lupus SLE

Grumbling Stomach v Patient Care

~ Rachel ~ 4 Comments

Last week I had my check-up with the rheumatologist – an annual highlight of my social calendar, alongside sorting the car’s MOT and having a smear.  As a rule, these appointments generally consist of 1 part disappointment: 1 part frustration: 2 parts total despondency.  They go something like this:

I arrive at the hospital with a well-prepared list of questions – I’m feeling positive, in control and determined to be heard.  I queue to get into the carpark, hand over a fresh pot of wee, get weighed and then wait.  And wait.  And wait.  I eventually get summoned.

I sit, he asks ‘So how do you feel?’ and I answer ‘Terrible‘ (that’s always a given).  He flicks his eyes across my notes and promptly declares that my bloods are looking good.  Less than two minutes after entering the room I am leaving it.  All my well-prepared questions are unasked and unanswered, my positivity is completely squashed and my ‘in control’ voice has been gagged and muted.  I scuttle off to the ticket machine, often in tears and always fuming – at him for making me feel so unimportant, at my body for being so useless and at myself for not having the balls to speak up more.

Why consultants (particularly male ones) seem to have the ability to render me a pathetic, jibbering wreck who actually feels guilty for taking up their time, is a complete mystery to me.  I think perhaps it’s the overpowering God complex they use to hypnotise patients with.

I wonder, do other people also feel ‘sshhhed’ into submission by all-knowing consultants, or is it just me?  And what about male patients?  Do they let themselves get steamrollered too?  Answers on a postcard – or in the comments below!

Anyway, where was I?  After a lengthy queue at the machine, I find out that once again I’m over the allocated ‘free’ parking time by 0.2 of a second, despite my appointment having only last two minutes.  I also realise I don’t have enough coins to pay.  So I leave the queue and join another, having to buy myself a muffin from the overpriced cafe just so I can get some change.

The muffin is invariably dry and totally inedible; it’s the final insult to an already depressing trip.  The muffin ends up in the carpark bin, I promptly scrape the hubcap against the pavement while trying to negotiate the hairpin bend of the exit and then, low and behold, I see that the ticketing barrier is permanently up.

Like seriously?  Is there anything more annoying than being made to pay for something that you don’t even have to?

On this last trip, for the first time, I decided to take my husband with me for back up.  I thought perhaps this might counteract all that testosterone swirling around the room.  I also wanted him to experience Dr Complete Lack of Bedside Manner for himself.

Sadly, on this appointment, it was not to be.

Being the last patient of the morning shift, Dr CLOBM (as I shall now refer to him) had decided to skip his customary two minutes with me and head off early.  The first I was aware of this was when a registrar called me in and said he’d be filling in for Dr CLOBM as he’d been called away for a ‘meeting’.  Had he heck, a meeting with his stomach perhaps.  My husband had already clocked him in the corridor, heading for the exit and telling his medical student to go on and get them a table for lunch.

I know!  What a bloody liberty!  The man only has to see me once a year, couldn’t he have overcome his hunger pangs for the couple of minutes that he normally allows me?  After all, there’s plenty of other things I’d also like to be doing with my precious energy rather than queueing up, giving wee, getting weighed and waiting.

As it turned out, he and his grumbling stomach had done me an almighty favour.  As the fill-in registrar had not yet reached the lofty pay grade that causes ears to stop working, he actually took the time to listen to me and answer my questions.  Even more of a revelation: he asked about the pain I’m in and, for the very first time, properly acknowledged my fibromyalgia.  Halle-bloody-lujah.

He examined my hands (never happened before) and tested the fibromyalgia pressure points on my body (certainly never happened before; didn’t even know they were there). He also explained why my memory is currently shot to shit, and how and why my body wasn’t able to deal with the pain.  He then referred me to the pain clinic.

Thank god Dr CLOBM had considered himself and his plate of foie gras and chips more important than seeing me that day.  For the first time, I left the hospital feeling vaguely upbeat: not because I think I’m going to be ‘cured’ with revolutionary tips on pain management, but because I’d finally been allowed to have a voice.

When you live in a world ruled by chronic illness, where doctors control your drugs, your future and your fate, being ‘heard’ is a monumental achievement – as much as an achievement as when Armstrong went for a stroll on the moon.

So that’s one small step for (chronically ill) me, one giant leap for womankind.

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Lupus: surviving summer and box set surfing

~ Rachel ~ 2 Comments

This week I have been wiped out beyond all belief.  Flared up, energy-less and completely lacking the will to blink.

If I were a car, the fuel lights would’ve been violently flashing for at least the last hundred miles.  I’d be running on the remaining fumes of whatever it is that keeps me going.  At the present that would be copious amounts of anti-inflammatories, green tea, bananas and blueberries.

It’s all the weather’s fault.  This summer completely did me in, with its endless weeks of heat and sun – neither of which is my friend – followed by a burst of sub-Saharan temperatures that could have brought an African elephant to its knees.  OK, admittedly I’m talking English summer here, so perhaps with a little perspective I should scratch the elephant and replace it with a cow.  A very elderly cow.  A very elderly cow with arthritic knees, severe heat stroke and terrible dehydration.

