What do The Tough do when they get ANOTHER ICI diagnosis (or two*)?


Call Mom from the parking lot of the doctor's office to tell her about it and sob a bit. After all, I did hold it in until I was clear of the office out of respect for my wonderful rheumatologist, Dr. James Mossell III of Tifton, GA - we joked about what bad PR it would be for a patient to walk out through the waiting room full of patients-to-be-seen, in tears.



Go to favorite Thai restaurant and order whatever I want.

Go hang out in Wal-Mart for several hours. (In my defense I WAS looking at the line of Danskin workout wear; very affordable, very functional, and they remind me of my dancing days.)




Get back to the car and remember it all over - and start crying again.

Have the words "Thy will be done" come to me out of nowhere.



Realize that in the past it's taken literally YEARS after a diagnosis for me to get to this point of acceptance. This time it took about four hours. I'm finding the cycle of acceptance to be a kind of reincarnation thing. It's a never-ending cycle but each time through happens at a higher level.





Go home and get on with facing the music.



*New diagnoses: Herniated cervical disc plus several more bulging cervical discs, and mild cerebral atrophy which is probably unusual for a person my age (possibly related to Fibromyalgia1).


1Accelerated Brain Gray Matter Loss in Fibromyalgia Patients: Premature Aging of the Brain?, The Journal of Neuroscience, April 11, 2007, 27(15):4004-4007; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0098-07.2007

Popular posts from this blog

Merton's Prayer for Peace

Image
A prayer for Sunday's post seems appropriate. Although I'm getting this post out so late that subscribers might not get it until Monday. Speaking of Monday, I have to have a root canal tomorrow. I forgot about that when I decided to try NaBloPoMo again. I'm not going to try to post tomorrow, which takes me out of the NaBloPoMo competition. I'll have to see how the root canal goes before I decide how often I'm going to try to post for the rest of the month. This Prayer for Peace was written by Thomas Merton , read in Congress on April 18, 1962 and placed in the Congressional Record. It was at the request of Frank Kowalksi, Congressman from Connecticut.  In 1962 the Vietnam War was happening, but it seems to be totally applicable here and now.  It also seems to me that it's a prayer that might be accepted by most religions. What does this have to do with chronic illness, you might ask?  I'll tell you what I think about that at the end of this p...
Read more

Marisol Maldonado "comes out" of the autoimmune closet with husband Rob Thomas' hit song & video "Her Diamonds" - check it out; it's way cool

Image
Watch the music video Rob Thomas - New Music - More Music Videos I think Marisol Maldonado has taken a very brave step, career-wise, to come out like this about her autoimmune disease. Being a model is a very physical profession and as those of us with ICI know, coming out at work, any kind of work, is a big deal. I'd like to send her a really big thank you for raising awareness of autoimmune disease in general. I wonder what the song/video title means? Her Diamonds. And she says ooh I can't take no more Her tears like diamonds on the floor And her diamonds bring me down 'Cause I can't help her now Losing her sparkle? Here's what Rob Thomas says about it: The album’s first single, the kaleidoscopic “Her Diamonds,” is the most personal song Thomas has yet committed to disc. Rob’s wife Marisol is courageously battling an autoimmune disease, and “Her Diamonds” was written “about a couple dealing with that on a day-to-day basis,” explains Thomas. “There’s an incre...
Read more

Nerve Damage on the Vaginal Cuff After Total Hysterectomy

 Here's the link to the actual article describing my experience:  https://medium.com/@SherrilLynn/nerve-damage-to-the-vaginal-cuff-after-total-hysterectomy-6d9a2e576f15 .     This has happened to me and I can find virtually NOTHING written about it, except the pain filled pleas of other women it has happened to, looking for answers as to why this has happened to them and what they can do about it.  I'm going to start a place for other women who have and are experiencing Nerve Damage to the Vaginal Cuff after a total hysterectomy (as far as I can tell there's no cure and nothing to do about it but pain management) to publish their stories here on the ICIE blog.  A collection of experiences of women who have Nerve Damage to the Vaginal Cuff (I'm going to shorten it to NDVC since no one in the medical field has deigned to give a name to this diagnosis), after a total hysterectomy.  I'm pretty sure there are quite a few of us out there but no one has co...
Read more