Kind of a long break between updates... again...
I've not been feeling well, but somehow squeaking by day after day. Sort of. I feel like everything is a mess (er, a disaster!!) and I'm so overwhelmed by it that I don't even know where to start, and so I do nothing but get upset and waste what precious little energy I have on anxiety...
I know, I know.. "Just take it one step at a time," is supposed to work. But even the tiniest things seem to loom over me like shadows, so I'm 'frozen' in the middle of my mess. (literal mess in the apartment, figurative mess elsewhere. everywhere.)
*gulp* Um.. This is hard to say but I know it's true. True but hard to actually do.. I just need to let down my guard and my pride and ask for help with what can be helped... I mean, for example.. I need a sink full of dishes washed, and having that done would be sooo helpful to me. Yet I HATE the thought of someone seeing that I'm the slob whose dishes aren't washed. (it's not like they are rotting or anything.. just rinsed and in the sink but still.. ugh.)..
Or different tasks just in trying to organize and go through things in my apartment to purge and clean and get rid of.
::frustrated::
Pulmonary therapy has been hard lately. Like the past 5 sessions or so. Usually I go, and each time I go I increase the length and time of my exercise just slightly- which makes it a little harder, but it's usually doable and fine.
Lately.... issues. Instead of being doable, the exercise has been getting much harder when it really shouldn't be. Not just shortness of breath, but over-all fatigue and muscle pain set in so much more quickly than they should. There was one day that I skipped altogether, I just couldn't do it.. Then one where I had to quit part of the way through, and another where I had to rest like every 2 minutes and cut it short.
Just in the past few days or so, I can hear some crackling in my lungs at night (super-quiet bubbling noise when breathing in) so... Not sure what to think about that. :( The shortness of breath hasn't gotten really that much worse, I don't think.. But I've never heard that noise except to find out that there's fluid on my lungs or something along those lines. Whenever I can hear it, people with stethoscopes can too, or if not, a chest film will show something.
SO... I see my primary care doc tomorrow, thank goodness. I am going to ask her to please order a chest xray, since I don't see the pulmonolgist again until the end of next month and don't want to call them sooner unless I already have the xray to show that there's something they can be concerned about or not.
Besides that, tho, this PCP kind of makes me nervous- She's really nice, and she's really smart, but I feel like I can't quite open up and just be myself around her without her misunderstanding me...? I guess? As long as I'm psychoanalyzing, I'll come right out and say it: I'm afraid that she will make misguided assumptions and/or unfair value judgements about me that could negatively impact my care now, or in the future when some other provider reads her notes.
It's not that I don't like her.. I just... I don't know. It's like there is some kind of barrier there. BUT I want to continue forward for at least a little while and give the doc-patient relationship some time to solidify. I want to give it a fair try, not just turn and run right away.
I am seeing my rheumatologist tomorrow too, and I love her... She's so compassionate and insightful. I'm a little worried, however, that I may not be able to start on the medication that we've been planning as the next course of action, due to some symptoms I've been having lately, but... *cross my fingers*
This is going to be kind of an icky week. Monday: appointments, Tuesday: esophageal manometry & placement of esophageal pH probe, Wednesday: Removal of pH probe -phew-, Thursday: language group, Friday: physical therapy & occipital nerve block.
Uggggh.. And that's with taking the week off from pulmonary rehab therapy b/c I just couldn't do all of it at once.
Even with all that is going on, I feel like I am hanging in the breeze, waiting for someone.anyone to set me right or set me loose. Real diagnoses, doctors who communicate with one another AND with me...
I think I might be asking for unicorns with that, I donno.
Sorry not so cheery... As a cheery end to the entry, which I probably should have put at the beginning... I have a new nephew!!!! He's 3 weeks old now and he's sooo beautiful. He's in Alaska, tho, so I haven't seen him yet.. :( I am hoping I can beg, borrow, miraculously find.. the money to get home to visit Alaska in May.
That means getting a LOT of things organized, getting someone to spend time with my kitty, etc.. But maybe maybe maybe I can go home for the first time in almost two years. Wahoo!
Okay, sorry for the looong vent.
My love and prayers go out to all of you-
bronwyn
