Do you?

Do you think God still loves me, even though sometimes I lay down against the cool tiles of my bedroom, close my eyes, and dream of all the ways I could leave this earth? Do you think God still loves me, despite the fact that sometimes I long for death more than I can bear? Or that I hold a pair of scissors to my wrist desperately fighting the urge to dig it into my flesh, and let the blood flow freely? Do you think God can forgive me, for wanting to return the gift of life He's given me. I wonder if he is ashamed to call me his daughter. If he sees a mistake when he looks at me. I wonder....if I can forgive me. Does the world see me as worthless, or is it just me?

Do you?

Do you think God still loves me, even though sometimes I lay down against the cool tiles of my bedroom, close my eyes, and dream of all the ways I could leave this earth? Do you think God still loves me, despite the fact that sometimes I long for death more than I can bear? Or that I hold a pair of scissors to my wrist desperately fighting the urge to dig it into my flesh, and let the blood flow freely? Do you think God can forgive me, for wanting to return the gift of life He's given me. I wonder if he is ashamed to call me his daughter. If he sees a mistake when he looks at me. I wonder....if I can forgive me. Does the world see me as worthless, or is it just me?

I'm getting sick of school

I'm going to keep this one rather short because I have so much work to do today. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep up with school. I keep missing days because some mornings when I wake up I just don't feel capable of going to school. At night I've been having a harder time than usual sleeping, and I already had issues sleeping to begin with. I've been running on five to six hours a night. That combined with the pain makes it so sometimes all my body feels capable of doing is spending the entire day curled up in bed. I now have custom supports for my shoes, so that my ankles stay in the position they are supposed to be in. I have lots of problems with my legs other than RSD...although I'm beginning to learn that some of these problems might have been caused by my RSD. My knees turn in towards eachother...and I have knob knees. In addition to this my feet turn in...I'm constantly tripping myself. My ankles roll funny. I don't know how to explain it, like they slope at a weird angle. Seriously I don't know what to call it. I have no arches. So anyways, my doctor thinks that if we get my legs to be more properly positioned, it will take the pressure off of some of my other joints that are overcompensating for the weird gate. On monday I go to the GI specialist. I'm a bit nervous. I want to find out why I seem to feel sick all the time, and I never seem to be able to eat anymore, but at the same time some of the tests they might want to do make me nervous. The blood tests didn't show any problems with my iron levels, so I still don't know why I'm always having dizzy spells. I am so stressed out...which definetely isn't doing my pain levels any good. But gosh...no wonder so many people drop out of highschool. In the last two weeks teachers put so many projects, tests, and other crap on our shoulders it's like tey expect us thave no life outside of school. And I need my weekends to keep sane. I need that time to soak in the bath and get caught up on sleep. I'm so tired of spending every second of my weekend working on hw. I have a paper due tomorrow, a huge self-research paper that is supposed to show what lessons I've learned from the books we read this semester. It's so stupid because we already did it last semester and I really can't think of anything to write about. I'm annoyed and I don't feel like writing it. It's nearly 7:30p.m, and I haven't even started on it yet. I had to take a long bath first. My legs hurt so bad...stupid rain. I wish my pain levels didn't have to spike every time the weather gets bad. And while I was in the bathtub I worked on reading Tuesdays With Morrie because it needs to be read by Friday. And since I didn't get home from school until four my day was pretty much shot just taking a bath, eating and writing this. So you might think, if your so dang busy why are you writing this? Well I just needed a breather. I don't care how busy I am. For one my teachers need to learn that sometimes I honestly cannot work at the same speed as the other students. They don't have to deal with all the other health problems I do, and that makes it alot harder to work on hw. When I have to sleep, I really do have to sleep. When I'm in a lot of pain it is really hard to focus on the assignment. My hips hurt so bad....my knees, my ankles, my calves. God every time I think that my pain levels couldn't get worse...I'm proved wrong. And my wrists are giving me so many problems lately. I don't know if it is RSD spreading to my hands, or if I could be getting carpal tunnel. I really don't type that much. And when I do I where the braces my doctor told me to wear. But my hands are becoming weak, and I get shooting pains, and yet they are stiff and numb. I'm beginning to have to ask other people to open containers and cut my food for me if it is something tougher to cut, because it hurts my hand too much to do it. Soon I may lose my ability to type even with the braces. Don't know what I'll do then. And I also am beginning to struggle to use a pencil, button a shirt, and other simple things. It's so annoying. And do you know what's worse? I tell my mom to mention it to the doctor, and she tells her, "Let's deal with one problem at a time." That pisses me off. I'm really struggling here and the doctor doesn't seem to care. I need a pain management clinic like I had in Fresno, but unfortunately my parents aren't very supportive. Okay well, I'll be up till midnight if I don't get this paper started, so I'll write more tomorrow.

