The Emotional is Just a Tiring as the Physical

I know it is Thursday.  But the truth is I am still recovering from last Thursday.  Finding out my aunt passed away, after getting a blood transfusion earlier in the week, on top of coping with a painful new sore in my right nostril and dealing with the ongoing side effects from my Hepatitis C treatment, quickly wiped me out.

I hate when that happens...

I also hate how I continue to underestimate just how draining dealing with the emotional can be.

Dealing with the death of my aunt was a huge emotional upset to process.  And as loss often does, this recent one brought up feelings from previous losses and got me thinking a lot about my family too.

It's ironic that the whole blood transfusion ordeal earlier in the week had already gotten me thinking about my deceased dad and how his blood transfusions had literally saved my life during my cancer treatment 24 years ago.  Now I was losing the person who, in the years since his death, had become an important living link to his memory and legacy for me.

Besides the thoughts of my deceased dad, I also thought about my siblings, of which I have three.  My living family is not as easy topic for me: you see, my own siblings choose not speak to me.  I know that at the core, it is a legacy they inherited from our abusive mother.  What I cannot understand is why they choose to perpetuate it, when all I want to do is heal and move beyond it.

All these heavy duty emotional issues aren't exactly what I want to be feeling as I continue to struggle with the hard part of Hepatitis C treatment.  Ah, but life can be cruel like that.  You can't always control when life delivers your next shipment of lemons...

As for my aunt's story, in the days before I began my Hep C treatment, she was hospitalized for a serious infection that required emergency surgery.  I got to speak with her afterwards, at which time it looked like she had turned the corner and would be alright.  She would need to go to a rehabilitation center for three months for wound care, but everyone was optimistic she would make a full recovery.

So when my cousin called me a week ago today to tell me her mother died, well we both just cried together between the spoken moments of shock, sadness and why.  When we finally hung up the phone, I couldn't help but keep crying, grieving my missed opportunity to speak with her one last time.  You see, just the day before, my cousin had emailed me, telling me she was doing OK and giving me the number for the rehab facility so I could call and check in on her.  Needless to say, I never got a chance to do that.

I know that when I do too much activity, I risk getting flared-up.  What I constantly underestimate is how draining emotions can be on my energy too, especially when they hit all at once like they did last week.

Now I guess I could have put off dealing with my feelings.  Except that experience has taught me when I ignore or suppress my emotions I make things worse, not better.  No, despite how draining it was to deal with them in the moment, it was better to feel my feelings so they could work themselves out and then dissipate.

Given my limited energy right now, it is no wonder I am feeling both physically and emotionally drained!

So as I slowly journey back to my more usual state of mind, I am going to be extra gentle with myself and give myself more rest to help my recovery from these recent emotional upsets.

And as for those pesky unresolved issues that were dredged up last week, I choose to ponder those further when I am in a better physical place to handle that kind of energy drain.

Want to be a member of Team Selena? 
Support me during the remaining 168 126 days
of my Hepatitis C treatment!  

Learn how here.

Related articles

• Getting Through the Hard Part of Hepatitis C Treatment (ohmyachesandpains.info)
• My Hep C Treatment: A Pit Stop at the Emergency Room (ohmyachesandpains.info)
• Hepatitis C: The Facts (ohmyachesandpains.info)

Me & Hep C: Sorting Through My Feelings as Treatment Is About to Begin

I picked up my Hepatitis C medications from the pharmacy Wednesday night.  When I got home, I inspected them, read the drug monographs enclosed with them and found a place to store them for the next seven days while I wait to begin treatment.

As I put them away, it felt weird to finally have my medications "in hand" and not be starting treatment right away.  All that struggle to get them and for now two sit in my hall closet and one in my refrigerator.

It just doesn't seem quite right...

