Being Home ridden

Being newly disabled without any access to a diagnosis or treatments to possibly relieve my symptoms has been different. I have been Home ridden for months now. It’s not exciting whatsoever. My typical day now consists of waking up, eating, sleeping, and lounging around the house. For some that may seem like the dream but for me it’s more of a nightmare.

When my friends from college came down to visit me, I told them how I missed going to classes and studying and they groaned saying “No you don’t…it’s horrible.” Now around that time it was midterms so of course they would have a negative outlook  on it considering they were stressed by the overload of essays, assignments, studying, and exams that they had to encounter. I’m sure however that if they spent 2 weeks in my shoes they would agree that being in college is probably the better situation to be in.

The truth is being home ridden by an illness/disability isn’t fun. I spend my days constantly suffering from whatever illness I have and there’s no way out of it. I have no treatments, no medications, and no techniques to lower my symptoms because I don’t even know what I have. Also in addition, my rheumatoid arthritis has been acting up so I’ve been in pain without any medications to relieve it.  So I’m just pulling through trying to make the best of it.

I have hardly gone out in public since I’ve been ill because to put it simply it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because I don’t know when an attack is going to happen and if an attack does happen in public I can only imagine the worst. I could be frozen in place in an awkward position and twisting and tremoring for hours and would have no way of getting back home because of it. I could easily fall because of my walking difficulties and injure myself more. I can stop talking or stutter and slur so much that no one would be able to understand me and couldn’t help me. I could have a full body spasm that some would mistake for a seizure and call an ambulance when it wasn’t needed. So many different scenarios can happen and even though I know it’s dangerous, I’ve tried convincing my mother to let me go out but she says no.

The only time I actually do go out in public is when I have doctor appointments. That is pretty much the only time I see other people of society besides my family and friends. Since right now I only have a walker, I hope that when I do finally get a wheelchair, I’ll be able to go out in public more since there would be less of a chance of me falling.

In one of my other posts I slightly mentioned how I try to avoid social media pages now because I tend to feel bad when I see other people my age doing things I can’t. Well the same applies to when I see my cousin. My cousin is only one year younger than me and she is in college as well. I love her dearly but I don’t know I get kind of sad when I see her because she can go out and enjoy life so easily and I can’t. Ever since we were kids I always felt kind of sad when I saw her life in comparison to mine. 

She had a family where there were both parents and siblings and I had a family of one parent with no siblings. She had no health difficulties and I always did and was constantly in the hospital growing up. She had toys that I wished I could have but couldn’t. She didn’t have to worry about running around and playing and I did because of my lungs.

The list goes on but in all honesty, I am grateful for the things I did have in my life. I have/had a wonderful mother, I formed a great relationship with my grandparents, I got to grow strong because of my health issues, and I gained a step dad in the process who I now consider to be my true dad.

I know it’s not good to compare my life to others because everyone’s life is unique and different but sometimes I just wonder what my life would be like if we traded places for a day. I guess in this post what I’m writing really goes towards the saying: “Is the grass really greener on the other side?”

In the end, I wouldn’t change my life. I wouldn’t change anything about it because all the obstacles have made me into the person I am today. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t go through hardships because those hardships made me strong and made me a fighter.

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