MISDIAGNOSED: Book One

Chapter Sixteen - Hell in a nutshell

Lets just say that December 2023 was when everything had been taking its final hits at me. After hospital in November, that traumatic time had been something I took a long time to process. The PTSD was not something I had expected to struggle to work with after hospital but it was a battle that I was ready to fight especially after fighting for my life as long as I had. A lot had been going on in this particular December. We were waiting for my final results to be published which would show whether or not I passed my first year in a course I spent two years fighting to get into, gathering up all of the last-minute things we needed for my mothers wedding, then leaving for the wedding, coming back and unpacking, and then holiday festivities, etc. You can imagine that this chapter was not a fun-filled one for my health. I was particularly excited to see my results which were supposed to be released the 7th of December but then I found that I was only to receive them around the 21st or so. The beginning of December was the calm before the storm to say the least. By the title of this chapter, you can speculate just how tremendously fucked up my health was, and thats putting it nicely. When December started, I was praying to God one night for a sign that ending a prior relationship was the right thing to do. I never expected a direct reply from him the next day but that was indeed the case. This was within the first week of the month where I found out that a former boyfriend that I was with for three years had cheated on me months before when he was an exchange student off in another country. Not only had he cheated and lied about it, but he also still spent my birthday with myself and my family, and then had the nerve to lie to me every single time I had a gut instinct about it, right until I was confronting him with the screenshots of proof I had received. That was my sign that I was clearly on the right track after cutting ties with someone who most definitely not the person I would want to spend my life with. Im not sure if it was perhaps my grandparents in heaven who declared the sign I requested as urgent as possible in order for me to receive it as immediately as I did but thank you to them. It helped me along my healing journey from hospital by giving me one less thing to think about. Then we were going back and forth getting certain things for my mothers wedding that were needed to be kept safe until the time came. Along with an orthodontist appointment. So, I had been feeling weird every now and then with a subtle ache in my stomach. We left for the wedding location on the 14th of December. The drive there was a stressful one, in hot weather, and we had to stop halfway along the journey to fetch a last-minute thing we needed as décor. When we arrived at the wedding venue to discuss final details with the wedding planner/chef, I had not eaten since 11am. If you read the previous chapters about what the Dietician said, you would know that I am supposed to have small meals every few hours as it helps control the acid production in my gut until we have the issue sorted once we have the capsule endoscopy. So, the fact that I had not eaten anything since 11am and we were seated at the venue around 5pm. I was nearing the point where my stomach was starting to tell me I need food soon or else I will give you hell, and I was listening very well. Trust me. At the same moment, I noticed a huge crack in my phone screen and was trying not to freak out about that. In case you were wondering why I just didnt eat something before we left considering that we left around 3pm, I had a small pie but clearly the pie was wearing off and dinner is when I have my biggest meal of the day. During the day I had been lashed out at by certain people and that stress was already causing the acid in my stomach to bubble, along with my blood because it was extremely frustrating. After hospital, one of the things I swore Id never let happen again was allow myself to feel disrespected or provoked by people who think that I will allow it to happen with no consequences. It has made me more brutally honest and blunt compared to how I used to be. However, since it was a wedding, I let it pass because it was simply not my time to voice my opinion. Personally, and you could disagree with me on this, due to terrible experiences and witnessing the sides of people that come out when engaged, I dont think that I have any interest in dating, engagement nor marriage. After tremendously traumatic relationships that included manipulation, gaslighting, lying, cheating, narcissism, distrust, rudeness, judgement, mental abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, rape, sexual harassment, immaturity, disrespect, all kinds of things that made me see through the potential and see what was being shown to me I no longer trust the idea of letting any person get close to me romantically ever again. Due to something an ex did to me years ago, that could be the cause for the internal bleeding that has been happening since that same year, causing my anaemia and iron deficiency, causing anxiety, etc. All of these things are what my mind tries to process along with things that were