How do you get past the “why can’t you do its?” the (groan) “really? If I have to, I will.” Why can’t they just understand my limitations? I feel guilty asking my family to help me.
I need to get out and do things, but I want to isolate myself from things that make me feel sicker. How can I do both?
I became a different person after disability and handicap. After not being able to do many of the things that defined who I was to me. For me. First it was losing the ability to engage in paying work. Then it was household chores; mowing the lawn, working in the yard, even most dusting and sweeping (dust and mold allergies are my main Meniere’s triggers aside from stress) I have been reduced to editorializing on life from the sanctity of my home office where I have reduced the distractions and triggers to a minimum.
I’m right there with you. I feel like I’m hiding and that is probably because I am. Hiding from my symptoms and their triggers. I don’t know if this is the right way to cope or not, but I’ll do what I have to do to get by, because that is the minimum standard I’ve set for myself.
I don’t know how you can communicate the limitations to the people around you. My wife and children are among the most supportive people I know and even they have to be reminded of my limitations sometimes. I suggest trying not to take the grumping about unwanted burdens placed on those around you as personal attacks. The people who pick you up and care for you are caught in this situation with you. They have every bit as much right to be frustrated as you do.
I recommend frequent hugs, myself. I find them very therapeutic for everyone involved.
If you have daily vertigo spells to the point that you feel nauseated, you are precisely the kind of sufferer that the more drastic procedures for treating Meniere’s symptoms are for. If the injections do not give you relief, you should talk to your doctors about other more invasive treatments. If the vertigo doesn’t stop, you may have to face some of those consequences to make it stop. Making it stop occurring constantly, daily or weekly, is what every treatment out there is for. Keep looking til you find what works.
Just as important is the need to get people who understand your illness around you to support you. You need to get the feeling of vertigo across to the people you rely on. How helpless you are. Short of making them OD on alcohol or strapping them to the centerpost of a merry-go-round (no, don’t do that. Try getting them to read this) I’m not sure that everyone will ‘get’ what the problem is. My wife has been there for me since the beginning. I’d be dead now without her. If they (husbands or wives) can’t be made to see reason, then you need to find someone you can rely on to be there when you need it. You leave them (husbands or wives) when you find someone who cares, when you find someone who can help you with this.
This is what chronic illness is. You can’t get through it alone, and unfortunately we, your fellow sufferers on the internet, can’t be there for you in that way. We can’t be there to mop up and change the sheets. Can’t help tend children or cook or clean. Most of us wish we could, some of us know we’d be more of a liability than an asset. We can’t, but there are caring people out there. It is just a matter of finding them. Have faith in that.
This is the new normal for us. For anyone suffering from chronic illness. There is no other real way for us to approach it. To get past it. Embrace your limitations and do the best you can around them. We have to focus on the day to day. The here and now.
There can be no plans, no tomorrow, without someone willing to pick up the slack because there is going to be slack. We can’t kid ourselves about that fact. If it isn’t a limitation, it wouldn’t be an illness. It wouldn’t be a disability.
Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I’ve fought against disability all my life pretty much without realizing it. There have always been various limitations that I’ve just worked around. Meniere’s is just one more constraint that I don’t want and didn’t ask for, but there is no disputing its presence so make the best of it.
We can’t wish it away, god knows I’ve tried enough times. The closest I ever come to prayer is in the depths of a vertigo spell. “Just make it stop.” After awhile it becomes “just make it through this minute.” Then it progresses to “five more minutes.” Then ten, then fifteen, then onwards. If you get to the end of the attack, you get to see another day. Every morning you get to see, like the pilot who says “any landing you can walk away from” is a good one.
Enjoy the sunrise.
