How do you cope with chronic illness?

[edzeppelin]

I know most of you are in your late teens/ twenties and will be unable to relate because the future seems a million years away and you'll be in a stable old marriage with grandkids, decent nest egg etc. That is how I thought when I was that age. You are forgiven. I used to be unable to understand why someone would commit suicide in their forties or fifties. My thinking was "Jeez, you made it that far...". Little did I know that you drag along all the unresolved ( and unresolvable) problems and pain then you start to buckle under the strain.

I have kyphosis (hunchback) and an auto-immune disorder. I have to work a lousy dead end job just to get money to live and health benefits(which because I'm on a drug called Humira @$1600/month, which I MUST have.

The real problem is the resultant fatigue and depression, which pretty much divides my life into working and recovering from/getting ready for work. I'd like to meet a women, but I don't come off so well in social situations like that, and my depression and kyphosis are noticable at a glance.
Anyway, a few years ago I was prescribed Hydrocodone for pain, and after several days, I noticed my depression had lifted and life was suddenly OK. It was like "WOW - this how other people feel. I looked into the whole opiates for depression thing(stumbling across BL in the process. I managed to find a pdoc who, after awhile was willing to try suboxone. I was so excited, but it ended up only having a very minor effect. I took it two years and stopped a year ago.

I saw Jamshyd's ketamine AD regiment on this site. Since I cannot get K, I decided to try MXE instead, using 10 mg 3-4x a day. After a few days there was a HUGE improvement. (Low dose MXE helps alot of people if you read the early B & D threads. I would say it helped 75%. Since I was taking sub-psychedelic doses, I never gave tolerance much of a thought, but after six weeks or so it creeped up, completely stopping any AD effects. It still takes 100 mg to feel a threshold psychedelic experience.

My latest attempt is using kratom. It works, but doesn't last very long and tolerance is a big issue.

In case you're wondering, I've tried the plethora of SSRI stuff. No luck.

I don't even know exactly what I want from posting this. I suppose if someone had a similar(or worse) life situation and found something to help, even if its self-help, that would be of benefit. And knowing there are others like me would as well.

Thanks for your time.

 

[herbavore]

Little did I know that you drag along all the unresolved ( and unresolvable) problems and pain then you start to buckle under the strain.



The real problem is the resultant fatigue and depression, which pretty much divides my life into working and recovering from/getting ready for work.

I don't even know exactly what I want from posting this. I suppose if someone had a similar(or worse) life situation and found something to help, even if its self-help, that would be of benefit. And knowing there are others like me would as well.

Thanks for your time.

Hi edzepplin, love your user name. It is true that you have to keep dragging your unresolved problems through life as long as they are unresolved but I disagree that they are unresolvable. Fatalism has a way of proving itself true. You have physical problems that engender psychological problems and then the two compound each other. I don't want to minimize your problems by any means but to offer some hope.

I have struggled with major anxiety much of my life. I used to think that it was simply who I was and how it had to be. I did all sorts of self-destructive things to mask it and try to pretend it wasn't there. Eventually, I came to the realization that quite simply, if I did not change the only thing within my control to change-- my mind -- that I would either live the rest of my life out dead inside or dead altogether. People talk about "hitting rock bottom" in addiction, but you can hit a rock bottom spiritually as well. I think that finding your own spirit's needs and addressing those is the key to not dragging unresolved train cars full of pain through life. For me, that meant rejecting whole paradigms I thought I should live in, finding people that I could resonate with in a very real and deep way (not easy! but when you have faith that others want this, too, it happens), and continually asking myself what I needed to do in any given situation that I didn't like. Instead of feeling imprisoned by my circumstances, focusing on how miserable they were, I started to try to see what I needed to do to effect change. Often, it feels terrifying.

I hope this does not read as someone that feels superior in her ability to handle life. That is not at all what I am or what I feel. I simply know that I did not used to know how to have hope and now I do. Having hope is living. Feeling hopeless is death within life. There are so many different paths to regaining hope. The one that has been the most useful for me is Mindfulness. If you google just that word you will be overwhelmed with information. I wish you all the best. You are confronting huge issues and I know they are both complex and entrenched. An endless cycle of going to work and recovering from/getting ready for work may be keeping your body going but it is killing your spirit. That is not tenable.

P.S. I am probably older than you if that counts for anything.

 

[motherofearth]

I've had type 1 diabetes for 17 years. It was juvenile onset, so that cut both ways: there was some insecurity and stygma - feeling I was different from my young peers. Conversely, I was able to acclimate to it by my teen years, thus I needn't take on puberty and suffer peripheral emotional damage concurrently.

An important action for me was never allowing myself to feel victimized by nature, despite so many close/loved ones around me expressing or implying such. It allowed me to be proactive, not degenerate, and manage my illness.

If I may ask, and I'm sorry if I missed it in your post, are you self-medicating for your depression, kyposis, or both? I've many friends w/ depression who medicate(d) w/ opioids and the outcome is never good. If you are going for a psychedelic experience I think that extends beyond medicinal purposes. Not to judge, but it's good to know for what purpose(s) you are taking psychoactive substances.

Best of luck.

 

[mrflowers00]

i'm 23 and have lived a full life of problems not to mention schizo and bipolar and panic disorder

 

[edzeppelin]

Thanks for the replies. I must get hope that much is true. Find others like me or worse off and see if I can be of any help, that may help me. If I wasn't so tired all the time, but I shouldn't use that as an excuse because it isn't ALL the time.

 

[phenethylo J]

I am 24 right now and feel like I'm 80 will all my health issues. I have ankylosing spondylitis an extreamly painfull arthitic auto imune condittion and iritis and very serious and painfull eye condittion that is linked to the arthitic condition which has already caused lots of damage to my eyes including cataracts and glacoma. i have already had to have 3 emergency eye surgeries for the glacoma. Besides the arthitic pain I also have nuerological pain because I also have a nuerological condittion I was born with as well as well. I have severe insomnia and weed is the only thing that helps but my pain doctor drug tests me so I can't smoke all the time. This condition has really changed me. I used to be very possitive happy person but now I am very negative stressed, axious, and depressed. If my body is this bad now and I am already on a very big cocktail of pills I don't even want to imagine what things will be like when I am older. Sometimes I just want to give up so I wont have to find out. These health issues have destroyed my life. I have had to drop out of college and give up my dream, can't work, don't go out with friends much anymore, ect. I did everything right; ate healthy, excercised allot, and worked hard in school; look were I am now.


Edseppelin I have found that ketamine and mxe have help allot with my pain and allow me to go down on my morphine and hydrocodone. There have been positive studies with ketamine being used in conjunction with opiates for chronic pain and it showed that ketamine helped stop opiate tolerence from going up. Ketamine is actualy sometimes perscibed to pain patients in the US but since it is not fda aproved for that treatment chances of getting it are extreamly rare.

 

[xxsicknessxx]

you get dealt the cards your dealt thats life. Learn to live with it or stop playing the game...

Trust me other people have worse cards then you, try to remember that when your down...

It can always always get worse, and when you think it can't get worse thats when the bad shit happens.