You can’t say that I didn’t try… just about everything. But, as I’m slowly realizing, it takes more than conviction to find relief. After several appointments with no improvement, I went to my acupuncture appointment determined to end the treatment if nothing changed. I reinforced my conviction by calculating how much time and money I had spent and how little I had gotten in return. Turns out I didn’t need the conviction as my acupuncturist quit me instead. Neither the herbs she prescribed nor her needles had been able to decrease my pain or increase my energy. She didn’t want to keep taking my money when she couldn’t give me anything in return except bi-weekly dashed hope. It’s hard to say who was more frustrated at that moment. She said I was the first person that she hadn’t been able to help, but she wasn’t the first person that had been unable to give me any answers. I appreciated her honesty and ethics, after all, most people, at least the ones I’ve been in contact with, wouldn’t send a paying patient away like that.
As she sent me back out the door I realized I had nowhere else to go. The long list of things to try has been checked off with no success: honey and cinnamon, lemon water, coconut water, coconut milk, meditation, acupuncture, herbs, supplements, exercise and a diet full of fruits, veg and nuts, sans gluten of course, and even prescribed medications and one surgery did nothing for me.
Of course I could do more with sleep, a constant recommendation by every practitioner, book, website and magazine, but who couldn’t? When I do get the chance to sleep in I wake with the sun and going to bed too early results in me staring at the ceiling.
The other consistently voiced statement is to wait for my body to heal. But for how long? When I was first diagnosed I was told a year, then after more test results it became two years. Now I’m reading that it can take up to five years. Five years! The Dragon Tattoo movies will all be on Blu-ray by then, or whatever replaces Blu-ray.
So I go back to my list and the only thing I haven’t crossed off is the ultimate recommendation: decrease stress. I’ve read the horrible effects stress can have. Besides slowing healing, it can cause even more health issues and, as Cosmo points out in almost every issue, it ages you faster than any free radical can. But how am I supposed to decrease the stress in my life when a harmless cookie, delicious pasta or a stray bread crumb from my niece’s toast is like poison to me? It’s the vigilance of double checking my vitamins, lipstick, plates and utensils that has saved me from getting even sicker.
So how do you balance the meticulous attention to detail you must pay everything in your life with letting go and breathing easy? Exercise and meditation, if they are helping at all, aren’t really making a substantial dent that I can see, although I’ll keep doing it, relishing that time to myself while still being exhausted. Until I find another book or doctor that can suggest something else the only thing I have to go on now is waiting and de-stressing. (Although, the very idea of waiting stresses me out.) Still, what else can I try? So tonight I’ll forget the laundry and the dishes and just chill on the couch watching Project Runway. Although, now that the show is a half hour longer, that will keep me up later than I should be if I want to get more sleep…
De-stressing is rather stressful.
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