PTSD, Fibromyalgia, High Blood Pressure and Nearsighted....Oh, My! Immortal?

By the time I hit college I had the insomnia and stress under control enough that my migraines were spaced about every 3 months and I knew most of my triggers. The stomach problems I'd had as a young teenager had backed off, and I wasn't living on or guzzling Mylanta or other antacids anymore and the nervous bowel/spastic colon diagnosis seemed to have gone away.

But then I started disassociating and dreaming horrible things that I only sort of remembered and went for long walks and talked it out with a good friend of mine.

 I finally ended up calling my sister to confirm if the memories that were coming back to me were true memories, or just really weird nightmares. They were true. I'd been sexually abused when I was a kid. By a family member. Not my father.

But my parents hadn't known how to deal with it, and I had never gotten treatment so I had a whopping case of PTSD. It broke my first year of college. So did my mind. I ended up with a bad case of Mononucleosis on top of trying to deal with starting school and having had to lose 40 pounds to be thin enough for the military weight charts so I could keep my full ride scholarship. I wasn't in a very good place when I was realizing what had happened. I confronted my Mom about it and all she could say was, "I didn't realize it had gone so far. Don't tell your Dad. It will kill him."

Wow.
 I never did. It had been hard enough to confront my Mother about why I hadn't gotten any help or counseling. So many things in my psyche started to make sense to me now.

 I took some psychology classes and talked to some friends. I wasn't really comfortable talking to strangers about things, I worked things out in my own ways and in my own times. I knew what my coping strategies and behaviors were and what I used as hiding behaviors. And damaged people who didn't trust recognized other damaged people pretty easy. It made me much more empathetic than I would have been otherwise, but it's something that never totally disappears.

 But the feeling that it is somehow the victim's fault, or that the victim is dirty...THAT goes away and THAT disappears over the years.

But my college time also had me dealing with high blood pressure and becoming nearsighted. They both hit at about the same time when I managed to hit a parked car. (Yeah, that was fun!) So the assumption was made that my eyesight was messed up BECAUSE of the high blood pressure. Oops! Nope. Not the cause. I'd been doing so much close up reading that my eyes didn't want to focus out farther anymore, so it was time for glasses AND high blood pressure medicine. LOL 

I knew biofeedback at this point, but I didn't meditate daily and I only used biofeedback during a migraine so I had no way of really coping with stress. I also had no real clue that the letdown of stress was a BIG migraine trigger for me. Notice I said TRIGGER not CAUSE. Migraines are a central nervous system DISEASE they are not caused by the things that might trigger an attack. Doctors don't know what the actual cause is currently. Not enough research has been done on this disease.

A year or two later I was afflicted with more of the back pain I had dealt with in middle school and high school. I initially had a gymnastics accident in gym class where my spotter didn't catch me on dismount off the horse and I came down on my neck, chin, and upper chest with my feet and legs curled over my head. That accident led to additional back problems throughout high school and college.  I spent almost an entire year in traction between the hospital and home traction on the living room floor to try and get my back spasms to calm down. That's where the TENS pack came into play

.

But in college I added pain in my knees, ankles, wrists and elbows. My doctor was pretty sure I had rheumatoid arthritis. That possibility scared me to death. I knew a teenager who had been dealing with that. She was in constant agony...but that's what I was dealing with...so it seemed like it might be true.

This was back in the 1980's. I was maybe pretty lucky in that I was sent to a rheumatologist who had just been to a conference and read about fibromyalgia. He tested for RA, but he was positive I didn't have it. He diagnosed fibromyalgia and gave me a packet to read that was 1/4" thick. The upshot of the reading was basically...you're sick...you have a syndrome....we can diagnose it and do really nothing about it. LOL So gee, I was lucky enough to get a name for it and be diagnosed, but from that point on I was on my own with the pain. I was given Neurontin (gabapentin which is similar to lyrica) early in this process, and it did help me get things under control for a number of years. I came to discover that I was unusual (Gee, imagine that!) in that I would wake up feeling as good as I would feel all day and go steadily downhill from there. Whereas most people with fibro I guess feel better as they get to moving and exercising. (If you've never heard of "the spoon theory" check out this link!)

I was also prescribed physical therapy for ultrasound and heat wraps and they were to do movement studies on my body. I was told seriously that I had a wonderful range of motion, but that I made not one single move in the correct manner. LOL And then they never bothered to show me what the correct manner was! LOL THAT really irritated me! If I'm not doing it right, show me how to do it right!

But I was really busy trying to get through college and get on with life. I used all my old standby's: Ace wraps, creams, gels, asper crème, menthol, soaking salts, TENS, meditation, biofeedback, steam rooms, saunas, hot tubs. I even tried new stuff when I graduated and a friend of mine became a masseuse. She learned deep tissue massage and did rolfing. It would leave bruises for a day or two, but it would also clear out the muscle and tendon knots that seem to live around my joints and throughout my back and allowed me to take up belly dance as a hobby for the next 10 years. I managed to work up to where I was practicing 5 hours a week and dancing performances 2 or 3 times a month.

I had a great career as a Systems Network Project Manager in the computer industry and I loved it. I lead a small team of techs. My migraines were under control. My fibro was under control. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue but I was kicking it because the Graves Disease my body threw itself into supercharged things. I was told I might have Gauillame Barr as well as the Eppstein Barr that had made my first year of college so intolerable and was getting me down with the fatigue. There were some sort of titers in my blood, but the infectious disease doctor didn't believe in it. So gee, I guess I wasn't sleeping all the hours that I wasn't at work then? Some doctors can be asinine.

 I was seeing the signs of carpal tunnel in both hands and thoracic outlet in my shoulders, but I was moving and happy and productive. After the Graves Disease triggered, my doctor used pills to burn my thyroid out because it was hard on my heart.

 I was an idiot and smoked and drank and partied, but I was young and immortal too. I even thought about joining the Navy Reserves at that point. But they still didn't like my Fibromyalgia any more than they had when I'd gotten the honorable discharge in 1981. LOL Migraines are Okay. Fibromyalgia is not. 

So you wonder why on top of this camel I just had to add another straw, huh? We're all immortal at 30 or so aren't we?