lupus

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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Am I becoming a junkie?

~ Rachel ~ 2 Comments

In the beginning, when God created the earth, Eve nicked Adam’s apple and I got diagnosed with Lupus, I stubbornly resisted every drug I was offered.  I was adamant that I’d manage without – save for a few ibuprofen when things got extra tough.

Six months later, when Lupus started to dig the claws in a little deeper, I was still in denial.  I was reluctant to set off down a road with no end in sight.  I was scared to start a medication I might never come off.

Roll forward a decade and oh, how things have changed.Sickandalwaystired.comMozi

As the years have ticked past and the conditions and symptoms have started piling up around me, not only have I stopped counting the pills I take, I’ve even started begging for more.  Surely, this is not good?

I think I’m becoming a bit of a junkie.

The trouble with taking bucket loads of tablets every day is that after a while you start knocking them back like Smarties.  You also start getting rather slapdash about the whole affair.

I’ve definitely become far too blasé for my own liking.  I know this because the other day when I pulled out my medication suitcase for the weekly decant, I clearly didn’t have my mind on the job.  After the 126 pills were all in their allocated compartments, I shook out the ones I was due to take with breakfast.

That’s odd, I thought.  I don’t remember them being that shade of green.

So I looked a little closer.

And….holy shit.

SickandalwaystiredAzathioprineIn place of the six white pills I take for vertigo every day, I’d somehow substituted them for six sleeping pills.  Six sleeping pills that weren’t even the same size or colour – for that matter, they weren’t even in my current meds ‘line up’.

As cock-ups go that one could have been rather disastrous.  I’m not entirely sure what that dosage of sleeping fairy dust would have done to me, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been good.

On the other end of the cock-up scale, I made a similar miscalculation that resulted in an entirely different outcome.  The exact polar opposite of results, in fact.

A month or so ago, when trying to get an early nights sleep, my body was so wracked with pain that even the pressure of my bones resting on the memory foam mattress was making me feel nauseous.  After unsuccessfully trying to levitate myself off the offending sheet, I reached into the bedside drawer with my one semi-functioning arm and fished out some extra painkillers.

Three long hours later and I was still laying there: eyes wide open in the dark and furiously trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I tried hard to relax from my toes up to my temples – but was simply too annoyed at being awake.  I tried counting leaping, sleep-inducing sheep – but was too irritated by their imagined bleating.  I tried to think ‘mindfully’ – but was too wound up by my complete and utter lack of zen.

In the end, with a backward and ever so bitter glare at my sleeping, completely oblivious husband,  I flounced off downstairs to the sofa with a pillow under my arm.  There I lay, accompanied by the slightly perplexed dog and watching the mother of all tripe and trashy TV until well past 5.30am.  I think at that point I passed out rather than fell asleep.

Later that day I discovered what went so very wrong.  When scrabbling for pain relief in the dim glow of my phone screen, I had mistakenly grabbed at tablets containing caffeine.  No big deal you’d think, but caffeine is a stimulant my body hasn’t consumed or experienced in over 15 bloody years.  No wonder I’d felt wired.

Needless to say, I’ve now started to harness all of my powers of concentration when sorting my meds.  I’m also pondering just how much I knock back.

I’d love to be able to wean myself off all of this toxic crap, but I don’t see how it would ever be possible, or if I’m brave enough to see how my body would even react.
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Why Chronic Illness leads to Loneliness

~ Rachel ~ 5 Comments

I think it’s true to say that all chronic illnesses have one symptom in common: Loneliness.

For me, it can be one of the worst symptoms of the lot, often battling it out with Pain and Fatigue to ‘win’ the day and get one over on me.  For healthy, socially active and ‘other side of the bars’ people, it must seem odd that a state of mind could ever pull top trumps on a physical pain, but in many ways it does.

To understand how it’s probably best to dissect each symptom: surgical gloves at the ready!

Let’s start with Chronic Pain.  In whatever wonderful form it takes, there’s no disputing that this one is unquestionably an evil bastard – unrelenting and utterly vindictive.  It takes no prisoners and gives no time off for good behaviour.  I won’t woffle on about just how bad Pain can be, as I’ve already covered that here.  And here.