experienced since childhood and then having a near-death experience in hospital which skyrocketed my PTSD and therefore increased my anxiety. So, being lashed out during that day and then being lashed out at the dinner table when no food had arrived until we were only allowed to order an hour thereafter. By the time we ate, I was already frustrated to the point where I just wanted to eat to satisfy my stomach lining and then drown myself in the ocean. Is this a stupid thought? At the time it did not feel that way but looking back at it now, I feel empathy for the person who was in that state. Nobody cares about your pain when they cant see blood running from your veins onto your skin or blue marks all over you. I have felt the burden of my health around everyone especially the ones closest to me. Every single time my health has made me struggle with the spasms, and even breathing, I still found myself apologizing to everyone around me as if it was my fault for my own body fighting me. This is simply because I was raised to always smile around people, be kind and never show how you truly feel inside. This might offend them but this is the truth. My sibling and I were raised to believe that if someone makes you angry, you need to hide it and smile, treat them nicely and just pretend you are fine. After hospital, it became explicitly clear to me that pretending Im fine is what was killing me slowly. Pretending that I was happy in a deeply toxic relationship, pretending I was happy with being slut-shamed by their family and a stepfamily, pretending that I was happy with hiding my pain from everyone in order to not ruin other peoples day, all of that was what led me to the Trauma Unit more than once even in a month. So, to those who I have cut out of my life. If you feel offended, stay offended, because I have a high tolerance for people who genuinely make mistakes but none for those who outright disrespect me or the ones I love. So, then that night of the 14th I was feeling weird and was running to the loo with my stomach being very busy. Only to find out the next day that both my stepbrother and sibling had been experiencing the same thing. We insinuated that it might have been something in the food that we ate, despite how delicious, it might have been a rich sauce or something. The 15th was the day that I had already anticipated to be horrible. To preface this, I had been taking anti-anxiety medication since hospital and prepared to take 2 the day or even 4 if the day became too much because I needed to calm my nerves. It would have been my three-year anniversary of not only dating my ex, but also the six-year anniversary of meeting my ex as well. So, it was a day that I had not been interested in dealing with but knew it had to be there at some point. I usually have breakfast (two scrambled eggs and a yoghurt) around 8am or 10am for the latest. Due to not sleeping properly, I was already awake around 6am. I just didnt trust the pan that we had in the kitchen of this self-catering place and didnt want to create a non-edible breakfast for myself. So, I had a yoghurt and we eventually all got dressed around 9am. We had planned to wait for my mothers wife and my stepbrother to meet us at that chalet around 12 the afternoon for brunch. I kid you not, they showed up around something past 1pm and my mother had made French toast which sat there since 12pm. Which meant that I had to smell the food that my body had been craving for 6 hours, so I was doing acrylic nails on myself to keep my mind preoccupied in order to somehow forget the smell of the delicious food standing on the counter as my mother refused to eat until the others arrived. You can imagine that letting the stomach acid boil for almost seven hours until eating was not a good idea. Then when it came around to 3pm, we were supposed to check out a specific location. However, we stopped at a grocery store to grab a few things for the chalets first. So, I asked for a pie to eat because my stomach was growling on the inside. It might only have been about two hours or so since I ate, but compared to the amount of acid that was waiting for the food that I ate, my food must have digested extremely quickly. When I asked if I could have my pie once we reached the location we were headed to, I received dirty looks that followed with a Youre hungry already, from the same person who has coffee for breakfast then only eats again around 2pm. We are not the same. I couldnt help the situation, and they knew this that frustrated me. Which we have all learned by this chapter is not a good thing. Being frustrated and angry causes stress, and all of that bundles itself up over time. Not only was I starving by the time I ate, I was sitting under a tree which had one of the only benches in the area and it was an extremely windy day which brought a cold wind. Digesting food along with cold winds is a recipe for disaster, and I could feel my stomach start to cramp up. That is when I asked if I could sit in the car until my food digested, which is when I received another dirty look and that was the moment I was DONE. I WAS DONE. Being treated like my health was such an ISSUE, such a BURDEN, such a DISTURBANCE. Im not going to apologize for something I have NO control over