i forget what it feels like to be healthy

i'm still not 100% as we've now hit the fourth month of being sick.

i had an appointment with a toronto urologist on tuesday after i finished the remaining c diff antibiotics friday night. i never want to see, taste, or take another pill ever again. and i never want to wake up with a new side effect ever again.

think of the absolute worst hangover you've had in your life. the nausea. the body aches. the headache. then multiply it by about 1000 and there you have how i felt for 5 days. constant, 24 hour nausea. what's worse is that i had to take the antibiotics with food or else it would be bad. ever tried eating when you're nauseous as fuck? it's not good.

i told the toronto urologist about all of my problems and all he could really tell me is that it sounds like i've just had an extremely unlucky set of events in the past four months. his sympathy was greatly appreciated once he put it into perspective. and here, i thought it was just me. he scheduled me for a cystoscopy for next week. they're gonna look inside my bladder and see if there's something in there causing the infections.

before any of this started, i never had a dream that involved doctors, hospitals, or me being sick. a few days before i was hospitalized back in september, i had a dream that i was seeing a doctor who told me i had a "self inflicted STD" - whatever that means. it's stuck with me, even though it didn't make any sense. i hadn't been with anyone and well, let's be honest, hadn't really helped myself out much either.

before i met with the toronto urologist, i had a dream i was back in the hospital undergoing some kind of a procedure for an "embolism" - but they were sticking needles in my tummy. again, this is a dream that's stuck with me because my subconscious seems to know when something is wrong with me before my body does.

and although i'm back on the job hunt in the most minimal way and back to having stupid, waste of my time interviews (like the ones i had yesterday, amongst the other five hundred people looking to score similar positions by meeting with an employer for 5 minutes), i just want to be better before i get out there again.

there's no telling when i'm actually going to feel 100%, as i kind of forget what that feels like. it has been over four months since i've felt healthy.

i'll just continue to take this one day at a time.

rough patch

my name is amber.

i'm 25, unemployed, single, and sick as fuck.

i never thought much about my future when i was young. 25 seemed so far away at the time and i didn't know what i wanted for dinner, let alone, where i'd be a decade or two from then.

you can tell me i'm going through a rough patch all you want. that i grew up and graduated from school at the wrong time. that the economy blows. that i'm not putting myself out there as much as i should be. that i should go back to school. that i should interview better. that i shouldn't have spent so long in school. that i should've started working sooner. that it's my own fault for losing my job. that it's my own fault for getting plagued with an illness that makes me watch my body deteriorate at an alarming rate.

but there isn't much i can do, outside of what i'm already doing. how long do these rough patches last? or maybe this is my body saying that i need to become a professional student, since the moment i stopped going to school, i became ill for no reason.

when the results of the test i took on sunday came back and were positive for c diff, it was  the first time in over a decade where i was more concerned with my mental health than my physical well-being.

plagued with this ongoing illness for over 3 months (with mild symptoms beginning as early as may and severe symptoms starting in september), my body has been in a complete revolt. the prolonged use of antibiotics gave me another infection on top of what i was already fighting, and now i feel as though i'm losing both battles simultaneously. my symptoms, severity, duration - none of them point to one underlying illness. instead, i've been thrown on 4 different antibiotics and attempted a wait-and-see appraoch, which did nothing and required me to go onto the fourth antibiotic.

i'm doing my best to be strong through all of this. i'm tough. i'm an optimist. this is what i do. but waking up and experiencing new side effects daily is making me lose hope in my optimism. the constant support of family and friends is no match when it's getting more and more difficult to recognize yourself, both physically and emotionally.

but i'll get through this because i always do. my optimism still stands, it's just a little less than what it was before.