24 January 2007

Happy feet...NOT

I'm sitting here, it is 4:30am. I woke up from a weird dream and my feet were aching really bad. I don't know if it was the weird dream I was having or the pain that woke me. I'm glad I woke from the dream as it was not a good dream but not really a nightmare. I dreamt that I was having my foot pain and the newly acquired hand pain, which we think is a side effect of one of the medications I'm taking to control the foot pain. I can't win!

Anyway, I wasn't able to get anyone to help me with the pain (in the dream). All the doctors kept telling me, is there was nothing they could do about and to get used to it(the pain). The doctors said the pain was a direct result from the length of time that I have been HIV+ (21 years). In other words the disease had been affecting other functions within my system not just my immune system. The funny thing about dream is that they reflect recent events and James and I were at breakfast yesterday morning talking about this very point however not specifically about me but about how people sometimes have a doctor that tell them to get over themselves and just deal with the pain or a side effect of a drug and to be grateful they are alive.

Let me say that I am very grateful to be alive but it is by my sure determination to be so. I put up with the pain, taken all the crappy medications and dealt with all sorts of health problems that this disease has dished up to me over the years and it can be damn depressing. I'm not the only one that has dealt with these issue as I know a lot of other HIV+ people who have similar problems and they have all coped with their issues in the own way. I've written about this before and I'm sure I will again because it is a way for me to cope and it helps me get it out of my system. So, I will inevitably continue to write about how I deal or don't deal with living with HIV and at the same time try to go through life "being normal".

I took my pain medicine a while ago and the ache is easing but under it all I know it's still there and some how I need to keep it from winning... I will.

Don't even ask about the hand pain...

2 comments:

dirk.mancuso said...

Sorry to hear about the hand and feet pain. It's weird how the very meds people take to help with one thing cause more problems -- my mother has been going through the same thing following her illness last fall.

TJ said...

Thanks for that D....