(Untitled)
Last Thursday, I had my first appointment with the Rheumatologist. She is the same doctor who both my sisters saw, and she knew who I was before even looking at my papers. She wrote down everything I said, she was very attentive, asked a lot questions and really seemed to care about how I was doing. My blood was taken, to test for the RA factor ( ( Read more... )
I went through a couple years of constant agonizing pain myself, so I get where you're coming from. I think swinging back and forth between mentally okay and mentally shattered is completely normal under the circumstances. As I discovered, it's not the same thing as depression when you're going through something like this - it's grief. I really wish the medical community would see the distinction there, because treating it as depression can often make it worse.
Allowing yourself to grieve over what you're going through is important, IMO, as long as you only allow it to take hold of you for a little while and then try to regain your spark. I still allow myself a short "grieving period" every once in a while to mourn the loss of my childhood, my freedom, my health, my mental stability, my ability to function out there in the real world... it crashes down on me every now and then, and I have to let myself cry and be pampered for a little while until it passes. Then I know I have to let it go, and try to appreciate the things I DO have and live whatever semblance of a life I can handle.
I don't know if there are any similarities there with your own experiences, but it seems to me that a person's healthy grieving process is too often labelled "depression" and medicated into oblivion when it was something that person NEEDED to work through. You can't possibly be cheerful all the time when you're in pain or you've experienced a trauma. But you CAN hang tough and persevere if you give your emotions an outlet for a specific period of time and then force yourself to rebuild your determination when you start to feel that you can.
You'll get through this, I know you will. Those "okay days" you mentioned are proof of that. Just don't beat yourself up over the not-okay days. Those days serve a purpose, too. *hugs*
Reply
Leave a comment