Saturday, September 22, 2012

Doctors Say I'm Fine

Only in my thirties and living a pretty decent lifestyle I shouldn't feel like my heart would give out at any moment, but I finally resorted to researching my symptoms on Google because the doctor said I was healthy.  I wanted to be healthy, but I LIVE in this body, and I'm telling you, THIS is NOT HEALTHY.
I was exhausted all the time, not just "I don't feel like getting up," but "I CAN'T get up."  It was a major effort to get out of bed, to take a shower, to stand up off the couch, to get out of the car.  Exercise wasn't even possible most of the time.
I felt hungry all the time but everything I ate either made me sick to my stomach or gave me abdominal cramps.
I couldn't sleep when I needed to sleep and I couldn't stay awake when I needed to be awake.  I literally pinched myself or bit my lip to stay awake at work, through church, in meetings, and while driving.  All day I prayed for bedtime to come, and all night I'd pray for morning.
Every bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, organ, and joint in my body ached and burned, all the time.  I couldn't live on pain killers, but what COULD I do?
My face was constantly broken out.  My neck always felt swollen.  I had migraines, sinus headaches, chronic colds and sinus infections, heart palpitations, and constant back-neck-shoulder pain. 
My mind was so foggy that even reading was impossible.  By the time I got to the end of a paragraph or even a sentence I had forgotten what the first part said.  Trying to hold my household and family together and keep up with social obligations (while I looked fine but felt miserable) was a huge mental tax.
I'd tried multivitamins, minerals, cod liver oil, resetting my internal body clock, sleeping more often, working harder, exercise, yoga, coffee, Red Bull, blood tests for hormone levels, ignoring the pain, giving in to the pain, and nothing helped except Vicodin.  (Now I see how soccer moms turn addicts.)
After quietly living my whole life like this, I started searching the internet to try to find out why I was so tired all the time.  The answer I kept finding was adrenal exhaustion.  Then my mom took me to her naturopath, who diagnosed me with exactly that.  She said there is hope for full recovery.  And she said it's going to take a long time.

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