Maybe I’m partially disabled. I don’t want to accept this, so I keep going back and forth from hope to hopelessness. The more I rest and clear my mind out of my problems, the better at least I can think. The harassment is counterproductive but I’m learning to deal with it among all the distress I’m suffering.
With physical pain it is really difficult to focus on creative tasks. There is a sort of different perspective from emotional suffering that can be turned into creativity, as there also is with physical ones. I’m starting to think that, without this physical pain I would not be able to deprogram myself of suffering from excess of hope.
Because of those health problems, I’m struggling with getting the whole story in my head so I can answer properly the selling points of my book. Until the beginning of this year, I only had the directions of what I wanted to write as the ending of the novel. I spent these past few months working on the content of the ending and now I’m trying to see it as a whole to find the key elements that I can use as selling arguments.
Contrary to this online journal, the book will be written in Portuguese because It is really difficult for me to write descriptive texts in English and the series of events that I’m about to describe will be part of my novels and I don’t want to get too much in detail or express it properly in a way that it spoils the content of my future publications.
About a decade ago I had a food poisoning event that at the time, after the diarrhea was gone, I didn’t investigate it further. As the character of Woody Allen’s movie Zelig (1983), my “Zelig syndrome” could also have started as something I ate as suggested by one of the many doctors of the movie.
During this food poisoning event, my skin turned red, especially noticeable in my hands where the redness would stop before the fingers. A few years later after taking Lysine supplements, I noticed that the same red coloring would form around my axilla, area that appeared what doctor’s called hidradenitis suppurativa.
After this skin infection showed up, I went to many doctors, I did many blood tests to check all sorts of infection, from HIV, HPV to all sorts of hepatitis and nothing was found. Most doctors could not even tell what the skin infection was, even the dermatologists could not properly treat it, saying different things about it. I was prescribed twice anti-biotics, being the second time a duration of 2 months of treatment but the skin infection could not heal.
I changed from dermatologists to a rheumatologist as other symptoms and events occurred and had more blood tests done and not a single infection was found. Remembering the food poisoning event and how intentional that incident could have been, I took anti-parasite medication and still, the skin infection could not heal. It was already an open wound that I had for a couple of years. I was starting to get worried, it not only bleed constantly, but I was also worried it could potentially cause an infection.
I tried many supplements that could help with cicatrization and inflammation as Zinc, vitamin D, Arginine and Lysine. It still could not heal. I also started having more health problems, like losing the grip of the left hand for a couple of days, losing part of eyesight, having chest pains. I went to many different doctors as I had different symptoms and did many exams, and the doctors had nothing to say about what was going on and the skin infection kept on bleeding.
I was convinced by the doctors that whatever I had at the time, wasn’t as bad or it would appear as an exam result. I took some iron pills, and it was when everything become worst. I’ll try to describe the events the best that I can.
The first stroke like episode, I hit my head on a thin street pole trying to get to a doctor’s appointment back in the days I still had private health care. I started passing out short before sleeping with the vein of my neck jumping, seeing many flashing lights with my eyes closed and I could smell burnt things, this kept going until I saw a black like curtain drops on my vision, having involuntary movements of my arms and hands and a numb face, typical symptoms of stroke and brain damage.
I also had all symptoms of a heart attack. Pain in the chest, arms and jaw while also having what I would describe it as a sepsis event, the doctors could not even say that I had high blood pressure. The doctor would say lyrics of songs that were written for me and that decreased a lot of my trust on the doctor. The pain on the left arm and the jumping vein of the back of my neck got better when I evacuated a lot of blood, the amount of blood lost almost made me lose my conscious.
Losing blood helped with the black outs, the flashing lights but I started drinking 7 to 8 litters of water a day and had an itching that could not let me sleep, I guess the amount of water was to restore blood pressure from the blood loss. I also started craving salt and eating olives, the itching become a fever and a shaking like sensation in the whole body, I would also frequently lose the vision of my right eye daily, specially standing up, symptoms of sepsis induced event, and loss of blood.
I had a piercing like sensation in my eyes that become eye floaters, I could not feel my face, this nightmare happened for months and the fever only improved after years, the pain is still present. I went a few more times to some doctors to only have a minor aorta aneurysm detected. I couldn’t sleep on my left side, or I would get out of breath. I still have some heart failure symptoms as if I have heart damage from the infection, I also had the sings of heart damage due infection on my nails and yet, doctors could not even determine anything besides aorta aneurysm.
After this acute phase of sepsis, heart attack and strokes I started having motion sickness while doing things like gaming, a thing that I never experienced in my whole life. For a few months I could not properly see myself in the mirror, it was as if the part damaged of my eyesight with the brain damage could not render my own image.
I lost my health insurance, my long-term memory is somehow intact but I’m having really trouble in making decisions or focusing. Last year, I took a test for a job application and on the second hour of it my whole body was frozen from what I call, lack of mental process capabilities. That brunt smell and black curtain certainly damaged my brain.
I feel exhausted, this indecisiveness from anterograde memory amnesia is an impairment. It is hard to organize the mental processes with pain, lack of sleep, lack of economical safety and resources. Sometimes I still go temporarily blind of the right eye. The physical pain, or even emotional are counterproductive in relation to the creative tasks. These past months I could at least create the content of the last part of the novel, but it wasn’t as efficient as it could be in a healthy state. These health problems also postponed a lot of my studies. The pain takes focus away so only the essential could be done.
Part of my cognition is truly gone. I’m trying to sort things out as I get proper sleep. The fever is gone which helps with the sleep but the decision-making difficulties and processing new and complex information is debilitating. I guess since I lost part of sensitivity in my face and arms I have brain damage on frontal lobe, I also have a lot of arms and hands spams and other involuntary movements.
The hardening of the arteries as a result of the arteriosclerosis causes constant pain. The arteries also move, which is really distracting and keeps me awake at night, the worries that it also could rupture like it did before also contributes to feeling like I’m somehow disabled. It will be really difficult to put up my book together in these conditions. There are also the dilemmas of going to the doctor because of my past experiences.
Part of the Zersetzung like techniques is denying an ongoing health problem or create one when you’re healthy. I lost a lot of confidence in doctors because of the saga previously motioned, doctors are also prone to errors even when they want to help, they are flawed humans like any other and health problems can be really complex with many causes underlying issues.
Considering what happened, I guess I’m the luckiest of the unlucky. I could have survived those events way worse than I did but the condition I’m currently in, they feel like they will eventually lead to my death. I’m accepting those past events as a straightening of destiny in a sort of reduction of my possibilities.