I'm not quite sure why I'm writing this blog. Maybe it's the need to get these feelings off my chest, maybe I'm subconsciously looking for someone to tell me everything is going to be ok, maybe this is my way of admitting to and dealing with a small case of depression. Whatever it is has me up late thinking.
Over the last year some as of yet undiagnosed problem has been getting progressively worse and has been causing my body to stop working the way it should. It all started with what I thought were allergies last year. I felt and sounded congested even though I wasn't. Kind of a weird thing to have happen but I since allergies run in my family and I had never had any I just figured I was finally losing my luck. Well nothing under the sun touched that feeling and I started to lose the ability to enunciate words properly during longer conversations. Kinda worrying but we were moving into flu season and I was coming down with a sore throat so I figured they were related. Well the sore throat went away but my speech impediment remained and was a little worse off and left me with the muscles at the top of my throat not working. The little muscles that you use when trying to clear your throat or gargle mouth wash? It's been over 7 months since I could do either properly.
I went to my doctor and he wrote it off because there was no obvious reason behind it. I insisted on at least seeing him more often so he could try to help me with this and over the next few months my ability to speak clearly has gotten worse and worse and now any time I eat any type of food I become completely unintelligible for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours and my doctor still just kept pushing it off because he couldn't see anything. Next I started having trouble swallowing food when I was eating. Doesn't matter what I was eating or how well I chewed it, food would get stuck in my throat and I would start to choke. When it first started this was once a week maybe. Not a huge deal and didn't seem to be related, just started making sure the next bite was smaller and chewed better. I mentioned it to the doctor and he gave me a lecture about how I must be eating to fast because I'm heavy, completely ignoring the fact that I'm down more than 60lbs in the last year because I made the decision to be healthier.
Well my speech problem progressed to being a problem anytime I spoke more than 3 or 4 sentences and I started to have trouble swallowing at nearly every meal. This was 2 months ago. I finally went to my doctor and demanded a referral to a specialist which he finally agreed to. So I went to see an Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor. He was amazed it took my regular doctor this long to refer me and told me that he didn't know what was going on but would help me figure it out. And I admit I finally felt a little relief. I allowed myself the hope that finally someone was going to help me and stop me from losing control. I got all of one test out of him before he passed me on to the next doctor, and it took a month to get that to happen.
Next came the scariest part. For the last two weeks on top of everything else getting worse I'm starting to lose control of my hands. It has only happened 4 or 5 times so far but given the way everything else is going I can only imagine what comes next. I'm not even 25 yet and I am trying to figure out how I am going to live my life while my body fails me and I can't communicate because I cant talk or use my hands. How am I supposed to work and support myself if that happens? Hell how do I manage to do the basic every day things to take care of the necessities? Eat? Clothe myself? Wash myself? Use the bathroom? How do you do those things if you can't use your hands? This scares me more than I care to admit, and I'm not ashamed to admit that sometimes I've been overwhelmed by all of this and cried a little.
So here I am trying to live a life where I can't talk to people without sounding like I have a gag in my mouth, can't eat with friends and family because every time I do they have to worry if one of them will have to give me the Heimlich or watch me choke and every time I eat alone I have to wonder if today is the day I will need the Heimlich and no one will be around to give it to me. A life where I have to worry about when the next time I won't be able to use my hands is and what do I do if it happens at work or while I'm driving.
And the best part is today the referral finally came through so I could schedule my neurologist appointment and it's 3 weeks until I can see the nurse practitioner and 5 if I wanted to see an actual doctor.
So yea that's where I'm at right now. Trying to smile and be normal while I deal with a problem they can't figure out. I made a joke about this shortly after thing got to a level that actually started to worry me about how the doctors were not going to be able to find anything wrong with me and were going to have to take me outside and deal with me "old yeller style". Sadly, Its starting to look like it was less of a joke and more of a prediction...