I had some renewed faith & hope today through a friend. She suffers like I do in many ways and still finds the strength to be positive and "Bee Happee"! She has been through many of the ups and downs that I am experiencing now and the struggle to find the light at the end of the tunnel. She has been there and now through her journey to recovery she has reached out and given me a helping hand. She has bestowed her wisdom onto me to help guide me through my journey and my quest to be happy and healthy once again. It takes a pretty amazing person to be going through the pain and emotional trauma this disease can render you with and still want to reach out and help someone else.
This friend has went as far as to set me up with a great doctor, help with all the preparations and come to the appointment with me! What a friend, I say...what a friend!! She is gonna hold my hand through one of the hardest things I am about to do and I have not seen her since HIGH SCHOOL!! She plays a pivotal part in my life now and I don't know how I would make it through without her! So this is my thank you to an amazing friend and soul sister.
Being positive is hard to do when you feel the pain that we suffer on a daily basis. Its hard to make it from the bed to the bathroom some days and some days its hard to even focus on how to make a sentence come out of your mouth. It is a never ending roller coaster ride of physical & emotional pain. I wish I could say I was well on my way to recovery like my friend, but I am not there yet. I feel like I am only half diagnosed right now.
I was so relieved earlier this year to finally get a diagnosis of Lupus thinking "OK FINALLY" everything was going to get better now that they knew what was wrong....I was so mistaken! I started treatment immediately and started to see some positive results. It was all short lived, in a few short months I was starting to feel worse than I did before my diagnosis of Lupus. I was devastated once again, not knowing what was going on. I was thinking that the tests must have been wrong, that the medication was wrong...everything but what the truth was. The truth was...there was so much more going on. I may have all these things wrong with me BUT there is still something else that is just not right and "IT" is getting worse by the day!
I stopped taking the steroids the rhemo put me on and stopped doing the injections because it was getting to be unbearable. My symptoms seemed to escalate dramatically overnight with no end in sight. Still after stopping everything but the basics my symptoms get worse more and more everyday. I wake to one more thing wrong almost daily.
My friend gave me a symptom list to check off "Master Symptom List for CFS, FMS, CMP & Lyme Disease". I filled this out over three weeks ago and went back and looked at it again today, only to see that I could add more things to the list. I had GAINED six new symptoms!! Please understand that these are not simple symptoms, they are relentless, agonizing symptoms that get worse with time if left untreated. I could not believe that in such a short period of time I had deteriorated so much, even though some days I thought I was doing ok.
I don't know what I would have done if my friend had not reached out to me. I would have never known what I do now. I would not be going to see this specialist that could potentially change my whole world for the better...if it were not for her. She has no idea how much her insight and benevolence may have very well saved my life.
In just a few short weeks I will meet one for the first time and see the second for the first time in over a decade, together all three of us will embark on an amazing quest for happiness and good health.