Feeling bad again

I haven't posted in quite some time. I wish it was because I felt so good that I was out living my life, but such is not the case. I had some good days, yes, but they were all tinged with anxiety. I'm now in a very bad place again. Last week I got a urniary tract infection - a real one this time, not like the false alarm for which I was prescribed cipro. I knew I had it, had all the symptoms. So I was prescribed amoxicillin. I took it faithfully. I called out of work the first day because my anxiety was so high that I was pretty much immobilized. It got worse from there. I stopped taking it at 6 and a half days because I felt much like I did after the cipro. My arms and legs ache and are weak, my anxiety is out of this world, my face is numb, and my stomach is in knots. Today is the second day I've been off it. I had hopes that I would feel somewhat better, but I don't. I woke up feeling like I couldn't breathe properly, near panic. I have to work today and am dreading it. I haven't gotten in the shower yet because I'm afraid to be wet and naked. Just typing this, my arms are weak and sore. God, how can this happen again?

Also, and update on the pet situation. My little dog Mini had to be put to sleep the week before Thanksgiving in 2009. She got diabetes somehow and went down hill in about 5 days. By the fifth day she could barely walk so we had her put down. Then in February my cat Pickle got to the point where I felt she needed to be put to sleep. She spent hours trying to go to the bathroom on my bed, pushing out bits of bloody urine. It was hard having her put to sleep. I really miss her. I sometimes still think she's going to climb up on me at night. She was a wonderful cat.

Guess I'd better get my butt out of bed and brave the shower. If there is a god out there, would you mind making my life less hellish?

Don't know what to do

I'm just sitting in my rocker, trying to find something to occupy my time on the computer. I have no motivation to move from here. I'm in a bad way right now - the Cipro I took is still damaging my body - my face still tingles and feels numb as does my neck, I have no energy, my back hurts, my joints ache, lets feel weak, anxiety is overwhelming. I have no appetite, no desire to do anything. I want so badly to feel normal, to have the desire to do ... anything. I'm afraid to do much as I don't want to stir up the pain or anxiety or fatigue. I just feel like crap mentally and physically. How long is this going to last? Will it ever get better? Will the poison continue to wreck havoc with my body forever or will it eventally stop and I will heal? And will I be able to wait it out? I would cry but don't have the energy for it. Hell.

Well crap

Crap, crap, crap. Things just don't get any better. Ever. I thought today was going to be the day I found out about the compression fracture in my spine - I had an MRI. Turns out MRI's don't show bones, only soft tissue, things filled with water. So why the hell did I have one? All I wanted to know was how old was the fracture, how bad was the fracture, would it be causing the pain in my right side, and what do I do about it? That's all! That's what kept me from jumping out of that MRI machine and running for my car for 2 hours - at last I would have the answers to my questions!!! The results came back and it shows I have a "protrusion" between 2 lumbar vertebra. Big deal. I've had that for 10 years. And that was all it showed. When the nurse called to give me the results, I asked if it showed the fracture. She said the report didn't mention it. How is that possible, says I. Uh, all I can tell you is that you have a protrusion and the doctor wants you to see an orthopedist. Well fuck that! (I've been trying not to use foul language in my blogs, but I'm really past fed up with this shit!) So where do I go from here? She wants me to see an orthopedist. She wanted me to see a neurologist for the cipro-induced facial numbness and vision distortion. She wants to pretend that a lumbar protrusion will cause pain way above the lumbar region. She is an ass and I need to stop seeing her.

I'm so depressed. I'm beyond depressed. I'm defeated. Yesterday my face and vision seemed better. Today they're as bad as ever. Yesterday my back hurt so bad I could barely finish my 4 hours at work. Today its less painful. I have no appetite. I eat almost nothing. I force myself to drink water, but I've even lost interest in staying hydrated. I'm sick of seeing doctors. I'm sick of inconclusive tests. I'm sick of my face feeling like I've had a stroke. I'm sick of anxiety. I'm sick of pain. I'm sick of living this way. But what the fuck to I do about it? It seems I've given it my best shot. I've done what everyone has told me to do, I've trusted modern medicine to make my life better, and its shit all over me. Friday I see the accupuncturist. I'm almost afraid to go because she seems my last hope. What if it doesn't do anything? What if my face remains as it is now? What if the anxiety is the same or worse? What if my pain doesn't change? I don't expect all of it to be cured by one accupuncture session - I just want some change for the better in any of the above areas. But if none are, or if, as karma seems bent on doing, it makes things worse, then where am I? I can't end my life, that's a given. I have neither the courage, the skill, nor the cold-heartedness to ruin my children's lives that way. But to die seems to be the only way out of all the suffering. I'm not strong. I'm not brave. I don't want to fight any more. I just want to be better in some way - any way. All right, in the face. That is the worst of it. The tingling/numb sensation is what keeps me down the most. That's what I want gone.