It was then I realized that this was a watershed moment.  I was in the space between talking about doing Hepatitis C treatment and actually doing it.  It was then that the emotions flooded in:

Feelings	Thoughts
anger	I already had cancer...did I really need Hepatitis C too?!?
annoyance	I have my medications but I have to wait a week to start taking them?  Aargh!  I just want get going before I change my mind and chicken out!
anxiety	What have I gotten myself into?  Am I in over my head?
concern	I know this will be hard for me, but how hard will this be for my husband who has a front row seat to this craziness?
courage & determination	I can do hard things!  I can beat Hepatitis C!  I am going to Fight Like a Girl and win!
fear	Will this work?  How bad will it be? Do I have what it takes to endure this?
gratitude	Thank goodness I have insurance that covers this treatment and a supportive husband and friends who will help me get through it.
hope	If I can do this and if the treatment works, this might improve my overall health status for the better.  And that would be all kinds of AWESOME!
resolve	I am doing this.  I am going to stick it out no matter what.  I will succeed.
overwhelm	Two pills every 8 hours and three pills every 12 hours that must be taken on-time or the treatment might not work.  Can I be this perfect?
worry	Side effects--which ones will I get? can my medical team handle them? will they derail my treatment? how will my level of functioning be impacted?

There is a lot going on inside my head and my heart right now.

So my plan is to feel these feelings and trust in the knowledge that, if I don't resist, they will sort themselves out during this final week of waiting. Plus if I feel overwhelmed, I can distract myself.  There are still plenty of things I want to do before I begin treatment.

Ultimately, the act of starting treatment will silence the doubtful emotions and allow me to take the leap of faith required to plunge myself into this treatment. 

In the meantime, on Thursday I purchased a mega pill organizer able to accommodate the blister pacts of Incivek and filled it with the first week of my medications.  Then I broke out the label maker and labeled the box with my daily medication schedule: 6 am, 2 PM, 10PM and midnight.  I also marked Friday as my Pegasys injection day.

While I worked, I observed that my pills are pretty shades pink (ribavirin) and purple (Incivek.)  Then a funny thing happened.  I began to feel grateful for these new "girl power" pills that are going to help my body do quite an extraordinary thing--beat Hep C!

I can't wait to get started...

Related articles

• Hepatitis C: The Facts (ohmyachesandpains.info)
• Book Review: Free from Hepatitis C by Lucinda Porter, RN (ohmyachesandpains.info)

Pep Talk: Rediscovering That You Are Loved

Lately I haven't been feeling the love much.  I've been so preoccupied with my health care plans for this year and finding new doctors to replace the other doctors who have fallen off my team that all I have been feeling is a whole lot of stress lately.  Plus I have a feeling that some of the medical procedures I've undergone in the last few weeks have put me off kilter, which has only served to make me more of a Grumpy than a Happy.

So with Valentine's Day quickly approaching, I figured I might as well try and reconnect to the love in my life.  So here I go...

Getting in Touch With the Love in My Life

You know, rediscovering the love in my life was at first surprisingly difficult to do.  I mean, it's easy to say "I have love in my life," but when chronic illness locks you away like a fairy tale princess in some old, dark, dingy and forgotten castle, it's hard to remember who loves you, let alone what love is. It's just too bad a kiss can't break the spell of chronic illness!

No wonder I can't feel the love.  Chronic illness is the ultimate love buster.

Yes, I'm guilty of letting my chronic illnesses run the show lately, hence my current predicament.  Now that I have identified the problem, I definitely need to do some damage control and tap into the healing power of love.

Step One: Act "As If"

Since I was having a hard time feeling the love, I decided it was time to "fake it 'til I feel it."  So I made a positive twist on that old blackboard punishment, you know the one where you write a single phrase over and over again until it is permanently stuck in your brain.  Only I made it fun and poignant by writing I am so loved on a beautiful piece of digital art I happened to find over at the Microsoft Office website.  Here it is again below:

Then I really made the message stick by declaring it publicly.  I took that piece of word art I created and made it my Facebook cover image. 

Step Two: Fall Back in Love with Myself

I know when I let chronic illness take over, it has a sneaky way of interfering with my self-esteem and sense of self-worth.  Solely focusing on my chronic illnesses can really make me feel bad about myself, which makes it hard from me to feel or acknowledge anything good.  It is a dangerous vortex that can suck me down and drag me under in mere seconds if I am not careful.

So what can make a girl feel good about herself again?

