Cardiovascular Disease

Coming up is a retirement party for someone whom I worked under for 15 years and had a wonderful relationship with. I left the job 2 years ago as a result of my symptoms getting in the way of my ability to perform my job duties.

Part for of me wants to go to the party, because this person was very supportive and meant a lot to me. I should be able to do this.
But as it comes closer- I’m filled with anxiety and dread of the prospect of going. I’ll have to see a lot of people who I was really close with but haven’t had any contact with for the last 2+ years. I feel this deep sense of shame for a multitude of reasons.

1. I’ve been unemployed so if they ask what I’m doing now, i could say “watching Netflix and trying to regulate my emotions while recovering from neuromodulating surgery to fix my broken brain”

2. I’ve gained a lot of weight since I last saw everyone as a side effect of meds, and even though I know that’s not something that should effect my decision, I’m honestly embarrassed and disgusted by myself.

3. I’ve always been socially anxious, so even if I was stable I’d be experiencing anticipatory anxiety. I haven’t really socialized at all in over a year.

I thought I was beginning to stabilize, but since this event came up I can feel myself losing the ability to maintain an emotional equilibrium. Each day I spend more and more time in a state of panic, self deprecation, and general depressed moods.

I know I should, and part of me does, want to go, but every time I think about it feels like someone’s sitting on my chest and I end up crying, a lot. I’m so disappointed in myself, but I honestly don’t think I can handle socializing with these particular people at a large scale event, especially bc I used to be someone they respected and even looked to for guidance.

I’m a shell of my former self and rapidly declining. I was starting to do better, but this has sent me into a downward spiral. And to top it off, my psychiatrist of over a decade abruptly retired around the same time I found out about the event due to an acute onset of heart disease.

It’s in 2 days. I made up a story that I had to go see the neurologist so I might not be able to make it. I’m so disappointed in myself because I’ve spent most of my adult life making up excuses (lying) about why I can’t attend things because the real answer, that trapped in a cycle of negative emotions and can’t function, is just not an answer most people would understand. And I don’t fault them for that because I’m barely navigating through it myself. But I finally have started to accept myself and my limitations and have been telling the truth and this feels like a total emotional relapse.

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. Maybe just for myself to put into words what I’ve been feeling the last few days before it consumes me or my mood rapidly changes again and I have to reexamine/reorient myself to another group of feelings.
So there that is. Thanks for the space to let me work through my stuff and really make myself become consciously aware of my constantly shifting feelings.

Bipolar Disorder sucks.

#Bipolar1 #MentalHealth #SocialAnxiety

Hi, my name is popcultureprincess. I'm here because

#MightyTogether #Anxiety #Depression #Fibromyalgia #ChronicIllness #HeartDisease #hepc

Hi, my name is popcultureprincess. I'm here because

#MightyTogether #Anxiety #Depression #Fibromyalgia #ChronicIllness #HeartDisease #hepc

Hi, my name is Anaconda33. I'm here because I'm tired of the stigma applied to the society that don't understand that we're like any other person and we have a disease that effects our brain. and should just as acceptable as someone who has diabetes or heart disease. To be honest, there have been so many times that wished I wasn't born this way and work so hard sometimes every day, but I was, and I really wish people were more understanding, If you don't take your medication and don't see a therapist- I don't think that's very smart, but I have lived with bi polar for 43 years now and I'm more than willing to help others out. To listen to what they have to say, and offer my advise.

Also, I have volunteered for NAMI, (National Alliance for Mental Illinois--for those who are unfamiliar with this wonderful non-profit organization who has many people, for several years) so I do have a lot of knowledge about mental illness. I have my good days and bad days, like every else. So I would also love to hear from others what their tips for dealing with relationships, and learning how to step back from a situation and think before I speak, catastrophic thinking (that's a big one for me) lol! and other things as they come up.

But after all the therapy I've had, books and other materials I have read, I do have a lot of understanding of mental illness to share. My friends reach out to me because they know how much I want to help and often refer to me as "their therapist". I like to talk a lot too, as you can see! Take care all! And be well.

#MightyTogether #BipolarDisorder

Part 1 of 2 I’m sitting here sipping an iced oat milk latte in weather that’s way too cold for that business, wondering how to make you care. So, as I dial up my insulin pump to cover for the carbs in the drink, I’m distracted by the mammoth task trying to make you care really is.

Maybe if I tell you about when I stood in front of a doctor, my nightgown hanging off my pointy bones, unable to register his words with all the nausea, headache, and dizziness whipping my brain into mushy potatoes, then you’ll care.

“Go straight to the Children’s Hospital. Don’t wait for an ambulance. It will take too long.”

