It may seem kind of convenient that I'm reaching this new phase in treatment just in time for the new year, and I'll try not to get ahead of myself (or beat up on myself) and see it for what it is: just the next phase.
Since I'm starting to get more views with every post and from other countries, I'll start this post with a small recap of everything. I'm a twenty four year old woman living in Colorado. I was diagnosed with Celiac on my thirteenth birthday after about a year of stomach issues (and all of the early signs, now that we know them all haha. I was a preemie baby, my mom had to dress me in doll clothes when I was born, baby clothes fell off. Also, I have super sensitive skin and my eyelashes fall out sometimes.) I got false diagnoses of a bunch of different auto immune diseases growing up, my joints were always hypermobile to a kind of nasty degree but doctors called it growing pains and said that of course I was flexible, I was a dancer. Since they didn't know what to do with me I kind of ignored it (great advice, not.) My PCP found Hashimoto's Hypothyroid disease when I was eighteen, so I went years thinking those two were my only illnesses.
I danced for eighteen years (imagine how fun it is to do the Nutcracker with no eyelashes. Yay, falsies!) before that career ended with a spine injury. Turns out my hypermobile joints were actually caused by a genetic illness that I'll talk about more later. I had an ankle surgery at eighteen because my right ankle overextended and a ligament got stuck in the joint when it came back in. My spine injury was a lot more complicated, I had two bulging disks at the base of my spine (L4-L5 and L5-S1), possibly due to the same issue or overuse from dance. I had an injury in dance class where the disks herniated, my right lat muscle tore and my L4 vertebra broke. It was nasty. I kept having issues after endoscopic injections and when they did a CT scan they found my L5-S1 disk was cutting into my spinal cord and I needed surgery a week later, on my brother's birthday. It's always birthdays or holidays with me, I swear.
It took me a while to figure out what to do with my life without dance in the picture. I changed majors probably about five times a semester before I moved back to Colorado for a change in scenery, and to get back to school and figure everything out. That plan got derailed when I started getting really sick out of nowhere. It started with sharp stomach pain and I couldn't keep anything down and months later (on New Year's last year) I found out it was Gastroparesis. Right when we found that out I started having new symptoms, I had tremors in both arms and both legs and random times, I started having balance issues (this was important because of the career in dance. Before then, I'd never in my life passed out or had balance issues. Ever.) blacking out all the time, and my muscle strength went from really high to nothing. I was absolutely terrified. I don't let go of control easily in regards to my own life. After nine neurologists did a million and one tests to prove themselves right (which failed, by the way. Naturally if they can't find the answer it's because the "girl" is lying for attention. I'll skip the bad language that this makes me want to use.) my mom and I gave up and went to the Cleveland Clinic. We were in Cleveland for a week and every doctor's visit was a test or a diagnosis. They took twelve tubes of blood (I have small veins. It took a while.) and I finally got my answer, twelve years after my bout with diagnoses of lifelong illnesses started.
In total I have Celiac, Hashimoto's, Gastroparesis, Ehlers-Danlos and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. I've been in Cardiac Rehab for my POTS for about two months now, trying to retrain the nerve connections between my brain and heart to get things back to normal. Until my team at CR was satisfied, meaning I could handle standing and exercising without my heart going past 130 (it likes to go a lot higher) I was banned from physical therapy to keep everything from spiraling downward again. Ehlers-Danlos (at least the type I have) is a genetic disorder that means collagen production is smaller in me, so my joints aren't as protected, so they'll bend at bad angles and potentially dislocate. My doctors think that doing dance and pilates for years saved my little white ass in this aspect, it kept my joints limber and strong, protecting them from injury. It's been three years now since I've taken serious dance classes and my joints have gotten really deconditioned. I was hoping I didn't injure something on accident before I was allowed back into pt to get everything strong again but hey, this is me we're talking about! I was sleeping and my right shoulder subluxed (don't ask me how, I have no idea. No, as my doctor asked, I wasn't wrestling or anything, just sleeping.) and I need about a month of pt to try and prevent surgery. (Let's skip the cutting into me and letting my multiple diseases try to eat me alive. We just calmed them down.)
But that (finally, sorry I'm bad at "short" anything when it comes to writing. It's why I'm going into script writing as my new major haha. I can write for days.) brings me to my news! I'm cleared for pt as long as I do it sitting down on a mat or yoga ball. Hah. Hey, I'll take it! We're going to focus on my shoulders at first and see where we need to take it from there. But I'm really excited:) I think this is another turning point, and I'm very fond of those lovely moments in recovery. It's a step forward.
I might even get to go back to work again soon! Keep your fingers crossed for me? I'm just so happy to start retraining, even if it's at a slower pace. I'm comfortable retraining muscles and joints, still unsure about the whole retraining nerves thing.
I know it's New Year's and I know a lot of people do resolutions, and I'm seriously not trying to say they're bad. I think anything that motivates you to be stronger, kinder, more successful, happier, healthier, whatever is great. Use it. In my life, things change on a dime and I mean that literally. Spine injury, diseases onset, disease diagnoses, it happens in an instant. Maybe more people need life changing events, I just hope they're, you know, happy ones. Not....you know. You can lose or win everything in the blink of an eye, we can't control our destinies. Take the punches as they come and try to be the best, kindest, most sympathetic person you can be when you come out the other end. Don't judge. It never does either side any good. (It also pisses off little Scots women like me. We may be small but we're loud and feisty. You've been warned.) I can't make long term goals because I'm still not at a point where I trust my health to stay a constant to allow me any kind of plans. Of course I plan to finish my degree and be as successful and epic as I can be in my own field, and I want that for all of you, too. But I'm still taking things moment to moment and I feel like I'm walking on thin ice. I'm out of the water but not on solid land yet.
I think everything in my life was leading to this. This was meant to be, even though I don't have a clue why right now. Surprisingly, with people telling me over and over I was faking it and just fine, my self confidence has grown to be so much stronger than it ever was before. It's a little counter-intuitive. I won't play the puppet game and I sure as hell am done looking back. This is a new year. It's going to be better. I've gotten stronger and I'm getting stronger every day. I didn't give up, even though there were months that I wanted to. Real life and the business world is going to be cake compared to fighting for my life for a year a half, more when you add in the rehab and physical therapy time. I won't be letting anything get in my way anymore, including myself. Somehow in accepting my fears and giving them names, I overcame them all. I almost feel bad for the competition, almost.
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