I felt Ok yesterday, but today is a different story altogether. Yesterday I ambled down to the beach, today I just managed to shuffle to the loo. My body feels like it is ten times heavier, my head is splitting in two, my face looks so pale my lips have disappeared. Maybe a vampire was riding in the truck.
I know you don't know what I am talking about, so below is an entry from my journal for the 28th of June, 2010...
ME - Mad Elephant
You've heard of MC, Mad Cow disease, well I've got ME, Mad Elephant. You know how an elephant never forgets, well I forget almost everything. And on some days I feel as though I'm as mad as a hatter.
I have lists for everything I do and stick it notes stuck all over the house. I tick off, when I take my morning tablets, my nighttime tablets, the tablets I take with food, when I give myself a B12 shot in the stomach, when I drink my electrolyte drinks, when I drink billions of bacteria, when I lay down and suck on oxygen for an hour, and oh, thats right, how many glasses of water I drink each day.
I know for sure I've got ME, I've been properly diagnosed by two specialists. It's ME all right. I've had what seems like dozens of tests...blood tests, urine tests, a saliva test, an orthostatic intolerance standing test, a hydrogen breath test, food allergy tests, an x-ray, an ultrasound, and even a poo test. I've been prodded and poked, I've filled in questionnaires and forked out zillions of dollars (well maybe not quite that much, but close to it).
I don't know how I got it, this Mad Elephant disease. One day I was well, just like everyone else and the next day I just barely woke up. I opened my eyes and it felt like a Mac truck had run over me. A few months before I had been in bed for weeks with Glandular Fever (Mono) but I'd gotten over it, or at least I thought I had.
I don't think I got it from eating Elephants, like you get Mad Cow from eating Cows. at least I don't think I've eaten any Elephant....maybe I have but just didn't know at the time. I have been to Africa, and come to think of it, I've been to India too. I ate some strange curries in India and in Africa I ate biltong, but I thought it was just dried Ostrich or something like that.
Since that first night the same Mac truck has visited me again, quite a few times actually, why he targets me I don't know? Sometimes it happens in the daytime but most often it's at night. I lay down, close my eyes and eventually drift off to sleep. In the morning or sometimes in the middle of the night, I open my eyes and I just know he's been back again. I can hardly move.
He's a sadist, this Mac truck driver. He drives his truck at full speed and makes a B line for me. After He knocks me down, he stops the truck and casually walks back to where I'm lying on the side of the road. My eyes are open but I'm in shock, he looks down at me then turns and walks back to his truck. From behind his seat he gets out a blanket and carries it over to where I'm lying.
Oh what a relief I think, but no, as the blanket touches me I realize that it's made of some kind of soft lead. It's so heavy it settles over me like a deadweight and I can't move. As if to make sure I can't, he searches around in the grass beside the road and finds a house brick which he promptly lays on my chest.
"I'll go get help", he says, walks back to the truck and drives off, but help never comes. I lay there waiting, but it never comes. It just never comes.
There are days when inwardly I rage and stampede like the Mad Elephant that has taken over my body, but it does me no good. I am who I am and I have what I have.
I long for the days when I could do what I wanted, whenever I wanted, but this Mad Elephant has me now and it just won't let me!
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