Illness

I had thought I was coping quite well. I knew that depression was lurking, but I kept telling myself to pull myself together and reminding myself of all the good things I have in my life. I have my wonderful, loving, supportive husband and a healthy, happy, kind son. We live in a house that we own and we don't really go short of anything. I should feel lucky.



I knew it wasn't normal to sob uncontrollably the moment my son went to bed every night. I also knew the strain of holding it all in every day was going to show eventually. I was getting migraines more frequently and my skin was bad and I had a feeling this was all related. Then it all came to a head when I got a urine infection. Nothing new there, I seem to be at the surgery every couple of months with one of those, but this started a chain of events.



I went to the doctor and she prescribed the antibiotics as usual, but I went on to mention to her that I thought my immune system was probably low because of the stress I'd had. She asked me to elaborate and when I did, I had a meltdown right there in the surgery. Now, normally when this happens, my long-suffering husband is there to cling to and I'm in the privacy of my own home and can cry it all out, but here I was, in a room with a doctor I'd never seen before and I had to snap out of it enough to walk out in public and get on a train and go to work.



The doctor asked if I'd been crying a lot and if I felt I was depressed. I was so scared of that word, that there was no way I could admit that. But I did say that I was getting ill a lot and I did feel very low, but that I knew I just have to get on with my life. She tried to get me to ask her for pills, but I don't want that. I don't want to be dosed up so I think I'm happy. I want to be happy. Rather than the NHS paying for me to have happy pills, I'd rather them pay for the thing that's going to make me happy.



I actually feel very let down by the NHS. They broke this bombshell that they weren't funding our treatment in a very blunt way and then we've just been left to pick up the pieces. You'd think someone would sit you down in a warm, yellow room with sofas and cushions and talk it through with you. Then you'd be referred for counselling to help you accept the enormity of being told you that you can't have children. But no, I was sent a strange, unclear letter from the hospital saying that our PCT don't fund treatment there. Then I had to do the running around to find out from the PCT what their criteria were? They respond by email, just sending me their criteria. That was it. No cosy room, no kind-faced, curly-haired lady breaking it to us gently and telling us where we go from here over coffee. Just the abyss of hopelessness and us falling uncontrollably towards it. God, I'm dramatic!



Anyway, I got to work and everyone kept asking if I was okay, and I just thought that my eyes must be a bit puffy and that I wasn't hiding my emotions very well. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I got a sore throat, then a headache, then a stiff neck, then I started to feel very hot. I went to the loo and when I looked in the mirror I saw why everyone had been asking if I was okay. Both of my eyes were bright red, not crying red, something is very wrong red. They were both really bloodshot and I looked terrible. It wasn't long before I felt so bad I just grabbed my stuff and left.



I called NHS direct who thought I might have swine flu and told me not to go to the surgery, but go straight home and call the doctor out. The journey home was like hell. I actually thought I was going to die because I had started to get pain in my chest and back when I breathed. When I got in, my husband called the doctor and she thought it wasn't swine flu, but meningitis and told me to go to A&E.



At A&E they found I had a temperature of 39 degrees and gave me paracetamol. After hours and hours of waiting and being spoken to rudely by very mean nurses, the doctor told me she thought I might have a viral infection and sent me home.



The next day I woke up in such pain. Every joint in my body was swollen and painful. My head was pounding and my neck was very stiff. I could barely move, other than to drink and swallow pills. On the plus side though, the back and chest pain had gone and there was no sign of the sore throat.



When the joint pain was still just as bad the next day, I got my mum to drive me to the doctor. She sent me for a blood test and told me to come back the next day. I did, but she was none the wiser. She's working on the assumption that the urine infection had triggered something that had inflamed my joints and eyes. So I've got to have more blood tests this week when the infection should be long gone and see if the results are the same. My joints improve greatly throughout the day, but when I wake up, I'm always very tense and have a stiff neck and headache and have to move around very carefully for a few hours.



So this is what people mean about the cracks showing when you're under a lot of pressure. I feel like a balloon, filling up with air and holding it in, occasionally letting out a bit, but not enough and then filling up again. Now I've gone bang. I want to be well again. Physically and mentally.