It's now a year since I fell off a route, bashed my leg, contracted norovirus from A&E, and in the process of my body healing my leg as a priority, suffered chronic damage to my digestive system. One very small, very stupid mistake, not washing my hands properly after going for a piss in the A & E toilet, then munching on a bag of nuts because I was ravenous and thinking too much about my leg and not enough about hand hygiene. It still riles me to this day just how fucking small and fucking stupid that incident was. Deep breath Fiend...
And.... I still have PTSD about having the norovirus itself. Beyond horrendous. I wish the sedative they gave me for the endoscopy could have wiped out memories of that night too, although the trauma is partly due to the lasting effects.
Anyway...
I am not better, I am not fixed nor cured nor well. I am still ill a year on. But I have improved, a bit. I'd estimate I've got 50% better compared to where I was. Say I was at 33% in the early stages, I'm maybe at 66% now. This is purely digestively, not DVTs nor mental health. Some progress, yes. But it's not that simple. A lot of that improvement is due to currently being on a heavily restricted diet and regular supplements. These were supposed to help me heal, maybe they have a bit, but mostly they have just kept the illness and symptoms at bay. I would say, without those restrictions, I've maybe healed to 45% - less than half normal. That's what I'd be like if I ate a normal diet. I.e., pretty shit still.
An equally, if not more, notable improvement is my mental ability to cope with it. Sporadic nausea bouts still have a direct and dramatic effect on my mood (one a few weeks back had me in tears a day later), the diet still has me frustrated, the semi-regular bloating and queasiness still distracts me. But - thanks mostly to DRUGS but also to some of my own hard work fighting through it - I'm not as depressed about it as before, and I can get on with being myself, most of the time. A bit like the permanent DVTs, as frustrating as they can be, I can usually accept being hampered and work around them (although this illness is far more mentally taxing than the minorly life-threatening DVTs *rolls eyes*).
So my goal for the year was to be able to eat pizza (yes, something I used to do very occasionally, as a treat, as a part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle, so fuck you). I don't really feel like that, partly being used to a shitty diet and partly just wanting to stack the odds for healing. That isn't going to happen. Which makes it an aim for next year.
More importantly for next year I aim to keep healing, climbing the fucking HELL out of the year (that I only managed for a couple of months this year), and be healed within two years. Blimey. That sounds fucking weird. I guess the fact I can write it with a minimum of teeth-grinding fury says something.... Pass the 20mg citalopram nurse.
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