A little self-hate. :/

Pain, so much of it. I can feel it in my arms, my hands, my sides. I'm bursting open with all of it and there's no one around that can sew me back up.
Pills are making me tired. I should sleep while I still have the chance but I'm much too stubborn and stupid for that. My fingers are adapting to being frozen in time, acting as if they are surrounded in fast-drying cement.
Tomorrow marks treatment round two in order to get me working again. Meanwhile I go on to short-term disability and get fucked sideways on income.
I'm almost ready to go back to New York. If this treatment doesn't work it's what I am going to do. Just go back to New York and get ready to roll over and die. There's no point to living like this. How can this even be considered or compared to living? I fill out a sheet, honestly, about how I'm feeling mentally and it goes ignored. I know I'm depressed, I know I'm having suicidal tendencies.. it's difficult for me to come out and say it. It's like admitting defeat or showing weakness, something I've never been able to do. That sheet is my cry for help and it's just going to get filed away and ignored. Waste of a perfectly good tree, if you ask me.
Everything has lost it's flavor and luster, I'm too busy worrying about things I can't control. It's just paper. It's just things. None of it matters when you are dead, in that case it just becomes someone elses problem. Not mine. What good is worrying about it? So what if I lose my car? It's not like I can drive it anyway. So what if I lose the roof over my head, will anyone out there actually allow me to become homeless? Homeless and sick, I think there are agencies for that.
The worst part of all of this, this entry took me more than two hours to write. I miss my hands.

-D

Ugh. Again? Really?

My attempt at a brave face during a round of steroids.

I wish I could wri te all of my fruustrations ou t without so much pain. With each relapse I feel like I lose ano trher piece of digni ty and an even larger por tion of who I am. I used to be so s tr ong when it came to figh ing this disease, I've lost that. I forget who that person was. With each bit of steroids my flesh fills out bit by bit unt il I'm just a rounded bit of dough. I'm playdouggh being stretched ou t and slammed into t iny puddles of mush. '

I won' t apologize for my typing and I won' ttake the time to edi t or spellcheck, because t his is wha t his disease has taken from me. My hands are useless. I feel useless. I can't take care of myself. I haveSteven he re taking care of me but how long befor e he grows weary of my neediness, my r oid r age an my anger and bolts? Could I seriously blame him? No, I'm no t sure I'd ghave the heaert to stick around ei ther.

I'm just so tired of fighting. What am I fighting for anyway? Resisting the urge to just roll over and die... I don' t know if I have trhge energy for that anymore. I'm just..exhausted.

Depression and Anger

There’s this dark side of chronic illnesses that not very many people like to talk about. Depression and anger are both significant emotions for those who not only have multiple sclerosis but PCOs as well. It’s as if getting diagnosed with both, you’re more than likely to, at some point, feel the debilitating side effects of depression.

For me, it always starts the same. I’ll be buzzing along, feeling fine when suddenly I’m hit with this overwhelming feeling of anger and dissatisfaction with my life. There’s never an exact cause to these feelings and there’s never one event or person that is to blame. It just happens.

For example, yesterday I was trotting along and feeling pretty decent when this dark cloud moved over me. It started with anger, this overwhelming anger that gets directed outwardly towards whoever is around me. Unfortunately, at that time, I was speaking to Steven. I told him that I had to let him go before I said something I would not only regret later but also something I did not mean. I knew it was going to happen, I could feel it welling up inside me like word vomit.

Thankfully, I was able to push these feelings aside while speaking to my roommates, as it would not have been fair to take this wave of emotional unbalance out on them. It continued, though, once I was alone in my room and alone with my thoughts. This overwhelming urgency to cry came over me, as well as this deep feeling of dread and sadness. I called and spoke to Steven and cried verbally on his shoulder. He was sweet- he listened and was filled with understanding. It’s moments like these that really make me notice the difference between someone who cares and someone who is just “there.” It also makes me thankful that I have the people in my life that I do. With him, it’s easy as he never passes judgment, never criticizes me or tells me that I need to seek therapy, he just listens. It’s exactly what I needed at that exact moment. It made a world of difference. My overwhelming emotional state eventually led to me passing out from sheer exhaustion. The one thing that really upsets me about these waves of depression is it leaves me feeling rather groggy and feeling like I’ve been “drugged.”

Living with these waves of depression is just a fact of life for people with MS and PCOs. I could consider getting it treated with drugs, which I would, if it happened more often than it does, but we’re already fed so many other drugs as it is. Ask someone you know, who has both MS and PCOs, to show you their drug cabinet and you’ll see a rather large assortment of drugs. What’s one more?

A brochure on depression from the National MS society states that “people with MS experience depression more than the general population or people with other chronic illnesses.” In fact, some research shows that people with MS may actually be more likely to be depressed because of the physiology of multiple sclerosis. For women with PCOs, depression is considered one of the symptoms of the syndrome. And since women are more likely to have multiple sclerosis than men and PCOs only effect s women, it makes sense that, as a woman, depression is not something to take lightly. For me, it’s like I’m the cream feeling in this oreo of depression. Eventually, it’s something I will have to consider seeking treatment for.

With that being said, if you happen to be going through the symptoms of depression, talk to your doctor. You have enough things to worry about- depression shouldn’t be one of them. And if you happen to be feeling suicidal, please, get help!

With all my love and encouragement-
Desiree