If you haven't read my last post yet, you might want to. Otherwise you'll be a little lost...
So my daily migraines had started, and this is where I remember a drastic change to my quality of life. I'd always been a very involved and active person. I was working full time, taking college classes at night, playing in the church orchestra, helping out with the youth group and leading the youth band, playing in another band, in a Bible study, spending time with friends... but I gradually started paring down my schedule. I didn't have the energy to participate in everything, so I had to start picking and choosing. When the migraines started, I really cut out my involvement on a number of things because I felt as though I was completely unreliable. I became scared to drive, because I didn't trust myself. The headaches clouded my thinking, my eyesight was affected, my ability to focus and pay attention was drastically depleted.
I withdrew. I spent a lot of time sleeping, completely exhausted. I was still working with the family business, but my hours were very low. I remember a time when I was happy if I could put in 5 hours of work in a week. I felt like a hypochondriac, like a failure. I figured I must be doing something wrong, that if I tried harder I could do all of these things that used to be so easy but now seemed insurmountable to me. Because of course, there was nothing wrong with me. I had been checked out by multiple doctors, been on different medicines, been told it was all in my head and that I just needed to go on antidepressants (which I tried and it didn't help).
At some point, I started developing severe joint pain in my hips and legs. Some days it hurt so bad I could barely walk. I felt like an 80 year old woman when I climbed the stairs at my parents' house - one, slow painful step at a time. And my symptoms continued to worsen.
Thankfully, I would have a reprieve in my symptoms here in there. I would feel terrible for a while, and then start to feel better. I would be so hopeful that I was better, that God had finally seen fit to end my years of suffering... and I would crash again into misery. This happened countless times. I finally stopped hoping on my good days, because the discouragement when my symptoms returned in force was too painful.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick," Proverbs 13:12a
Back to the medical side... I had an MRI done on my head to make sure there wasn't a tumor or something causing my daily migraines. There wasn't.
By now, it was apparent that there was something wrong with me (even to the doctors) but a lack of medical proof as to what was wrong. The doctors were telling me it was fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which are diagnosises of exclusion. There is no specific test that can diagnose either of those illnesses. It's what they tell you you have when your symptoms fit and there is no other apparent problem.
I didn't want to accept that as my diagnosis, because then there wasn't anything I could do to get rid of it or feel better. I would just have to learn how to live with the way I was feeling.
I still suspected that I might have Lyme disease, but I was starting to get the impression that doctors in Florida were not well-versed in dealing with Lyme disease. At the end of 2006, I decided to move back to New Jersey in hopes of finding a doctor that might have some answers.
Inexplicably, my symptoms also seemed to be less severe when I was up North. I didn't know if there was just something in Florida that completely disagreed with me - allergies, molds, the weather? So I moved back to NJ, in search of better health.
...to be continued...
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