After such an exciting and eventful life, especially my adult life (most of which you still don't know about yet), where am I now?
Well, I've hinted at it a bit, but for the last few years my whole life seems to revolve around my health. I finally got disability last summer after losing 2 good career jobs due to health. The judge at my SSDI hearing determined that those jobs were "failed work attempts".
So I'm living on a very limited income and hang on to a hope that I can at least eventually work part-time again. But it may be difficult to even find part-time professional work within the income limits to keep SSDI and health insurance that comes with that.
I guess it's not unusual for people like me on disability to have people wonder what we do all day. My mom, on the phone, a couple months ago asked me if I was spending all my time at the beaches here! HAH!! That's a big joke... I did my first "fun" thing tonight that I've done since returning here last March, and that was to go to a free classical concert. Then I promptly returned home and I'm doing my evening 45 minute session on the stimulator (like a souped-up tens unit) as I write this.
And when I'm not on the stimulator (1 1/2 hours a day), then I'm managing my medicines and supplements, doing physical therapy (self-managed or at a formal p/t session), doing extra cleaning to try to deal with my dust mite allergy (eventually I'll get immunized for that), etc., etc.
Today at church I had trouble singing; my voice went all hoarse and I felt sort of out of breath. So I had to sit down in the middle of singing to deal with that. Then this afternoon my temperature went up to 99.3 again. I've had some virus that they can't figure out what it is since last December. I've been on 4 rounds of antibiotics (I evidently got secondary infections along the way) and also 2 rounds of methylprednisone dose-pack. Each time it helps for a while then I start deteriorating again. I'm also on Nasonex and QVAR, and take Mucinex and do saline nasal cleanses and drink a detox tea all to help deal with this bug. Before I went on the last round of antibiotics and methylprednisone my temperature was around 100 often. Then it came down and it's creeping back up again.
Yeah, mom, I spend all my time at the beaches...
To help me feel like there's more to life than just health management, I work on a little kitchen garden and like to try finding new recipes to cook my crops in. Today I'm making a homemade cracker recipe using thyme (I grow several herbs). I've never really done gardening like this before, so it's somewhat new to me. I want it to be something that I can dabble at, though, so it's not stressful.
Now I think my thyroid is acting up again, so I got tested last Friday. I had Grave's disease, but it went into remission so I haven't been on methimazole for about 3 years now. If it's acting up again as I think it is, I imagine we'll look more seriously at having the thyroid taken out. I've been loosing a lot of hair, especially after I shower, and I've also been losing weight and I'm starting to feel a bit jumpy, which are all signs of hyperthyroid. If I hold my hand out it's not shaking though, at least not that I can notice. I also don't have insomnia or diarrhea yet, which are all symptoms of hyperthyroid. I'll learn in a week or two what the lab test results are.
So that's really my life now, at least a good chunk of it. Not very exciting, especially when you consider where I've come from. I guess you could say I'm sort of a "has been". I suppose I can live with that. But the hard part is always feeling like there's no one that really understands me. I mean, I don't really fit into any mold. You could say I'm a bit of an enigma... Okay, maybe more than "a bit of" an enigma. Hopefully, though, I'll become less of an enigma as you find out more about me.
Ciao for now... I hear my crackers calling (the ones I'm making)
~ Meg