But Pain (in its simplest, non-chronic form) is a widely known entity.  There isn’t a person alive today who hasn’t felt its wrath, from a grazed knee and pesky splinter to a twisted limb and broken bone.  And let’s not forget childbirth – the mother of them all!

This shared understanding of Pain makes it socially acceptable: it can be openly discussed and easily emphasised with.  No GP will ever panic if you tell them about Pain, they’ll just reach for the prescription pad (or keyboard, these days) and bombard you with drugs.  In the case of Chronic Pain (or mine at least), most of these pain ‘killers’ barely scratch the surface; they’re as effective as a hit man with a cast iron moral compass.  But at least for Pain there’s plenty of meds and it always makes me feel slightly proactive to pop a pill.

Then there’s Chronic Fatigue, an equal to Pain in every way.  Real, wall-hitting, concrete-encasing, treacle-plodding Fatigue is the undisputed Queen of All Bitches.  It drains the life out of life and the fun out of everything.  But I’ve already covered my hatred of Fatigue here.  And here.  And here’s my Top 10 Things That Fatigue Isn’t list.

Unlike Pain, however, Chronic Fatigue has to be experienced to be truly understood.  It is not the same as tiredness (that everyday, run-of-the-mill stuff that everyone feels) and nothing else compares.  In my opinion, Fatigue is a powerful force for evil: The Dark Side, Dementors, Death Eaters and The Eye of Sauron all rolled into one.  It’s impossibly hard to fathom for those with bounce and vigour and this makes empathy rather thin on the ground.  There is some, however, as  Fatigue can make you look like the walking dead and it’s obvious to all that you’re really not feeling great.

Sadly there are no pills for Chronic Fatigue, but it can (according to the ‘medically’ trained) be aided by rest.  And taking it easy.  And learning to pace yourself.  Please just excuse me here while I roll my eyes.  What all this Fatigue and resting and spending time on your own does lead to is… the actual point of this blog.

Loneliness: an entirely different type of beast and the Satan of Symptoms.

For me, Loneliness is something that sweeps in and out of my life, like an all-consuming surge of water in a particularly menacing storm.  Whether it comes from nowhere or accompanies a flare, it always takes me completely unaware.

It creeps up on me whilst I’m focussing on Pain.  It slinks into the room while I battle Fatigue, filling up every last bit of space until I feel I can’t breathe.  It sits beside me when I’m resting, invading my thoughts and slowly drip feeding negativity into my brain.  It’s as if the worst of my insecurities and crippling fears are joining forces, playing games with an already fragile mind.

It’s hardly a surprise that Loneliness stands shoulder to shoulder with Anxiety and Depression.  They’re like a small coven of witches all hell-bent on dragging me down.

Yes, Loneliness is a bleak and terrible place to find yourself: dark and isolated and a million miles from everything that feels familiar.  It has the ability to transform any environment, no matter how safe and secure and make it feel empty and odd.  It’s the unsettling feeling that something is ever so slightly out of place, but you just can’t put your finger on what or why.

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Loneliness for me is like looking out at the world from behind a set of bars.  It’s seeing life carrying on around me, life carrying on without me.  And however much love may surround me it doesn’t change the feeling that I am completely alone.

In part that’s because it’s true.  Loneliness is something that I often feel and think about but very rarely discuss with anyone.  Partly because I don’t want to cause offence to those who are always by my side and partly because I don’t think anyone else would really care.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.

The worse part of Loneliness is feeling that it’s so damned obvious that everyone around me should be able to spot it.  I really, really want someone to notice how I feel, but of course, it’s as invisible as all the other symptoms so no one ever will.

Even my rheumatologist doesn’t.  He’s certainly never asked me whether I feel utterly alone with the collection of diseases it’s his job to treat; he couldn’t be less interested in my state of mind.  All he wants is for me to take my meds, never query his opinion and turn up once or twice a year to be ticked off his ‘to see’ list.  My new GP also steers clear of Loneliness.  Maybe that’s because she can’t afford to open the floodgates and release the tidal wave of tears that’ll inevitably come.  She knows it’ll be nigh on impossible to replug that dam in a 10-minute allocated NHS time slot.

So maybe my worst symptoms come down to how much understanding and empathy they evoke.  This puts Loneliness on the winning podium as how can there be empathy for something when no one even knows it exists?

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Pain: a very curious companion

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

Chronic Pain is something of a curious companion.  A very constant, curious companion.

