Sad Girl Rant #3
It’s been over a month since I’ve written. Anything. My life has not only been shaken up, but completely dumped out and ripped apart.
I’ve had my hearing aids for a little over a month. The adjustment has been a task in itself. Relearning is exhausting. Every noise that was once background noise is upfront and it is loud. Before the hum of an air conditioner or fan was comforting, now it’s a task to try to listen over it. My speech has changed, I’m unsure of the volume of my own voice and find myself being too quiet, I’m messing up words when I’m overwhelmed, putting words together incorrectly and that’s taken a toll of my confidence. A phone ringing, child running, dog whining, doors shutting…..everything causes me to wince.
But to act like getting hearing aids is a curse is wrong, it’s a blessing. I’m so fortunate that my state insurance paid for my set of hearing aids allowing me to hear sounds I never knew I was missing. While it has taken a toll on my brain and I become easily exhausted mentally, there’s those moments where things are amazing. Standing in a forest, being surrounded by the sound of the cicadas, birds, and other insects all singing their song to the world. It’ll be worth it.
I finally gave in and gave up my apartment around a month ago. I’m dating someone and we moved in together. Much quicker than either of us planned on, but the idea of living in my car scared us both.
I’m sure I mentioned before that I was sick but it’s been getting worse.
I’m still coughing up mucus, sometimes bloody, sometimes not.
In March I had posted about losing weight. I gained some back but within the last five months or so, I started losing weight faster. Within the past two months, I went from around 160ish to 130 pounds.
I’m unable to eat solid foods most days, it’s like everything gets caught in or before my throat. So I’ve basically been living off Atkins/Ensure/nutritional shakes and things like applesauce or soup.
I recently had an allergy scratch test done and of course, mold was my highest ranking allergen. One in particular reached a 15 (mm size in 15 minutes, I assume) while any other allergen reached an 8 at best. No wonder I started getting sick, in my studio they took out a wall that was covered in mold on the inside and I had lived there nearly three years.
My boyfriend found me on the floor one evening perhaps a week ago, where I was gasping for breath and as he described it, almost seizure like movements. Needless to say my breathing isn’t great.
I’m constantly finding new bruises. Large sections of hair on my head, eyelashes, and part of my eyebrows started dying or fell off. I’m working on regrowth now.
My balance is way off, I’m finding myself struggling with vertigo and stumbling to walk a straight line. Which is most likely hearing related since my sinuses are completely clogged.
My joints pop out of place, my body aches, I’m not sleeping well, and I just can’t seem to get better.
Doctors drew a ton of blood to test for all sorts of things. My thyroid is fine, my vitamin D was low but not terrible, and my hormones low but they wanted the rest of the tests to come back before any treatment decisions. I need to begin immunotherapy for the allergies. Most likely further, more in depth testing for allergens, I’m supposed to be set up to see a rheumatologist and a pulmonary specialist. I’ve heard some chat tossed around about Lupus due to my symptoms and the fact I have Reynolds, which is usually accompanied by a more intense autoimmune disorder. And hopefully a speech therapist to help me learn how to talk correctly again.
So all in all, life isn’t exactly a picnic right now. I’m missing work because of health problems and there doesn’t seem to be a policy in place to help. Also doesn’t help that when I need to call human resources I am unable to speak or hear well enough. But I do go see vocational rehabilitation before the end of the month to see what services and help is available to me. Which means, I need to start thinking about work and careers.
Which in turn plagues me because I’m still working to relearn how to hear, process information, give information without screwing up my words. I realize with time, things will return to normal, a new normal, but the correct normal for me. But it’s hard for me to think of what jobs I would like to work when I feel like I can’t hear or speak correctly. I don’t want to end up working in the backroom of some job where I become isolated. Being around people and talking was doing so great for me.
Let’s just say that now that I know I’ve been missing out on sounds, conversations, everyday stuff before my hearing aids, I felt a whole lot better. Now I feel socially isolated at times. Noise can be too much, I avoid certain places while I work into more and more places where people are and sound travels differently.
I dread phone calls, certain situations or people, so I seem to have begun to shut off from people. I’m trying to change it, but change is hard. I’m lacking emotional support. I tell people how to talk to me, but people don’t always pay attention or remember the things I said. I ask for help with my volume level when speaking but no one tells me when I’m talking softer. I ask someone to set a normal volume level they would listen at, but I feel like it’s adjusted and catered to me, in a world where I want and need to feel normal, I know some people are making adjustments for me which will never be helpful.
The world doesn’t care, it doesn’t accommodate people. Jobs don’t go out of the way to make adjustments, even when I tell them what I need and already acquired some things I need but require corporate to give the okay on. I feel like I’m just…worthless. I guess being told that I have a disability has made me feel less than others. And that’s a hard pill to swallow. I try to work how I used to, going above and beyond to help at my job, putting in extra hours, extra work, asking to take on more and more, but my body checked out. It made me realize while I still have the same work ethic and thought process inside of me, my body has limitations and I have to accept them.
I know, I’ve heard it, seen it, read all about people with disabilities who were pushed down but were able to rise above and achieve greatness. Perhaps someday that will be me. But right now, I don’t have that in me. I’m just trying to live a relatively normal life. Be a normal girlfriend, a normal daughter, or friend. Not be stressed out and overloaded all the time.
So that’s where I’ve been. That’s what I’ve been doing. Taking care of myself the best I can at the moment. But I’m not gone and my spirit isn’t completely broken. I plan on getting back into the blogging game. More posts and updates, more topics though I’m sure hearing will come up again. I’ve seen so many new views so thank you for continuing to support the site, hopefully I’ll own it. But I promise, I’m coming back to you guys. I’m here to share my life with you and I welcome anything you want to share with me. I’ll hopefully shoot a new hearing update for YouTube soon, I actually finally upgraded my phone to the iPhone 8 plus and I still haven’t messed around and taken any pictures or videos with it.
I’ve missed you all, you guys give me strength to keep going and I look forward to coming back to the table with new entries again. Feel free to leave a comment, send an email, or write a comment/message on the Facebook page and hopefully I’ll have some stuff on Instagram soon! I’ll most likely add photos to this later, but I wanted to get this post done and out so I could tell you what was going on. I’m happy to be back!
Perspective is everything,
Lobeless