I'm sick of hell. I want to leave it. I want to live in light and beauty and peace. Fuck hell.

I'll Give You Something to Cry About!

Remember when you were a kid and spent the day whining about this and that until your mom finally turned to you and said, "If you don't be quiet I'll give you something to cry about!"? Well, I think Mother Earth or God or Karma has finally had enough of me whining about the invisible anxiety and has decided to give me something "real" to cry about! Because god knows, living with anxiety doesn't make ones life miserable enough. There is no true malady, no tangible evidence of disfunction, no outward signs of distress, so what is there to moan about? Well now I have something to cry about - not as apparent as say leprosy or gangrene - but a "real" problem. I have a compression fracture in my spine. Yes, I'm getting old. And yes, it hurts. Fate couldn't wait until my cipro toxicity symptoms cleared, or my renewed agoraphobia subsided; no, it had to keep piling it on. Heaven forbid I should have one thing to worry about at a time! I've known about it for about a week but figured it didn't hurt bad enough to worry about. Until yesterday when I overdid it. Perhaps carrying 20 pound bags of groceries was a bad idea. Now my side and back hurts pretty much constantly. I read about treatment for this particular injury and it says no lifting, bending or twisting, and often a back brace. How does one go through one's day without bending or twising? And if one buys groceries and no one is home, how does one get them into the house? I've seen so many doctors lately I could paper my bedroom walls with invoices. And yet it appears I need to see more, get their learned opinions on what I need to do for this newest malady. One suggests that the pain I have in my side may not be related to the fracture, so suggests a CT scan. Another feels further studies of the spine are in order, in the form of an MRI. At the insistance of my primary care doctor who screwed up and gave me the cipro, I was sent to a neurologist about the ever present face tingling and sight problem, who suggested an MRI of my head! His reasoning, "What if the sensations just coincidentally showed up when you took the cipro and its actually something else?" WTF! Its NOT! He's never heard of this reaction to cipro. He's obviously never googled it! So no head MRI for me.

All I want is to go back to plain old anxiety disorder. I'll even take the agoraphobia. I know how to deal with that. I want my face to feel normal, I want my eyes to function properly, I want to be able to bend or twist or pick up a gallon of milk, and I want to never see another doctor or have another test as long as I live! So who does one talk to about this? I spoke to God the other day and suggested He help me, but of course got no response. I've been sending out positive vibes into the universe but with no luck. What does one have to do to get a little positive energy into their lives?

Hell. It is apparently where I am destined to remain for the rest of my days. My only hope is that when I leave this planet there will be peace. Oh yes, I need to add depression to my list.

Sigh

I do that a lot. Yesterday for the first time in the 18 days since I took the cipro, my face didn't tingle and my eyes weren't messed up. Today they're both as bad as they were in the beginning. I don't know what to think now. And I'm so distraught and depressed. Even with my lack of symptoms yesterday, the anxiety was still extraordinary. I wanted to climb out of my skin. While the anxiety was less today, the other symptoms were overwhelming. I can't seem to wake up out of this nightmare. As I sit here, my cheeks and chin ache from the numbness and tingling, and my right eye hurts and feels somehow heavy. I don't know what it is I'm afraid of - that its going to get worse? That its going to stay the same? That its going to come and go for the rest of my life? Its so damned annoying having this constant feeling, this constant source of worry and anxiety and FEAR! God, I'm so tired of being afraid.

Sigh.

Another Day

Yeah, its another day. Its an anxious one, but there isn't a reason for it. I had a bit of good news yesterday - well good news/bad news/interesting news. I've been struggling with the tingly face, blurred vision from what I've come to learn is cipro toxicity, and all the research I've done seemed to suggest it was permanent. My sister, the doctor, has been trying to figure out how to reverse the effects once she was finally convinced it wasn't all in my head. Unable to come up with anything, she went with her last resort and called her "crazy" doctor friend who is a homeopath. She told him about the cipro and resulting effects of it. His first question to her was, does your sister have anxiety/panic disorder? She was taken aback and said yes. He went on to tell her that there is an impaired enzyme in many anxiety sufferers that keeps them from metabolizing about 56 percent of all drugs and given my drug intolerance history, he believed I was one of them. He also said he had seen and treated a number of cipro toxicity cases, all with positive results, and he does it with natural things. He's supposed to call me this afternoon to talk with me about it. He also told my sister that he'd like to start seeing me for my anxiety, that he's had good results with that as well! I'm skeptical, but will give it a shot. Bad thing is, he doesn't take any insurance so it will be all out of pocket. Oh well.