When waking in the morning it’s already there.  Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and smirking in delight.  Always perched at the end of your bed, double espresso in hand and impatiently tapping a foot.  Just waiting to crack on and eager to ruin your day.

From eyes open to eyes shut, Pain makes everything you do a mission and the simplest of things a chore.  Stairs turn into mountains and every walk feels like a trek.  It’s there when you shower, cook, eat, drive, shop and rest.  It pesters you when you’re working and turns your brain to fog.  It mocks all attempts at exercise.  It punishes you for weeks.

Like a lazy toddler who refuses to be put down, Pain hangs off necks causing knots to form and tendons to shriek.  It clings to backs until muscles pull and ache.  It grips hands in a vice, crushing fingers until colour drains and cramp sets in.  It bounces off hips and sits astride shoulders, gripping temples and reigning blows down upon throbbing heads.  It’s positively relentless.  And an utter pain in the arse.

At the end of the day when you eventually collapse into bed, Pain is still there.  Snuggled in like an unwanted spoon, weighing you down and wrapping around every painful limb.  And then for its grand finale – the biggest insult of all.

By the time your eyelids are hanging down past your cheeks, blissful sleep doesn’t even come to save you.  No sirree.  Pain snores like a freight train, kicks the small of your back and hogs the entire duvet.  So now, you’re utterly exhausted and completely wide awake, all at the same time.  Painsomnia they call it.  Possibly the worst hours of the entire 24-hour day.  And that really is saying something.

Week after week, year after year Pain hangs around like a bad smell, just sat there waiting every morning.  You can try drowning it in lavender scented bath water or drugging it with pills.  You can count your breaths and be mindful or ‘downward dog’ it to death, but nothing really seems to work.  No matter what you tell it or how loud you scream, rant and swear, it just smirks a little more and ramps it up another gear.  To give Pain its dues, it certainly has commendable staying power and a very thick skin.

So yes, Chronic Pain is quite possibly the most curious, constant and loyal companion of them all.  Just like cellulite or a very needy dog, come rain or shine, no matter what you do, it’s always there and it refuses to ever back off, take a break or budge.

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Alive. Kicking. Almost.

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

Oh dear god, it’s been more than a year since the last post.  There’s so much tumbleweed drifting around this barren landscape I call a blog that I can barely beat a pathway through to the ‘New Post’ button.

I do seem to be making a terrible habit of avoiding my screen and I’m not even sure why.  Every day I wake up with the very best of intentions.  Every night I promise that the next day I’ll definitely do better.  Procrastination in its finest form, I’m sure you’ll agree.  Sadly this terrible lack of motivation seems to have infiltrated almost every aspect of my day-to-day life.

Much like a petulant, sulking teenager, one day, Motivation simply gave me a withering look, rolled its eyes and then disappeared under a festering duvet.  Accompanied by (oh so easily led) Mojo, they both holed up in the dark, barely visible amongst piles of cushions, hoodies and assorted technology beginning with ‘i’. They blocked out the world (except for the WiFi, obvs) and slept like the dead, surviving on nothing more than carbs, Spotify and Netflix.  Sunlight was met with shrieks, hygiene was minimal and conversations consisted of no more than one syllable.  Earphones kept all pleads, threats or bribes at bay.

It was neither a battle or a war I could win.  I’m a mother of a teenager, I knew that.

To make matters worse, at the exact time Motivation descended into pubescent hell,  my ‘Oomph’ simultaneously went into hibernation overdrive and Creativity went AWOL – last official sighting, 28th May 2017.  I put that last deserter down to writer’s block on a gargantuan scale.  The Trump wall of writer’s block, if you will.

Like I said, this last year really has been procrastination in its finest form.  To highlight just how bad it became, both my 2017 and 2018 New Year’s resolutions were to try to write more on my blog.  That panned out, clearly.

Come to think of it, my other three resolutions for 2017 and 2018 also proved something of a non-starter.  They were: to start exercising more (and when I say more I mean to actually start); to make the time to meditate (instead of watching trashy but extremely enjoyable TV); to sell everything I don’t need on Ebay.  Needless to say, my yoga mat was last seen loitering on top of the wardrobe, my Headspace membership expired with an embarrassing lack of use and my Ebay account has been as badly neglected as this blog.  Fail, fail and epic fail.

