Hurry, hurry, hurry, now if I can get out of the house in the next few minutes I can pick up the dry cleaning, stop at the pharmacy and get the cards and look for a birthday present I could make it to the high school and drop off the brownies, then I should be able to make it to work in time. Just a few minutes late isn’t really late right??? I had already cleaned the house from top to bottom, done two loads of laundry and put dinner in the crock pot. Thank goodness the dog is behaving this morning, so I didn’t have to waste time chasing him down the road and back home. So I put the keys in the ignition and prepare to back out of the driveway and low and behold..............my neck would NOT turn.
Now this was the theme of my 20’s and 30’s. Hurry, hurry, hurry. There was just not enough time in a day to get everything I wanted accomplished. Being a major type A personality I really thought it was ultimately normal to get up in the morning, have my coffee, prepare dinner for the evening, scrub 3 toilets, do laundry, dust, and clean the floors and vacuum and if needed pull a few weeds outside. Now this all is done by 9:30 in the morning and then off to work. I was a bank teller and worked only 10 – 4. The afternoon was then spent taking kids to whatever activity they had and then back home. Then came dinner, dishes, more laundry and usually putter out in the yard until about 10 in the summer.
So earlier I had mentioned taking brownies to the high school. Well, now let me tell you about that. So my son was a huge handful in his teenage years. He had put us under so much stress I can’t even tell you how much. After about the 3rd time of being called to the high school to meet with the vice principal (he was such a nice man) I told him to just kick him out of school, his attitude was terrible. The vice principal said no......let’s give him another chance. In my head I am thinking how many chances are you going to give this monster? So the next morning I made brownies to take to the vice principle.........as a thank you. Well this was awesome. All of the kids saw Leroy’s mom taking brownies to the vice principal and started teasing him. He came home from school and said “Mom why did you do that, it was so embarrassing” I said GOOD. The next time I get called to the vice principal’s office I am marching through the school with a big old cake. I would like to say that this did the trick and he straightened out, but no such luck. He was only in school a week or so and then was kicked out. He never completed 11 grade. Now for a type A personality this really hurt and embarrassed me. There was just nothing I could do to stop him from taking the path he chose.
Stress, stress and more stress. Raising two teenagers holding down a job, keeping an immaculate house and yard meant a very strict schedule. While at work one day a bank robber came in. Of course he came up to my teller window and gave me a note. While I have a million things going through my head, the most prevalent thing was that I just didn’t have time for this today. Because when you get robbed it takes so much time afterwards with the police and FBI and bank personnel. Usually about 3 hours. Well I just did not have time for all of that. I had to get my daughter over to the youth Pastors house for their weeklong camping trip. If she didn’t get there in time they would leave without her and she would not get to go. Now back to the bank robber. He passes the typical note and I just pass the note right back to him and say .... I DON’T THINK SO.
He packs up his note and then stares me down and says....”Well, ok then” And he walks out the door. Needless to say I got in big trouble. My point in telling you this story is that this is all part of my stressors.
More years pass with stress after stress after stress after stress. Then my husband comes home with news that his company is moving us to Hawaii. Excitement and then more stress. Leaving my grown children at this point, my friends, family and everything I have ever known. I quit my job and concentrated on packing up the household and getting ready for the move. While packing boxes down the stairs, I fell about 4 stairs, bruising my bottom and hurting my back.
My eye started hurting about this time. It started out as an irritation, then getting madder and madder. It turned bright red. What was happening. Why so much pain. OH MY GOSH. Why does it hurt so bad??? Then off to the eye Dr. It turns out to be Uveitis. They told me I had a very angry eye. So then starts the never ending battle of steroid pills and drops every 2 hours in the eye. This eye became a full time job. It took close to 4 months to get it back under control. In the meantime the move to Hawaii came. Eye Dr said I could fly, but as soon as we landed I needed to go see the eye Dr. Needless to say my first contact on the Island was the eye Dr.
Before the move, while I was still packing, because of the fall down the stairs, I was going to see an Orthopedist and she saw my angry eye and my sore back and says “I bet you are HLAB 27 positive”. She told me next time you go to the eye Dr. have them do a blood draw to check for that. She was right. The good news is that we now know what is wrong with my eye. The bad news is it is going to be chronic as well as all of your other issues. HLAB 27 is an arthritis marker.
You see now I will pull all this together for you. It is my belief that all of the stress from my 20’s and 30’s came to a head while the move to Hawaii was happening. All the stress of raising teenagers, leaving everything I had ever known and going to a new life and not having my kids around and my body had just had enough. I did not know how to handle all of what was happening so my body just rebelled. My overactive immune system decided to start attacking its own eye (thinking it was a foreign object). And then arthritis started eating away at my back. I had procedure after procedure done on my back to no avail. And the never ending trips to the eye dr. When the eye was active I was in there twice a week. When it was quiet maybe once a month. However it was rarely quiet. The goal was to get my eye quiet and keep it quiet and that my condition would go into remission. Well I can tell you that 15 years later, still no remission.
While living in Hawaii I had caught pneumonia and it would not go away. The doctor did not want to put me into the hospital. She said go home and go to bed for 2 months. Which was fine with me as I was so exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep. When I was finally on the mend, the pulmonologist had said that had I gone to hospital it would have been a completely different end to this. I did not know that I was very close to death. I certainly felt it but didn’t really know how bad it was.
So many illnesses so much medication, not to mention GROSS toenail fungus on all toes that has not gone away in 15 years. Loss of hair from medication, waking up and just waiting to see what gross thing had happened to my body overnight. One morning I woke up to no eyelashes. Apparently my eye was hurting so bad in the night that I pulled them all out. Ah yes, then the skin cancers, caused by certain medications accelerated by the beautiful Hawaiian sun. Then the piece dee résistance, the positive TB test caused by medications and the 9 months of terribly strong antibiotic to treat it. Now I will always show positive for TB. So now once a year instead of a TB test I must have a chest x-ray for my bio-logics.
Medication.............medication...............medication. You name it. I have been on it. All of the biologics....work for a while until they don’t . Then on to the next one. And so on and so on. When they stop working, my eye will flare up and then I get the extreme pleasure of receiving an injection in the eyeball to try to quiet it down. YES that does hurt.
Then comes the heart trouble. After a few overnights at the hospital I finally find out that it is my arthritis that is causing inflammation on my chest wall that mimics the symptoms of a heart attack. That coupled with high blood pressure. High blood pressure caused by a certain medication I had been on for the arthritis that the Dr would not take me off of.
My 40’s and 50’s became a balancing act. How much fun can I have without being down for weeks. How many activities will I have to give up because of exhaustion. Come to find out. IT WAS EVERYTHING. I had to give up everything. I had to quit working and be called ‘disabled’. My body would not allow me to have any fun at all, between all the medication, chronic uveitis, psoriatic arthritis and fibromyalgia.
Now in my 60’s I have pretty much come to terms with the situation, I have processed through the sorrow, the loss, the feelings of worthlessness, the feelings of being a burden and life would be better without me, all the can’t get out of bed days, and YES the depression. Humor is a really good deterrent for depression. When that doesn’t work I try to count my blessings and tell myself that this too will pass.
My strong faith in God, his promises, and my love for dogs. This is what keeps me going. On the worst of the worst days, I sleep. On the next to worse days, I put one foot in front of the other. And then on a good day, I take a shower, brush my teeth and get dressed. And that is enough for me!!!!
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