The next stage?
Following on from my previous post about the stages of grief, I think I'm in depression right about now. I'm going to bitch a little here, so bear with me.
I seem to have pretty much bypassed bargaining, although I guess there's no reason why I can't revisit that at a later stage, but I honestly thought I was heading for acceptance. Things were still tough, sure, but I was going pretty well. As long as I paced myself and got plenty of rest and made sure to take all my medication, I could muddle through.
The occupational therapist sent someone out to fit my chair raisers. They wouldn't fit my furniture, so they're a total bust. Then last weekend I took pretty much the worst attack of vertigo I have ever had. It lasted for three days and during the worst of it I couldn't even stand on my own two feet without feeling like the world was trying to throw me off of it. I felt like I was split in two, there was my body and then there was me, my body would move but it would take me a second to catch up with it. Urgh.
That lasted until Monday. Then on Tuesday I woke up, had breakfast then decided because I was so tired from the weekend that I would go back to sleep. I was woken up by the phone ringing, I was already lying on my left side so I just reached across with my right hand and picked up the phone (cold caller about car insurance) and I felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder. Reached up to rub it and immediately knew it didn't feel right. Got up to check it in the mirror and to my horror saw a huge bulge poking out of the front! I kind of pressed the palm of my right hand over it and the bulge disappeared, and at that point it wasn't really hurting that much, I'd say just about a 4/10, so I thought I was probably OK. But it started to get more painful so I took another look in the mirror to find that the shoulder was all misshapen, it looked like it had been pushed forward and up and was really angular, instead of rounded like my other shoulder. I had a good poke around it in case it was subluxed but normally when I have subluxed something I can feel where it's come out of and where it has to go back into. With this everything felt solid, just in the wrong place. Plus the pain was increasing, so we decided to go over to the hospital to get a professional opinion.
It took 40 minutes to see the triage nurse, then another 80 minutes to get into a cubicle, then another 30 minutes after that to actually see the doctor. During this time the pain was getting so bad (like 7-8/10) that I was starting to feel really nauseated. Unfortunately as this was now around 3pm and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, there was nothing in my stomach to actually bring up. Dry retching for 2 hours is not fun.
When the doctor finally came in he was actually really nice (and young and cute which is usually a bonus but not when you're sitting there in your granny bra with tear-stained cheeks and the dry-retch hiccups) and he had actually heard of Ehlers Danlos which is a miracle in itself. He manipulated the joint a bit and said that he didn't think it was dislocated but it was definitely not sitting where it should be so he wanted some X-Rays done just to make sure it wasn't still subluxed. X-Rays came back showing the joint was fully in the socket so he thinks what happened was that I dislocated it when I was in bed and that it popped back in at that time, but there was so much soft tissue damage and swelling done that it was pushing the shoulder out of place. Which explains why I couldn't find anywhere that was 'out' when I was poking it, as it had already gone back in by then, and also why the pain got so much worse as time went on, because the swelling was getting worse.
I've got a sling to wear on and off for a few days, I've got to ice it and do some exercises but it's still fecking sore and I can't really do anything with it yet and it's still looking out of place.
I took this photo (it's a bit blurry as I was taking it by myself with one hand) not long after the joint went back in but when it was looking angular. I've drawn a fairly vulgar line to show where the normal rounded edge of my shoulder would be to give you a rough idea.
And this one, you can see it high and pointed, which is not its normal shape (no, I'm not completely naked, lol)
AND THEN on Thursday I broke a tooth. *rolls eyes* I was having dinner and I bit down on some lamb and there was a small bone lurking in the piece and the side of my back tooth on the left side just sheered right off. It was a tooth I already had a filling in, and I thought it was just gonna have to be pulled, but I managed to get an emergency appointment that day and get it fixed (after some kerfuffle which involved settling myself in the waiting room and not leaving until I'd been seen - they had originally given me an appointment for the next day but no freaking way could I have waited overnight.)
But when the tooth broke, the initial pain of it brought tears to my eyes. Then it was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back and I just broke down sobbing, absolutely crying my heart out. And it wasn't over the stupid tooth, it was about everything. The whole week so far had held nothing but one misery after the other and all I could think about was 'is this how it's going to be forever? Am I going to spend virtually every day of my life dealing with some sort of health issue like a dislocation or vertigo so bad that I'm clinging on to my own mattress so I don't fall off?' And the scary thing is that the answer is possibly 'yes'. And at the minute I'm not sure I know how to deal with that. I'm scared. All I've been doing is lying in bed either eating or sleeping, and that's pretty much classic depression right there. I'm having catnaps throughout the day, I'm lying down (because I'm so exhausted by then that I have to) at around 5pm every day but I'm falling asleep for 5 hours and then I'm going to sleep again maybe around 2-3am and sleeping til 10am. That's not like me, I've always had issues with my sleeping pattern but it never normally included falling asleep during the day. I'm already on anti-depressants as part of my regular medication routine, so hopefully this is just another phase on the road to acceptance.
It's just... I'm only 30, yaknow? I hope to have a long life ahead of me yet. But then I think if it's going to be a long life filled with this..... and I wonder.
