She Suffers From Chronic Illness, And Wishes Her Boyfriend Could Be With Someone Who Isn’t Sick Like Her
This 24-year-old woman became a licensed doctor not too long ago.
She has an amazing boyfriend, and she believes that, on paper, she should be content with her life.
However, she suffers from chronic illness.
“Over the course of a year, I have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism (under control), early onset ulcerative colitis (meaning it was accidentally found during a colonoscopy done for other things and that I don’t have symptoms yet), polycystic ovary syndrome, and my doctors are very close to diagnosing me with dysautonomia (the main diagnosis on the table right now is POTS), gastroparesis, and there is a high suspicion I might have Ehlers Danlos syndrome. I was previously diagnosed with a rare type of hereditary anemia (which is recessive, meaning no one in my family has it that we are aware of),” she said.
Unfortunately, she also suffers from regular migraines. Plus she also has thoracolumbar junction syndrome, which is a chronic pain condition and, more specifically, a “complex regional pain syndrome.” As far as medical experts in the field have researched, it’s one of the most painful conditions that they are aware of.
Currently, she is confined to her bed for the third time over the last weeks due to intense nausea and a horrible headache.
She hasn’t eaten much at all this week because even thinking about food makes her so nauseated that she has to be sick. She didn’t feel well enough to leave the house until this past Saturday.
In the country she lives in, she can’t start working until January. As of right now, she’s cramming for a big exam that she’ll be taking at the end of November.
Over this past weekend, she was with her boyfriend, and she had to make sure to pack all of her medications to take with her. Even while keeping up with her medications, it didn’t make her feel good enough to eat.
New Africa – stock.adobe.com- illustrative purposes only, not the actual people
While going on walks, they had to take multiple breaks because she got tired so often.
Sadly, because of how much pain she’s in, she wishes that her illness would end her life.
Right now, she is confined to her bed once every two weeks at the minimum. She is in horrible pain for about five to ten days a month, usually from PCOS or migraines.
“I am taking 12 pills a day. There is a big chance I will need to use a nasal tube to get my nutrition because the usual nausea medication (which works on about 90 to 95 percent of people), which is also supposed to make me digest foods at a normal pace, isn’t working,” she explained.
She isn’t able to move quickly or stand up quickly if she has to. If she tries to do so, she feels dizzy and falls over.
The worst illnesses that she’s been diagnosed with don’t have any cures that medical experts have yet discovered. Others with these diagnoses only have the option of relying on medication in the hopes of better coping with their symptoms.
This means that, at best, she would be bedridden once a month at the very least, but most likely more than that.
For all of her life, she will have to cope with these illnesses and the periods when her symptoms are worse.
“I am not able to do my job as I am supposed to. I need to be sitting down most of the time, so surgeries are mostly off the books for me. I can’t rush to assist a person in need. I can’t use too much energy to help someone get up or sit down,” she shared.
Along with all of these typical work tasks she would be expected to perform as a doctor, she also wouldn’t have the physical stamina to be on-call for 18 hours or more. Plus, even standing at the bedside of a patient in order to get their clinical history would be too much for her.
Upon reflection, she realizes that she would physically struggle to do most of the things she’d need to do as part of her job as a doctor.
She also wondered how patients would react to having an appointment with a doctor who has a feeding tube or needs to sit down while they meet with them.
Chronic illness has taken a toll on her mental health. She has been suffering from depression, and she has been seeing a psychologist and psychiatrist, who have been wonderful.
However, she obviously doesn’t want to be going through any of this in the first place. She wants to have a regular life that most 24-year-olds have. She wants to be able to perform her job without any limits.
She also doesn’t want to have to be so concerned about her future and her future children inheriting any of her illnesses if she does end up having children. However, she believes that since the inheritability of many of her illnesses isn’t completely certain in the medical field, she doesn’t know if she could take the risk of her children possibly having any of these chronic illness struggles as well.
If she didn’t have all of these chronic illnesses, she would be able to play Padel with her boyfriend. She wouldn’t have complaints about her symptoms each morning when her boyfriend asks, “‘How are you feeling?'” She feels sad that her boyfriend has to be so concerned about her and her health. She wishes he could be with someone who wasn’t sick like her.
She wants her illnesses to kill her because she wouldn’t be suffering anymore, and she thinks that her loved ones wouldn’t have to worry about her well-being anymore.
Do you or anyone you know suffer from a chronic illness? What has the experience been like?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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