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Sunday was mostly normal.
I dyed my friend's hair pink and purple.
We all had dinner, laughed until six.
Rick and I went to bed at 8pm.
I woke up soon thereafter coughing so hard I couldn't breathe. Over and over and over. I felt like I needed oxygen and I was starting to have a panic attack.
Rick ran out that Sunday night to a 24-hour drug store to find anything to help. He came home to my crying incoherent gibberish.
Every joint and muscle hurt, undoubtedly from doing what to others would be normal...standing, bending, moving all day. But spend the majority of three years lying in bed, taking this medication and that medication and you lose muscle tone and strength. Some people, like me, lose their appetite. Some people, not like me, lose a ton of weight. I've lost. Gained. Lost. Gained more.
Humiliation is a side effect of long-term illness no one talks about much. Being fine one hour and wanting to die the next -- no one has time for that. I know. I've lost friends who just "couldn't deal" with the crazy fun house of mirrors and yo-yos that is Lyme Disease.
The disease so many doctors and nearly ALL insurance companies says does not exist, even when given concrete medical proof from advanced medical tests. Yeah, that one. The disease that turns a common cold into "do we need to go to the hospital or not."
Things were worse throughout the night and Rick stayed home late enough to get Zack to school. That alone told me he was scared, because he gets up at 3am. At 3am I was screaming in pain. I'm pretty sure that freaked my stoic husband out.
When he came home, he said my two-doctor GP office couldn't see me for at least two days. Rick decided to take me to an Urgent Care facility instead of the ER. The ER would have cost a cheap copay. It's also a lousy hospital, with one doctor on call in the ER. Rick called our insurance about Urgent Care. I needed a referral, which would take a few days. Unless I wanted to drive 45 minutes to the first "approved" one.
You see a pattern here? My insurance company does not believe I am sick with Lyme, regardless of proof by top doctors in the country, if not the world, yet can't say what I have. My insurance company prefers I sit seven hours in the ER (the last amount of time I spent waiting when I went) when I waited only ten minutes at Urgent Care three miles away and chose to pay out of pocket rather than wait days for a referral.
I barely remember the visit. I was weak, half asleep yet in deep pain, but I do
remember a nurse asking kindly,
"Does she need a wheelchair?"
In my mind, I rebelled. I've had to use a wheelchair once, but I didn't want to do it again. I don't like staggering, being unable to drive at times, but I'm afraid if I got in a wheelchair...
I'd never get out.
Zack's 13th birthday is the 10th. I had big plans for his Friday school snack and his Saturday party. Zack has no idea the extra things I wanted to surprise his party with. But I do. I have one child, one 13th birthday.
I am absolutely going to do this. A friend has picked up Zack for school all week thus far. I get about an hour or two after sleeping like the dead to get things done. Maybe a wheelchair would be good, keep me from falling. I don't know. I've fought it. I was getting better. I AM getting better. But I push too hard, and maybe, just maybe, a wheelchair would keep me from hurting myself so much and setting my progress back.
Do they come in pink?
