One of the worst things about what I’m dealing with is how isolating it is. I have no one to relate to-and I mean, how can you? I don’t know a single person who has had to deal with vomiting and/or diarrhea nearly every single day for what is going on nearly a year and a half.
Life hasn’t always been this way.
I was so active in college- I went to the gym four, sometimes five times a week. I ran, I lifted weights, I was super social and always took a full load of classes (hence, graduated with two degrees in only three years). I was so on top of my game that it’s almost embarrassing where I’m at now.
I spend a good portion of my days sleeping, as I don’t have the energy to do much else. I have no idea how I’m going to adjust to going back to law school in a couple months, as I barely have the energy to manage one or two online classes, ONLINE classes. Forget driving anywhere or sitting in a classroom for hours on end.
When I’m not sleeping, I try to eat and be active, but that’s usually a fail. If I’m too active, my stomach gets upset, and it’s no fun to get diarrhea while trying to exercise, or having to take a ton of imodium just to attempt to work out. I try to use that medication sparingly, because it’s really the only one that keeps me from losing it, literally and figuratively.
When I’m not puking or shitting, I’ve got zero energy because of how many nutrients and water I’m losing. As I’m writing this, I’m literally sitting in bed crying because I can’t sleep. I spent the day puking on and off, bloated from the imodium I took to make it to a family dinner.
It’s tough to keep up this image that I’m okay when I feel like I’m literally dying on the inside. No really, when you have no energy and feel like your overall performance is less than half of what you used to be, you lose a lot of confidence. Sometimes I wish I could just sleep forever and not have to deal with this. Other times I feel like I’m on top of the world and want to accomplish everything I’ve been meaning to do.
I don’t know if seriously meeting with a nutritionist, or someone else is the key to solving this. Over the last year I’ve met with all of the best stomach and internal medicine doctors in the country. I’m so so scared if my symptoms don’t go away significantly by June when I start back summer classes in law school. What if I can’t sit in class for that long? What if I get sick? I can’t miss class if I’m sick…I’ll fall behind.
This all feels like a bad game of dominos, and everything just keeps tumbling down. I don’t know how much longer my teeth can take the acid from daily vomit, despite lots of things I do to diminish it. I don’t know how shredded my stomach lining is because of how sick I’ve been getting. I already know the back of my throat is losing some its lining because the burning after vomiting lingers, and it didn’t used to.
I know I’m writing this from such a low point, but that’s part of being sick. It’s not always the instagrammable moments that people are like “no way, you’re not sick,” or my favorite, “you look so good, you must be beating it.”
All I have to say to that is FUCK that. I’m not getting better. In fact, most days I feel like I’m regressing and getting worse. I would give anything to have the health that I once had. When you’re really sick, like chronically no fucking energy to do anything, what’s the point sick, everything else in life pales in comparison. I pray every night that this has all just been a really bad dream, but then I wake up and my stomach aches because I puked up lunch and dinner before I went to sleep and haven’t eaten in almost a day.
Enveloped in tears,
kissed.with.a.quip.