It’s a well-known fact that a summer in the UK usually involves three things: high expectations, endless rain and crushing disappointment.  Anything over 15 degrees is met with shock and rapturous applause.  Climb into the 20s and the glamping brigade comes out in force.  Head towards the 30s and severe weather warnings begin.  Creep up any higher and the roads start to melt.  Literally, melt.  Nudge north of 35 degrees and the country battens down and prepares for Armageddon.

Shock.  Horror.  This August the mercury actually hit 36 degrees.  Across our green yellow and pleasant parched lands, the unmistakable raspy voice of Steven Tyler could be heard drifting through the still and stuffy air.  “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” he warbled, on constant repeat.  I humbly beg to differ, I could have happily missed the lot.

This sort of heat could cause even the spriteliest of people to wilt and fade –  and then there’s me.  I’m quite literally as far from spritely as it’s possible to be.  Back in June sometime, my body clocked one look at the ongoing weather reports and threw its hands up in a panicked surrender.  The next few months were brutal.

Roll forward to September and whilst the summer may have finished, the after-effects of that heat are like an unwelcome house guest.  Lingering and annoying.

Once upon a time, a younger, healthier version of me used to laugh in the face of the hottest of suns and crack open another bottle of tanning oil to celebrate summer.  (Clearly reckless and stupid by today’s standards, but normal back then.)  Today it’s a different story that I keep having to learn the hard way: even the mildest of months + lupus/sjögren’s/fibromyalgia do not mix.

And so, there’ve been endless weeks of dizziness and headaches, plenty of staggering around the house, closed curtains and a hell of a lot of horizontal living.  When your body renders you ‘not fit for purpose’ sometimes all you can do is sit, weep and wait the flare up out.  From my makeshift bed on the sofa one week, I worked my way through the latest series of Poldark, two series of The Crown and half a season of Greys Anatomy. Plus Love Island, obviously.  Even for a self-confessed TV addict such as myself, I have to admit this was pretty extreme viewing.

Sadly anyone with a chronic anything will tell you that watching TV as an invalid isn’t half as much fun as you’d think.  By the end of that week when the sofa and I had (temporarily) parted ways, I was miserable, bored, lonely, restless, festering and what felt like mere hours away from the start of a bed sore.

Not being able to partake in the world around you is beyond completely pants.  I hate it and resent it in equal measures.  So yes, for me, I’m relieved the summer is now behind us.  That being said, I have some sketchy recollections swimming around in my grey matter about how the winter is even worse.  Arghhh.

The thought of clambering in and out of all those tight thermal layers, boots and heavy coats is already making my little Raynaud fingers curl up in dread.

 

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What is the point?

~ Rachel ~ 7 Comments

Sometimes it feels that people are constantly telling me how best to ‘beat’ this thing.  Doctors, nurses, specialists, family, friends – all telling me how to get the illness in check and under control.  All offering up an opinion.  All offering up advice.  All telling me what I should be doing.  All reprimanding me for not doing what they say.

But I try to do what I’m told, I really do.

I rest.  I sleep.  I take it easy.  I take a break.  I rest.  I do things in moderation.  I don’t push myself.  I rest some more.  I pace myself.  And then repeat.

That last one’s the worst.  Pace yourself they all say.  How is one meant to ‘pace’ oneself in a normal, everyday life?  What about the kids and family and home and work and pets and school runs and sports fixtures and all the other crap that comes in between? How do you pace this little illness into that gigantic mix?  Please, someone, do tell.  What exactly is meant to give?

Even if I do make myself do all the above – the resting, the breaks, the endless sleep, it still gets me absolutely bloody nowhere.  All the pacing in the world and it achieves what?  A couple of ‘good’ days to get stuff done and then a week of feeling like absolute shit while my body struggles to get over the unexpected exertion.

Moderation.  There’s another word I hate.  I am sick to death of trying to live a life in moderation.  It’s like setting out to only ever achieve half of everything you want to do. For a task-loving, goal-oriented person like myself, this is the very definition of frustration.

Oh yes, while I’m at it, I’m also completely over being told I should of ‘learnt to know better by now’.  Two words to that one.  Bugger Off.

I did already learn long ago that this moderating, pacing and enforced rest doesn’t really work.  I get why those living in a logical think it would, but it really doesn’t.  I’ve learnt that truth the hard way – and on a regular basis, in fact.  Living like a sloth can usually buy a day or two, or a week tops, but that’s really about it.

But anyway, here’s the thing.  It’s not really the ‘learning’ to pace myself that I have an issue getting to grips with, it’s the acceptance that I have to do it at all.  The acceptance that there will always be limitations of one sort or another.  And with that comes the realisation: I’m never going to be able to climb a mountain, or walk for miles and miles along the beach, or hold down a full-time job, or even hit the town and dance till the sun comes up.  OK, granted, the mountain climbing was probably never going to happen, but it’d sure be nice to do all the rest.

What a dismissal, depressing and utterly uninspiring prospect this acceptance malarkey can seem.  Who in their right mind would ever want to do it?

So like I said before – seriously, what is the point?