[Ren]
A year of living in a nightmarish purgatory does strange things to your psyche. I was still trying to push through university, but I found myself missing many lectures to stay in bed. I started noticing more unusual symptoms creeping in. A strange buzzing sensation in the soles of my feet. My vision started looking like fuzzy television static. Something that I later learned was called visual snow. Something with no known origin.
My calf muscles started constantly twitching and spasming. At any moment they wouldn't go longer than twenty seconds without twitching. And that can drive you a bit nuts. All these symptoms I still live with to this day. You just become very used to tolerating constant discomfort, it becomes kind of the norm. And kind of becomes like an annoying, unsettling radio static in the background of existence.
I stopped taking my antidepressants after having cycled many different kinds. None of them helped, all of them gave me some new kind of symptom or side effect, like insomnia, dry mouth, heart palpitations, no libido, etc.
I spent a lot of my time alone, but in the moments of respite, I'd hang out with friends. We formed a band called Trick the Fox the year before I'd gotten sick. It was the one ray of sunshine I had at the time. I quickly became friends with the bass player called Charlie, and we developed some kind of musical telepathy where we both knew what the other was going to play before it even happened. It was the first musician I've ever felt this kind of chemistry with. I became a kind of third wheel in his and Momoko's relationship. With time Momoko became like a sister to me. To this day is one of my favorite people on this spinning rock.
Performing with Trick the Fox was one of the rare times that I felt free. There was something about the duty of having to entertain others that let me escape the physical limitations of my own sick body. Even if just for a moment. I usually pay for it the next day with what can only be described as an energy hangover, where I'd be stuck in bed all day. But for me, that was worth it. Those days I was still fairly functional.
It was around this time I started losing faith in the medical industry. The more appointments I'd go to, adamant that something was wrong, the more of a hypochondriac they'd treat me as. Medical gaslighting is a real thing with chronic illness. They'd chalk me down as someone who was always requesting blood tests, and my mental health diagnosis probably didn't help that. Strangely, they never tested me for any kind of pathogens.
I decided to embark on a precarious journey into the Russian roulette chamber of doctor Google. I would type in the most predominant symptom of the day, and doctor Google would tell me that I have a rare disease and I'm probably gonna die. With time, I sharpened my search engine axe and refined what I was looking for.
I dived headfirst into the abyss of online support groups, hoping to find solace or answers amongst fellow sufferers. We were like crabs in a barrel. Very rarely, someone would find their silver bullet and announce what it was that cured them. Hundreds of people would follow their protocol, some with mild success but most of us will still remain trapped.
I joined as many online support groups as I could. It was a bit like the beginning of Fight Club, except instead of faking conditions to feel accepted, I was desperately hoping I had those conditions so I could cure myself and get the fuck out. I convinced myself I had conditions like candida, magnesium deficiency, parasites, adrenal fatigue, heavy metal poisoning, etc.
At the time, I felt like I was single handedly keeping Jeff Bezos in business. While most students were spending their student loan on drinks, I'd spend mine on the supplement or protocol of the week. I'd follow whatever herbal or supplement protocol was suggested, sometimes noticing mild improvement and sometimes getting a lot worse, most of the time feeling nothing. A story would pop up on one of these groups, like: "After I did a thirty day parasite cleanse of wormwood, cloves and garlic, all my symptoms disappeared". I'd read a story like this, get full of hope, and put myself through a grueling thirty days, which would often result in a worsening of symptoms. My body felt even sicker and weaker, but I'd stick it out because I was told that this was a good sign. The parasites are dying. I peered into the toilet bowl and valiantly waved goodbye as I flushed their imaginary corpses into a watery abyss.
At the end of the thirty days, I'd be left with a lighter wallet and all my symptoms still remaining. And if that didn't work, I'd move on to what was next. Maybe I have seasonal affective disorder. All right, so I'd get on the internet, order a light, stare at it for ten minutes a day, and to my big fucking surprise, still have all my symptoms. The only thing that that light illuminated for me, was that I was desperate enough to buy a glorified table lamp.
I kid you not when I say that over the years I probably have taken nearly every dietary health supplement known to man. One of the most grueling self-treatment courses came when I did a round-the-clock heavy metal chelation. I will take a supplement called ALA and DMSA, which supposedly shuttle mercury molecules out of your body through a process called chelation. I'd have to take the pill once every three hours around the clock, which meant setting multiple alarm clocks to wake up and take them. The supplements came with their own side effects. I remember one time standing in a supermarket and feeling like the sounds and lights were so bright that I couldn't even bear to be in there. I stuck with this protocol for a whole year with no luck.
I was still coming to terms with the death of one of my best friends during this time, too. I was too sick to hold down any kind of stable job, so I was mostly living off my student loan. Welsh students studying in England also weirdly get given a small sum of money just for being Welsh, almost like a "We're really sorry that you're Welsh" sort of condolence prize. I've always prided myself on my own financial independence, so whenever I could, I'd get out on the streets of Bath and I'd busk.
