December is not my favorite month of the year. It’s cold (even here in California). It’s filled with a whole lot of extra errands and expenses due to Christmas. It’s the month where I cannot escape holiday related allergens – even at the grocery store.
November of 2015 was filled with too many things that drained my energy. I was fighting off a cold, and that made everything harder.
I was physically overwhelmed. My body decided to react – badly – to allergens hidden in things that I though were safe. A coconut allergy appeared out of nowhere, and I had to find soap that was safe. (Grandma’s Pure Soap is coconut free.)
Plan for the day: Go downtown to get a calendar from B&N and a drink from Starbucks.
Woke up with eye pain.
Took herbal allergy pills to reduce pressure in head from allergens.
Wait for pain to go away.
Pain is exhausting – Pills kick in and I fall back asleep.
Good News!
I have an appointment with a rheumatologist!
Here’s what it took to get it:
October was a busy, and difficult, month. I was fighting allergies from fall pollen season, the cigarette smoke from my neighbor’s yard, and a cold. It was overwhelming both physically and emotionally.
September was yet another month were my allergies were horrible due to heat, humidity, and high pollen. Ragweed season raged on. Considering how sick I was, and how many allergy medications I was on, I’m amazed that I got anything done at all.
I used to have a Tumblr blog. This post is a comment I left in a long chain of comments about an important topic that I don’t think gets very much attention.
The original poster, a woman, wrote in great detail the severity of her health issues, and how frustrated she was because her doctors flat out refused to listen to what she was telling them. Sadly, there were so many other women who had the same, frustrating experiences with their doctors.
They added their voices to the post. Some of the younger women noted that their parents wouldn’t take their symptoms seriously, and that this prevented them from getting the medical help they needed. I decided to add my personal experiences to the list.
This post is about my most recent doctor’s appointment and an update on my health.
I went to my doctor’s office today to follow up on some blood work. Earlier this year, they discovered that I had a HUGE vitamin D deficiency. (As in: “normal” is somewhere around 100 or so, and I was at 6.)
Today, I’m somewhere around 80 or so. Still not great, but better. This improvement is due to months worth of prescription strength vitamin D (that are so strong they are taken once a week). The pharmacy gives me 4 of them at a time, and I’ve got 1 left from my current prescription. My doctor gave me one more refill, and then I switch to over-the-counter- vitamin D.
August was overwhelming physically, emotionally, and financially. Some of this was my own fault, and the rest was unavoidable. I was in fear of what the upcoming ragweed season would do to me, so I really pushed myself to do things before my allergies got horrible, again, for an indeterminate amount of time.
Anyone who knows me well is aware that I suffer from a wide variety of allergies. I have a tendency to try and put my suffering into a poem. I wrote this poem on a Tumblr blog that no longer exists.
I read “Vicious Cycle” on episode 067 of Words of Jen.
