#and its all gonna be useless bc i wasnt built to last! whats a therapist going to do when im inherently useless

[localcryptic]

im venting in the tags if u see this no you don’t ❤️

[backtojuno]

yoooo ive been really inactive lately, ive been going through a lot of shit. under the readmore is a bunch of stuff i need to get off my chest/make sense of. just be warned, its really long

you can read it if you want but its mostly complaining and cursing

riiiiight so about 2 months ago shit hit the fucking fan. Ive had problems with my neck thats caused very, very bad headaches for maybe 5/6 years or so. mostly i wasnt able to get anything done about it, being dependent on 2 parents who are both very pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of people.in june though, i started working extra shifts at my job so i could pay for a chiropractor. and it worked, i had no headaches... for about a month. for a month after that the headaches came back, even though i was still seeing the chiropractor. AND FUCKING THEN

i was at work, my last weekend before i went on a 2-week trip to see my mom up in ohio! i was super excited. but also in a lot of pain too. most of the way through my shift i cracked my neck, a little bit too hard. all of a sudden i was floating about a foot over my head, i was getting hot flashes, and the left side of my throat went numb. of course, i panicked, told my manager and called my dad. my dad called his doctor and he said that since my hands/feet/anything werent tingling or anything like that I was alright, but i should still see a doctor. dad decided not to take me to the ER, but I was still goddamn scared. I still am, honestly. of course, this got more complicated. it was a saturday, so doctors offices were closed and wouldnt be open til monday, the day that id leave for ohio. it was a really hard decision but if i didnt get on the plane to ohio, i wouldve had to forfeit the trip entirely. so, i went to ohio and my mom set an appointment for thursday for a doctor.

i waited, we went, and i told my story to the doctor. she didnt do any tests on me, didnt even touch me. just said i had probably hit a nerve and that i was fine, and offered to prescribe medicine which i didnt want. EXCEPT. FOR FUCKS SAKE. the day after i went to the doctor i started feeling this pressure on the side of my throat,right in that fleshy part just underneath the back of your jaw.i thought and hoped it would go away. it fucking didnt. some days were better than others but on some days id be sightseeing with my family and id be silent, standing in a museum looking at The Plane that The Wright Brothers Themselves built, and trying not to panic bc the pressure in my throat was bad and it felt like i couldnt get enough air in. when i told my mom she told me to calm down. that did not help, at all. anyways, the rest of the trip passed and i flew home. EXCEPT. JESUS CHRIST. while i was on the plane, i was having a hard time popping my ear. I didnt have any gum (and i hate gum anyways bc of misophonia) so i ended up spending the entire plane ride moving my jaw to try and pressurize my ear. that, of course, ended up with me doing something to the right side of my jaw that makes it crackle and sometimes pop when i move it. it also hurts sometimes, which is weird bc the only jaw pain ive ever had was when i had all 4 of my wisdom teeth taken out at once. with the pressure in my throat though, it was kind of an afterthought at the time

anyways. since doctor #1 really hadnt done anything and i didnt have a primary doctor, i decided to go to the primary doctor my mom and sister went to when they still lived down here with me. its probably a good time to mention that that side of the family is the one im close to and im stuck here in florida for another year while i finish college. anyways. getting to him was a long wait but i got there and told him my story and he ordered some x rays of my neck and bloodwork, and prescribed me medicine. i waited for the tests and waited more for the follow up. looked at everything and told me everything was peachy keen, perfect except for a little bit of degeneration in my spinal vertebrae. it looked like things were kinda (really) out of his area of expertise, so he prescribed me a different medicine and a few sessions of physical therapy and recommended a nose & throat specialist to go to if the throat pressure didnt go away. i am goddamn lucky my dad offered to pay for my medical expenses. Doctor #3 was more or less useless.

on to doctor #3! he’s a neck specialist. i managed to get an appointment pretty quickly with him so i waited to see him. i didnt see him on the day of the appointment, but rather his assistant. she listened to my story (except that i forgot to tell her about the throat pressure thing. i s2g i go featherbrained around doctors) and then tested my arm and leg strength/mobility/general usefulness/whatever. then she ordered an mri of my neck. i waited for the mri, then waited again for the follow up. She, of course, said there was nothing wrong and when i remembered to tell her about the throat thing (which had still not gone away, 2 months later) she just looked kinda confused. she, like doctor #2, prescribed me a different medicine and a month of physical therapy. i think somewhere along the timeline of seeing doctor #3 my jaw started acting up again? i dont remember the exact timing of that but it hurt, and it sucked. my throat also started getting pretty uncomfortable when i talked, like i had to work harder to speak at a normal level. that also sucks when you work in a customer service job

so i managed to rule out that the throat thing wasnt bc of my neck and that my vertebrae werent gonna spontaneously combust or anything, i booked an apointment with the nose & throat specialist, which was on tuesday. by this time i was a damn mess. i still felt at times that i was having a hard time breathing and i really couldnt even think about it without going on the verge of a panic attack. 2 months and NO answers other than “huh, that’s weird” (the physical therapist literally told me that to my face). i had started to do research on my own for lack of anything better. that led me to eagle syndrome! which described exactly what i was feeling! (http://www.livingwitheagle.org/t/es-information-common-symptoms-and-possible-explanations-for-them/1389) and from what i read, there’s no cure! just analgesics and surgery, really. that really, really did not help- if you cant do anything then whats the point, right?

EX-FUCKING-CEPT. right around the time that i figured that out, i started having pain in my chest. i didnt know why it was happening (i later figured out that its bc when i sleep on my side i put too much pressure on my chest and it hurts me where my ribs and my sternum meet. it just decided to act up then). still though, i didnt know that at the time and let me tell you, when your chest starts hurting after youve been having whats more or less a 2-month-long constant panic attack, its goddamn TERRIFYING. i had lost my appetite a couple days before and had not been eating much, so i was weak and my heart was beating weirdly. i asked my dad what to do. he told me to call my primary, and they told me to go to the ER. i asked my dad to take me to the ER. his answer? “no, we’re going to an urgent care clinic”. the urgent care clinic, of course, couldnt do anything, while i sat there crying. (the doctor there, doctor #4, literally told me to just wait to see the nose & throat guy and that “i should try to be more composed when i see him”) meanwhile, when trying to talk about what ive been feeling to my parents, aka several mentions that i feel like im choking, i was just told to calm down. as if everything wasnt crumbling and going wrong.

so i waited until the appointment on tuesday. actually, no i didnt, i went into depression mode(TM), getting nothing done, and ended up in the doctors office an hour and a half before the appointment on the verge of tears. since it was uncomfortable to talk and something just outside of my throat had started hurting a week before, i had typed up my story (named “The Big Clusterfuck” on my computer). doctor #5 did some tests and mentioned eagle syndrome, even though i had only described it in the paper and not named it, and TMJ. he gave me prednisone for a week and told me to come back in a week. i feel bad for the man, i cried a lot.

ive managed to get my appetite back and have started eating again, and spent all of yesterday evacuating florida. i really, really hope the prednisone works. i dont know what im gonna do if it doesnt. if youre religious or do witchy stuff or whatever floats your boat, please send along a prayer or a spell or something. im not as bad as i was last week but im still Not Okay