A little bit of Noisy

Mental Health and Trauma Blog | Noisy

Many of you will be following me on Twitter and will see my daily posts. But for those that don't, I thought it would be a good idea to do publish a 'getting to know me' post. I certainly live life at a million miles an hour and only tend to stop when I sleep (although, I do move around a lot in my sleep). This is how I've always been and it's certainly a bad habit of mine. Not knowing when to stop, or in my case knowing when to stop but carrying on anyway isn't healthy. I push my body and mind to the absolute limit, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I've lost count how many times I've been told to slow down (I promise I'm working on it). In December I had no choice but to slow down. On my birthday I was really unwell, completely out of the blue. Before this I never got ill, the most I'd get is a cold once every few years. As each day passed I got worse and found myself in A&E on many occasions. Doctors did intense investigatory work and discovered I was autoimmune. My immune system woke up on my birthday and chose violence. Looking back, even as far as a year, I was showing subtle signs. I was exhausted but for no obvious reason, I was losing weight (I'm a weight lifter so that definitely shouldn't have been happening), I found myself with a loss of appetite and generally feeling a little under the weather. Nothing extreme enough to warrant going to the doctor though. It wasn't an every day thing and I put it down to simply pushing myself too far. Of course I couldn't just be a little autoimmune, no. My immune system went into overdrive and attacked everything. It's nearly four 4 months since I was diagnosed and it's certainly been an adjustment, physically and mentally. I'm a hyper independent person so I found people having to help me with day to day life a real struggle. I still wanted to do everything for myself no matter how ill I was. Depression hit hard when I couldn't lift weights, I spent most days crying as I screamed "why me?". Physically, it's challenging. I repeatedly describe my autoimmunity as if being hit by a train and surviving. The pain is, at times, unbearable, the exhaustion even worse, and the nausea never seems to go. I spend a lot of time in and out of hospital and although I am adjusting to this, I do still find it incredibly frustrating.

The medication and treatments I get are intense and often make me feel worse for a while before I see any benefits. Even then, the benefits aren't always substantial. Currently, doctors are investigating the possibility of a second autoimmune disease being present, and few days ago they told me that my adrenal glands are failing and aren't working as they should be. My immune system needs to go to therapy or something because this shit is killing me. I am unwell a lot of the time but it doesn't stop me. It certainly slows me down most days, and on the rare occasion it completely grinds me to a halt, but it hasn't broken my spirit. I have two amazing dogs who not only help me with day to day life, but they give me the determination to push past the barriers I face and keep fighting. I couldn't do it without them.

This, is the fight of my life. - Noisy