is my back broad enough, sir? | sick and tired

Take four Dilantin (take four), two Clonazepam (take four), three lamotrigine (take three), six different hormonal concoctions, an array of strong pain medications (take 8 of one, four of the other at a high milligram dosage) for layover cancer pain from too many surgeries, mix all with water and a small amount of food-- ah, the caveat, you may require that nausea medication to keep all of this down and as I recently found out, between all of the pills, this amounts to a handful of pills every hour on the hour, no shit.

No, I am not some television watching hypochondriac who just has to try the latest medication to be fashionable. I am technically, still a cancer patient who has a rare autoimmune disease and a form of epilepsy (temporal lobe) that is, these days anyway, totally out of control and has, for the past year, left me seizing practically every day, unable to make sense of my world and more importantly perhaps, unable to communicate in any real way with those around me.

This year alone I have had status epilepticus several times (that’s several times I could have lost my life – or to be honest, every seizure is a potential life-costing event or at least, life altering, depending on the severity ) but we go on. We troop on and I do not write now for pity, because pity does nothing for me at all and besides, pity is boringly monotonous and the same and the same and the same and no, I don’t’ want a marathon or walk held in my name or any such thing unless it is to raise money for the epilepsy foundation, long forgotten because we lack the glamour of the more exotic diseases and besides, epilepsy is still so poorly understood.

But I don’t care about that right now. I’m not on any kind of crusade to get epilepsy recognized. All I feel is the weight of this back-breaking depression that weighs on me more and more every day, leading to dreams of my dead brother (suicide), dreams in which I join him, or beg him to let me join him because it seems like the better alternative at the moment because I have become not simply a burden unto others (though that in itself would be enough), but a burden unto myself, and that part is unbearable. I am at a loss. It is so simple… I am at a loss…

I write now because I have to try, because these days, no matter what I read, no matter what I watch, no matter what news I read and plan to write about or how excited I am in the moment, when push comes to shove, the only thing on my mind is this: this extreme fatigue, this vicious epilepsy, this unbelievable head pain that leaves me vomiting too many nights, limp and hanging over the toilet, the drug side-effects that no, I cannot live with even if they will save my life because the cure in this case feels worse than the disease and no matter the disease may kill me, what’s the difference whether I decide to kill me or the disease does? In the final account, doesn’t it add up to the same thing? I think it does. Nor do I wish, contrary to what may seem to be the case, to spend the majority or even a small portion of my life tucked and settled in bed under the blankets, safely sleeping away because I am simply too tired to function. I want work again, a fulltime job, a thing to throw myself into and i actively seek it hard; aggressively and things are looking hopeful. I find myself praying and thinking constantly of ways in which i can improve myself or my odds of finding such employ - i try. I try harder than i have ever tried, and i know, logically, that this to will pass, only it does not feel that way at the moment. At the moment, it feels like sinking, deeper and deeper.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Visit Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti's author page — Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti's Blog