For starters, I’ve been having issues with my heart rate for over a year now. In the past, I’ve had problems with pericardial effusion and pleurisy a few times. My heart has almost failed twice within the past two years. I can’t remember exactly when, but I’ll say around…April of 2021? Is when my heart rate issues became worse. My resting heart rate is 76 - 88; usually, this is when I’m lying down or sitting for more than 20 minutes. When I sit up completely, my heart rate will go to 110 - 125 or 136. When I stand, it goes to the 140s or 160s. After showering, my heart rate hits 180 - 191. So far, the highest heart rate I’ve had is 198. My symptoms for the past few months has been stomach pain, brain fog, nausea, vomiting, headaches/migraines, dizziness, lightheadedness, random blurry vision that’ll last for up to 10 - 20 minutes, chest pain, shortness of breath, skin sensitivity, painful red patches on arms, leg swelling, painful/uncomfortable bloating, weakness, fatigue, a few fainting spells, and much more but I can’t remember them all at the moment. My current diagnoses are Lupus (SLE), Rheumatoid Arthritis, TMJ, and Raynaud’s syndrome.
Is anyone going through this or has gone through this? If so, what tests were run or recommended? Did you get a diagnosis?
I really need to know. I’ve been dealing with this for so long now. It’s interfering with my day-to-day life and daily activities. I can’t even talk or laugh without my heart rate going up to 126. The lightheadedness and dizzy spells are happening daily, and I’m afraid that I’ll pass out. The stomach issues I’ve been having have made it difficult and painful to eat and drink. It feels like my stomach is on fire 24/7 and being ripped open every once in a while. My doctors think I could have another possible autoimmune disease, either fibromyalgia or a connective tissue disorder (I dislocate almost daily). I’m not trying to self-diagnose myself, but I’ve been wondering if POTS could be another possible diagnosis? From what I’ve been able to research, the symptoms I’ve been experiencing are pretty similar, but I know Lupus can be the cause behind a lot as well. I also know that Lupus can be the cause of POTS. I just want to find out as much as I can to bring some things up to my doctors since they’re just as confused as I am, haha. I’m tired of dealing with this and need relief.
(Just a lot of words. A lot of pointless and beautiful and painful words. Isn’t that what writing is?)
(Always is the cruelest world I know.)
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
I do not know what happened. I was sitting at a Starbucks with a warm cup of hot chocolate. A pair of children made silly faces at me through the window, and I laughed. For a moment. I laughed. I turned my head back to the work in front of me, typing words into another paper for my writing class—a class I loved, for the professor I admired, for the dragging determination that I would continue on, in spite of everything. Certainly, I was miserable, but that was something to be overcome, to fight against; I would make it as long as hope remained. — How was it then, that moments later I became hopeless? — I see myself sitting on the train, watching soft night descend on city lights. Watching apartment buildings for glimpses of lives I’d never know, hoping to catch the shadow of some lamp, the face of a curious onlooker, watching me as I watched them. Life, at its purest essence. Humanity has always been the same.
Always. Was it that word that broke me? That sense that everything should go on? Was it my own determination to continue in spite of everything? What was it that struck that fear so deep into my mind? What was it even—but that concept of always—that I feared?
Half an hour later, with hot water streaming down my face, I slipped into the bottom of the bathtub and tried to chase out the thoughts. Head underwater. The sound of artificial rain on my ears. Eyes closed. Breath held.
I’ll know what it’s like—eternity—in a second.
It wasn’t death I was hoping for, it was paradise. It was a glimpse of the divine and a promise of eternal life—everlasting consciousness. I didn’t want to die, you see, I wanted to make certain I would live forever. I wanted to know what my mother felt when I was born, when she almost died, when she heard the voice of god and knew paradise. I felt my body plead for oxygen. I felt my heart skip a beat. I felt cold darkness echo back to me the same way it did each time I prayed to god and begged for some promise of hope. I felt the unforgiving silence again, and nothing more. Instinct took control and I lifted my head from the water, gasping at air the way I grasped for hope. I still don’t know what happened; I don’t know what made me so afraid of dying that I wanted to risk life. — I keep telling them I want to be dumb. If I were dumb, I wouldn’t think about it; it wouldn’t bother me. Like a bird I would live and I would die and would care very little for eternity. — What I understand of neuroscience and physics, what I know of thermodynamics, makes me think eternal consciousness is impossible. — What I know about religion and philosophy is that this is the ultimate question. Or as Camus said: “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” It’s the ultimate question because no one truly knows the answer. — Is that what made it happen again? Is that why I had to run away? The deepest and yet most absurd question—is that really what made me leave school for the third time? I know it’s not of course. It was more than that. It was an inability to keep going, it was a loss of hope and an outpouring of fear. It was everything and nothing. — I beg god again, for something, really anything. But like all those days, those endless hours sitting, curled at the bottom of my closet pleading, I meet silence and darkness and emptiness. I meet the very thing I fear, and the thing which has taken over my OCD, and anxiety, and led me to the deepest depression I have ever known. I hope for certainty where I cannot have it. — There are two things I know: 1. I do not have any reason to hope for eternal life. Death, like every other thing in this world, seems physical, temporal. 2. Without the hope of eternal consciousness, I have no reason to enjoy living, no reason to hope for anything. Hope, at that point, becomes temporary, and seemingly useless. — There is no reason for me to say any of this, of course. I am not asking for anything, not looking for someone to tell me to just have faith, not looking for anyone to tell me not to. — My obsessions have fixated on ideas of aging and death. (Time is so short. “It is later than you think.”) I sank into depression. I left school again because I was simply, physically unable to continue on, even though this time I thought I would make it. Until that moment, that second on the train watching the world go by I was okay. Now, I need to know that I will be okay forever—literally forever—or I don’t know if I will ever quite be okay again. Without a hope for everything, is there a hope for anything? — No, I haven’t given up all hope. I hope for a someday (and for an eternal someday.) I hope to find some sense of spirituality, some presence or peace from some god, some little spark of light in the echoing darkness. I hope. But I do not expect—I do not know.
The amount of effort ficwriter does in order to write a fic. “nah the story doesn’t need to be that accurate it’s just a fic I’m not getting any money out of it” and then as they keep writing and posting their browse history is something like “moon calendar in 1981”
I’ve been MIA in the las few months, let me tell you, art block sucks. Anyways, here is some of my unfinished wips just to show you, I’m still alive :’D
sulking because i wasn’t allowed to go see my baby jay because i’m a broke college student with strict parents that will never allow me to travel alone <\3
