Filtered photo, an illustrative style, completed sock 1 on the knee, beginnings of sock 2 on the needles.
I have been progressively ill for the past few weeks. The latest statin that I tried, the last of 4 tried over the years, resulted as usual with a bad side effect, after a month of it. The first two brought raised blood sugar, the last two including this, horrible muscle cramps in my lower back. This last too, persistent headaches, and I suspect some trigger for postherpetic neuralgia – I had shingles in my late 20s, this is something that rears its ugly head when given the opportunity (weakened immune system due to inadequate sleep, and especially, ongoing stress). However, unlike the last time with statin #3, the pain didn’t stop after I stopped taking it. Six days in, I’m still feeling it, plus absolute exhaustion. What I fear is that I may be on the edge of shingles again, but hoping to confirm within the next day or two.
My LDL isn’t high, but the protocol for doctors given my T1 diabetes and middle age, is to start patients on statins as a preventative measure. T1s and women at this age tend to die very often from heart attacks. Our vascular systems age as it is, but this illness makes us that much more vulnerable on top of it. Unfortunately I seem to be among that minor population of people who never fails to have difficulty with statins.
It’s tiring to be ill, to be physically fragile. In the US we really are not valued. Everything must be super human – no aging allowed, play that you’re younger than you are, be HEROIC AND SUPERHUMAN. As it is, to survive with this kind of illness and carry on despite actual physical obstacles IS heroic, in a way that getting plastic surgery and washboard abs to look good really is not at all. Not that anyone in that business would notice that their perceptions are backward. Desperately so.
Odilonvert 