Humpty Dumpty

I feel exactly like Humpty at present. For the last few days I’ve been broken into a thousand bits. Each fragment of shell representing the return of a new or long gone symptom. Sadly there were no King’s horses and King’s men to put me back together again. I had to muster all my own reserves to get through this one.

It may be useful for others if I list the symptoms that descended to shatter me…..total insomnia (no sleep at all for two nights and very little for a week), violent stress dreams, tachycardia when waking from these, painful hands with tendonitis in my thumbs and wrists, indigestion and constant wind and stomach movement plus pain, flowing pain throughout my body, stiff muscles and joints, temperature variations with fluctuations between the  intolerable heat of the Sahara to the freezing cold of the Arctic, mild headache, deafness and fullness in my ears, painful, red, watery eyes, runny nose (no cold), overwhelming tiredness, foggy head and a new feeling of unreality, difficulty in remembering what I was talking about,  feeling hungry all the time but able to eat little, dry retching and shaking  while, overriding all this, was tension  that held my body in its vice like grip and sent out messages of needing to die to get out of this one.  Nevertheless I didn’t die and slept a few hours last night to wake with a feeling of unreality but relatively calm again. What a nightmare of a journey.

The last couple of months symptoms have certainly ramped up but there’s been the odd window or two here and there. I am absolutely certain that all this represents major healing. Now, at nearly two years away from Nitrazepam, I am beginning to feel different deep down inside myself. I was able to cope with the beast of the last week by lying back and listening to relaxing music with my eyes closed as well as visualizing myself healthy and whole again. The battle was exhausting but, somewhere deep inside me, I knew that it was one that should be happening at this time if I am to slay that beast and put it to rest once and for all.

I have much more to say but am typing this with the rubber end of a stylus as my wrists are painful from the tendonitis. It’s slow and frustrating. This bad setback may not be over but for today I’m calm again.