When you live with the particularly unpleasant and often blindingly painful symptoms of Behcet's, you're often ready to try anything for relief. Like really, anything. Like if someone told you that attempting naked cartwheels down your back alley at sunrise was going to help you, you'd totally try it (assuming you can move at sunrise....arthritis doesn't really work like that!) Especially when you've been waiting for a diagnosis and treatment for a couple years; living with symptoms for countless years. So when your doctor writes this magical script and hands it to you, you have pretty high hopes. It sounds all magical and you see unicorns and rainbows. You float to the pharmacy on a pink cloud.
Then you fill that prescription. Most often you get a sheet of what the drug is, what the side effects might be, etc, etc. When you get handed one that is the equivalent to a short novel you get a bit skeptical. When you actually read it you get a little worried. When you Google it, you are ready to flush the drugs. When you start them, you wonder what you did. What is this devil drug?! Turns out what your doctor forgot to mention is that its a chemo drug. As in chemotherapy. Granted its in smaller doses than a cancer patient receives, but considering she is keeping you on the last chemo drug you were prescribed right along with this one, its a kick in the teeth nonetheless. Especially since you just finally got to the point where you can tolerate the side effects of the first one. A bad Jager hangover would be a welcome distraction. I want my unicorn back.
We get used to living with crippling nausea anyway. Most of us have several meds to combat it. We get used to the incapacitating joint pain, bone pain, muscle, nerve, and connective tissue pain. Again, we usually have a whole arsenal of meds for that too. We fight our way through the grueling fatigue and brain fog everyday just to shower. That's just our reality. We have a list of ugly symptoms as long as our arm, but we somehow manage to live with them. But then you start taking these meds and you feel worse than you did to begin with. That's cause as it turns out, they're really quite toxic. They tear down your immune system so you're open to any infection that's waiting for you. They make your hair fall out. They make you nauseated. They hurt your bones. They destroy your blood cells. You have to go for weekly blood tests when you first start some of them because they are just that hard on your organs. They make you sometimes wish for the flu....at least you'd feel better.
But, you stick with it. Not because you were told you have to, but because it just might be the light you so desperately need at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Hopefully this is what it takes. You grab the hope, because sometimes its all you've got. Sometimes you push through and eventually those side effects become less and less. The good starts to outweigh the bad, and you hear that unicorn galloping off in the distance. And, sometimes you just can't tolerate the meds and you move on to the next miracle. You realize that sometimes the treatments hurt as much as the sick, and that's just the way it is.
"Until you've travelled to that place you can't come back, where the last pain is gone and all that's left is black..."
..."And when you follow through and wind up on your back, looking up at no stars in the sky those white clouds have turned it black."
Then you fill that prescription. Most often you get a sheet of what the drug is, what the side effects might be, etc, etc. When you get handed one that is the equivalent to a short novel you get a bit skeptical. When you actually read it you get a little worried. When you Google it, you are ready to flush the drugs. When you start them, you wonder what you did. What is this devil drug?! Turns out what your doctor forgot to mention is that its a chemo drug. As in chemotherapy. Granted its in smaller doses than a cancer patient receives, but considering she is keeping you on the last chemo drug you were prescribed right along with this one, its a kick in the teeth nonetheless. Especially since you just finally got to the point where you can tolerate the side effects of the first one. A bad Jager hangover would be a welcome distraction. I want my unicorn back.
We get used to living with crippling nausea anyway. Most of us have several meds to combat it. We get used to the incapacitating joint pain, bone pain, muscle, nerve, and connective tissue pain. Again, we usually have a whole arsenal of meds for that too. We fight our way through the grueling fatigue and brain fog everyday just to shower. That's just our reality. We have a list of ugly symptoms as long as our arm, but we somehow manage to live with them. But then you start taking these meds and you feel worse than you did to begin with. That's cause as it turns out, they're really quite toxic. They tear down your immune system so you're open to any infection that's waiting for you. They make your hair fall out. They make you nauseated. They hurt your bones. They destroy your blood cells. You have to go for weekly blood tests when you first start some of them because they are just that hard on your organs. They make you sometimes wish for the flu....at least you'd feel better.
But, you stick with it. Not because you were told you have to, but because it just might be the light you so desperately need at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Hopefully this is what it takes. You grab the hope, because sometimes its all you've got. Sometimes you push through and eventually those side effects become less and less. The good starts to outweigh the bad, and you hear that unicorn galloping off in the distance. And, sometimes you just can't tolerate the meds and you move on to the next miracle. You realize that sometimes the treatments hurt as much as the sick, and that's just the way it is.
"Until you've travelled to that place you can't come back, where the last pain is gone and all that's left is black..."
..."And when you follow through and wind up on your back, looking up at no stars in the sky those white clouds have turned it black."
Black
Danger Mouse feat. Norah Jones
Danger Mouse feat. Norah Jones
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