I never thought I would feel confused about how my body is feeling. Have I gone so long with the aches and pains of a low functioning thyroid that I can't get used to feeling nothing (meaning well)? All day today I find myself lost in the thoughts of checking in with my body. There isn't any stiffness, any aches, or any overwhelming feelings of exhaustion.
Part of me is in shock.
We take so much for granted until we are robbed of it. I forgot what it feels like to sail through days with ease and energy to spare. I have been forcing myself through each day, one day at a time, for so long now I am as lost as a kitten in a brown paper bag.
Gone are the feelings of sadness and confusion. I am afraid. I am afraid that I will wake up one day and not feel like this. What will my life feel like if I don't ever "crash" again? I can imagine the things I can accomplish if my body is back in the game with me. Already I am noticing I am having clear thoughts about my future. Just two weeks ago, these same thoughts seemed overwhemling and depressed me .
Doctors should be shot, I swear (this is a frustration comment - not a command). I remember how my own father suffered through all the experimental cancer treatments in the 70's. To this day, I don't know how he did it. God, they would make him so sick. He would get up every day at 4:30am, throw up and go out the door, into his truck and work a 12 hour day. I remember thinking as a child, "Why are the doctors doing this to him?" But he would have done anything to stay just one day longer with us. It was heartbreaking. If a man's soul is judged by how he dies, then my father is a saint.
The same thing happened with my step-father when he had his aorta replaced in Houston Texas. The doctors then told him he would die soon without the surgery. After the surgery, he was in a coma for 6 weeks. My mother had to fight to get him on an air ambulance home. We were going to remove the life support, because he had made it clear to us that he did not want to be kept alive by machines. When he was transferred to the hospital here, he awoke, thinking I was my mother.
He was never the same. I spent months going to rehab to check on him every day. Gosh, Brian was a small baby at this time. How did I ever do it? But the doctors continued to anger me with their treatment of my step-father. He was never again the man who got on that fateful flight to Houston Texas.
Once, I found his left arm folded up around his back and by his right ear. I didn't want to panic, so I calmly said, "Papa Dick, let me adjust your pillow" and I gently, slowly moved his arm to his side. While in the hospitals care, he had another stroke was paralized on the left side. Some orderly had left him that way. Once I got him comfortable, I calmly told him I was going to the bathroom. I proceeded to walk out to the nurses station, scream for the doctor and then cuss him out asking him if he went to the Wringling Bros school of medicine. He was eating and chatting with the nurses. You should have seen their faces. My step-father could be seen from their station. I told them they should be ashamed. How many times that day had they walked by him and not noticed that his left hand was behind his right ear?? I don't think they will ever forget me...
We watched Papa Dick slowly die of heart disease anyways, stroke followed by stroke. My mother cared for him until I thought it was going to kill her. Brian was just three the night he turned to me and said, "Grandpa is going to heaven tonight". I still don't know how Brian knew... they were so close.
Can you tell I have never been fond of doctors? I don't like being treated like a human guinea pig. It seems like what you tell them goes in one ear and out the other, as they have already decided your case. It's as if they treat you like you're Cinderella. They waive a magic wand and everything seems different - seems ok, until midnight, when all the symptoms return or you become more ill. Then if you go back to them they tell you it's your fault cause ya' lost the magic glass shoe. Oh, and by the way ... it will be $1,300.00 for the wand treatment ... $50.00 for this after ball consultation ... and $250.00 cause you lost the shoe.
I did love the doctor my mother worked for while growing up. He treated me like a daughter. He was from Russia. He was a man far before his time. He felt knowing about someone's lifestyle was part of the diagnostic process. He could be so dead-on right about illnesses.
I wish he was here to help me with my thyroid...
I gotta go. I'll keep you updated on my progress. I hope I inspire the rest of you to fight for your right to a healthy life. One you are able to live and enjoy!
Until next time-
C
