While in the midst of it, it feels like I am in a fog. It feels as if everything is hazy with a deep, dark film covering my world.
When I have a flare up, from any of the things that are “wrong” with me it is often subtle, a sort of cumulative effect. I have a few days where I feel just not quite right. I have many days of fatigue so bad I would rather drag around a bag full of bricks all day. There’s the nausea, the pain, the blurred vision, there’s the mood swings and baseline anxiety; the all encompassing depression and underlying fears. The daunting inability to regulate a single body system leading to fainting, and inability to digest, to not eating to constant overstimulation of the nervous system often resulting in, at minimum, a never ending vibrating sensation. And there’s whatever new symptom I may have. In this most recent case, a throat and neck pain. Neck pain that receives no relief from pain killers. Throat pain, that luckily is more sensation than function, but off putting nonetheless.
These things can last hours, days, weeks and months and be so unpredictable and inconsistent it is maddening. Typically when I’m in the midst of an MS flare I have every cognitive defense up in order to ignore, distract and pretend it’s not happening. I try my hardest to carry on with my daily routine and schedules and follow through with all social plans and things that I want to do despite struggling so hard.
It is similar, for me, when I’m a depressive episode too. Daily tasks feel daunting, and social plans feel crippling. However, if I pretend it’s not happening sometimes being so busy leaves me feeling too exhausted to have time to feel the overwhelming sad that inevitably settles in.
But, I digress, this post is about emerging from these moments and coming out on the other side.
When I move through the depression, or when I notice my symptoms (new and old) slowing down or dissipating it feels as if I opened my front door after a storm. When things are still, and quiet and fresh and bright; that’s the most noticeable…the brightness of literally everything. When I can walk down the hall without being winded and I can sleep a full night, that’s when colors are more vibrant. When I can do yoga and go to work without feeling immense pain, that’s when I truly exhale. And when I make it through a day, or even a half day without crying or feeling extreme anger, that’s when I know I will get through it, and I really am okay.
Coming out of a flare of any kind feels like a reset, it feels like work to put the pieces back together but it feels more worth it each and every time I recover. There is always a thought lingering in the back of my mind (especially when new ms symptoms are involved) that I am now carrying this damage with me forever moving forward; but, it feels lighter now. I know it will always creep back in expected or not, covert or overt, physical or emotional, these things will never go away for me.
However, when I am able to see that light at the end of each tunnel I am reminded that the permanency of it all is not worst case scenario. The hope and the good days are truly the reminders that I am, as the kids say, living my best life…to the best of my abilities.
These Are The Things I Have To Think About 