7 Years

Some people believe that your life changes every 7 years.  Certainly when I got up this date 7 years ago, I did not expect to be disabled and unemployable for the next 7 years.  But by 3 PM on February 9, 2000 I was jobless, and my health has never returned to a point where I could manage full-time employment.  I've been told it never will.

Have things changed in the past 7 years? 

There were a lot of days in 2000 that I woke up and immediately threw up.  That's changed, thanks to finding a doctor who didn't go for the easy answer of forbidding me to eat things I don't eat anyway; he listened and realized that the problem was that I didn't eat for 12 hours between dinner and breakfast and my stomach acid had nothing to work on.  We added two antacids to my bedtime routine, problem solved.

There were days in 2000 when I was puking my guts out non-stop thanks to medication that research has shown to be useless for CFS.  I've finally gotten away from doctors who think CFS is another name for depression and found someone who understands that you can't fix viruses with psych drugs.  You fix viruses by building up the immune system so that the body can vanquish them naturally.

There have been days in the past 7 years that I could not even sit up.  Now I can fairly consistently sit upright for about an hour before either the back spasms or the lightheadedness forces me back horizontal.  Some days I can even manage several hours at a time.

There was a long period when I was only able to work 5 minutes out of every hour.  Now I can fairly consistently work for 2 hours at a time.

For years, I slept only 2 hours a night due to pain (what I believe precipitated the relapse).  I progressed to sleeping 2 hours at a time before the pain woke me up.  Now, thanks to finally (last week) getting prescription pain pills, I'm fairly consistently sleeping 6-8 hours a night.  Not necessarily 8 hours consecutively, but most of it is now at night, instead of 2 hours between 5-7 AM, 2 hours between 9-11 AM, 2 hours between 1-3 PM....

For most of the last 7 winters, I've been down much of the winter with chronic sinus problems, a vicious spiral of infections sapping my already-tapped-out immune system and my immune system being unable to control the next infection.  If I'd had a job, I would've lost it for excessive absenteeism -- my business partner once counted that in one month, I had e-mailed her on 17 days that I was not even able to sit up because of my sinuses, much less accomplish any work.  This winter (knock wood), I've only lost a couple days to sinuses, and weather-related rather than infection.  To me, that says that my immune system is getting stronger.

I see small, but important, changes over the past 7 years.  But if my friends are correct that "your life changes completely every 7 years", I'll wake up tomorrow with all my health problems under control, ready to go back to work full-time.  Based on how I feel right now, I don't think that's going to happen.  But I'm more than ready for my 7-year change.

You could say, I have the 7-year itch.