and have to protect in order for me to not be laying on the damn floor SHAKING LIKE I WAS HAVING A FUCKING SEIZURE AND NOT BEING ABLE TO BREATHE. THINKING OH LORD, IS THIS WHEN I GO? and still feeling like shit for being the one to be the dramatic one even though I could fucking die. I was done pretending like being mistreated for trying to keep to my routine for the sake of my health was such a problem. From that moment on, my mind delved into darkness. I no longer cared for anything. Once we got back to the chalets, I was so sore from the aches in my stomach that I passed out until around 8pm. My mother had told me how she and her wife were disappointed by me and my behaviour. That they were hurt. It was honestly something that held no meaning in my heart, mind and spirit at that point. I was no longer going to apologize for things out of my control. Whether you like it or not, not my problem. Im done saying sorry for my body spasming into such tremendous pain that I cannot balance my body temperature, that I cannot control my breathing, that I need to stay as calm as possible in order to stop the risk of an anxiety attack, that I need to have calm energy around me because I can feel the energy shift when I am having an episode. So, if I am around people who get angry and treat me like a piece of shit when I already cant control whats happening inside me Do you know what that does to a person over time? It makes them feel like perhaps being dead is the better option. It makes them no longer want to fight the pain and let it just consume them. You all know who you are. I spent most of the last (almost a decade) feeling ashamed about my health and locking myself in a room when sick until I felt better just to walk out looking all perfect so I wouldnt inconvenience anyone else as I have been told it does. This was all occurring the day before the wedding and the day that I would have celebrated an anniversary with someone who, if I had not found out, if I had not ended things with, I would have been celebrating with someone who had genuinely no interest in my well-being. Someone whose toxicity and toxic people around him caused me so much strain that I had been hospitalized multiple times and in pain and never saw him visit me once. Then to make matters worse, the only thing available for dinner was the one thing I said I cant eat because it makes me sick. It was a chicken wrap with sweet chilli sauce. Sweet chilli sauce has caused me more spasmic episodes than more of the other things I could think of. I tried my best to scrape as much of the sauce off that I could and eat what parts of the wrap that I could, but it still has some of the sauce on it. As you would expect, I was in pain again. At that point I was just so drained, so disappointed, and so let down my body was in pain, but my mind shut down. I felt like a shell of a person. Or at least as if I was a ghost watching somebody in pain that I didnt consider myself. I simply cleaned up and went to bed, mentally cut off from the rest of the world. I might as well have been dead in that moment, because thats how I felt. I knew that my body was in pain but I didnt care anymore, just laid down on the bed, wrapped me in my gown, closed my eyes, and prayed that I wouldnt wake up. Im sorry if this hurts to read, but its how I felt. Closing in on almost 6 years of spasms, aches, pains, crying, throwing up, struggling to breathe, anxiety attacks, panic attacks, struggling to keep my body temperature normal between hot and cold, going so pale that I look like a ghost due to all my blood rushing to the organs that need it most so my body doesnt shut down, being in such inexplicable pain that once my body successfully won the battle, whether it took thirty minutes or eight hours or an entire day, I would immediately pass out in order to recharge from the toll it took. When you have experienced all of that, along with needles going into skin tissue, needing to get blood and iron via intravenous at hospital, being rushed to the Trauma unit when I was too sick for tablets to help, almost successfully overdosing on medication, being treated like I meant nothing by hospital nurses, doctors, and general practitioners, being misdiagnosed multiple times, being treated like I was crazy when in fact they were just not thorough enough with their tests, being treated like a burden by family and friends all in almost a decade You do get moments where you wonder whether you should just end it all so you can give everyone else a break. I became suicidal at certain points in the almost 6 years of this crap. Tell me, would you be able to handle it? Where you cant trust things you eat or drink because once you have it, all hell breaks loose. Your body turns on you. Your insides feel like they are being torn apart within you, put together, twisted, torn apart and put together again and repeating this for hours Feeling like your body is so hot that you cannot stop sweating, but when you dry off and take off some clothing, you start shivering and shaking from freezing, then put on warm clothes and that cycle continues for hours All the while, trying your absolute best not to cry from the pain, the burning, bubbling, and ripping happening inside you because when you cry, it strains