Being ill

We take so much for granted and yet it takes very little to change our lives. We are vulnerable all of the time and yet we tend not to think about that or indeed our mortality. The latter tends to come up more often as we get older and an awareness of out impending check out becomes clearer with each passing year.

I was at the doctor's this morning for a misery inducing urticaria that strikes me periodically. She seems to be exploring the causes but I don't think she will find it. It has been investigated by a number of GPs over the years and they all end up throwing up their hands, and so I live with it until it gets me down again. Mostly it is absent but when it manifests it dominates my life.

I was actually not thinking too much about it this morning but that was what the appointment was made for.  The other issues that I have need new appointments. There was a time when a GP had time to talk to you and find out what was wrong. Talking sometimes was all that some needed, maybe a little reassurance and possibly for some a prescription for a placebo. Ten minutes is now the limit and so I have had to make two more appointments, with different doctors who will deal with each problem in isolation rather than dealing with me. I am more than my conditions but hey they are human beings working to rules inflicted on them by bean counters.

I have a very painful knee - I have no idea what is causing it and no idea whether I should be working it or resting it. At the moment I am doing the latter but when I do get up to walk the pain is excruciating and so I tend to do this as little as possible.

More worrying is again a long standing problem which just won't go away. This is in part due to my inability to express what is happening.  I am writing this as a means of assisting myself in describing what happens and maybe I can start to make sense out of it.  Ok here goes, I am having periodic episodes that are quite scary.  They are not painful but deeply unsettling and each time I get one I wonder if it is the last one, the big one.  I go weeks without one and then maybe I will experience four or five in a day and sometimes at night too, then they are gone again.  The odd thing is that each one begins with a feeling of deja vu. I hear the laughter already. It could be a sound, a smell, any sensory input, though more frequently it is something I see. Then I know it is coming. It feels like something inside me has burst open and my body is being flooded by something warm. My ability to think and process becomes impaired and I have to stop whatever I am doing and wait it out. It lasts less than a minute generally and then all is normal, whatever that may be.  I am not sure that I have described it fully but that will do for now. I have something in writing and that may be of some help to someone.

So yes things could be better, but i am still here for now and grateful for that despite the pain and the fear. I am taking nothing for granted.