It is that time of the year when kids reach into their imaginations and pull something amazing out to be for just one day........ Halloween! Little boys want to be super heroes and little girls want to be princesses. There are little witches and goblins running around and a sense of excitement fills the fall crisp air. At the end of the night they sit down to see just how lucky they were this year! They make piles after piles, bargain with their candy to take their favorite treat from another ones candy pile! They eat as much as they can until they hear those shattering words..........time to put the candy up and get into bed because you still have school tomorrow. Booooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!! After sneaking that one last piece they put away their special costume and become themselves again. The good part is that they have an ENTIRE year to figure out what they will be next year and it has to be better than this year!!!!!!!
For those of us suffering from autoimmune diseases and other diseases that cause so much pain and anguish we have developed a super power of our own. Over time it seems that we have built up a tolerance when it comes to the pain we encounter in our everyday lives. Our tolerance is higher than most and illnesses tend to hit us harder but our body has adapted and hence our super power was born! Most people think about this and think it is great! You stub your toe and it doesn't throb, you burn yourself on the oven but you never even felt it and internally aches and pains are just part of our day. We have adapted to a very hostile environment and I am thankful for that,well, at least most of the time.
You see this super power allows us not to feel as much pain as most people but that also means our bodies natural alerting system has kinda of lost its shine. For me personally I feel pain from sun up to sun down. I may have a moment of relief when I take my nightly medications but if my body really decides to show off the relief never finds me and this results in long nights for both Tim and I. I am rolling around in pain and Tim is trying everything he can to make me feel just a little bit better so sleep can finally reach us both. It is hard and miserable at times. I also suffer from lung issues and I will tell you that I do not remember what it is like to breathe normally. Oral medication and inhalers are a part of my everyday life and without them I would have a very hard time with the most simple of tasks, breathing. These super powers of mine don't seem so super when you really think about it. It actually frightens me when I stop and think to myself that my body really does not have a way of showing me if I am injured or if my disease is acting up.
I have been dealing with this fear quite a bit lately and it has been hard on me and it has been very hard on my loved ones. It first started one Sunday morning. I went for a bike ride and went back to my friends house and I went back to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up it felt as if someone was pulling a belt tighter and tighter around the upper part of my chest. This pressure was making breathing very difficult and one thing I have learned over the life of my super powers is that you do not mess around when it comes to breathing! So, I went to the hospital and after seven hours of testing we found out I had pneumonia in the upper lobe in the left lung. I was shocked! I always thought pneumonia made you very sick and you would know if you had it or not. How could I not know that I had pneumonia? It was because of my super powers except these powers did not feel so super at this point.
My family wondered how I had let it get so bad. I tried to explain to them that I don't remember what it feels like to take a deep breath in and feel it throughout my lungs or feel the aches and pains of just a normal infection such as pneumonia My body has grown accustomed to the environment it has found itself in. It has had to overcompensate when it comes to pain so many years ago when all of this started and that has lead to my inability to differentiate between pain you get from exercising too much or if my Lupus is flaring and causing tremendous joint pain. I have no clue at this point in my life and my poor body is so out of wack that I am not sure if I ever will be able to have a normal pain threshold again or if these super powers are here to stay. All I know is that I don't feel so super today and these super powers that have been bestowed upon me can just go away! I would like to pack them in a box and send them to farthest point on Earth! After all of this I think I will have more luck using one of those eight ball fortune teller toys to guide me through life. It may not be accurate but I think it would be much more fun than having super powers!!!!!!
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