it’s time to tell the story of my shitty health

So I was just having a conversation with someone and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to make this post for ages.

Firstly I went back through my blog and tagged anything about my health with ‘my health problems’ so if you feel a pressing desire to read about me wangsting about the stuff I’ve been through there you go.

But I sort of wanted to create a primer about me and my chronic illnesses. I’m going to link to this in my sidebar because it’s a pretty important part of my life.

Anyway this story is a bit complicated because I have multiple problems and I discovered them over a period of three years.

So if you are curious about me then continue under the cut.

Okay so this is me right now. I’m Sonia, I’m 18 and I’ve dropped out of school:

But this story starts when I was a freshman attending a poncy private school. Back then I looked more like this:

I chose those pictures for a reason, and it’s because I’ve been an athlete since I was about 6 and I loathe how my body has betrayed me now.

Freshman year I was playing varsity soccer, playing soccer on a travel team, and rowing crew. Basically, I was in the best shape of my life, but unfortunately everything was not hunky dory.

I was missing classes because I couldn’t wake up in the morning, I was missing classes because I’d fall asleep during them, and I was fighting to make up work in my classes because I couldn’t finish my homework before falling asleep. So, obviously, something was wrong. Except it wasn’t obvious to me, because I had convinced myself that everything was okay. This post goes into more details about my denial, but long story short is, I had been to a lot of doctors because of my fatigue and general malaise and they had all told me nothing was wrong with me.

So I pushed through. I finished the year with okay grades, but not as well as I knew I could’ve done, except for physics which I napped through almost every day and earned a C- in. Whatever, physics sucks anyway.

Then, the summer of ‘09, I completely crashed.

Catastrophically.

I was sleeping 20 hours every day. I was eating almost nothing. The 4 hours I was awake, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I was a zombie. My parents flipped the fuck out.

I went to the doctor, yadda yadda. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is when your thyroid gland stops, or slows, producing the hormone that it’s supposed to. That classification means that the cause is autoimmune, so my body attacked my own thyroid gland because it’s a fucking idiot.

Funny story, but it turns out in 2005, when I was 12 and already feeling shitty, I had my thyroid tested and it came up worryingly out of whack. However, my doctor at the time apparently completely missed it meaning I went around for an extra 4 years feeling like shit and fucking up my body unnecessarily. I wanted to sue her but my mom’s a hippie or whatever so she refused.

I wasn’t super happy with being diagnosed with a disease that I’d have to treat with medication for the rest of my life but I basically thought that all my problems were solved.

AHAHAHA. Not so much.

Now when I say my thyroid was seriously messed up, I do mean it. The test that’s used to diagnose hypothyroidism is called a TSH test and a healthy person’s values are from 0.4-4.0. Mine was 139.

So when I wasn’t really feeling better after treatment, I just assumed that it would take time.

Unrelated to this, I had decided to go to public school, and I had quit my travel soccer team because I wanted to try out for a better one.

So I struggled through my first semester of sophomore year, unbelievably still playing on the school soccer team (JV this time). However that winter, running on fumes and actually feeling worse, I couldn’t make it to school anymore and stopped attending.

The next year and a half passed in a haze of doctor’s visits and frustration until I was diagnosed with dysautonomia some time in 2011.

Dysautonomia is kind of an umbrella term, but what it means is that my autonomic nervous system is malfunctioning. Here let wikipedia explain:

Symptoms of dysautonomia are numerous and vary widely from person to person. Since dysautonomia is a full-body condition, a large number of symptoms may be present that can greatly alter a person’s quality of life. Each patient with dysautonomia is different—some are affected only mildly, while others are left completely bed-ridden and disabled.

Unfortunately, I am on the bed-ridden and disabled side of that spectrum.

It affect me in was that are huge and debilitating (FATIGUE, chronic pain, anxiety, migraines, headaches, constant nausea) and ways that are a little and really annoying (facial flushing, numbness, nerve pain, trouble breathing, chest pains, low blood pressure, high heart rate, dizziness, and how my feet are always fucking freezing no matter what I do). The other really frustrating thing it does is fuck with my sleeping schedule. For one, I need 12 hours of sleep a night or I can’t function. Secondly, I still manage to have insomnia and I always tend to revert to a nocturnal schedule, as in I sleep during the day and stay up during the night. Guess what, this makes it hard to live a normal life. As does all the other shit.

Wow this sounds really bleak. I have made some steps towards recovery, obviously sleeping for 12 hours rather that 20 is a big improvement, and I am able to get up and go around for a bit but it is very difficult for me. I am also starting physical therapy this week and I really hope that this will help with some of my chronic pain issues and help build the amount of time I can be up and about.

I’m also working with a specialist in trying out some different medications and I’m still hoping something will work.

I’m also working on getting my G.E.D and attending classes at my local community college (my guess, it won’t be as fun as Community) which is good for me because I’ve always kind of been a pretentious academic and being a high school drop out was really bumming me out.

So not everything sucks, but some things do. But, hey, isn’t that life?