I have been quite sick the past few months. I wanted to write in length about it, but I'm just not ready for that yet. I'm also not entirely sure this is truly the place for it.
At the very end of September I suffered a very rare and spontaneous tear in an artery in my neck. This lead to a mini-stroke and I wound up in hospital. After further tests the neurologist also found evidence of an aneurism. I was terribly lucky for the hospital staff to take my symptoms seriously and catch this event because it's extremely rare at a young age. There is literally no telling how much worse it could have been had the ER doctor not been so vigilant.
It's been very difficult to come to terms with the fact that I came that close to death or sudden and severe disability. I'm not out of the woods yet as the tear isn't healed and it could take over a year to heal fully. In the meantime, there's still a risk of stroke, and so I have to be careful and rest. It is indescribably hard. All I want to do is LIVE.
I will know more about the progress at my check up next week.
The whole thing is too overwhelming to describe. I've been in a lot of pain and experienced the worst disability of my life so far these past couple of months. I have already endured a lot of pain and injury in my life, but this is a whole new level. These recent events and most of my past injury and sickness are very likely related and due to a rare inherited connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
I really would love to write more about it, but... I honestly can't. It's almost impossible to even truly talk to my close friends about this. How does one come to terms with the fact that they have a very real, life-threatening, progressive and incurable illness? While I was aware of the disorder before this most recent hospital visit, it wasn't clear whether I had one of the life-threatening forms or not, but with recent events it's inescapable.
I'm still awaiting many doctors appointments and referrals, and I still have so many questions to be answered, but for now I'm taking each day as it comes. There is so much I would just love to do right now. So much I haven't done and so much I'll never do twice. But for now, I must continue to rest and at least heal this artery.
I fear I'll never be able to describe how trapping this is; how helpless and lonely I feel.
I've been at the computer too long already, and the pain is reminding me I must return to resting. I do what I can in between the pain and the enforced rest, but I've never been happy with sitting still for too long. It's simply time I learn to become someone else.
