I have been hyper-aware of my health and body lately ever since I stopped taking my prescription medicines aimed at combatting inflammation.  I hope I don’t sound whiny/complain-y/self-centered or overly repetitive whenever I bring this issue up, but honestly, this is the absolute best place for me to vent!  My poor husband has gotten more than an earful– I pretty much force him to listen to day-by-day breakdowns of exactly how I felt at any given moment during the day.  Also, this is the ideal place to document the process my body is going through, trying to adjust to no medications and figuring out how to heal itself as best as it can.

So, again, if you don’t feel like listening to my spew about how I have been doing health-wise this week, feel free to click off and return tomorrow!  No hard feelings, I promise!

This week was good and bad for various reasons in terms of my health.  The nerve-y leg pain I had over the weekend pretty much disappeared by Tuesday, which was a relief since there was a point on Saturday that I couldn’t even walk.  I was worried about having to go to work on Monday because I have to walk a lot being a teacher, but fortunately, the pain had significantly diminished by Monday morning.  Then, on Tuesday during the day, I started to get these weird, rolling sort of spasm/cramps in my abdomen.  They were like little waves of nausea in my stomach that caused pain, but then would go away after a few seconds.  My stomach became uncomfortably distended at the same time.  I thought maybe it was a strange sort of virus passing through, but mind you, I didn’t have to run to the bathroom or anything along those lines.  The weird thing is these pains continued to surface on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and even today.  On Thursday, I even debate staying home from work because the pain made it difficult to stand at times.  However, I soldiered on and just managed the best I could.  I still have them– fortunately, I have a doctor’s appointment this coming week so I can bring it up then if they don’t go away.  My husband seems to think it may be my body adjusting to having recently gone off a few meds at the same time.  All I know is I feel awful in that department– my stomach area is huge and sensitive to the touch, I have no appetite (though I have been eating just as much as usual!), and it is forcing me to essentially come home from work and just lie on the couch all afternoon and evening.  I wanted to begin moderate exercise this week, but my stomach cramping hasn’t even made it a possibility.

On the plus side, my back has not been hurting me too badly!  On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst, my back is a 2 or 3.  I still feel soreness but it is totally manageable, and most importantly, my back has not been keeping me up at night.  The ironic part is that my stomach has!  In fact, I was awake between 11 and 2 A.M. on Wednesday night into Thursday because my stomach cramps were so bad.

Good health is definitely a gift, not a given. I realize that now.

(Source)

Needless to say, I have mixed emotions about all of this.  I am so bummed that I can’t do the things I am so used to doing, particularly exercise.  However, I still am convinced my body is screaming from a break from running and hardcore exercise as it does its thing off of medicines.  Clearly, I am going through a transition, or maybe even a detox– I am not sure.  I have faith I will feel better over the next few weeks and hopefully achieve a more balanced state in terms of my health.  Man oh man. . . this is not fun, but at the same time, I am happy to be letting my body regulate itself on its own.

What do you think friends?  Am I being hypersensitive?  Do you have any words of wisdom (or encouragement, which is what I really need!).