Sunday night is Interferon night. I start dreading it in the afternoon, and will usually do the injection right before bed. Then Monday: hoo boy, it is a dilly, not fun in the least. Let's start with the migraines. I've had headaches for most of my life, including my childhood. In adulthood, those garden-variety headaches morphed into migraines and cluster headaches. Pre-interferon, I would have bouts a few times a year, typically every 2-4 months. They would last a couple of days (up to a week sometimes) and then go away until the next spell. Thanks to Interferon, they have now become a regular Monday visitor, and will usually stick around until Tuesday evening, sometimes until Wednesday evening.
Then let's go to the fevers and sweats. That will also typically start on Monday morning, and every week they last longer. This last week, I had them up until Saturday morning. I hope that is a fluke. This week might also be a bit nasty in that regard, since we started a pretty serious heatwave today. I didn't look at the temperature during the daytime today, but I can tell you that it almost certainly went over 100. At 9 pm tonight, it was 87 degrees. That's right, that is not a typo; 87 degrees. Tomorrow and Wednesday currently look to get progressively hotter, and it will then drop slightly the next few days. That should not be very conducive to me staving off a fever, or for that matter, help out with the next problem: the malaise.
I've had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since 1993 or so, but the fatigue that I'm having now makes the usual old malaise I was used to look downright inconsequential. So far, it's not lasted more than 3-ish days, and I hope it stays that way. Today, it meant that I basically didn't leave the couch, other than to feed myself, the dogs, or go to the bathroom. I don't even have the energy to read. Actually, I had to pep talk myself tonight into writing this because well, I knew I needed to. Writing has been my refuge. As much as it may sound like I'm getting ready to host a pity party, it's far from the truth. Just putting this down onto "paper" is so therapeutic. It's giving this perspective for me, and since I'm somebody with a high tolerance for discomfort, pain and disease, that perspective is not a view that is leading me to feeling hopeless. On the contrary, it is keeping me sane. When I'm lying there for an entire day, it's easy to fall into the despair that it might never be any better than this. I know that is not the truth, I just need to keep reminding myself of that. That is another unfortunate problem with Interferon, and that is the psychiatric adverse reactions.
I've still been unable to find a single person who has done interferon and has avoided any psych issues, and the usual one is depression. It's typically an insidious and unpredictable variant of depression, often not set off by or the outcome of anything that one can identify. I'm just starting to get glimpses of it, and am thankful that I did my homework. Otherwise, I might be a lot more concerned. I'm not saying that I'm not vigilant; to the contrary, I'm on pretty high alert. But I have to say that I think that knowing this makes it easier to remind myself that it won't always feel like that.
This is a very foreign landscape that I'm navigating. I can honestly say, this is thus far the most challenging thing, other than losing Ken, that I've had to confront. I'm still sometimes feeling like I'm walking in the dark and waiting for the step that will stub the hell out of my toe or send me falling down the staircase. At its worst moments, it's like that scene in The Silence of the Lambs when Clarice is being stalked by the killer in a totally dark house and the killer is wearing night-vision (infrared) goggles. At its best times it's an annoyance. If I can keep the balance in my favor that will only make this journey more tolerable. More than anything else right now, writing is keeping me sane. It's taking all this negativity that is swirling in my head and giving it a face. If it has a face, it's less scary for me than than the faceless monster that is stalking me in the dark.
Next time, I'll promise a little more happy talk. This solitude hasn't been all bad. On my good day or two of the week, I've been able to get myself in the kitchen and cook again. Actually, I've found a new obsession that helps the time fly by when I have the energy for it: canning and preserving. I've become obsessed with canning, freezing, dehydrating, fermenting, any way that I can preserve food. "Putting up" (as we say in Montana) for the winter has been so satisfying. I know that what I'm getting at the Saturday Farmer's Market will be available in various reincarnations throughout the rest of the year. And I made it myself.
But more about that later. For now, I don't like Mondays. I want to shoot the whole day down. But that will change, that I know. I just have to stick it out and keep my eyes on the prize. That is not so bad, I can do that thing. I know I can do that. I think.
Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
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