Introduction

I thought that just in case anyone ever reads these posts, they might want to know a bit more about me. As I stated earlier I am seventeen years old, although I will be eighteen in august. I am a senior in highschool and I will be graduating on May 30th. I have already been accepted to northwest narzarene university and I have my education almost paid for. If you don't count the loan since that is something I will have to pay back, I have over $17,000 in money towards college. I've always worked really hard in school. It's a lot harder for me going to school and having RSD, but I do my best to make it work. I was a competetive roller skater before I got RSD, and I have a bronze medal in the JO qualifying events which allowed me to go to regionals. It was a pretty big deal for me. I probably would have gone far if the pain hadn't become too much for me. My initial injury was to my right heel. I had something called severs disease which basically just means that my growth plate in my right heel became separated. It's apparently pretty common in kids who are involved in sports that strain the feet before their growth plate in their heel fuses. I really don't know when that injury turned into RSD. I know the pain was and still is excruciating, and my leg was very skinny and weak and purple. My mom was always bringing that up to my doctors. She'd be concerned but they would tell her it was no big deal. Maybe if they had paid more attention to my moms complaints I could have been diagnosed sooner. Right now I seem to have a very general version of RSD. My pain is very widespread, I am extremely sensitive throughout my body, not just my legs anymore. But I no longer have the discoloration, and I haven't had it since surgery, PT, and meds got me up out of the wheelchair. So I don't know. Some people get better with therapy, others don't. Some people say that RSD is localized, others tell me it can spread. So I don't know if my RSD has just spread throughout my body since it took so long to diagnose, or if it is something else. I don't know if it is possible to have both, but I actually have a lot of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia now. Horrible pain every day, I never have any energy, and yet at night I can't sleep. I get alot of headaches. I have IBS and I also have idiopathic cystosis which just means unexplained bladder pain. I seem to get sick all the time. I get headaches pretty much every day. I now have really bad acid reflex as well. I wish I could say I was on a huge list of meds cuz then maybe I would be improving more, but as it is we are battling with our insurance and so I really don't have much help. I have a TENS unit which I use alot and it seems to help some. I go to acupuncture which for some strange reason also helps. I am on 50mg of elavil, I take naproxen, I have some hormone stuff, I take prilosec for my heartburn, this other stuff cuz I feel nausous all the time now, and of course I'm probably killing my liver with all the advil I take. I'd say on an average day I take anywhere from 6-12 advils. I am going to a pediatric GI specialist on May 12th and soon I would like to see a pediatric rheumotologist to see about getting my pain levels a bit more manageable. I can stand about ten minutes...and I can walk short distances. My legs and feet turn in at a weird angle and my ankles are weird, I have custom supports in my shoes that help me to hold my ankles at a proper angle. We think alot of these problems stem from my RSD. I came home from school early today because I wasn't feeling good, my legs were giving me problems, I had a headache, and we weren't doing much of anything in sociology.

RSD

This is my first post on my newly created blog. I don't know if anyone will ever see this and read it, or if it will always be just a place for me to vent my feelings, but I felt that it was something I should do. I have to go to school in a few minutes so I don't really have time to waste. So I'll make it short and touch things up later. My name is Becca and I am seventeen years old. The pain of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy began when I was nine...although I wasn't diagnosed until I was almost eleven. I went from crutches to wheelchair, wheel chair to quad cane, quad cane to reqular cane, reqular can to walking slowly by my self and eventually to the point I am today. I fought my pain because I refused to give up, but of course I still am battling RSD. My pain has never really gotten much better. It is less than it was before treatment, but it is still a very prominent part of my life. I am in pain 24/7 and I am generally very tired too. The RSD is in both legs, and recently I have been displaying RSD like symptoms in both wrists...but nothing has been diagnosed yet. I go to a GI specialist soon to see why I've been feeling very nauseous and sick to my stomach all the time. I barely eat anymore because of it. So whenever I get answers you'll know. I have to go brush my teeth, try and see if I can wear shoes, and put my contacts in for school.