There is, naturally, a valid reason for all the tumbleweed and radio silence.  It’s called life, and it’s mainly been shit.  I’d go so far as to say that life has completely drained the last jot of energy out of me.  If the last year was put on a spectrum ranging from ‘Rainbows and Unicorns’ through to ‘Complete and Utter Misery’, I’ve probably been hovering right around the ‘Big Dark Hole’ mark.  That’s somewhere between ‘Up A Creek’ and ‘Where Exactly Is The Light At The End Of The Tunnel?’  Nope, not a flicker of a rainbow or a bleeding bloody unicorn insight.

Daily existence has mainly centred around pain, with some exhaustion, frustration, upheaval and therapy thrown in for good measure.  Then there’s been the depression, with a side helping of despondency, debt and despair.  Oh yes, and a little bit of death, like a sprinkle on top.

A right barrel of laughs it’s been.  A ‘fed up/screw everything/ I give up’ type of year in which I just haven’t felt engaged enough with my brain to type anything worth reading.  Certainly, nothing that you, most lovely reader, would want to digest.  That said, other people’s misery does have a wonderfully warped way of giving perspective and cheering the soul, so perhaps I’ve done you all a massive disservice.

Anyhow, I’ve decided that things need to improve, at least on the blog front.  So I’ve dragged a stinking Motivation and Mojo out from under the duvet and slung them in the shower.  Oomph has been given a triple espresso and Creativity has been frogmarched back from the wilderness and shackled to the keyboard.  Now we’ll just have to see how that all goes.

So thank you – to everyone who hasn’t unfollowed me, to all those who’ve recently shown their support and for the truly lovely comments that have helped to remind me why I started the blog in the first place.  It’s a mixture of all of the above and my therapist’s steel-capped boot up my backside that’s (hopefully) got me back on track.

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Highs and Lows of Lupus

~ Rachel ~ 8 Comments

Yes, I am alive.

The daffodils have long since sprouted, bloomed and faded and I’m still sat here in my fleecy lined pants, waiting for the year to crack into gear and get going. Alarmingly this seems to be a bit of an annual thing now. I’m not sure if it’s down to age or the illness (or a bit of both) but one second I’m packing up the Christmas tree, next, I’m looking up from life and thinking ‘bloody hell, it’s half way to June already’.

During February, March and much of April I plodded along quite well – not quite bouncing off the ceilings, but pretty upbeat most days.  The pain was reduced and for the most part, the exhaustion was fairly manageable. Little Miss Hope even raised her head there for a while.  Bless her for trying.  Clearly, she’s one of the more optimistic of the Little Misses bunch.

Then, 3 weeks ago, a variety of shit happened – the sort of stressful, unwanted shit that life likes to vomit up at us from time to time.  My body, in response to this shit, decided that it really couldn’t be bothered to deal with that extra hassle.  So, just like that, it shut up shop and switched to Low Energy Mode.  My batteries basically went from ‘Bunny’ to ‘Dodo’ in the blink of an eye and I found myself back in my ‘can’t think, can’t speak, can’t function’ dormant state of complete and utter uselessness.

Just like that, Little Miss Hope went scuttling off into the sunset and Little Miss Dozy moved her duvet and pillow back in.  So much for that optimism, they’re a fickle, cold-hearted bunch, I have to say.

3 weeks on and there’s bugger all I can do to get myself out of this slump.  I’m living in a fog where the exhaustion brings back the pain, the pain brings back the black clouds and the blue moods make everything seem that much harder.  Right now I’m so bloody tired I could curl up, cry and sleep through to Christmas. The Christmas at the tail end of 2018.

The annoying thing is that during my brief good spell, I kept meaning to write a positive post about how the meds were working wonders.  But, as is always the case, when I’m feeling a bit better I always use that precious energy to get a load of other stuff done.  Plus, if truth be told, when I’m feeling ‘up’ the very last thing I want to think or write about is feeling down.

But hey, now I’m back to this largely horizontal state again, life’s all about the Lupus, Sjogren’s and bleeding Fibromyalgia.  So while I probably don’t have the clarity of brain to put one correctly spelt, relevant word in front another, I might as well get this blog back on track.  If nothing else, it might stop the onslaught of WordPress emails that remind me I’ve gone to ground; they repeatedly tell me to keep my followers informed.

