I'm back, with a backstory on my health after being inactive for 2 years lol

Well damn, I forgot I had an account on here. *blows dust off keyboard* The bad news is that my health hasn't gotten any better, and the worse news is that it's actually gotten worse.

Since I'm pretty much starting over (unfriended most of the ppl on my list since I didn't recognize ANY of them lol), and I never really gave a full backstory, just little updates... I'll give y'all the full rundown.

I've had undiagnosed GI issues my whole life. Up until 2019 when I was 18 that was my only issue; I was otherwise healthy, thin, and active. I loved running, would stretch regularly, do sit-ups, and lifted weights occasionally. My self-esteem was pretty good; I was a little shy and preferred to observe rather than socialize, but my mental health was pretty okay. I went out places a lot and went to a youth group for years where I was able to make friends, run around playing games, and go to events. 

That all came to a screeching halt in November of 2019, when I got sick with a mystery illness. It started off as a normal cold I think, but it never went away and the cough got progressively worse as time went on. I saw doctors, had urgent care visits, was prescribed various inhalers and the strongest cough medicines available, and nothing would touch it. I was even prescribed promethazine with codeine, which is a controlled substance. It didn't even put a dent in my symptoms. It persisted through December, and I remember being absolutely miserable on Christmas. A few days later, I was sent for a chest x-ray, and later the same night, I broke down sobbing on the floor and my parents took me to the ER. I had a fever of 104, felt like my head was going to explode, my body was on fire, my ribs ached from endless coughing fits, and I felt like I was going to die.

Turned out to be pneumonia! You wouldn't think it would be that bad, but it definitely was. I've had Covid twice since then and neither of those held a candle to pneumonia. Thought that shit was gonna take me OUT forreal. Anyways, I never felt quite right again after I recovered. Felt like my lungs didn't work the same, and I couldn't run like I used to. Even walking at a moderate pace had me out of breath -- and I was a BIG walker; I would walk to the store with my mom all the time and carry groceries on the way back. We would walk to the antique shops in town, spend hours browsing, and then walk back. We would even walk to our local park, powerwalk a couple miles around the trail, then walk home. Not anymore though. The days of sit-ups were gone; 5 reps in and I was done. One lap around the park trail at a moderate pace and I was out. Stretching was pretty much the only thing I continued to do.

Somewhere around this time, we started seeing a few doctors about my GI issues. First we saw this quack doctor who told me to eat less than 1,000 calories a day (btw, at this point I weighed about 115 pounds... she was literally telling me to starve myself). Eventually I saw my dad's GI doctor who I wanted to see before, but he only took patients 18 or over. He ordered an endoscopy and put me on a medication called pantoprazole, or protonix. He gave me absolutely no warning of any potential side effects, only that my stomach pain "sounded like a stomach acid problem" and that the protonix would limit the amount of acid produced. The endoscopy results turned up nothing abnormal.

Then came the headaches. Oh god, the headaches. 

They too started gradually -- a mild headache a few times a month..... a mild headache once a week.... a moderate headache twice a week..... a mild lingering headache 24/7, and a bad headache once a week...... severe headaches every day. The worse they got, the more other symptoms began popping up -- I started becoming dizzy, light-headed and nauseous during the more severe ones, and started to fall, feeling like I was unable to walk steadily. My first ER trip came when I had one so severe that I was crying and trying to scratch my eyes out, telling my mom it felt like they were being stabbed with hot pokers. ER took a CT scan of my brain to make sure it wasn't bleeding, said "yup, it's a migraine", gave me a cocktail of pain meds and fluids and sent me home.

This little episode put my GI issues on the back burner and fast-tracked me to a neurologist, who after multiple MRIs found out I had Chiari 1 malformation and a small pituitary adenoma -- apparently neither of which were causing my symptoms! Yay. She gave me a diagnosis of "chronic migraines" and sent me on my way. We also saw a neurosurgeon just to make extra, extra sure they didn't have to cut open my skull to fix the Chiari 1. Over the next 6 months, unbeknownst to me and my mom, the protonix was rapidly making me gain weight. There had been no dietary change at all, and at that point my activity level had only slightly decreased. I blinked, and suddenly I was 220 pounds. Having been a petite girl who fluctuated between 100 - 115 pounds my entire life, my body did not take it well. I was now out of breath from simply walking up a flight of stairs, and showering became a taxing activity, which my mom had to sit outside the door for to make sure I didn't fall. My heart sometimes raced even when I was stationary. Joint pain joined the plethora of other symptoms. And the migraines did not stop.

