Fourteen Years of Hard Labour

FOURTEEN YEARS OF HARD LABOUR In my early twenties, I asked a doctor I had consulted about pain in my left side, at the edge of my breast. He told me it was Angina, but didn't offer any medication for it, as it didn't bother me all that much. However, after the birth of my third baby, at age thirty two, who was two pounds heavier than my other two, no doubt because I had given up smoking and taken up chocolate instead, I found I had absolutely no strength left, and could not lift my right arm to cuddle my baby, who was placed in the crook of my left arm. I thought this was a normal occurrence, and didn't mention it to any of the nursing staff. When I went back to work two years later, I would have to have what I considered 'power naps', in reality energy surges, during the day, and was constantly tired. I assumed it was because I was combining home and work, but it was not a normal fatigue. More a depletion of energy, which left me drained. My eyes bothered me too, but optometrists could not find a reason for the pain and swelling of my eyeballs if I read or watched TV for any more than two hours at a time. I also suffered a lot of headaches, which one learned specialist told me was due to not enough oxygen getting to my brain. But he could 'fix' that, by operating to widen my nasal passages. It didn't help me, but certainly helped to fatten his wallet. I'd had a lot of stress and trauma in my life. Firstly, a dysfunctional childhood, followed by a dysfunctional marriage, during which I spent twenty five years living with panic and fear, a conditioning of my childhood, then my eldest son was taken very ill with a life-threatening brain injury, and two years later my husband passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack. I was forty four years old then. Somewhere around that time, because of excessive hay fever and asthma, I got so fed up I took hay fever tablets containing Pseudoephedrene continuously for a month, which interfered with my heartbeat, making it race. It may have contributed to the AF, but it did stop racing when I stopped taking the tablets, which I did as soon as it dawned on me what was causing it. There were other major stresses which contributed to a bubbling sensation that started at my waist on my left side and traveled up to the area where I had pain from the Angina all those years before, which would happen while lying on my left side. My doctor at the time could not explain it. I had always turned over onto my right side to stop it, but one night I decided to stay as I was to see what would happen. The bubbling sensation, which I believe now was probably nerve activity, continued on, seeming to do a right turn, and when it reached my heart, possibly the Sinus Node, I went into what I now know to be Atrial Fibrillation. My heart felt like it was quivering and not beating properly. I tried calling out to my son, asleep in the next room, but couldn't make him hear. I didn't have a phone in the bedroom, so I had to just lie there feeling my heart doing all these strange things. In the morning, I decided I had to get up, and it was going to kill or cure me. When I got out of bed, the quivering stopped, but I wasn't able to walk without my knees buckling, and feeling very dizzy and faint. I had to claw my way up the hall to get to the bathroom, and felt decidedly unwell for the next two months, not able to function properly, and was off-balance all the time. My doctor, when I finally got to see him, said, while throwing his hands in the air, “I don't know what's wrong with you!”, and showed no further interest. One day at home, after climbing our flight of steps, I entered the lounge room, went to take a step while turning, and fell face down on the floor. There was absolutely nothing I could do to stop myself, except hold my arms in front of me so I didn't hurt myself. Fortunately, there wasn't any furniture there, and there was carpet on the floor, so I didn't sustain any injuries. I could not get up, as my body felt like it was full of fairy floss and I had absolutely no strength. My daughter was present at the time, and I called out to her as I fell. The ambulance was called, I was taken to hospital, where several tests were done, after which the Medical Registrar came over to me and said ”Look, we can't find anything wrong with you – have you thought about seeing a psychiatrist?” When she left, I got off the bed, picked up my bag, and staggered out to the waiting room where my daughter was waiting, while the nurse ran behind telling me to come back, that I couldn't just leave. I ignored her and kept going.. I vowed then to only return to that hospital if I was dead or unconscious, as that hospital was guilty of the grossest misdiagnosis of all – they mistook the early symptoms of my husband's fatal heart attack five years earlier for Inflammation of the Pleura – and now they were telling me I was a hypochondriac and needed treatment! I think it was the same Medical Registrar too. Not only that, it set the scene for years of doggedly going from one doctor to another, with various 'diagnoses', Vertigo, Migraine, Anxiety, Ectopic Ventricular heartbeat....the list seemed endless, all the while being treated as a hypochondriac given to histrionics. I have tried to count the number of doctors and specialists I have consulted over the past fourteen years, in two states, Queensland and NSW, and come up with at least six GP's and four Specialists, none of whom could diagnose my illness or give me any answers. They are just the ones I do remember. One cardiac specialist on the Gold Coast, Queensland, gave me his valued diagnosis. “I don't know what is wrong with you – but it won't kill you!” That was ten years ago, after I weaved my way to his consulting rooms, very dizzy and light-headed, unwell enough for the receptionist to be concerned. I continued living like this for two years, with accompanying flu – like symptoms every so often, which was puzzling, because it didn't last more than a couple of days, and I had no temperature. I also experienced deep aches in my forearms, which I was sure was aching in the bone itself. Again, no explanation could be given, or for the tremors I felt through my body, a shaking, even though I was not anxious or upset over anything. Enter the Vertigo diagnosis. A well-meaning GP decided that was the problem when I bent over in her surgery and kept going, nearly falling. She prescribed Stemetil, which did help with the nausea, and did stabilize the dizziness a little, and sent me to yet another specialist, who diagnosed Migraine. He prescribed Epilem, then cranked up the dosage when it didn't appear to work, culminating in a bout of Schizophrenia, possibly caused by that, but there were other factors that could have caused it, so I won't blame the medication entirely. I was living by myself, with dog, by then, so unwell I had to pay someone to exercise him, as I couldn't walk very far, and spent half of my week in bed, the other half getting over the latest bout before the next one superimposed over the last one. When I felt able to, I would venture over to my sister's house for a bit of company, to be greeted with “Uh oh, the Basset Hound look again!”. The bags under my eyes told their own story. At about this time, I met my partner, Rob, and moved to the Far South Coast of NSW, where I didn't fare much better, if anything it got worse. Having moved to a bare cow paddock of five acres, with the idea in mind of building a mud brick house, I ignored my health problems,even though I was still subjected to bouts of faintness, especially in hot weather. After being there a couple of years, I bent down one day to move our box trailer and all hell broke loose. I experienced the most excruciating pain in the centre of my chest, with sweating and nausea. Rob, who was mixing cement a little distance away, watched the proceedings without offering any help, as he, along with some family members, was of the opinion that I was being 'dramatic' again, and just looking for attention. I didn't go to hospital then, but spent months getting over it, mostly in bed. As we were living here without family support, and had not really made any close friends, I had to rely on Rob for my welfare, which was grudgingly given when he had time, as he related me to his grandmother, who went to stay with her daughter when her husband died, went to bed complaining about her hernia and stayed there for twenty five years, being waited on hand and foot by her daughter, until she eventually died.

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