madamkitty

Jen, Here I'll give you a reply vent. Maybe you're lurking and will read it.
I hate this ***t too. I am BP II AND I have rhumetoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. I take 3 types of meds just for my BP, all toll I take 14 kinds of pills a DAY! MY diseases feed off each other, when my RA or Fibro flares up and puts me in pain, my BP throws me in a depression. I had a reaction to a new pain med one of my docs tried and it knocked me out for 26 hours- and sent me straight to hell to boot. I was stuck in the worst nightmares I've ever had in my life and could NOT wake up. Being up at 3AM is nothing new to me, being up for 3 days without any sleep, a weekly thing. I am taking meds to "relax" me before I go to bed, I take meds to make me "sleep", and I take pain killers all day and double dose at bedtime- and still can't go to sleep because the pain running through my body sets my mind racing and won't shut up. There's many a time I've finally said to heck with it, got up and come in here to write a rant on my computer. In a private journal, not where it's on-line, no board or web site would let the things I write stay near them. That is the only way I can work on releasing some of my hostility, anger, frustration etc. I can't work, my rhuemy placed me out of work in Nov 05. I've lost a career I loved, I dreamed of doing that one thing from the time I was 4 yrs old. I did it good too, I got safety awards, I never got a ticket in the last ten years I did it, and I made REAL GOOD MONEY. Now I stay at home, alone except for my cats while my husband is out there still working and having to do it alone. I don't see him except once every ten days. Our income has been cut in half, $325 of that goes to pay for my Cobra Insurance every month while I wait to hopefully get on disability. I might get a phone call 3 times a week from one family member or the other. It's getting to the point that I'm starting to scare myself when I drive to my doctor's visits, so I must be scaring other people on the road. Thankfully, my sister has offered to drive me to the doctors on her days off, so soon I'll be totally off the road.
Damn it girl, pick your chin up off the floor. You have the option of being able to become stable with the right combination of drugs. Do you want to really know what I have to look forward to? A wheelchair. The bones in both feet are disintgrating so fast and there is no way to fuse all the little bones together that make up your feet, mine look like they're being eaten. There are people on these boards that are worse off than me. How we deal with our diseases depends on one person, ourselves. We all have our good days, our bad days and then our really grose days. Once they're over, brush yourself off and say, ok I've done that what's next, and find something to help yourself get thru the next bad time. I keep a cartoon framed over my computer, every time I need something to smile about I look up to see the cutest loch ness monster with a shocked look on his face, looking back at his tail that has a sock puppet on his tail.Find something that makes you smile, put in where you can see it everytime you need to smile. And keep your chin up, you'll get there. I've read that people who have BP for a long time are becomming stable, and staying that way for 20 years and longer.
Remember: While I breath, I hope.