Day 26: One does not simply....

Day 26 – Monday, Nov. 26
Interview your health
OR
Make a chart / meme / poster and write about it

There isn't much to say about the three memes I've made for the sidebar here. If you've lived with CFS/ME, Depression, or Fibromyalgia, you know how often people tell us to just get over it. As if these weren't real diseases, with actual biomedical effects on the body. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy.

I'm lucky that Depression can be successfully treated, as I consider it the worst of the three diseases here. Not only is it the worst to suffer through, but it is the most deadly of the three. I have been taking anti-depressants for over ten years now, and unless a cure is developed, expect to be taking them for the rest of my life. I am very grateful that there are so many excellent pharmaceutical products available to treat depression, as well as psychological therapies.

It's my experience with Depression that makes me wish that CFS/ME was a mental illness like so many people seem to think. If it was, then I would use all the tools in the mental health arsenal to treat it. After four years since I first fell ill, I would have it in remission by now, if it was really a mental illness.

Fibromyalgia is my newest diagnosis and one I'm still learning to deal with. There seem to be more medical options for treating pain than there are for treating fatigue. One of them is to increase my dosage of gabapentin, which I'm doing now. The dosage increase is really doing a number on my mood, making me highly irritable. It should pass in a few days. It's worth it because it already seems to be lessening the pain. Neuropathic pain, which is the sort of pain caused by Fibromyalgia, can't just be treated by painkillers, because the nerves are simply not responsive to them. They have to be handled in a different way, and it is common for anti-seizure medicine to be used instead. It's complicated. I'm so grateful for Dr Purple Hair who seems to know all about nerve pain and how to treat it.

I guess in keeping with the "One does not simply walk into Mordor" theme, I would class Dr Purple Hair as one of my Fellowship of the Ring, along with my husband and my family and my copy of "How to Be Sick" and all the other people and tools who help me cope with a life of being chronically ill.

#NHBPM