Terry Yager wrote:
Too late, I'm there...starting with 'Sickness -- Physically and Mentally' (is there a difference?):
Terry - unless you're a Robot or Android (without the emotion chip) there is most certainly a big difference! Physical sickness throws you stamina around big time, though mentally you could still work, but your feelings have been crushed! Having both I can say that I've been Mentally sick while at work!
At last count, they got me taking 23 - 25 pills a day in 13 different flavors (some are optional, as needed).
That's a lot of drugs for someone who's in as great health as they keep telling me I'm in. Here's the breakdown:
I take one pill for schizophrenia, and another for schizoaffective disorder, which basically means that I have enough symptoms to qualify as schizophrenic, with enough additional symptoms to qualify for a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, so they give me two anti-psychotics, just to keep me from murdering everyone who crosses me the wrong way. They also give me one pill that targets the manic phase and a whole 'nother one that targets the depression.
So by the sounds of things those are all mental sicknesses!
I also have chronic pain conditions, including osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis, with severe degradation to my spinal column bones, which has also led to degenerative disc disease, so of course, I need pain pills.
So those are physical sicknesses, but because it's attacking you are the root, their physical disabilities! A Physical sickness could be a virus, flu or just some annoying cold - even a migraine headache is physical - even though it's your brain which is pounding away.
Now the fun begins. They give me three different pills for pain, none of which do me any good, but when I tell 'em I need sum'n stronger, they tell me I can't have the really good sh!t because of (possible) interactions with the psych drugs.
It gets better...
Now for the side effects. One or more of the psyche drugs sometimes caused a rise in cholesterol (in my otherwise normal body). So now my cholesterol shoots up to 324, which my doc calls "alarming". She prescribes a cholesterol-lowering drug! Now, after I start taking them, they cause me to have severe heartburn (unbearable, actually). She prescribes a prescription-strength anti-acid (2x a day). Now I take a pill for a side effect, and another for the side-effect of the side-effect pill.
Gets better still...
After a few years of swallering their concoctions, they discover that I'm being depleted of certain vitamins & nutrients (side-effects of several of the other drugs), so now they prescribe three more pills; vitamins and other supplements. So that makes it three more pills for side effects.
That brings the tally up to 5-out-of-13 pills just to control side effects! They call this Medical Science?
I actually believe they're doing me more harm than good, but I don't dare quit cause I know that taking in all this crap (aka, compliance with my treatment program) is the only thing that keeps me out of jail. And when I do have the occasional 'episode', I get 'treated' in a nice, clean bright hospital instead of being thrown into some dingy-ass filthy dungeon somewhere. And, btw, as far as I can tell, I still go psychotic on all these pills just about as often as I do without 'em. They don't prevent the episodes, they just make me as dumb as a sack of hammers the rest of the time.
That's my rant, and I'm sticking to it!
OMG, You certainly have been through the Wars!! All those conditions you've mentioned are they generic conditions or have you simply had a long hard life this has come to this?
My Dad's on a bit of medication and plus he's on Dialysis, but otherwise he's improved since he's come out of Hospital!! Everything he's been though goes back to when he was a kid! He never really knew his father unfortunately, so those problems could have come from them, as well as having heart bypass, he's got arthritis - unfortunately nobody is really safe against anything when you prone to get generic diseases, but unfortunately that's just the sad reality of life and at best I feel so much better when I'm enjoying life rather than worrying about what will kill me - cause in the end the show will be over for all of us!