I don’t remember most of the car ride, as consciousness came and went, but I could tell my dad was racing against…something. It must’ve been important. I hadn’t known the car could go so fast.

White coats and blinding lights and I.V. pokes followed. Somehow, I qualified to lie in the dimly lit room of the ICU next to a little boy who’s bandaged head oozed through tire tracks after being driven over by a car. My nine-year-old brain couldn’t compute that my life hung in the balance just as much as that three-year-old’s.

Will you care if I tell you about the time I stood in front of a nurse with a clipboard as she pumped me full of liquid using a reverse catheter and then asked me to cough? She then made notes as I peed onto what looked like a dog-training pad because my bladder couldn’t hold it in. As I wet myself and the floor, mortified, my eyes couldn’t hold in their liquid any more than my bladder could. I also laughed a little. That’s what one does when embarrassment is so powerful and you’re already crying.

It was then that I learned this disease can cause nerve damage in the most intimate of places. It turns out this hadn’t yet become my problem – that I failed the test for other reasons – but for those who’s bladder is a diabetes dud, self-catheterization multiple times a day is the current answer. Yes, even while you shop for new jeans at the mall, someone might be behind the disabled stall door inserting a tube into their urethra just to relieve themselves. Their life depends on it. Not all disabilities are visible, after all.

What if I told you that my uncle Ivan, who after being diagnosed as an adult and lived with this disease for many years, needed his leg amputated? It was that or die. After the surgery, he recovered and then hobbled on his prosthetic leg up into the combine to continue harvesting his wheat crops. I stood beside him at the hospital two years later as he died from another complication: heart disease. That’s how long diabetic amputees usually live after having a gangrenous limb removed: two short years.

I’d flown in to Winnipeg from England just in time.

“You made it,” he said in a feeble, scratchy voice.

“Yes, I’m here,” I said softly, near his face.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, he took his last breath.

How about the time I lay on an operating table, with Dr. Leight and his headlamp hovering above me in the dim room? I couldn’t have general anesthetic because eyeballs move in REM sleep. He needed me awake as he first froze my eye and then stuck a vacuum into it to suck up the blood that was causing my blindness. I could see the vacuum from the inside, back and forth, back and forth. Had I died? Maybe purgatory was real after all, with a creepy clown house level of strange? Or maybe this was Hell, a final, tortuous, un-resting place. A couple of months later, when my other eye bled, we repeated it all. This time, though, I felt the tools as they cleaned-house.

What about when my stomach and intestines stopped doing their job moving and breaking food down, separating nutrients and waste? Autonomic nerve damage had struck, causing gastroparesis, a rare complication of diabetes. That’s when I had a machine implanted into my belly wall, with wires wormed up through my abdomen and sewn into my stomach. Sounds like a solution, right? But instead, it felt like a butcher’s knife floating around my side slicing me up every time I ate a bite or two. I slowly starved, weight falling off my frame. Why? Why hadn’t this futuristic device done its job?

The doctor ordered a test that should have happened before the implantation. There I sat, barium oozing out of every orifice after being pumped full of it, as a doctor and his cohorts cheered me on.

“Push! Push! You’re doing great, Susanne!”

There I sat, on a portable commode in the center of the room, x-ray pictures being snapped as I defecated in front of an applauding audience. Hysteria grabbed and shook as I laugh-cried at where this disease had brought me: medical-test rock bottom. Somehow, it made it worse that he’d said my name as he hurrahed.

They confirmed gastroparesis and intes

I've noticed that if I raise my arms over my head they tingle. I've had this for years so it's obviously not fatal but out of curiosity I wondered if it is related to heart disease or something (I do have pernicious anaemia but have found no mention of this as a symptom of it)?

Hi, my name is ElleWoods82. I'm here because I was diagnosed with heart failure at the end of last year due to alcohol and substance abuse. I am on my road to recovery and would love to find people to learn from and chat too who have been on a similar path.

#MightyTogether #HeartDisease

Hi, my name is ElleWoods82. I'm here because I was diagnosed with heart failure at the end of last year due to alcohol and substance abuse. I am on my road to recovery and would love to find people to learn from and chat too who have been on a similar path.

#MightyTogether #HeartDisease

Hi, my name is debzp60.
I have heart disease, diabetes type 2, Polymyalgia Rheumatica and autoimmune diseases.
#MightyTogether #Diabetes #HeartDisease

Hi, my name is debzp60.
I have heart disease, diabetes type 2, Polymyalgia Rheumatica and autoimmune diseases.
#MightyTogether #Diabetes #HeartDisease