Immitation of life

This is my first attempt at a self-portrait, it was one of the assignments for my art class. It's not the one I had wanted to do, I still want to figure out how to manage the piece I have in my head--it's a double exposure, if you can do that in a drawing... one of the fat Cushing's me ghosted over the real me, the vibrant me that I know has to be there somewhere.

I was amazed at the other student's self-portraits, since that was a reoccurring theme in most of them, either being trapping inside or breaking out of their bodies and heads. I suppose it is something to think about further.

I used my avatar photo for this self-portrait. It was taken minutes after we took the stage for the ISU dance recital last winter. I reduced the picture to an outline, and transfered that to a piece of sketch paper, where I used the Prismacolor pencils to do the drawing.

I really miss belly dancing, but for now, it is so far from what I can manage. So, this picture represents something of joy for me. Bitter sweet joy, but joy nonetheless.

The last three weeks have been very hard. Especially these last two. This sinus infection has kicked my ass, and last week was probably the worst week. I had a crisis every single day, with one exception. Three trips to the ER, once in the aide car, one doctor wanted to admit me, but for some reason the ER doc said no, I guess a BP of 152/102 is nothing to get excited about... My labs keep coming back "normal" or "slightly elevated" what ever the hell that means.

Considering that my MRI readings all came back "pituitary looks normal" when in fact it it was crushed by a previous tumor...

I'm just not sure how many more days I can endure this imitation of my life. There is no escape from this. There is only "will I crash today?" and if so, how hard it is going to be? How bad is the pain, will I stop breathing again? How many hours am I going to spend retching and twitching and dry heaving, the zofran being only mildly effective. It's so hard to think that this is never going to end, because I feel like it never will. It will just go on and on and on, this misery.

Part of me is ready to just call it quits. Just refuse to take my medication, since it feels like it is only prolonging the inevitable. If I stop taking the medication, perhaps it will be like pulling off a strip of tape from my arm, ripping all the hair and part of the skin, leaving a rash, quick, but painful. Or will it be more like slowly peeling it away, one hair ripping out at a time...

I went in for another full MRI/MRI-V and MRI-A on Monday. The new neuro is concerned about the noise, she said something to the effect that normal people don't have noise in their heads. Ya' think? The noise had gone away mostly, after my adventure in November, but it's back full force, all day, every day. I think it is connected to the what I have currently going on, but only because it returned about the same time that I started this slide.

I want my life back. I want to have some sense of normalcy, some sense of hope something, anything to keep me going. But for now, I feel like I'm on a death's march.