Why you lovely people (who’ve taken the time to follow my blog) would actually want to be informed about my health related crap, I have no idea!  But thank you, sincerely, for showing support.  I was starting to wonder if there’s even a point to spilling my guts and whining all over the web in this way, but I guess if even one person can relate and nod their head in agreeance, it makes it all worthwhile.

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It’s all a bit (fleecy lined) pants

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

January is one of those months when nothing really happens, it’s all just a bit blah. One minute you’re cramming a too big bird into a too small oven, the next, you’re realising that February is about to happen. Once again you ask yourself: What the hell happened there?

Was January shorter this year? Did I sleep through a week and not notice? Did we ever finish off all that turkey? Creme eggs already? Really?

For me, the weather plays a rather large part in this black hole of time. So cold has it been lately that I’ve only left the house when absolutely necessary. School runs and the occasional trip to support sporting offspring fall into this category. Clearly, I braved the post-Christmas sales as well, but that’s also a ‘necessary’.

Each day in 2017 I’ve sported exactly the same ‘dressed for warmth, not style’ combo: fleecy lined yoga pants (yoga mat not required), furry lined hoodie, furry lined slippers and thick fleecy socks. When needing to leave the house, so many additional layers of fabric are required that I struggle to bend over and pull my boots on. Aforementioned sporting trips involve jeans over yoga pants, multiple thermal vests under hoodies and two additional pairs of socks inside the fleecy ones.

Do I look like a blue whale packing some extra winter blubber? Most probably. Do I really care?  Nope. Far too cold to give a shit. Have I showcased any of my ‘must make more of an effort to look stylish’ new sales purchases? Erm, no.

So about all this January blah-ness. I think it probably comes down to motivation; I know that I definitely lost mine. I suspect it might have been thrown out with the Christmas wrapping paper by mistake. It’s probably languishing at the bottom of a recycling skip right now, waiting to be pulped. Or worse still, buried in some godawful landfill with a pile of stinking nappies.

Sorry, I digress. Back to the blah.

For once, I can’t even blame it on the dodgy health. So far this year I’ve had great days, mediocre days and ‘don’t you dare even try and wake me up’ days. For the most part though (touch wood) the tablets are still doing their thing. Of course autoimmune is no friend of winter. My joints feel more inflamed in the cold. My mood dips when the sky is grey. My fatigue is ramped up by the central heating. My fingers often look like a rotting corpse.

It’s safe to say I probably won’t have much of a spring in my step until… well, until Spring. When the first daffodil is brave enough to claw it’s way out of the earth and face the world, I’ll consider doing the same.

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‘Top 10’ things that chronic fatigue ISN’T

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

Following on from the last blog about unwanted opinions, here’s my ‘Top 10’ list of all the things that chronic fatigue isn’t.

Feel free to print it off and wave it around in the faces of all those doubting non-believers!  Better still, why not download the PDF, print onto A3 paper and stick multiple copies around your home or place of work!

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Get outta of my head

~ Rachel ~ 2 Comments

Today was the first day in over a week that I woke up and didn’t wince.

For the last 8 days I’ve had a killer headache that just wouldn’t shift. A migraine-like nightmare that has made me sound sensitive, light-sensitive, heat sensitive, people sensitive and living sensitive.

headache-sick-and-alwaystired-comIt’s felt like a 100lb block is crushing down on my scalp, sharp spikes are stabbing into my eye sockets and a metal band is wrapped around my forehead – a metal band that some sadistic little bastard is screwing tighter and tighter into my temples every time I move.

This has made me feel nauseous, dizzy and as grumpy as hell.  It’s hurt to look, think and move, and as a result of this, I haven’t been able to really do anything or go anywhere. I’ve mainly moped from room to room, moaning a lot and clutching my head. Writing anything was pretty much out of the question, as sitting in front of my computer screen was like staring at an eclipse with my eyelids taped open.

Every morning last week, I opened my eyes, reassessed the pain levels and thought ‘shit, here we go again, there’s another day ruined.’  When there’s no end in sight and the tablets aren’t even making a dent,  8 straight days of headache can seem like an eternity.  That’s 192 hours, 11520 minutes or 691200 seconds of feeling like utter crap. For heaven’s sake, we’re told God created the entire universe in less time than that, including the 7th day when he sat back, relaxed and admired his work.

