The Walk Beside

The sucky side of sick

Posted on August 18th, 2007 by Cam.
Categories: Let's talk.

I am forgetting what it is like to feel well and healthy I think. It has now been nearly 6 months since I started feeling pain and losing strength in my arms and neck. Somedays it is frustrating because I will feel mostly fine, but that is because I guard my movements carefully, so whenever I do have to use my arms for work I feel like there is a hole in my chest that doesn’t allow my arms to do what they need to do. A simple task like washing some things at work the other day just brings waves of pain. The side effects of the stronger painkillers are too much, so I have gone back to non-prescription stuff. Even so, I am pretty thankful that I am more mobile now than what I have been in the last 5 months or so. I just wonder about the next phase of life, whether I will be able to get around without the pain.
The other things symptoms of what I am experiencing at the moment include unclear thinking, feverish sweats, dizzy spells and skin irritations because my immune system is shot. I am trying to remain physically active as much as possible by walking to and from work which is about 15 minutes each way. Even after that though I am sweating, dizzy and exhausted by the time I get there. I think the constant exhaustion makes my mind cloudy most of the time, so every day just seems like a daze.
On the upside, Libs is on holiday at the moment. We had already taken this time off before the diagosis as we were going to be taking holiday in Sydney, Darwin and Alice Springs, so it has worked out well to just have this time at home to recouperate a bit before the treatment starts. So our days at the moment are spent wandering between the workshop, cafes and pottering around the house. Could get use to this.

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