When my mom and I finally made the connection that the protonix was the only new factor, I stopped taking it. It hadn't even helped with my GI issues. I went back to the neurologist and she prescribed me Cymbalta, an SSRI that is also used for headaches I guess. This helped somewhat, decreasing the frequency of the migraines, but it made me very nauseous and I still had a lingering headache 24/7. I took it for about a year, until I began having weird experiences with it -- when I would lay down to go to sleep and turn the lights off, I would see weird swirling shapes on the ceiling and get severely dizzy. Closing my eyes did not help, but if I turned the light back on, everything would be fine. This really freaked me out and I brought it up to the neurologist, who said she'd never heard of that being a side effect. I called bullshit and stopped taking it. Wouldn't ya know it, the swirly ceiling stopped as well.

My mom and I started throwing darts at the wall, taking guesses as to what the hell could be causing all these problems. I had a tilt-table test for POTS, which came back negative. I had rounds of bloodwork done which showed some of my levels were off, but nobody ever elaborated on why that could me. After running the gauntlet of doctors, my symptoms became so severe that I basically never left the house. I was out of breath and my heart would race just from standing up, I was dealing with body pain, nausea, vertigo, spells of feeling faint and lightheaded, headaches and migraines, sensitivity to light and sound, was constantly either too hot or too cold, GI issues, and my sleep schedule was a mess. My self-esteem was in the toilet because I still thought of myself as the thin girl I was just a year or two prior, but I'd look in the mirror and see someone I didn't fucking recognize. I stopped wearing my retainer because my head couldn't take the ache you get when you wake up after wearing it all night, so my teeth got a little crooked again. Not a lot, just enough for me to notice and hate. I hated how disproportional everything seemed, all my cool clothes didn't fit anymore, and I had to wear my mom's baggy clothes that made me look so much uglier. Nowhere made nice clothes in my size now, and if they did, they were expensive as hell and we didn't have that kind of money. My fine hair, which was relatively thin before, looked even thinner against my fat face. I stopped wearing shorts to hide my fat knees, and stopped wearing sandals to hide my fat little toes.

What hope did I have? I couldn't live, let alone exercise. I was limited in diet because of my GI problems. I became anxious and depressed. I rarely left the house and if I did, I had to tote around a massive bag of over-the-counter meds to deal with various issues I'd inevitably have while there. And I'd inevitably have to disappoint everyone when I said the dreaded, "Ok, we have to go home, I'm in a lot of pain and can't hold out anymore." I'd inevitably embarrass them when I had a panic attack in a restaurant. I'd inevitably get asked "you good?" every 10 minutes. I'd inevitably feel ashamed that I was holding everyone else back from having fun, that I was this burden they had to keep track of at all times. During the Covid era, I'd get dirty looks from ignorant people who couldn't understand why I wasn't wearing a mask, even when I literally had gauze on the backs of my hands from doctors sticking me and tears on my face because I couldn't breathe right. I would wind up in the ER once every few months, sometimes twice in the same week if it was a particularly bad streak.

2024 was officially the worst year of my life, one I would never want to relive even if you gave me a trillion dollars for it. More health struggles, my narcissistic father went full-blown psychopath (Imma write a whole separate blog on that because DAMN it's too much to fit in this post), my mom died, and my brother completely turned his back on me. -1000000/10, absolutely would not recommend.

Oh, and in January of this year I somehow got BOTH types of the flu and once again thought it was curtains for me. And I had to go through it without my mom T.T that was 2 ER trips and a whole lot of pain. My fever got up to 105 and when I walked into the ER a nurse took my heart rate and said "oh wow! :D That's not good!" and wheeled me back for an EKG pronto. Obviously I didn't die but I did actually pass out and pee myself, so that was cool and totally not humiliating at all x.x I really don't remember much else from the ER except that whatever magic juice they had me breathe from a nebulizer worked wonders, and they had me on 4 bags of fluids at once. After the fluids they sent me home, I washed up very wobbily, and then slept like I'd never slept before in my LIFE. Oh, and then in the morning after I finally felt a teeny bit better, I got my period LMAO. And a decidual cast. 0/10 would not recommend.

So yeah anyways thanks for reading my whole sob story lol, I'm sure there will be more to come as I'm definitely making one entirely about my dad and how shitty 2024 was and how he's still being a an asshole today. Hashtag trauma, or something.