Dealing with a chronic illness or any other type of an extremely stressful situation does leave behind emotional scars. Some of this scars just do go into hibernation. They continually cause mental suffering on a daily basis. This is true for me. Lately, my emotional scars have decided to play a riveting game of "let's screw with her feeling daily." On a daily basis I experience at least one anxiety/panic attach. And for any of those people out there reading this has had them then they know this just is not a fun game at all. It's fucking horrible. I have to laugh a bit about it though because the whole time I was going through a tornado of doctors, medications, tests, and awful flare-ups I handled it very well emotionally. Now that the waves have stopped crashing and soothed down, that is when my mind decides to go into panic mode. I always thought I have a knack for doing things ass backwards but this one takes the cake.
So many, many people everywhere deal with emotional issues such as depression, maniac behavior, bi-polar, anxiety, and so on. It is an every day battle dealing with those thoughts that just screw up our way of thinking and acting. You even tell yourself to snap out of it but that never works. A lot of people see mental disorders as not a real type of illness because it's all in our heads. Well, guess what? My Devic's Syndrome can't be seen on the outside so is that all in my head too? Mental disorders are far too real and far too dangerous to be left untreated. Now I am not saying medication for mental disorders is a cure all and should be given away like Tic-Tacs. It takes a combination of maybe some medicine, therapy, and daily exercises to re-train your way of thinking. I always said it takes a lot more work to change a frame of mind than the frame of your body. So many of us suffer silently out of shame. But being in complete solitude with our mental illness just makes it worse. We need to start supporting people more with mental disorders. We need to try to understand them better. It's easier to do this if you have gone or are going through it yourself but it is very hard for someone who never had a mental disorder to try to grasp the reality of it. If you know anyone in your own life who shows some signs of something like this please be there for them and try to help them find the help they need. Just one act of kindness could change someone's whole world. You may not be the person who changes the world but you will always be the person who changed that one person's whole world. And that is something glorious!
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Out of some random curiosity I decided I would do some numbers research on Devic's Syndrome. What I found out nearly made my jaw hit the floor. Only 1-2 per 100,000 people world wide has Devic's Syndrome. Now if my math is correct, which it might not be because I suck in math, that means there are only about 10,000 people in the world that has this disease and I am one of them. 10,000 people out of a world wide population of 7.046 billion. What the hell?! I knew this disease was rare but I never imagined this rare. I can't even try to put that into a percentage because my math skills are very limited. Now let's compare Devic's to its sister disease which is Multiple Sclerosis. Currently there are about 250,000-350,000 people world wide with MS. Plus, studies suggests that 200 new cases are diagnosed each week. Wow! I don't know whether to feel frightened or special. I always liked to stand out from the crowd but I think in this particular situation I would be O.K. with fitting in. I went on this site, myelitis.org, that seems to have a lot of information on Devic's. I happened to stumble across a paragraph of listing symptoms of its flare-ups. I think I made the news and didn't even know it. The site said, in rare cases, persistent hiccupping and vomiting can result from a flare-up. When I had this no medical profession, including my world renowned neurologist, ever heard of this flare-up. Well, let me give my neurologist his credit, he did figure it out way quicker than any other doctor. So I believe somehow I made headlines. Not only do I have a rare disease I also had an even more flare-up from this rare disease. I guess I really do like to make a statement. I am still surprised, even after all this time, whenever I tell a person including medical professionals what I have I always get the confused look. This follows with the normal question of, "What is that?" I start to explain but then find it way easier to just say it kind of like MS then they usually get it. This reaction does not upset or anger me in the least. I find it a golden opportunity to make more people aware of it. If I can bring more attention to it then maybe it will get more research and fundraising efforts for treatments and maybe even a cure. I throw that notion around my head quite a bit of how I can bring more attention to this illness. A fundraiser? A benefit? Hell, a freakin billboard maybe. Well, if you have any ideas please feel free to comment. I could use them. Pass along my website and maybe that will be a start. Word of mouth. Here's a YouTube video I found explaining the science behind the disease. Well, I think a generally agreed statement would be that what is going on with the government shutdown and idiotic and embarrassing. I wouldn't be surprised if the other countries are laughing at us. We are suppose to be this super power. Instead we look like two kids fighting over crayons.
