chronicillnesssucks

[chronicillnesssucks]

“Have they tested your *insert thing that is tested on every basic bloodtest ever here* yet?”

[chronicillnesssucks]

Me: I am well hydrated, have had plenty of salt and am ready to take on the heat!

My POTS-y ass after approx. 2 minutes in the sun: *faints*

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My absolute pansy of a body in any temperature above 70 degrees:

[chronicillnesssucks]

being diagnosed later in life is like watching a tv show with a huge plot twist revealed at the end of a season, and then rewatching it with this new knowledge, picking up on all the foreshadowing, and getting upset that you didn’t see all of it before

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[chronicillnesssucks]

you: at least we have our health

me, a chronically ill intellectual: at least we can utilise the present meme formats to joke about how we don’t have our health

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What I think I sound like when I’m talking to a new doctor about my chronic illnesses:

What the doctor hears:

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When a new doctor hasn’t heard of my condition

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100% yes

I feel like there are v different ways to experience nausea. sometimes I have nausea in my stomach, sometimes in my chest, in my throat or in my head. it’s hard to explain it

[chronicillnesssucks]

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*does literally fucking anything*

*feels nauseous*

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can we as a society just generally move away from the idea that it is better to bear with an illness than to take medicine that could help? 

[chronicillnesssucks]

A reminder to myself and others: It’s important to let yourself rest when you need it 💙

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Chronic illness is doctors doubting you until you doubt yourself.

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I don’t know what’s going on but it’s a lot

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I don’t post much on here anymore because of a million different excuses, but I want to see if anyone else in the Tumblr chronic illness community has had any experience with negative zombie-like side effects from taking Nortriptyline.  I started taking Nortriptyline at the end of April 2017 for IBS related diarrhea and pain. Started with 10mg for a week or two and then went to 25mg and have been on it since. Six weeks later I started getting weird episodes of suddenly having this zombie like feeling come over me. I would feel so out of it, my eyes would be really heavy, couldn't focus on anything, have a headache, and just very cloudy and had this weird 'heavy' feeling come over me. It would last for a little while, anywhere from maybe half an hour to a couple of hours at a time, and then all of the sudden as quickly as it came on, I would just suddenly snap out of it and would feel like a human again and just feel so much lighter. Lasted for a couple of weeks, and then it mostly went away for a bit except for a few episodes here and there. Then in September it started happening again and I would feel terribly drowsy on top of it. The drowsiness could last just a short while or all day for multiple days at a time. And those episodes have pretty much stayed consistent through now, and the last few months it's been getting worse and the episodes are happening more frequently and lasting longer, and it's starting to interfere with my life. I'm almost positive it has to be because of the Nortriptyline, because since it is an antidepressant it takes 4-8 weeks to build up in your system, and these side effects started at 6 week after taking it. So I had decided a little while ago that I wanted to talk to my doctor about stopping it and seeing if it made a difference. But now the past week or so, I've been feeling really depressed, sometimes just for a little while and a few days it's been all day. But it seems to happen on top of this drowsy and out of it feeling, so I'm assuming it's related. I had depression as a teenager but have been depression free since 2007 and haven't felt like this at all since then, so now I'm really worried about it. The Nortriptyline has reduced my IBS symptoms a good 80-90% so I hate to try and go off of it, but I know I need to try for my sanity. So I saw my doctor yesterday morning and even though I told her this started last year 6 weeks after starting it, but I've been dealing with it and ignoring it because it's helped my IBS so well, she said it's unlikely that it would be the Nortriptyline causing this all of the sudden when I've been on it for so long. -eye roll- But we met in the middle and decided to try alternating my dose between 25mg and 10mg every other day for a week or two, then going down to just 10mg until I see her again in six weeks. I'm so afraid my IBS symptoms will flare back up, but I really want to completely be off this medication so that I can see if these feelings go away. Otherwise if they don't, I'll know for sure that it is some other weird issue going on, but I'm hoping that's the cause of all of this. Is there anyone else who has dealt with something like this?

[chronicillnesssucks]

me: *eats one (1) edible substance*

my stomach: