Life With Chronic Illnesses, an Introduction

I found this journal site through a group on Habitica. Like I need more sites to keep track of. I already keep a daily journal at 4thewords.com which has been immeasurably helpful over the years, but I keep coming back to this site, wanting to use it in some way.

So, I've decided to keep a (much neater) journal about my life with chronic illnesses. Not that you can call it much of a life.

Currently, I've been diagnosed with bipolar 2 with chronic depressive states, general and severe social anxiety (sometimes with panic attacks), and now critical hypertension. There's some debate about my iron deficiency, but my anemia was so low in the past, I had a doctor wonder out loud how I was even out of bed, let along taking care of five children.

All of these illnesses leave me with crippling fatigue that has been getting progressively worse since about 2018. Oh, I've had it my entire life (but never knew why), but since 2018, it's gotten so bad, I've pretty much stopped doing everything.

See, I'm a 40-something stay-at-home-mom of five and now gramma of one. My kids are 20, 18, 17, 14 and 10; my grandson just turned 1. I'm supposed to babysit him while my daughter works, but I physically can't care for him. Not like I took care of my own kids. I can barely take care of myself. I'm pretty much dependent on my husband of twenty years and the kids to function.

I can't drive anymore because the fatigue makes my brain foggy and sleepy. I'm terrified I'll crash because I have zero reaction time and get easily confused. I can't count how many accidents I've nearly caused, leaving me in tears as I drive home, desperately trying to focus on what I'm doing. The only place I drive to is the store which is two miles away, and I'm a nervous wreck every time.

The chronic fatigue is slowly killing me. Every day I feel a little more drained of life because I literally can't do anything. Getting out of bed is exhausting. Watching TV takes too much concentration. Creative writing is nearly impossible (my brain just shuts down if I try). Can't drive. Can't go for walks. Can't clean the house or do yard work. I can't do anything. I save what little energy I have to try and cook dinner for the family every other night. That's it.

So, what's causing the fatigue?

Who knows. Originally, I thought it was the anemia. My iron was so low, it was barely on their little chart. But OTC iron pills make me violently ill. Easy to digest ones seem to do nothing (or so I thought). Last time I had blood work was 2019, but I never got the results. I slipped into a major depression and just gave up ever getting better. A few months later we temporarily lost our insurance so I never got the results. I got through the year by focusing on when we'd get our insurance back in January or February of 2020 then I could finally get treatment. Well, the new year came, and I finally had an appointment for the end of March only for COVID to hit and cancel it.

Then in April, I ended up in the ER with chest pains and found out I have severe hypertension (high blood pressure). When I called my doctor for a followup, I found out she was downsizing her practice which meant my entire family was being dropped. So there I was with a sudden, life-threatening condition on top of my chronic, untreated illness and no doctor to help me. And at a time when a lot of doctors weren't seeing patients and weren't accepting any new ones.

I finally got into see my husband's doctor last week (a week after I ran out of blood pressure medication). She got me set up with more meds and I go back in a week to talk about my other issues.

I've been completely unmedicated for my mental illness since October 2019 when I ran out of meds and had no way to refill them without insurance. My depression is out of control. I can't sleep because of anxiety. I'm a complete emotional mess most days.

That's me in a nutshell... a mess.

So, I'm going to use this journal to document the process of trying to "fix" this mess.

I have a hard time being hopeful for anything because I always end up disappointed when it all falls apart, and I've been super depressed for months, so this will probably be a lot of whining and ranting, but I hope to show what it's like to have to deal with chronic conditions in a world that expects you to just "suck it up" and not bother anyone.

If these entries make little sense, I blame the many illnesses I have that leave my brain foggy. If things sound disjointed, just know that's how it feels in my head all of the time.