I seem to have pretty much bypassed bargaining, although I guess there's no reason why I can't revisit that at a later stage, but I honestly thought I was heading for acceptance. Things were still tough, sure, but I was going pretty well. As long as I paced myself and got plenty of rest and made sure to take all my medication, I could muddle through.
The occupational therapist sent someone out to fit my chair raisers. They wouldn't fit my furniture, so they're a total bust. Then last weekend I took pretty much the worst attack of vertigo I have ever had. It lasted for three days and during the worst of it I couldn't even stand on my own two feet without feeling like the world was trying to throw me off of it. I felt like I was split in two, there was my body and then there was me, my body would move but it would take me a second to catch up with it. Urgh.
That lasted until Monday. Then on Tuesday I woke up, had breakfast then decided because I was so tired from the weekend that I would go back to sleep. I was woken up by the phone ringing, I was already lying on my left side so I just reached across with my right hand and picked up the phone (cold caller about car insurance) and I felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder. Reached up to rub it and immediately knew it didn't feel right. Got up to check it in the mirror and to my horror saw a huge bulge poking out of the front! I kind of pressed the palm of my right hand over it and the bulge disappeared, and at that point it wasn't really hurting that much, I'd say just about a 4/10, so I thought I was probably OK. But it started to get more painful so I took another look in the mirror to find that the shoulder was all misshapen, it looked like it had been pushed forward and up and was really angular, instead of rounded like my other shoulder. I had a good poke around it in case it was subluxed but normally when I have subluxed something I can feel where it's come out of and where it has to go back into. With this everything felt solid, just in the wrong place. Plus the pain was increasing, so we decided to go over to the hospital to get a professional opinion.
It took 40 minutes to see the triage nurse, then another 80 minutes to get into a cubicle, then another 30 minutes after that to actually see the doctor. During this time the pain was getting so bad (like 7-8/10) that I was starting to feel really nauseated. Unfortunately as this was now around 3pm and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, there was nothing in my stomach to actually bring up. Dry retching for 2 hours is not fun.
When the doctor finally came in he was actually really nice (and young and cute which is usually a bonus but not when you're sitting there in your granny bra with tear-stained cheeks and the dry-retch hiccups) and he had actually heard of Ehlers Danlos which is a miracle in itself. He manipulated the joint a bit and said that he didn't think it was dislocated but it was definitely not sitting where it should be so he wanted some X-Rays done just to make sure it wasn't still subluxed. X-Rays came back showing the joint was fully in the socket so he thinks what happened was that I dislocated it when I was in bed and that it popped back in at that time, but there was so much soft tissue damage and swelling done that it was pushing the shoulder out of place. Which explains why I couldn't find anywhere that was 'out' when I was poking it, as it had already gone back in by then, and also why the pain got so much worse as time went on, because the swelling was getting worse.
I've got a sling to wear on and off for a few days, I've got to ice it and do some exercises but it's still fecking sore and I can't really do anything with it yet and it's still looking out of place.
I took this photo (it's a bit blurry as I was taking it by myself with one hand) not long after the joint went back in but when it was looking angular. I've drawn a fairly vulgar line to show where the normal rounded edge of my shoulder would be to give you a rough idea.
And this one, you can see it high and pointed, which is not its normal shape (no, I'm not completely naked, lol)
AND THEN on Thursday I broke a tooth. *rolls eyes* I was having dinner and I bit down on some lamb and there was a small bone lurking in the piece and the side of my back tooth on the left side just sheered right off. It was a tooth I already had a filling in, and I thought it was just gonna have to be pulled, but I managed to get an emergency appointment that day and get it fixed (after some kerfuffle which involved settling myself in the waiting room and not leaving until I'd been seen - they had originally given me an appointment for the next day but no freaking way could I have waited overnight.)
But when the tooth broke, the initial pain of it brought tears to my eyes. Then it was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back and I just broke down sobbing, absolutely crying my heart out. And it wasn't over the stupid tooth, it was about everything. The whole week so far had held nothing but one misery after the other and all I could think about was 'is this how it's going to be forever? Am I going to spend virtually every day of my life dealing with some sort of health issue like a dislocation or vertigo so bad that I'm clinging on to my own mattress so I don't fall off?' And the scary thing is that the answer is possibly 'yes'. And at the minute I'm not sure I know how to deal with that. I'm scared. All I've been doing is lying in bed either eating or sleeping, and that's pretty much classic depression right there. I'm having catnaps throughout the day, I'm lying down (because I'm so exhausted by then that I have to) at around 5pm every day but I'm falling asleep for 5 hours and then I'm going to sleep again maybe around 2-3am and sleeping til 10am. That's not like me, I've always had issues with my sleeping pattern but it never normally included falling asleep during the day. I'm already on anti-depressants as part of my regular medication routine, so hopefully this is just another phase on the road to acceptance.
It's just... I'm only 30, yaknow? I hope to have a long life ahead of me yet. But then I think if it's going to be a long life filled with this..... and I wonder.