The History of me!

So I decided to start this blog about my life and living with Chronic Illness so let me give you a little background about me!

I came into the world at 3.20pm on the 15th of May 1978 and I came in screaming.

I was healthy bar some jaundice caused by my mom developing toxemia in the weeks before I was born. I always was an awkward bugger!

I had a reasonably healthy childhood with the usual childhood illnesses, measles, chickenpox and a few kidney infections but otherwise I was healthy. I started developing migraines at the age of 8, not very often but I remember being very scared that I was going blind. My mom and grand mom suffered with the them too so it was in the genes. Lucky me!

Just before I turned 12 I started having problems and pain around going to the toilet and eating. I can remember being in 6th Class in primary school and really needing to go to the toilet and my teacher at the time telling me I needed to wait until the break. I can remember how panicked I was that I wouldn't get there before everyone else and that others would hear me as there was only two WCs at the end of the classroom.

Things went from bad to worse over the following years, severe pain, bleeding, loss of appetite and my doctors kept telling my parents and me that I had either "just" IBS or was attention seeking so I stopped telling them how I felt.

I stopped telling my parents how I felt. I hid food and fed it to the stray cats that were around at the time, wore layer upon layers of clothes to hid my plummeting weight, drank calpol (kids medication because at the time I wasn't able to take tablets) like it was water to try to kill the pain from an abscess that unbeknownst to me was growing on my intestine and the two fistulas that have developed down below. My weight plummeted to five stone.

Eventually the abscess became such a problem I couldn't walk properly and my mom took me to Blanchardstown hospital where after trying to send me home with a "ruptured" muscle my mom said "My daughter is dying. She's not leaving" and she left me there.

She saved my life. I would probably have died if she hadn't done that.

After days and days of awful tests and terrifying and lonely nights in the hospital I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease at the age of 15 and given a resection operation on Christmas Eve 1993 as the abscess was about to burst, it was an emergency. I recovered well.

The following December I had a relapse which thankfully didn't need surgery and once I was in remission they put me on medication and all seemed to go well after that.

After a couple of years on the medication (Salazopyrin) I started to have awful side effects,, skin rashes, swollen jaws and kidney issues etc and decided by 2000 to come off it and use something more natural.

Since then (touching all the proverbial wood) I've been ok. Not symptom free but who is. My days are still wrapped around toilets and where I am in relation to them. I have anxiety and panic attacks that are hard to deal with for me and my family.

But we all deal as best we can.

Around about 2007 I started to develop pain in my hip. In the beginning I thought it was to do with the muscle I lost in my earlier operation in 1993. It got so bad I was sent to Blanchardstown hospital again and diagnosed with Trochanteric Bursitis and given a couple of very painful injection treatments; I nearly broke my hubbys hand. They didn't help and the pain got worse and started to effect my wrist and shoulder/neck area but I muddled on anyway.

I unfortunately lost my job in February 2013, I was deputy manager in a busy creche/daycare. I'd worked in childcare since the late 90s which takes a lot of physical and mental energy, and after that my pain seemed to get worse instead of better and my fatigue and cognitive issues got worse.

In January 2014 I was told "You actually don't have bursitis you have Fibromyalgia."

I remember being so happy to finally have an answer as to what was happening me and to be told it wasn't all in my head.

I didn't know then what I know now that there is no treatment, no cure and no bloody clue as to what is happening to people to have this condition.

Since then things have gotten worse, my pain is constant, never ending and some days so severe I am sobbing. My fatigue is exhausting and I am never rested after what ever little bit of sleep I snatch. I forget words and what I'm saying half way through the sentences. I've pretty much all 200+ symptoms of fibromyalgia.

I also developed a migraine in July 2014 and it's not gone since. They had been getting progressively worse over the years. I once recorded 26 days of migraine days in one month. Some days it achy and bearable but on others is agony and makes me nauseous, dizzy and agitated. I'm still waiting for Drs to sort that out too.

Some days are hard and make me want to quit but some days it is bearable and I can live my life.

That's why I wanted to start this blog for the good days and the bad, to help me get this stuff out of my head and maybe it will help someone else feel not so alone. Who knows.

I count myself lucky for the support and love of my husband and family, I know there are people out there with no support and having to work through the the pain and fatigue alone and my heart goes out to them.

And that's my "stuff" to date! Thanks for reading and hopefully you'll stick around for more. :)

Kayt Autumn 2017