Looking to the Future Instead of Fixating on My Health

I believe my close family and some of my close friends think I seem very hyper when my health is especially erratic or poor or I’ve just had another surgery. I get amped up and my mind is spinning with a lot of future talk – my way of saying I’ve got big plans for my future, baby.

 

I have found that like the video, “Claire Wineland on How to Live When You’re Dying,” I believe that focusing on my health does not have an effect on my health. In fact, if I am seemingly spinning out of control and going to a street dance on crutches, writing a business plan for a downtown shop and doing my PhD homework late at night, but I’m energized and smiling… it means good things. It means I’m not letting the giant bruise and multiple stitches on my hip, along with the crutches, walker and cane next to me get me down. It means I am fully aware this will pass. That I will have a time when I’m not so busy with my homework and, better yet, a time when I’m not so busy with my health, because like most things, my health ebbs and flows.

I’m also aware that right now I am diagnosed with a chronic illness, which is a primary immunodeficiency of low IgG and IgA; however, that includes respiratory issues, kidney disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcers and an undiagnosed GI issue that ties all of that together. I have a specialist for every organ system of my body, except my heart and technically my brain. So I have that going for me, since those are the big ones.

I am scheduled to once again go to the special specialist for immunology, which is what I call it when one of my specialists sends me to the research version of them at either a university or the Mayo Clinic. This time I vow to not leave until they give me a “new” answer. Because I’m feeling feisty and want the diagnosis that is fairly inevitable of a variation that is actually more specific for my immune system that is to come.

That will be the time for me to focus on my health. When there will be news, news that could lead to better treatments. News that may keep me out of the hospital more often than not. It is not the time to focus on my health when no matter how hard I stare at the hip I just had surgery on, it isn’t going to heal faster. I’m staying off of it best I can, but my lungs are starting to fill some from the inactivity, so once again, staring at my health is a no go. It is time to get up and around some and look to the future, because the future is bright – because hell, I can only go up from using a walker at 35 years old.

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Thinkstock photo via bowie15.