...and so it continues...

It isn't supposed to be like this, you see...things are supposed to be so much better now. And I want to cry, because they're not, and it seems so unfair, because they aren't perfect. My shiny, happy, easy time only lasted what seemed to have been such a brief moment. I knew I was playing the odds, I did. But waking up in the morning, full of energy and life, it was *so easy*, and it made me hope against hope that maybe it would continue to be that way.

I felt so alive, and so *good*. The sun didn't hurt me. Most of the major pain, it wasn't there. I kept hoping that was going to be normal...That maybe *I* was finally going to be normal.

I guess nothing lasts forever, huh?

They've diagnosed me, at long last, with Rheumatoid Arthritis, which isn't altogether surprising, when you figure in lupus and fibromyalgia. The lupus, as it turns out is very nearly completely in remission. But I'm going to be playing a round robin of new medications, and it's making me sick again. Plaquenil, which I've already started and is making me both dizzy and nauseous around the clock. Flexeril, which is making me sleepy as all hell, and I don't like at all. They want me on Methotrexate, which is a cancer/chemotherapy medication and if I can't talk the doctor out of it will simply make me yet more nauseous I'm sure, and since my Topamax already makes my birth control unstable, Methotrexate is incredibly dangerous for me to take. Methotrexate causes both birth defects and/or spontaneous abortion in women. It's *not* a good drug for any woman who is fertile to be on, which is why my neurologist doesn't want me taking it, but the rheumatologist knows that he's put patients on that mix before with no problems. My instinct tells me all his patients who take the mix have been either past child-bearing age, or male. In both those cases, it wouldn't be a problem...*sigh*.

And the really sad part is, because of all the stress, I just get more and more tired and more depressed day by day. All I want to do is sleep, and not have to deal with any of it. And I'd been feeling so good, and now I just want to give up again. Why can't I just wake up one morning, half the size I am now, and healthy? Is that too much to ask, to be normal, and healthy?

I got into it about my weight with someone recently, because his 'opinion' was that it should be pretty simple. I have two options as he sees it. I can either eat less, and exercise more, that's pretty simple, right? Or I can go and have the weight loss surgery, and take care of my problem that way. Either way would solve my problem.

The trouble is that I actually do eat pretty healthy, and I do exercise. Yes, I could probably do a little more than I do, but overall? I do not spend my days laying on my bed eating ice cream and potato chips, and drinking Pepsi, while having someone hand me junk food and watching soap operas. I get up and get what I want to eat, and I exercise. I take care of myself.

So I fear, greatly, that if I have weight loss surgery...what if it doesn't work, because I actually *am* already eating healthy, and it won't do me any good? If it cuts my calories down, but because I've already *done* that, it isn't going to do that awesome result that so many heavy people get? Then what? I've let someone do surgery on me, for no end result?

And being told by someone who doesn't actually have a weight problem, *and* who hasn't got physical restrictions limiting him from doing more exercise, and who can eat anything he wants, and does, majorly hurt me. Because it made me feel awful, about myself, and about everything I've done to get to where I am now. And as someone who couldn't walk from the living room to the car, I know what a major fucking deal it is, the fact that I can walk to anywhere I want to go. I might not get there very fast, but I can get there.

I own two canes, and I actually still *need* to use them, sometimes. They aren't here for decoration, or as toys because I just want them for my personal entertainment. That's what 'disabled' means. It means that it sucks to be me, and I have to cope with that, even when it isn't convenient. It means that some days, I'm going to be dizzy, and unbalanced, and whether I like it or not? Whether I'm heavy or skinny? I'm still going to need a cane. Because that's just how it is.

And I wonder sometimes, if he thinks that my losing weight is some kind of choice, and that if I really wanted to, I could just...write out a little plan, and hang it on the wall, and follow it, and it would just fall into line. That weight loss works that way, in some kind of "I want it this way, and if I would just have enough determination, then I'd be thin" sort of reasoning.

If it was that simple, I'd weigh about a hundred and fifteen pounds. I have determination in spades, what I don't have is a body that cooperates, and actually does what it seems as though it would logically do, in spite of what I put in, or take out, or exercise, or anything else. I can eat 600 calories a day. I can eat 2600 calories a day. I can, and have, followed x, y, z diets, to the letter, and the end result is still the same, every time. My weight doesn't move. I just don't know why :(

And now I'm more depressed than I was when I started writing this. I was rather hoping that the process of writing it was going to make me feel somewhat better, for working it out in my head, but it doesn't seem to have. So I'm going to go, and work on my never-ending homework, and then read a novel, where make-believe people solve make-believe problems, in some other world, that isn't mine, until I fall asleep.

Goodnight, internets. I hope that someone, somewhere is having a better night than I am.