I know it's been a while - the impact of not being believed!

I know i haven't posted in a while. A lot of things have been happening in my life, mostly good but some bad too. As is life!

Currently I'm struggling to live at home, mostly because my mom has once again decided NOT to believe how much pain I suffer from every single day. H says to take her words with a grain of salt but it's still hard and it still hurts! Ever had a parent break your heart? Then you know what I'm talking about. She says my pain and other symptoms are just 'excuses'. Well they aren't and I'm not sure how much more of this crap I can take from her. I don't want to push my move to Portland but I don't know what else to do. I can't live like this. I've started avoiding my own house! How fucked up is that!?! I really thought we were getting along but because I don't live my life the way she thinks I should, with her rules and her schedule - gee, sorry mom, I have my own life! and I'm 30 years old or did you forget that!?! So I'm considering either a) finding a bunch of overnight housesitting jobs on the Peninsula, to be close to my new friend CR there and her horses that I get to ride and that is helping more than I ever thought it would. Or find housing in exchange for pet sitting, which may happen in a couple of months too. Or b) save as fast as I can, ignore my mom, which is hard to do, relish the times that she is gone and deal with it the best that I can or just not be home very often and then move to Portland as soon as I can, which right now won't be until end of this year or beginning of 2009. Need to save 1st, last and pet deposit anyway, so i figure $1500 at least and also talk to J to see if she will consider Portland instead of Seattle and be my roommate :)

On another bad note, I found out that my best friend J, who lives near Seattle has to have surgery, which she had last week, for a grapefruit sized cyst that she had on an ovary. She's okay, though she lost the right one and is just taking forever to heal. She also has Fibro plus MPS and some other issues. So she's better and I didn't need to go visit her but I was quite concerned for about two weeks.

And on top of all of that, I'm also now dealing with the upsetting reality of the memory of something that happened to me over two years ago now. I didn't tell anyone about it, which I know is dumb. We, as women, always say that if such and such ever happens to us, that we'd be able to report it or tell soemone about it right away, even if it means getting someone you thought you liked or cared about hauled off to jail. Well for some reason, I dealt with it by hiding, keeping my mouth shut out of fear and then blocking it from my memory. It ruined my relationship with the only person I've ever loved and will always love, becuase I couldn't tell him, because of a stupid fear that he wouldn't believe me (even though that fear was realistic at the time); my parents and closest friends don't even know. I see movies about it all the time and ask myself why?! It's weird when you literally block a memory. But now it's been coming back and last night I had a nightmare about it, woke up in a cold sweat, alone. Then spent all of today in tears and dealing with being super anxious. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm low on Effexxor and can't get more until Wed. I can't afford to see my therapist right now so that makes the situation almost impossible to deal with. I think I need to tell my closest friends who are girls - not that I have any guy friends anymore anyway - but I need to just get it out, have someone show me that they believe me. And then go from there! I wish this feeling on no one. But I felt that I needed to write this here, to get it out.

Here is an article I just found, regarding the impact of how it feels and how it makes pain patients or anyone feel, when someone doesn't believe you:

The Impact of Not Being Believed
Monday March 3, 2008

"I just wish someone would believe me!"

How often have you said or thought that? Disbelief or skepticism about fibromyalgia (FMS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS) is something most of us are all too familiar with, and if you've experienced it yourself, you don't need a study to tell you how painful it can be.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if someone would tell your doctors how detrimental it is for them to dismiss your pain? I was delighted to see a chronic pain study out of Wales that does tell them. (While this study was only on chronic pain, I don't think it's a stretch to say the findings would apply to fatigue and other "invisible" symptoms.)

Of a group of 8 people in the study, only 2 said they had no problem getting health-care workers to accept their word on pain, and those two people also had visible disabilities. Stories from the other 6 included doctors denying pain medication, shouting at them for taking more pain killers than prescribed, and even blatantly saying, "I don't believe you," and walking out.

Those actions left them with feelings that (no surprise to us!) included anger frustration, isolation, depression and thoughts of suicide.

The study concludes that doctors and other health professionals just need to believe what their patients say when it comes to pain, bringing up a definition of pain coined 40 years ago by Margo McCaffery, a chronic-pain nursing consultant: "Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever the experiencing person says it does." The logic is simple, but the implications to our treatment would be profound.

The final paragraph sums up what practitioners can do to avoid all these problems:

These simple means are: active listening; being non-judgemental; accepting the pain experience as credible as recounted by patients; and thus showing to patients that the relationship is based on caring and empathy. While these may be considered mundane and accepted practice, it is vitally important not to overlook the impact they have on patients with chronic pain.