I know I used to post (somewhat) regularly, and one day....I just up and disappeared. Well, for the several thousand of you guys who stuck around, THANK YOU!!...and you deserve an explanation. I'm not going to get crazy into my personal life, and I'm not going to pour over everything in boring detail (that would take forever!), but I will wrap up the past 2 years in a neat little package for you. About 2 & 1/2 years ago I was diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis. It's an autoimmune disease similar to RA. It got so bad that I could barely walk, and I was in and out of the hospital for a while. The messed up thing was that tests were coming back pretty normal, and there are really no visible symptoms for this disease (aside from psoriasis...which I have never had). Basically my immune system decided that all the connective tissue in my body isn't supposed to be there, so it attacks all my tendons, cartilage, etc., as if they're viruses or bacteria, and tries to destroy them. This causes severe pain in all joints, in my sternum where my rib cage joins it (I was having chest pains so bad, I thought I had a heart attack a couple times), my spine, and worst of all; my hands & wrists. The pain and swelling in my hands and wrists is so bad that I haven't been able to tattoo for 2 years. I still can't. I'm on medication now that does help, but it's not magic. I can walk pretty normally, with limited pain, most days now. In fact most days, overall, I'm pretty okayish. The only issue that is remaining consistently are my hands and my wrists...so I still am unable to tattoo. Tattooing is my love and passion, and it was a huge blow to learn I may never be able to go back to it. Also, it kinda really sucked to have a doctor tell me that I have to live with a pretty painful disease for the rest of my life. This, combined with an extremely toxic and abusive relationship (which has been over and done with for some time now) kinda threw me on a whole downward spin. I'm still trying to climb my way back up. My kids help me a lot and my family helps me tremendously. I have a boyfriend who I adore, and we actually have a healthy relationship. My friends all kick ass. If I didn't have these people in my life, I don't know where I'd be right now. I'm still not okay, and I may be looking at surgery on my left wrist. The overall pain is better, but that's only because I'm injecting $2000 worth of medication into my thigh every week. If I miss a dose......it's just no good...I absolutely cannot do that. On the bright side though, mentally, I'm in a much better place. Anywaysss...so that's what happened, in a nutshell. Just remember, just because someone doesn't look like they're sick or struggling, doesn't mean that they aren't. This goes with mental illness and physical illness. A smile can hide a tremendous amount of pain. Thanks for reading. 💗Laura
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