multiply what you pictured by about 46. THAT is The Cough.

I missed almost three months of school straight. I went to the ER multiple times when I coughed so hard, so frequently, that I could hardly breathe. They put me on literally dozens of medications including multiple inhalers, steroids, and multiple rounds of antibiotics. Nothing was working. I got breathing treatments and went to see an allergy doctor. We found out then that I was allergic to dust mites (AKA, everything) and got me on some allergy meds that made me stop being itchy all the time (which was a whole different problem), but didn't stop The Cough.

After a while, I tried to go to school. I would usually make it until about AP Music Theory. At which point my teacher would make me go home. So picture this: the music room is in the same hallway as the nurse's office. So I would walk down the hall to call my mom, then I would walk to the complete other side of the building and up the stairs to my locker, and then back down to the nurse's office to wait for my mom to pick me up. So I essentially passed EVERY SINGLE CLASSROOM. Teachers would literally stop their classes so that they could poke their heads out of the their doors and ask if I was alright because they had heard me hacking in the hallway. I'm pretty sure that the whole school became accustomed to my Cough.

Finally they put me on steroids AND and antibiotic at the same time and it eventually went away. But not before I missed every Midterm, science fair, and all of the research days for a 10 page AP Lang research paper. That was fun to make up. I had no idea what was happening in any of my classes at that point and certainly didn't remember what we had learned before. So making up the midterms was torture, I turned my science fair project in literally the last week of school, and I just about killed myself writing my paper that ended up being 18 pages long because it was about Harry Potter. Oh, and I did the musical. Don't ask me how.

Ever since that year though, I have "asthma". I put asthma in quotations because it's not typical. My rescue inhaler doesn't actually help after I've started to have an asthma attack because I don't have normal asthma attacks. I don't stop breathing or anything. I get The Cough. And once it starts, it's not going to stop anytime soon. So I basically just have to lay down for the rest of the day, knowing that I'm going to be sore and exhausted the next day. I swear I should have a six-pack by now from coughing.

Colds almost immediately turn into bronchitis for me, so winter is kind of the worst a lot of the time. I have to be really careful about exercising because if I push myself too hard I'll have an asthma attack. It's great.

So there's that.

Depression

So I said that the depression started when I was 8, but thinking back, I'm realizing that that's not really true. I definitely was always an emotional kid. I was very sensitive to others' pain. I would cry about everything and had really low self-esteem. This wasn't helped at all by moving to a state where I never, ever felt like I fit in when I was 12. It was from the ages of probably 11-16 that the depression really started to set in. In particular, I remember that the year that I turned 16 was really rough. I was super emotional all the time. I would end up alone in a side room crying during most stake dances. I felt like nobody cared about me and it made sense that they wouldn't because there was nothing special about me. It was rough.

I also remember getting super freaked out by my brother being deployed. He'd been deployed before and it hadn't really bothered me before, but this time I was just a total wreck. Constantly.

My mission was super rough for me because I didn't just get discouraged, I became completely distraught. I was so thoroughly down on myself and nothing that anyone did or said helped. I ended up having to talk to a counselor while I was a missionary because it got so bad.

Side note- Can I just say that counselors can be SO wonderful? There's something extremely validating about having a trained professional tell you that you've been through more in 20 years than many of her older patients had been through in their lives. It made me realize that maybe I wasn't as pathetic as I thought after all. Finding the right counselor is vital, but once you do, they really are amazing.

Anyway, that's all I'm really going to say about depression for now because I'll address more of that when I talk about PTSD and such.

Part Two of this post will address IBS and PTSD, so I'll talk a little bit about some of the other things really quick.

Back Injury

So I was in a bicycle accident a little over two years ago. I sprained my wrist, bruised- and possibly fractured -my ribs, bruised a few bones, and got whiplash. The wrist hurt the worst first. Then the ribs. And then my neck. And yet it's the whiplash that's still affecting me.

The pain spread from the left side of my neck down into my shoulder and back on that side, and eventually to the rest of my back and neck.

I went to the doctor, an osteopath (a chiropractor that's actually also a legit doctor as well), and physical therapy. I did PT for a few months. I went and got massages at the massage school here in Rexburg. I did exercises and fixed my posture (mostly). But my back would get better for a little bit, and then tank again. And if I try to do anything the least bit strenuous, my back hates me for weeks. I climbed The Tower at the ropes course here at school for one of my classes. It was so fun! My back didn't bother me at all! Until the next day. And then for the next two weeks. I haven't climbed since.

I work at a thrift store right now in the Small As Is/Large As Is department. This means that I'm constantly bending and lifting. My back has been angry at my for the last few months because of it. My asthma also gets angry at me because of all of the dust, and I have to wear gloves so that I don't break out because of my dust mite allergy. It's great.

The point is, my back has made it really difficult to do a lot of things. I love climbing. Trees, rock walls, you name it. But I'm so afraid of the pain that I know will follow if I do it that I just... don't anymore. A lot of exercise is hard not only because of my asthma, but now also because of my back.

So there's that.

Misc

Some other things that I still have no clue about:

My arms have always been really sensitive. My brothers would hardly touch me play punching me and it would hurt SO bad. They're still like that.

I have "weak ankles" like Megara says in Hercules. Or Kronk.

My right ankle started hurting really badly one day and didn't stop. We went to the doctor who said that I had probably sprained it. I wore an ankle brace for a while. It kind of helped. Except that I still get severe ankle pain sometimes. Not only in my right ankle, but in my left ankle as well. Sometimes one bothers me, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. I have a couple of ankle bandages that I wear occasionally when it's really bad. Not because anything is "wrong", but because my ankle just hurts.

Granted, I also have a cyst on one of my ankles, which doesn't help. It hurts to kneel on it.

Speaking of cysts. I also had one on the side of my head for years and years. I finally got it removed right before my mission. Only to have another one appear on the back of my head a few months into my mission. It's already at least the same size as the old one ended up. It doesn't really hurt most of the time, so I just ignore it. But what the?

Other than that, sometimes my legs will be really sore for seemingly no reason. Basically I just get a lot of random pain that doesn't really have an explanation. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at one point, but then it was decided that that's not what I have after all. That's happened to me a lot. I've been diagnosed with so many different things, only to have it retracted later when the treatments for those things did nothing. So that's cool.


Anyway, this all seems kind of pointless at the moment, but I promise that this is really going somewhere. I'm not just listing off all of the ways that my body hates me just for funsies.

I hope that you are starting to see, though, how much chronic illness/pain really does interfere with everyday life. Because I think that that is what people really don't get. They don't get how a sickness that you can't see or treat can really screw up a person's life. They don't get that functioning as a normal human being is sometimes just really hard for those of us with chronic illnesses. People think that we're being weak and whiny, or else that we're faking and just trying to get out of things. But I know that for me at least, I have a huge desire to live a normal life. I WANT to be able to have a regular schedule, go on adventures, work hard, exercise, etc. But I can't always do those things because of my body. It's not that going to work or doing homework are my favorite things in the world, but feeling like I'm a competent human being that can work hard and progress in life is.

I'll delve more into all of that in Part Two, so hang in there and I'll get Part Two soon!

(To be continued...)