Sadly, I am all too familiar with the whole ‘headache’ scene.  I spent a large chunk of my childhood experiencing the varied delights that a migraine has to offer: flashing lights, dancing black spots, exploding head, spinning rooms and wall-to-wall puking. Thankfully I rarely get a fully blown migraine these days, although they have been known to creep up on me in seconds if I do something foolhardy.  Like, tilt my head back, for example.  Lesson certainly learned that particular day: never attempt to paint a ceiling.

A trip to the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel a few years ago also proved rather pointless, when I realised I was unable to look up and see the paintings on the ceiling – the paintings being the very reason for the visit in the first place.  Of course, by the time I’d walked a good 3 miles through museum’s long (and frankly boring) corridors to get to the chapel, my hips had long since given up on me and I had to limp into the room and have a sit-down.  Adding insult to injury, after lining up to touch St. Peter’s foot in the Basilica, and putting in a request for a cure, my health has only gone from bad to worse.  Seriously Pete, where’s the love?!

With Lupus, Sjogren’s, vertigo and a Chiari malformation all sticking the boot in, these days the headaches are pretty much part and parcel of my everyday life.  I would, in fact, be more surprised if an entire week went by ‘headache free’.  Keeping on top of this amount of pain requires the stashing of tablets in every pocket, bag, room and drawer in the house.  I batch buy every week just to keep up with the demand.  I’m pretty sure my local supermarket thinks I’m stocking up for one big Armageddon style hurrah.

Making life that little bit easier still, the listed side effects of both Azathioprine and hydroxychloroquine are… wait for it… headaches.  Seriously people?  Is there no break to be had here?

With Lupus being a disease that affects the nervous system, sufferers are statistically twice as likely to get these migraine-like headaches.  Lupus headaches, they call them.  Yes, someone obviously put a lot of time and effort into thinking up that name, didn’t they.  Tension-types headaches are also more prevalent.  I totally get that.  Having Lupus definitely makes me grumpy and tense.

The Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) – a scoring system often used in Lupus research – describes a Lupus headache as a “severe, persistent headache; may be migrainous, but must be non-responsive to narcotic analgesia”.  Narcotic analgesics, by the way, are drugs that ‘relieve pain, can cause numbness and induce a state of unconsciousness’.  You’d think that unconsciousness would probably be enough to stop the pain, surely?

As ever, with such medical theories, opinions and statistics, there are ‘people’ who dispute the notion that people with Lupus could possibly suffer from a specific headache.  Dare I suggest these non-believers don’t have Lupus, don’t get the headaches and don’t have the first bloody clue.

Try living inside my head for the last 8 days and just maybe they’d have a fresh perspective and a totally different viewpoint.

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Getting away from the world 

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

24 hours, three flights, two sick bags and one emergency oxygen canister later, and we have finally arrived in a little corner of paradise called Krabi.  Time for some much needed rest and recuperation.

Set beneath towering cliffs in the middle of a tropical jungle, our resort is possibly the most idyllic setting in which to escape from the real world.  So far, so perfect.


Being one who struggles to stay awake and overly active at the best of times, the multiple flights, change in time zones and a big old helping of jet lag isn’t much helping the cause.

Day one: crawl out from under the mosquito net for breakfast; scuttle back to bed for a quick nap; wake up at 6pm; swim, eat dinner and then go back to bed.  All-in-all a thoroughly exhausting and non-productive day.

Plan of attack going forward: stay awake long enough to actually leave the bungalow and experience Thailand.

Day two: wake up from a deep, coma-like sleep; leave Arctic temperature of an air conditioned room and get hit in the face with a wall of 96-degree heat; stagger to the restaurant for breakfast and eat my own body weight in eggs and papaya.  I figure one will counteract the other…

Next for the tricky bit: protecting my sun-sensitive, lupusy skin in an environment that’s not dissimilar to a tandoori oven. First up, a very liberal helping of Factor 50 P20, followed by Factor 50 on the face and a bit more Factor 50 for good measure.  Plus, of course, the obligatory hat and big glasses.

So here I now lay, oiled up like a seagull in a shipping disaster, sweating like a beast and hiding under the shade of umbrella by the pool.

So far, so sun safe.

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