Pushing Against the Current

A bit beat down.

That’s how I have felt for the last few months. Just kind of beat down. Pushing against a rising current.

Sometimes I can swim that current. Sometimes I just have to let it take over.

I haven’t been sleeping or breathing very well, and they both work together to exacerbate the other. I'm always having difficulty breathing but it has been much worse over the last month. I continually wake up in the middle of the night not breathing and then struggle to breathe all day. My medication, my inhaler, and my canned oxygen only do so much right now. I consider it really annoying that breathing is such an essential function. Is there a comment card somewhere I can submit so I can complain about this? 

All the oxygen in the world couldn't put her back together again...

Monday was one of the worst days in some time. I was desperately struggling to breathe and should’ve gone to the ER. But I didn’t. I always say “next time. I swear next time I’ll go. Today I don’t have the fight in me to battle with doctors at the ER or sit in a waiting room for hours.” Next time. The problem with Myasthenia is that you can go into crisis and stop breathing suddenly. The condition can become fatal then. I tried to push through and by evening I was doing a little better. Thank god for Mestinon. I see my pulmonologist next week so maybe she'll have some ideas. Full body transplant? 

I’ve also had some disappointments the last few weeks, but I’m working on rising above them. I have mentioned that I have put an immense amount of energy working on my long-term and short-term disability applications over the last year: gathering medical documentation, sifting through them, making copies, organizing notes, requesting more documentation, making phone calls. My short-term disability was denied in January and I am waiting to hear the results of my appeal right now. My long-term disability was denied two weeks ago.

I was denied based on a “pre-existing condition” because I stopped working within a year of when my insurance policy started (I had to pay into a private system as an educator). As a lowly adjunct, I never paid into any type of disability before that. I wasn’t denied because of medical necessity; I was denied based on a bureaucratic caveat.

I missed the cut off for the pre-existing denial by a few days. If I had been able to hold on at work for just a few more days, I would have been eligible. But that was an impossibility. I held on longer than humanly possible. I tried every loophole with the insurance company and battled the best that I could, but I don’t see a way around it.

Luckily, husband and I have worked some financial wizardry (which unfortunately included him selling his beloved truck) and we can survive on his income. We can make it in a future that will likely include me being unable to work for a long time, possibly indefinitely. It’s a relief.

I can’t rage against the injustice of the “pre-existing” condition nonsense because there are too many people who have also fallen in the cracks and who must struggle because of an inadequate system. I count my husband and I as incredibly lucky compared to some of the stories I have read.

I saw a woman post a picture of her empty refrigerator a few weeks ago. She is waiting for her disability hearing (which can take 12-18 months), and it was the end of the month so she was waiting for her food stamp money. In a Dysautonomia group I am in, I saw a young woman ask “what essentials do I need to survive? I will be homeless in a few days.” She didn’t have any family to rely on and was too sick to be able to work. I see people who are treated like frauds and criminals before they finally get their disability benefits. It can take many years to finally get them. How exactly is anyone supposed to maintain their health or live under those conditions? I could go on and on. 

I don’t know where I’d be without my husband. I wish I could do something to help all of these people who must suffer because they are sick and lost the genetic lottery. It’s heartbreaking. I dream of starting a non-profit that works to support people who have fallen in the cracks. Or winning the lottery and building a commune for all the Spoonies out there who need a home. I like this dream. The commune would also be filled with cats from shelters who need homes. So many cats.

I also got the results of my thymus scan.

Normal. No surgery and I perhaps lose my best possible chance of remission. I may be the only person crazy enough to look forward to the prospect of surgery. My neurologist told me he really expected there would be a problem with my thymus. I tried not to get my hopes up but I thought my trusty thymus might be my ticket for some real answers finally.

This may provoke cognitive dissonance but normal results come with heartache. Once again, you have to hear “everything is normal. Nothing is wrong.” And the subtext I always hear in this is “you’re just crazy and imagining it.” This probably comes from years of being told I was wrong by doctors. I haven’t heard those exact words in awhile but I’m always waiting for them to resurface. I fear that I am going to make a full circle and after all these years, I will just end up back at the dead end of “you’re imagining this.”

Perhaps the tools for really identifying what is wrong may not exist yet, and this is true for so many diseases. When you have lived on the outer edges of Western medicine and turn to stare into the impenetrable abyss of the unknown, you appreciate the limits and hubris of human intuition. We do not know everything.

So I’ve been failing at pushing against the currents of hopelessness of late. It’s been too hot to sit outside, so I’ve been trapped inside, which is not helping. Usually I can sit outside in our little yard that is my oasis. I have two blue jays who have made a home there, a few butterflies, my flowers that can survive the heat. I sit out there, listen to my neighbor’s scream-talking, listen to the great live Mariachi music from the house down the street, and I feel at peace with the world. I just have to hunker down and ride out summer.  

A little patch of heaven 

I know that I’ll get the strength to push against the current again.

I can already feel it building.

In the haze of hopelessness, you reach out a hand into the fog

Hoping for a corporeal grasp, a lift up

Calling for a response

Sometimes only despair is waiting

The current picks up your disparate limbs, a body in pieces, and drags you in its weighted storm

Until

The ground hurdles from under you

You land, bewildered and blinking

You stand up and stare into a world that suddenly has dimension and shape again

But you see the fog in the distance, gathering motion to consume everything once more

Then music. Sound. Booming, glittering life

Make it as loud as possible to drown out the fear

Dance like the fog will never take you again

In a body strengthened in persistence

These are obstacles, riddles to solve, barriers to challenge. I’ve climbed over many before so I know I will again.

I believe sometimes obstacles are there to challenge your will and your warrior spirit; they make you dig deep to see how hard you will fight to climb over them. And sometimes when they are insurmountable, you recognize their immutable weight and just walk around them, waiting for a time when you have more strength to climb over them.

But you never give up. That—at the very least—is non-negotiable.

You press on. Pushing against the current the best you can. Tomorrow is another day and today is worth the fight to make it there.

In the meantime, I'm going to crank up Stevie Wonder, drink my electrolytes, and dance from my couch. Waiting for a lift up.