We all know that saying, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Well life has been giving me a lot of lemons lately. Scratch that, life has been straight-up pitching fastball lemons straight at my head! Let me give you a quick backstory.
In 2011, I was diagnosed with an aggressive cases of rheumatoid arthritis. One of the first things my rheumatologist said to me was that he'd never seen a case so severe on a patient so young before. I was 23 at the time. I've written a more detailed Take about my RA here if you'd like to read about it.
I had to chang insurances in 2014, which stopped my treatment. The process of finding a new rheumatologist took a year. In that year, all the progress I made went out the window and the aggressiveness came back tenfold.
After switching insurances twice, I finally found one rheumatologist in my area that my insurance accepted. I made an appointment and got set up at a new place. All was better. Finally. It was a while year later, but thing were better.
February 2015. I awakened to news that one of my sisters had passed away. It was sudden and something that none of us had been expecting. It was tough. Especially watching my nieces and nephew react. Talk about heartbreaking. While dealing with that, I found myself in the middle of a financial crisis. When I first started treatment, my PCP and rheumatologist both unanimously suggested that I apply for disability. So I did. And I was approved. In 2015 Social Security sent me to one of their doctors and then stopped my disability payments. I appealed the decision. I was without an income for the duration of the appeals process, which was 9 months. To say that I was stressed out would've been a serious understatement. It's very easy to let stress take over, and very unhealthy as well. I wrote a Take on some of the things that I do to help ease some stress.
I won the appeal. Someone dropped the ball big time. They never consulted with either of my doctors. They didn't have up-to-date tests or blood work. They couldn't even understand any of the handwriting from the doctor they sent me to! So my case was reinstated in February of 2016. That same month, I got my heart completely broken. And from there I spiraled. You can read about it here.
If you've noticed by now, every time something good happened, something bad followed up. That's usually the way life works. It's not all rainbows and sunshine all the time. There are cloudy days and storms.
For instance, I finally started to get over having my heart broken. I was in a better place. I was happy. In July, I went to the hospital for a migraine that I'd had for a week straight, and ended up being kept for a week and diagnosed with intracranial hypertension (also known as pseudotumor cerebri). That's basically increased pressure in my brain for no known reason.
I could bitch and moan. I could cry (I did in the hospital, not gonna lie) and complain all day. Or I could roll with the punches. I tell myself that it could always be worse. We all get dealt a hand in life. How we play that hand is up to us. One of my earlier Takes was on that subject.
Playing The Hand You Were Dealt
That about sums it up folks. In order to appreciate the good times, we have to deal with the bad times. Take them on the chin, learn from them, and remember: you can't have a rainbow without the rain.
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