I was talking with my mom yesterday about this new doctor and she started remembering back to my first bad drug reaction. I was prescribed compezine for an ucky tummy in college. Shortly after I started taking it I began to have severe anxiety and paranoia. I'd climb the stairs to one of my classes and feel like I was going to die. My skin was always crawling. But I kept taking the pills, not putting two and two together. I also started seeing the school psychologist because I thought I was going crazy. After a few sessions, she surmised that it must be a parent issue and asked my mom and dad to come up (an hour drive) for a session. As we all sat there talking, I noticed that I couldn't stop smiling and looking up. My mother, having been a psychiatric nurse for many years, immediately recognized it as a reaction to the compezine - she'd seen it a lot in mental hospitals. So they rushed me to the campus ER and gave me benedryl IV and I was all better. No more compezine. I shudder to think what would have happened if circumstances hadn't been what they were! If my mother hadn't been there at that exact moment, would I be a drooling idiot today?

And then there was my journey through ssri's. Ah, anti-depressants! It still doesn't make sense to me to prescribe an anti-depressant for anxiety. The first one, prozac, worked okay for a few weeks. I didn't feel great on it, kind of like a zombie, but the anxiety seemed less. Until my body built up enough of it to become toxic! Then it was wave after wave of panic for days on end. No more prozac. My sister figured it was all in my mind. I wondered myself.

Next was Zoloft. Immediately after taking it I became so aggitated that I couldn't sit down. At the time my sister chalked it up to my mind again, but a few years later she tried it and had the same reaction. She believed me on that one.

A few years later I tried Celexa. I don't know if the other two had already wrecked my P-450 enzyme, but after 3 days on it I was suicidal. All I could do was sit in bed and rock, begging for someone to put me out of my misery. After that, no more anti-depressants - ever!

I stopped taking anything at that point. Now I'm glad I did. Who knows what damage I could have done if I'd taken anything else! Again, shudder!!!

So anyway, now I know. I did some internet research and found a list of drugs I should never take, and also found out the 7 to 10 percent of the population have impaired P-450 enzymes! If one of us is given even .5mg of warfarin (for blood clots, drugs like coumadin), it could make all the blood in our body no longer coagulate!!! SHUDDER!!!!!!

And I'm anxious today. I feel like I'm suffering from post traumatic stress. The whole - oh my god I'm going to go blind and my face will go numb and I'll look like I've had a stroke and god only knows what else will happen to other parts of my body - that had me terrified. I still worry about the lasting effects of the damned drug. And now I also have the fear of ever having to take another drug, what will that do to me! Ugh. I'm tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I could barely get out of bed this morning, and when I did, I hurried through the shower and sat back in bed, rocking for almost half an hour. I had 3 things I wanted to accomplish today - 2 loads of laundry, clean the litter box, and mail a package (which consisted of walking to the mailbox at the end of the driveway). I have accomplished the mail and will soon finish the laundry. No litter yet, but the cats would really appreciate it. God, I hate being immobilized with irrational fear!

Its a gorgeous day out and here I sit, in my rocking chair, afraid to venture from home, locked in my own little hell. When will it end?

From Hell to Nightmare

Its been quite some time since I've written. Things were going pretty well for a short time. The anxiety, while still present, was running in the background and allowing me to live a semi-normal life. I'd still get waves of panic at a store now and again, but for the most part I was okay. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I'd had a pain in my right side for 3 weeks and decided to see a doctor about it. She did a urine test which came back with trace blood and white cells - an indicator of a urinary tract infection. So she started me on Cipro, an antibiotic. My drug phobia made it hellish to take those pills, but everyone said "Its only an antibiotic, they don't hurt anyone." So I took them. It was a 3 day course. The first day was okay. The second day my anxiety was high and I was jittery. The 3rd day I started feeling flushed in my face and my vision became out of tune. I finished the medicine. An hour later I got a call from the doctor's office saying the urine came back negative for infection from the lab! I didn't even know they were sending it to a lab! I thought the test in the office was accurate or I would have waited for the results! So fine, I took a drug I didn't need to take. Problem is, 2 weeks later and I still have tingling and numbness in my face and distorted vision! I looked online and found a site with 7 pages of people who had lifelong debilitation from taking Cipro or Cipro-like drugs, one of which was the face and vision problems! Now I'm scared to death that this is how I'm going to be forever! I'm depressed beyond depression. If I could end my life today, I would do it. I am a walking nerve right now, have been for the last 2 weeks. I was so desparate for relief that I prayed for the first time in years - one of those sobbing, pleading prayers. If only there were a god to hear it. Who knew that hell had deeper, darker rooms than just the standard one.