Health

It's so weird to me that you don't think about health until you're unhealthy.

I never thought about health until mine was in jeopardy.

This has been a big week of thinking about my health. Other than the fact that there's a worldwide pandemic going on and everybody is stressed, my health has been deteriorating. I've had to pursue specialist appointments because it has gotten to the point of not only impacting me but everyone around me as well. 

 

Here's just some things that have happened for me in terms of health lately:

1. I have a requisition form for bloodwork. This is bloodwork to check 2 things, the first being my thyroid levels. I have hypothyroid and some of my symptoms have been resurfacing which leads me to believe that my medication is not working as effectively as before. The second thing it is looking for is rheumatoid arthritis. RA runs in my family and I've been having problems with my joints for years now but the issue with that is that the bloodwork is looking for evidence of swelling but when you live with chronic pain, it can detect swelling that isn't related to RA.  

2. I had to get a colonoscopy. If you're queasy, I wouldn't read this point. I was bleeding A LOT. And usually this is fairly normal for me but it just was so much blood than I had ever experienced before. I got the colonoscopy, it was expected that I had a fissure but it came back with hemorrhoids which was a bit of a surprise. Honestly I don't remember a lot from this procedure except a lot of pain and then blackness and then waking up in recovery. Let me tell that the prep for this procedure SUCKS.

3. I had to go see a neurologist. I have been having the worst migraines and more frequently than ever before. It was beginning to become out of control. Losing whole days to pain is the worst. I've been having migraines for years but they were becoming so frequent and so intense. I ended up being booked in for an MRI and being given 2 different, new medications to try to combat the pain. They said there's not a lot of worry about brain tumours but the fact that they're still trying to rule that out is terrifying.

4. I have a consultation for counselling services. It's hard to take the first step with things like this but I've been struggling with depression and anxiety for years and finally having benefits allows me to seek relief for invasive thoughts that I normally wouldn't have pursued otherwise. Luckily the doctor I contacted was accepting new patients because I did not have a backup plan. I like her approaches, she offers art therapy and that's something that I think could be beneficial for me.

5. This isn't a current one but I have a referral appointment to an obgyn in July. My doctor informally diagnosed with endometriosis when I stated getting my periods. The thing with informal diagnoses is that you can never say with certainty if that is what you're affected by. This referral includes an operation where they cut a hole in my bellybutton and try to find out for sure if I have endo.

 

These are all things that I haven't had time for before. They're things that just didn't seem important to deal with when you're trying to get a paycheck. 

Health is so finicky, I've been taking medications for years but lately I've been thinking a lot about what it is to  be healthy. 

A lot of people take good health for granted but when you have chronic conditions and are seeing specialist after specialist and you've never been free from regular doctor appointments you realize that you don't think about health until you're unhealthy.

A lot of my ailments are invisible and that is something that makes treatment so much harder to request and receive. It makes life so much harder when you're dealing with an invisible illness because people tend to take your problems less seriously. I'm not just talking about doctors either, to the naked eye, I seem like a perfectly healthy 23 year old and sometimes I feel that way...

But if a migraine hits me when I'm out with friends or my joints start acting up on a trail/nature walk-- people can't see the pain I'm in and so it's treated (as most things with females are) as an exaggeration or me being dramatic or lazy. 

I'm not any of those things.

I'm just not healthy.