I'm sure there are many answers to that question, but my answer was in a new tube of Mary Kay lipstick in the shade Really Red.  It gave me the opportunity to have some grown-up dress up fun trying out a new look.  I took some picture too, which, much to my surprise, turned out quite well!  Take a look:

Step Three: Write a Love List

The first two exercises were a good start, but I found I wanted more tangible proof of the love I received from others.  Now of course my first thoughts were of my pets and my husband, because they are the people that interact with me on a daily basis.  But they aren't the only ones who love me, so I waded through the fibro-fog and searched my brain for people I didn't interact with on a regular basis.  This was a little more challenging, but I put my thinking cap on and started by acknowledging these five people:

• my friend Dina who makes room in her busy schedule to spend some precious time with me
• my friend Beth who keeps in touch with me, even though I haven't been so good about keeping in touch with her
• my friend Cyndie who recently told me that knowing me has made a big difference in her life
• my friend Colleen who keeps telling me I am her hero for enduring so many trials and tribulations with aplomb
• my mother-in-law Kay who has heart-to-heart conversations with me and taught me how to can tomatoes last summer

I stepped back and pondered my list.  In doing so, I verified that I am so loved.  I also realized that I didn't need a lot of names on my list, because being well loved by just a few people was quite enough indeed.

Now here is the weird thing: ever since I started this list a few days ago, I find myself adding to it.  It's like a snowball effect.  I started with just five people, but once I got rolling, I started remembering more and more people who love me, past and present.  The more people and love I reconnected to, the easier it was to truly feel that I am so loved. 

Take the "I Am So Loved" Challenge

Now that I have given you some ideas about how to reconnect with love, I am going to challenge you to rediscover that you are loved too.  Don't let chronic illness make you feel nothing by grumpy.  Try my steps or create some new ones of your own!

I want to hear all about the love in your life and how you work to feel it, experience it and appreciate it despite your life with chronic illness. 

XOXO,

Chronic Illness: It Sucks ... And I Deal With It

What advice would I give to someone new to living with chronic illness?

There are so many things I do to cope with my own chronic illnesses, I could probably write a self help book (or several.) But as I contemplate this question, I recognize that what works for me may not work for someone else. Plus, giving advice ignores the fact that today is the result of my numerous experiments, trying out many different strategies to get to the ones that work for me.

Which got me thinking that maybe the best thing to share with someone new to chronic illness might not advice, but my approach.

So here is my guiding philosophy--> Chronic Illness: It Sucks ... and I Deal With It.

It Sucks

A lot of people comment about how positive I am in dealing with my multiple chronic illnesses and ask me how I do it. Here is my secret: I feel all my feelings--the easy ones, the hard ones, the pleasant ones and the crappy ones. I have found that the only way I can tap into living my best life with chronic illness is to be in touch with all my feelings.

I say embrace the suck and all the other feelings that come your way. Don't fight them and don't stuff them. The surprising part is that once felt, feelings don't last very long. Feeling your feelings lets them pass through and dissipate, so they don't control you or make your life miserable.

This is a lesson I learned the hard way.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, everyone around me started talking to me having a positive attitude. It was like having a positive attitude was the only thing that was going to cure my cancer. So I pushed all my other emotions down and didn't deal with them in the moment. But that didn't mean they went away. In fact, a few years later, I started having problems with depression. I learned that I missed out on dealing with some aspects of my cancer experience because I avoided my feelings.

Feeling your feelings helps you get to the next the next step ... acceptance.

... I Deal With It

Chronic illness sucks, but what I am going to do about it? I can't wish it away, I can't make it go away and I certainly don't want my life to suck. So after I took some time to feel my feelings and process them, I asked myself what I wanted my life to look like, even if chronic illness was going to be a part of it.

This is how my quest to live my best life despite chronic illness was born.

Yeah, it wasn't a path I chose, but this isn't the first time a monkey wrench had been thrown into my plans. I've learned to embrace this new path and start searching for new things I could do and new directions I wanted to go. I've tapped into the girl who likes a challenge, enjoys taking risks and rises to the occasion. I found a way despite the suck to get motivated and get moving towards the life I want.

So if you are new to chronic illness, I'm sorry. It really does suck, but I am sure you can find a way to deal with it too. Let me know if you need my help ... leave me a comment or send me an email.

P.S. I've discovered that when I am having problems dealing with it, it usually means I need to spend some time going back to feeling the suck. It's a process: two steps forward and one step back. I just keep feeling the suck ... and dealing with it.