I know I've been absent from this blog for a few months. I'm sorry. I've been so afraid and sick and terrified that anytime I sat down to write anything, I felt an overflow of emotions that wouldn't allow me to express myself articulately. And I'm still in that state, but I think I'm going to try to tell y'all what's up.
My health has gone into another nosedive. I've been terrified, feeling like I'm falling down a slippery slope to some uncertain fate.
I managed to start my internship with a local nonprofit that trains service dogs for veterans. Their name and the names of all veterans and details about that internship can not be discussed here, as I signed a privacy agreement. I had no problem signing that agreement, as I believe the people I work with deserve the privacy the paper asked me to protect. I will say that I think I've found my calling, and it is training service dogs for civilians. I will be re-directing any veteran that comes to me for a service dog to the nonprofit I am interning with, as they are the best at what they do. But I'm very excited to see what the future holds for me as it relates to dog training.
Now, back to health. Long story short, I'm seeing a bunch of specialists and they are testing me for many diseases. They don't think it is EDS anymore or, if I do have EDS, I have other things on top of that. I'm no longer just an Ehlers-Danlos "Zebra," and I'm just so scared. The main thing they think I probably have is Multiple Sclerosis. I had been doing some research on new and scary symptoms that were getting aggressively worse, and some of my EDS forums were talking about how MS was linked to EDS and how MS was the source of all of these symptoms that I realized I had. I researched MS myself, and was astonished how every single detail of MS seemed to line up with my symptoms. I approached my Internal Medicine Specialist with a new list of all my symptoms and told him I was worried about MS. I asked him to tell me if I was being a hypochondriac and that I just had EDS. He told me I was right to worry. My heart sank. He told me that my symptom list was textbook MS. We set up tests and specialists. He did some blood tests to rule out Lupus and RA, and they came back ruling out Lupus and RA. And now we wait. We wait for the horrible news.
Because either way, it will be horrible. If I am told I have MS, it is horrible. If I am told I don't, then I'm back where I was YET AGAIN where I have to fight for tests and diagnoses and some goddamn help.
If I had a dollar for the number of times I've broken down sobbing, telling my husband that I just want someone to help me, I'd have enough money to pay for all the alternative treatments I need to stay upright. I've been collapsed on the bedroom floor, sobbing and begging the powers that be for some form of help more than once in the past couple months.
So here I am, unable to write any sort of good blog post about current events, my dogs, my internship, TV, movies, music, or whatever else because I'm in a blind panic about what is happening inside my body.
So. That's me. How are you all?
