Random Chaos

Friday morning began with me rolling over and smashing the front of my phone with the palm of my hand. The phone’s face is made from Corning-brand Gorilla glass, though, so all that was doing was—actually, it wasn’t making my hand sore, I couldn’t feel my hand. I’ve come to terms with that recently, it seems that 90% of the time, I can’t feel my hands in the morning. Since it wasn’t damaging the phone or my hand (I hoped), I kept banging on the front of the phone until the alarm stopped. I didn’t know if I hit the snooze button or the dismiss button.

I’d spent the entire week up to that day like a paranoid ungulate, chewing over the same terror cud over and over—what if it’s cancer? what if it’s lupus? what if it’s some hitherto undiscovered SUPER LUPUS? what if it’s none of the above and I’m some new freak of nature?!

I stopped the train right there and made a glass of cranberry soda. And then another. And then another. And then for good measure, I had one more. Because frankly I was freaking out. Then I got off my ass and got to the doctor. By this point one arm was flipping between on fire and “where the fuck is it,” but I brought things to read and do so I wouldn’t have to think about it.

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The doctor’s office was damn near vacant, considering that I thought I was running late—I was not, in fact, I was running early—and I got in right away. I explained what I was in for, pulled out my phone to browse news links on reddit (and, let’s be real, look at cute cat pictures because when you’re feeling bad, cats) when the doctor came in with a handful of papers.

“Do we know what’s caused it?” I ask almost immediately.

His response?

We’re stumped.

We can’t find a cause for the neuropathy. We can’t do anything but treat the complications of the neuropathy as they come up. And apparently if it progresses long enough I might have the loss of digestive function to look forward to. YAY. Basically, deadened nerves would paralyze my gut and bladder, as well as making my arms and legs more often than not numb and/or painful. ANOTHER sweep of the blood work ruled out it being caused by any of my meds. This also fails to explain the blisters inside the sinuses and the roof of my mouth. To turn bad into worse, this is affecting my leg as well—after all, that was where the FIRST bad nerve came up, back when I bricked the damn thing three years ago now. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if that’s what set this whole thing off.

Before you think I’m going to stand idly by and just take that, I’m planning on fighting this shit—there’s got to be something out there provided by Mother Gaia to fight this shit, and I plan on finding it and taking it, regardless of the risks. I DO NOT plan on being on incontinence wear by my thirtieth birthday (the neuropathy is moving fucking fast).

We are now down to House-ing it: We’re taking everything that my system is torturing me with, treating it individually, and seeing if it does any good—except the neuropathy itself, since the one prescription medication approved to treat that is something that I can’t take with my current medications. Killer interaction, you see. Next on the list is an antiviral—because the blisters apparently kind of sort of behave like shingles. If it doesn’t work, we’re back to square one.