Standards of Care

It is amazing to me how quickly the landscape of your life can change. One day, you can be chugging along and you can be you, secure in yourself and all of the things that make you who you are and then something comes along. A sneaky headache say, a that headache begins to rob you of your life, a little bit each day and before you know it, something like 42 days have gone by and you look up and the entire landscape of your life has changed and you are helpless and gasping and fearful and even though you have your family around you, you are alone and you wonder if you will ever be free of this dreaded thing again.

All of the sudden, because, really, in the scheme of things, when you remove that hot poker of pain from you head, 42 days is not long, so, then... All of the sudden, the entire landscape of your life is different. Strange. Where there was light, there is now dark. Mountains are now dark valleys. Your bed is now a prison of boredom and torture. Your feelings become a weird, strange mix of white hot, sharp pain that you feel so acutely while all of the things you long to feel, the good things, seem so far off and fuzzy. Colors fade. The voices of your children fade in and out of your consciousness, you can't quite focus on the stories they tell you but somehow their laughter and silly games cause you physical pain.

And so you make trips to doctors. Doctors that can't quite seem to ever look at you. They can't quite stop writing and checking boxes long enough to see you. I want to scream at them. I want to say. "treat me because this headache is taking me away from my children! They are missing me! I am missing them!! Time is passing as you sit there and leave me here alone with this dragon in my head!!!!"

I am disgusted at the state of modern medicine.  A pill for this. A pill for that. They turn you into the very thing that they despise and they just keep checking the boxes and filing the forms. A good doctor is worth his or her weight in gold. So if you have a doctor that treats you like a person, that looks at you, that listens and responds... a doctor that realizes you are someones mother, someones wife, someones daughter, hold on to that doctor because they are few and far between.

And so now I fight. Not just the thing in my head and in my body that makes me hurt and makes me sick. Not just the Insurance company that loves forms and protocols and ever changing regulations they oh so conveniently forget to tell anyone about. But I also fight the very people that are sworn to help the sick. I go into offices and I tell them about the beast in my head and I wait to see if they even flinch, and if they don't, I am going to move on until I find a doctor that cares. Because my children have lost one mother and as God is my witness, they will not loose this one because some asshole can't do anything but pull out a prescription pad.

So I'm sick. Ongoing headache. 42 days of that shit. Weird heart and blood pressure stuff. I am having to take at least some of the pills the pushers send my way or the pain would debilitate me. At this time, between the pain and the pills, I am such that my Mom has to be here to help us (thanks Mom- a milion thanks and love to you). I am heading off to Philly and off to my Endo ( a good guy) so hopefully he will have an insight.

And what can I say to my husband? About my husband? He is here. He is frightened and tired and just trying not to freak out and he's trying not to punch a doctor and he's trying to be normal for the kids and he's being Les. He amazes me. I love him.

I open up my mouth sometimes to talk and instead self pity falls out. Sorry about that.