As I stepped onto the elevator leaving my routine doctor appointment for medication follow-ups, I glanced down at the stack of written prescriptions I had just been given, along with the referral letter for a therapist. This only deepened my thorough humiliation. Thinking back on the appointment I just left from, I don't even recall having an appointment with an actual therapist in which I became so emotional.
I thought the summer was going to be easier on my Fibromyalgia since it had been the summer before. Unfortunately this summer has turned into what seems to be one long pain flare up. The only relief that I have had is when I went back home to the south to visit my family last month. I have noticed that each time I go back to the south, my pain nearly vanishes! I want to move back there so badly! Ever since I've come back to the dry desert climate that I live in, the pain has been back and is seemingly intent on making me pay for the week of relief I had. Of course this only deepens the depression I have been trying to find my way out of for so long now. It is hard not to be depressed when in chronic pain all of the time and medications don't typically help. Since my diagnosis with Fibromyalgia in March of 2010, I am still having a difficult time learning to accept that the immense pain I am constantly in will be something that I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
So as I sat in that room telling my doctor how pain-free my visit home had been, I suddenly felt the tears coming. Of course they began pouring down my face before I was able to compose myself. Throughout the following thirty minutes, as I gave my doctor a brief synopsis of the last eleven years of my life, she informed me that not only has my life had extra "dynamics" in it than the average person, but I seem to have hit complete rock bottom and have absolutely no quality of life left. Sadly, she's right. She then proceeded to give me an "assignment" that would be due at my next appointment in one month. I am supposed to come up with a list of the things that I want in life and then start figuring out how I am going to make those things happen. I am to tell my doctor about my "life plan" during my next appointment.
That was about a month ago. It is now the night before my dreaded doctor appointment...