your oesophagus which pulls in and makes you immediately start projectile vomiting Then trying to stay as calm as possible to stop yourself from having an anxiety attack but your mind is panicking because nothing you do is working The tablets you take lasts two seconds in your throat before you throw it up and the acid burns you from the inside out Not being able to slow your breathing enough before the anxiety and panic attack hits you and suddenly you arent able to breathe... This continuing from thirty minutes to an hour, to several hours, sometimes days... Would you be able to handle it? The anxious feeling in your mind of When am I going to feel this powerless again?, Where can I hide when it happens so nobody is bothered by me until its gone? Could you handle that for almost 6 years? Feeling powerless, hopeless, useless, ashamed, and like a burden in those moments. Having your family give dirty looks and tell you to stop being dramatic when you literally dont know if you will make it out alive because it feels like your body is trying to kill you. Not being able to control when or where it happens, who it happens around, how to stop it, or make it never happen again. Not knowing if you will survive it or if you should just give in. This is what happened the evening of my mothers wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony. However, getting everything ready before the wedding was very stressful. Making sure that my mothers makeup and hair looked gorgeous, that my hair and makeup was alright, that our photos and everything were all done on time, that we would get to the wedding venue on time and being able to keep everything in control with how strong the wind was that day built up more stress. Once we started eating dinner that night at the reception, my body was ice cold from the wind outside and the jacket I wore wasnt helping. Nobody understands that sometimes you could put on a million clothes and it wouldnt help. I knew that I needed to be in a warm area but there was no area that was warm despite being indoors. It was a lovely reception but taking sips of sparkling alcohol piled onto the stress, having fried fish with batter piled onto it especially since I was getting very cold, and what caused everything to topple over for good was when I was halfway into my chicken when I realised that there was cheese in there. All I remember from that night was everything before that moment hit. I remember asking my sibling if he could drive me to the chalet so I wouldnt worry anyone but he was only planning to leave the venue around 11pm, I had been in pain since 9pm. We only left the venue at 11:45pm. I, however, was laying passed out in the car from the pain since 11pm. Once we got to the chalets, I first had to remove my nails and makeup, tie my hair and undress before I was able to take a shower. The heat from the shower onto my back is what saved me. I stood there with the water burning into my back until I could feel my insides were warm again too. It was awful. The days after that was too. I was sick and in pain on our way home, so I had to treat it again. Then a few days later I was so sick that I bloated till I looked 9 months pregnant. I recorded video of it because I found it so funny at the time. Until the pain hit me like a truck out of nowhere and as soon as I started salivating, I ran to the bathroom and threw up five times. Keep in mind, my mother was on her honeymoon at the time. At least I wouldnt be bothering her with it after her wedding. Days after that I had been trying to stay calm and eat as little as possible, whilst drinking more water. Until Christmas day, where I accidentally had a big breakfast and they served lunch earlier than I expected so Christmas lunch was served two hours after my big meal. I only ate half of my plate for lunch and for dessert but then it hit me like a ton of bricks. But of course, to protect everyone else, I stayed in one room and passed out from the pain. My stepbrother was playing games in the room, and everyone else was doing there own thing so it didnt matter where I was. Yet I was still yelled at for being knocked out. So, of course stumbling my way through the house to satisfy stupidity, everyone saw that I clearly wasnt well and was pale. They were all concerned and asking me if I wanted to lay down. Like wow that sounds like a great idea, why dont you go tell the person who angrily woke me up and rolled their eyes at me that its a wonderful idea? Then days after that I had insomnia, woke up at 4am with this gut feeling that something was wrong. Not too long after waking up with this feeling, my sibling had been projectile vomiting until 8am. Nonstop. I, of course, was sending message since 4am to keep my mother updated and I tried different methods to help him but they didnt seem to help. She was here within an hour or two. No judgement, no eyeroll, constant worry, kind and understanding voice, etc. But thats different. He was sick for a day. When someones been sick for years, you dont even bat an eye. Thats why a lot of people never cared a lick whether I was in pain or not until Im in a hospital bed and cant breathe. This was December 2023. What an end to a horrible year That is until I tripped and fell on New Years Eve.