I am no stranger to getting up in the middle of the night, feeling around in the dark for the door, trekking up the hall to the kitchen, squinting at the bright fridge light and pouring formula into a bottle for a crying baby in the other room, then lugging my butt back to bed.
I have been doing this for 12 years now. Yes, I get the occasional reprieve - but it's not often and it's few and far between. The effects of interrupted sleep on the body over the years has aged me beyond where I should be for 41 years old, though I always hope to bounce back to my "former self" at some point.
And now it seems like I am fumbling in the dark with a less concrete visitor to my body. I have the same middle of the night "fog" but it's 10 o'clock in the morning. I still hit the corner of the dresser but I'm not stumbling to make a bottle at 2 a.m. Unfortunately, it's not just from lack of sleep. "Probably MS" that's what I have heard from two different doctors several weeks ago.
Words like, maybe, possibly, it could be, perhaps, possible, float through the various conversations with the mixed bag of physicians I see month after month. Even more disturbing are phrases such as, you need to relax more, this is a classic sign of stress, you're a mother of six - it's no wonder you are forgetting phone numbers. Probably the most unnerving and irritating response I have recently received was from my former GP who has four children himself and a wife who homeschools them as I do my own children. He said to me at the last visit when I was telling him my symptoms of tingling in the hands and feet, the forgetfulness, the numbness in the toe ('insignificant' he said to that one) was this: "You could be my wife! (!) My wife suffers from anxiety and this is textbook anxiety." He then wanted to put me on a different antidepressant (I've been taking antidepressants for 10 years now) and Klonopin, an antianxiety. I told him I didn't want to switch antidepressants and I didn't want to be on an addictive drug such as Klonopin when I don't FEEL anxious. He said, "You're a different person then you were 10 years ago. You are much more stressed out with six children." I am not going to say that tending to a 12, 8, 7, 5, 4 and 1 year old is all roses and yes, it CAN be stressful, but I know my body very well. I know medicine very well as I have been a medical transcriptionist for 10 years. I have read hundreds of medical reports. I know whatever this is, it's not all anxiety. I am fortunate to have a very reliable "gut instinct" and the gut has been right about 85% of the time if I had to guestimate looking back on my life.
I suppose for now I will continue stumbling in the dark until I can receive that gentle reprieve I so desparately am searching for.
