confessions from a woman with impaired vision, complex PTSD, and hope
Last night, I watched the movie Cake, which stars Jennifer Aniston as an ill-tempered woman dealing with chronic pain. Seeing her move slowly and robotically, small gasps with every effort, brought back some difficult memories. But also a clear sense of strength and of hope. As anyone with chronic pain can tell you, it becomes…
Today is a bad day. For those who know what I mean, let’s just say I woke up without any spoons left. My head ached, my eyes were blurred and pained by the small light streaming through my window. It was a feat simply to look at the extraordinarily large numbers on the face of…
Now and again, there comes a time when we just need to take a breather and hit the reset button on life. Frustrations mount, stresses build, and complications twist everything into a knotted, tangled mess. You can’t always walk away from your stressors – usually you can’t – but you can take a step back. You…
You just found out your best friend has been sleeping with your significant other. Your cat has the flu. Your job promotion went to the guy two cubes down who can’t even find AutoSum in Excel. The fecal matter has found its way up and into the proverbial fan, and life seems like it just…
So often when you have a chronic disorder, especially a painful or debilitating one, it can be difficult to talk about the good days. That seems counterintuitive, right? Shouldn’t we want to talk about the good days more than the bad? Of course we do! Thinking of the good days is what gets us through…
I’m sitting in a hotel room in Miami, mere hours from the next chapter in what has become a seven-year climb. I suppose I could think of my steady stream of surgeries as a mighty war against the scar tissue that continues to threaten my vision. Tomorrow’s surgery is but one battle of many in…
Do you ever wake up and just think, “Not today”? For those of us with chronic illnesses (or even difficult habits), finding a way out can seem like an impossible task. After years of trying, the trying itself can become a monstrous chore. I know I have certainly had moments where giving up looked like…
My last post explained how crummy I’ve been feeling in the last month. The culprit seems to be the oral prednisone I’ve been taking since my eye surgery in May. I am happy to say that after talking with my eye doctor today, I’ll be tapering off over the next month. So hopefully I should start to…
We don’t talk enough about the added effects of chronic health problems. We’ll talk about what medications help. We might mention their physical side effects. But how often do we talk about how these things affect our daily lives? It’s almost as if being alive is enough. But in some ways it really isn’t. Being…
I suppose I should start by saying that I won my battle with the insurance company! I apologize that it has been so long since I have written. I could blame it on being in grad school. Or on this increasingly frustrating bout of writer’s block. But excuses are futile. I haven’t written because I…