Doctors aren’t miracle workers. We want them to be and we want, or all too often need, them to be
the source of our hope. Perhaps it’s unfair to put that kind of responsibility upon them but where else
are we supposed to put it.
I’m lucky enough to have a rheumatologist who actually cares about my wellbeing but today he was
at a loss as to what we should do next. As I am writing this, I am sitting in Starbucks with huge
plaques of psoriasis on both my forearms. I’ve caught the women to either side of me staring at my
arms. My hips are both on fire today, a leftover symptom from when I went outside my comfort zone
and attended a Vancouver Canucks game. Two of my fingers in my right hand are causing me more
trouble than they ever have before. It is clear that my current Taltz regiment is, at the very least,
inadequate and far more likely to be losing its effectiveness all together.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that I am lucky to be living in a country where pharmacare covers the
cost of Taltz in the first place, with each injection costing well over $1500 CDN, and that’s atop the
specialist and general practitioner appointments, as well as the monthly blood tests which are also
covered. However, when all that effort leads to no results it’s difficult to be thankful for very much.
And perhaps that’s what makes this all so hard, no forward movement. Hell, I don’t think I’m even
holding in one place anymore, instead being dragged backwards no matter how hard I struggle. So
when the doctors are giving up on hope for you it becomes impossible to keep looking forward
because you’re constantly checking over your shoulder for what hellishness is behind you. We will
all face that moment in our lifetime when we have to accept the eventual decline and failure of our
bodies, unless of course something tragic robs you of the ‘opportunity’. I had hoped, in 2012 when I
asked for help, that there was going to be some possibility of forward momentum for the foreseeable
future. That positive outlook lasted at most for two years until I hurt my knee once again and was laid
up, had to stop running and eventually walking.
After that moment, my entire life has been in a backwards direction. I failed my way out of school. I
put back on all my weight. My mental state has been in steady decline, despite the occasional bump
of a good day a couple times a year. My financial situation is about to take a huge turn for the
worse, with my income dropping as much as 40%. I eat and drink because those are the only
reliable things I have in my control which I know will give me an all too short feeling of contentment,
even knowing the incredible guilt I will feel later that day or the next.
I am alive today not because i fear death but because of what my suicide would do to my mother.
Not even the prospect of finishing and compiling my book is a reason to keep going. Where do I go
from here that isn’t backwards into the mire of loneliness, addiction and utter morbid gluttony?
x
