I’ll cry if I want to

I’m having a crummy week. I’ve been on the brink of tears for some days now. Maybe I’ll watch a sad movie later to coax them out. Any suggestions?

This mood has crept up on me for a few reasons. I believe the primary cause is a new drug I’m trying called Gabapentin. It’s supposed to help with neuropathic pain, the kind that’s felt in the nerves, the tingly burning kind. It’s one of the types of pain that I’m trying to manage. It appears in a few places in my body: my coccyx (tailbone), my left glute and thigh, my left neck and shoulder and down my arm, and throughout the length of my spine.

Like many other drugs, you have to take it for a number of weeks (sometimes up to 12 weeks for certain anti-depressant type drugs) to know if it’s working. I also decided to stop taking cannabis while testing the drug to know that any effects are from the new drug and not the cannabis. In other words, I want to give it the best chance of working and be able to monitor the effects without interference.

This is easier said than done. The Gabapentin appears to have an unfortunate side effect of increasing anxiety, which for me is a major cause of some of the tension pain flares I get in my back and neck. What’s more, cannabis has been my medication of choice to help manage my anxiety levels. It helps me reduce my tendency to latch onto dooms day thinking spirals and instead helps distract me with a constant supply of shiny new thoughts.

The combination of increased anxiety from the new drug and the lack of management from the cannabis is creating an unfortunate side effect on my mood.

All anxiety and no relief makes Samantha a dull girl.

Hanging out in limbo

Another contributor to my mood is this feeling of being in limbo on a few fronts. I’m simultaneously waiting on my long-term disability application to be assessed and, hopefully, approved; on the new drug to take effect; and on getting in to two pain clinics, one local here in Prince George, BC and one in Vancouver, BC.

All this waiting is taking a toll on my resilience. My hopefulness is slowly eroding into hopelessness. Patience was never really one of my strong points either. I’ve mentioned in past articles my tendency to be a doer of things. At work, I was known to get things done, removing barriers and challenging the status quo to move things forward. Oftentimes I’d use the motto “better to ask forgiveness than permission” in the defense of going forward on something without following the long and painfully slow protocols.

Unicorn problems

The final bearer of bad mood for me this week was brought on through discussions with my husband around our options for starting a family. Josh and I have started exploring alternative options after finding out that we may have difficulty conceiving our own. Something about a unicorn uterus, which to me sounds pretty fantastic (who doesn’t want a unicorn?), but apparently means we may have some challenges ahead in carrying a fetus to term.

Getting pregnant has ended up being more difficult for us than originally anticipated. I mean, growing up all you ever hear about is how you shouldn’t have sex because you’ll immediately get pregnant. Apparently, not the case for us. Two years after removing my IUD and all the sex later, still no baby.

It was stressful for a while, but I’ve come to accept that we may never conceive. I’m also sort of relieved that I may not have to carry a baby. I was absolutely terrified of the idea of carrying more weight on my already deteriorating body when we first started trying.

How am I going to carry a fetus when I can’t even hold myself up half the time? Am I going to be adding to the pain I already have to manage? Can I even do this??

Alternative options

Now my husband and I are discussing alternative options to have a family. Adopting a baby? Adopting from foster care? Adopting from another Country?

Fertility treatments are out of the question for me. The idea of having to spend more time in a hospital setting doing more treatments and having more failures would likely destroy whatever resilience I have left.

In the process of discussing our options, I came to a sad realization that a lot of the pain I experience in my body is a result of high emotions. My body simply can’t handle any big emotions without thinking it’s being attacked. It responds by tensing my muscles and causing my head to turn into a bowling ball. My neck can’t handle the strain and my brain shuts down from overwhelm trying to manage the flurry of incoming pain signals.

How am I supposed to handle a child, baby or otherwise, when I can’t handle the slightest stressful situation?

Even positive emotions like joy and glee can trigger a flare. My body can’t seem to tell the difference. I recently eloped with my husband, the most joyous day I’ve had in the past two years. My body crashed on me the moment we got home, absolutely exhausted from the expression of emotion.

No happy ending

This realization has been tough. I’ve even questioned whether it’s worth it to think about this right now, with so much uncertainty already in my life.

I wish I had a better way to end this article, but sometimes there is no happy ending. Sometimes we just need to feel the bad stuff. I know that it won’t last. Nothing is permanent. The clouds will part and I’ll see the sun again.

Until then, I’ll stew in my crummy feelings. Maybe they’ll tell me what I need to hear if I listen hard enough.