A year of living in a nightmarish purgatory does strange things to your psyche. I was still trying to push through university, but I found myself missing many lectures to stay in bed. I started noticing more unusual symptoms creeping in. A strange buzzing sensation in the soles of my feet. My vision started looking like fuzzy television static. Something that I later learned was called visual snow. Something with no known origin.
My calf muscles started constantly twitching and spasming. At any moment they wouldn't go longer than twenty seconds without twitching. And that can drive you a bit nuts. All these symptoms I still live with to this day. You just become very used to tolerating constant discomfort, it becomes kind of the norm. And kind of becomes like an annoying, unsettling radio static in the background of existence.
I stopped taking my antidepressants after having cycled many different kinds. None of them helped, all of them gave me some new kind of symptom or side effect, like insomnia, dry mouth, heart palpitations, no libido, etc.
I spent a lot of my time alone, but in the moments of respite, I'd hang out with friends. We formed a band called Trick the Fox the year before I'd gotten sick. It was the one ray of sunshine I had at the time. I quickly became friends with the bass player called Charlie, and we developed some kind of musical telepathy where we both knew what the other was going to play before it even happened. It was the first musician I've ever felt this kind of chemistry with. I became a kind of third wheel in his and Momoko's relationship. With time Momoko became like a sister to me. To this day is one of my favorite people on this spinning rock.
Performing with Trick the Fox was one of the rare times that I felt free. There was something about the duty of having to entertain others that let me escape the physical limitations of my own sick body. Even if just for a moment. I usually pay for it the next day with what can only be described as an energy hangover, where I'd be stuck in bed all day. But for me, that was worth it. Those days I was still fairly functional.
It was around this time I started losing faith in the medical industry. The more appointments I'd go to, adamant that something was wrong, the more of a hypochondriac they'd treat me as. Medical gaslighting is a real thing with chronic illness. They'd chalk me down as someone who was always requesting blood tests, and my mental health diagnosis probably didn't help that. Strangely, they never tested me for any kind of pathogens.
I decided to embark on a precarious journey into the Russian roulette chamber of doctor Google. I would type in the most predominant symptom of the day, and doctor Google would tell me that I have a rare disease and I'm probably gonna die. With time, I sharpened my search engine axe and refined what I was looking for.
I dived headfirst into the abyss of online support groups, hoping to find solace or answers amongst fellow sufferers. We were like crabs in a barrel. Very rarely, someone would find their silver bullet and announce what it was that cured them. Hundreds of people would follow their protocol, some with mild success but most of us will still remain trapped.
I joined as many online support groups as I could. It was a bit like the beginning of Fight Club, except instead of faking conditions to feel accepted, I was desperately hoping I had those conditions so I could cure myself and get the fuck out. I convinced myself I had conditions like candida, magnesium deficiency, parasites, adrenal fatigue, heavy metal poisoning, etc.
At the time, I felt like I was single handedly keeping Jeff Bezos in business. While most students were spending their student loan on drinks, I'd spend mine on the supplement or protocol of the week. I'd follow whatever herbal or supplement protocol was suggested, sometimes noticing mild improvement and sometimes getting a lot worse, most of the time feeling nothing. A story would pop up on one of these groups, like: "After I did a thirty day parasite cleanse of wormwood, cloves and garlic, all my symptoms disappeared". I'd read a story like this, get full of hope, and put myself through a grueling thirty days, which would often result in a worsening of symptoms. My body felt even sicker and weaker, but I'd stick it out because I was told that this was a good sign. The parasites are dying. I peered into the toilet bowl and valiantly waved goodbye as I flushed their imaginary corpses into a watery abyss.
At the end of the thirty days, I'd be left with a lighter wallet and all my symptoms still remaining. And if that didn't work, I'd move on to what was next. Maybe I have seasonal affective disorder. All right, so I'd get on the internet, order a light, stare at it for ten minutes a day, and to my big fucking surprise, still have all my symptoms. The only thing that that light illuminated for me, was that I was desperate enough to buy a glorified table lamp.
I kid you not when I say that over the years I probably have taken nearly every dietary health supplement known to man. One of the most grueling self-treatment courses came when I did a round-the-clock heavy metal chelation. I will take a supplement called ALA and DMSA, which supposedly shuttle mercury molecules out of your body through a process called chelation. I'd have to take the pill once every three hours around the clock, which meant setting multiple alarm clocks to wake up and take them. The supplements came with their own side effects. I remember one time standing in a supermarket and feeling like the sounds and lights were so bright that I couldn't even bear to be in there. I stuck with this protocol for a whole year with no luck.
I was still coming to terms with the death of one of my best friends during this time, too. I was too sick to hold down any kind of stable job, so I was mostly living off my student loan. Welsh students studying in England also weirdly get given a small sum of money just for being Welsh, almost like a "We're really sorry that you're Welsh" sort of condolence prize. I've always prided myself on my own financial independence, so whenever I could, I'd get out on the streets of Bath and I'd busk.
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