I see some posts on my facebook and how they side with the Republicans and say it's all the Democrats fault. Then I see posts that side with the Democrats and say its all the Republicans fault. I think this embarrassing tug of war is a reflection of ourselves. Politicians are human after all, and I use the word "human" loosely. I think we need someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump to handle the country's budget. At least they know what the hell they are doing. I don't know if I fit into either two sides. I think I the one that fits in the middle and is just pissed off. You know, if we normal people had a credit card, skipping payments, and still asking them to raise the limit, well you know what would happen. They would stop the credit card and have collection agencies stalking us. So please let's just keep borrowing from China or whoever and be completely in debt to them. Hey maybe they can use our middle class trick of opening another line of credit to another country to pay off the first one. Or they can get the thumbs out of their asses and actually come up with a solution to lower debts and rise income, and I do not mean new taxes. Hey we are taxed so much that I can actually feel a suction of a vacuum come out of my check before it's even in my hand. All this money we spend on salaries of stupid congressman when we could be paying experts on this matter. Real experts. Opinions anyone????? What exactly lies on the other side? What happens to us, or our souls, after death? Is there even an other side or is it just something we hope for so our death doesn't frighten us into knowing it is just the end? All very sound questions. I, myself, have been raised Catholic and still practice my faith today. O.K., maybe not as much as I should but I do. I raise my children Catholic. So it is our belief that basically if you follow God's laws your soul goes to heaven. A place of infinite wisdom, glory, and happiness. To be perfectly honest it is hard to keep my faith, especially during times of distress and seeing all the horror in the world today. But yet I still cling onto it. Why? Is it out of hope or fear? Or is it basically because it has been embedded into me over the years? That is a soul search I need to do on my own. There are many other faiths and practices out there in the world. I don't feel the need to list them all. I am sure you are aware of them. The one basic principle in all of them is that our souls, or energy as some refer to, do pass on in some shape or form. Think about certain incidents in your lives that you can't really explain. A familiar fragrance that you smell for no reason or maybe a feeling that someone is with you when you are alone. Maybe there was a very dark time in your life that for some odd reason, something or someone gave you a sign not to give up. We try to create logical reasons for these incidences or simply blow them off. But they linger with us because we just can't explain them. Are we just grasping at straws or are these little signals being sent to give us reassurance. I'd like to think the latter one is true. In the end we just really don't know for sure and it is that exact mystery that keeps us intrigued. We rely on our faith. But the one thing about faith is that you believe in something that you physically can't see or touch. So sometimes our faith weakens or gets corrupted by the ways of the world. I hope there is an other side. I hope I am living a life that will get me there. I hope I get to be reunited with my loved ones in a place of comfort and joy. I hope I keep my faith. Maybe I should stop hoping and start believing, have a strong conviction towards my faith. We all hope that there is something better than this, that there is something more than this. Maybe if all of us practiced our faiths more and had stronger convictions that better place would start being here. Almost everyone is aware of the crisis facing our nation and Syria alike. If you are not aware then you must be living under a rock. The people of the United States along with Congress are split in their decisions whether or not to attack Syria. There is a very fine line that I personally am not sure if we should cross. Attacking Syria would be another instance where the United States interferes with another country's problems. Also, the US does not have the backing of its allies which should be a strong determining factor.
On one hand I can understand and ALMOST support the US if they do decide to attack Syria. It shows a strong stance against the use of chemical weapons. If we do not take a stand against such morbid weaponry use then who is to say that chemical weapons won't eventually be used against America? Since Obama prematurely put out the military threat against Syria, how would it look if we did nothing? Should we not try to protect people and innocent children from such horrid destruction and grim deaths? If the US didn't interfere in WWII what might the outcome have been? On the other hand why should the US constantly interfere with other nations' problems. We have so many issues affecting our own nation that needs dire attention. Things such as high unemployment rates, extreme numbers of home foreclosures, lack of finding work, the homeless, health insurance, and so on. Why should we spend possibly billions of dollars on attacking Syria when we could be using that money to get our own country back in order. But that sounds pretty selfish doesn't it? I would love to hear your views on this issue. Post a comment. |
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