Life Before Dog

In order to fully understand where this blog is coming from, you need to know about my background. Life Before Dog.

It feels a bit strange to talk about life before I got my dog. He's integrated himself so thoroughly into my life that I can no longer imagine life without him, even though I've only had him for a year and a bit. I still sometimes have these moments where it all seems so unreal, however. I still find myself going "holy shit I actually have a dog wow" every so often, and I don't think I'll ever really get over it. He changed my life. In fact, he saved it- right before he came into my life, I'd given up. He gave me something to live for long enough for me to find other things to live for.

Backtrack to when I was just a wee kid. I had a bit of a rocky childhood, several traumatic experiences fueling my Manic Depression, with a heaping spoonful of ADHD, NVLD, OCD, and anxiety issues on the side. I was definitely a problem child. I started on prescription medication for my various mental problems when I was in grade two, and since then, there hasn't been a day where I haven't had to take prescription meds every morning and/or evening.

Junior High was hard, High School was even harder. Those things are hard enough normally anyways, let alone tackled while also battling a slew of health problems. I had a lot of emotions, and didn't quite know how to handle them, so I ended up hurting myself, using cutting as a coping mechanism. It all came to a head in my Grade 12 year, when I made a suicide attempt that came dangerously close to succeeding. I landed myself in the hospital for a while, and it was during this time I decided that maybe probably I didn't want to kill myself. Or at least not the way I'd attempted it before, with pills, considering I had to chug liquid charcoal, and when I couldn't finish the bottle I ended up restrained with a tube shoved down my nose and charcoal pumped directly into my stomach, which was a wildly unpleasant experience. Not to mention the sound of my mother crying outside my hospital room.

I got sent to therapy, saw psychologists, psychiatrists, the whole nine yards. Pills can only take you so far though, and while I diligently took my meds, I never properly opened up to any of the therapists I went to. I think at that age I just wasn't ready to talk about my past yet. I really wanted to feel better, but I couldn't bring myself to trust anyone enough to show them my whole self.

But I got that stuff done. I survived High School, I was on meds, I saw some doctors, I was totally good to go... Or at least that's what I kept on telling myself. Back then I thought I had it all together, I thought I was better, but looking back on things now it's easy to see how wrong I was. Just because I'd slapped a bandaid on my wounds didn't mean that they weren't festering underneath.

I did okay, for a while. I took a gap year, worked on a ranch camp, led trail rides and taught archery and climbing and all that good stuff to groups that came through. I learned lots of new skills, I got to live in the wilderness, I got to bum around with horses all day. I had a lot of fun, but also a lot of stress. The Depression I thought I'd totally kicked came back with a vengeance. I still hadn't broken the habit of cutting myself to cope with my emotions. On top of that, I slowly started getting sicker. I gained a bunch of weight. I had no energy. My hair started falling out. I was an emotional wreck. It eventually got to the point where I just couldn't finish my year there. I had to go home and see my doctors.

I was distraught. That ranch had become my life, my home. I didn't know what to do with myself anymore. When my family doctor diagnosed me with Hashimoto's Disease, I jumped on that. Surely it was all just because I had this untreated autoimmune disease! I totally kicked my Depression, my mind was fine, I just needed to take a few more pills a day and everything would get better! Treating my Hashimoto's Thyroiditis did improve a lot of things. But the gaping wounds I'd built up from a lifetime of Depression and a whole lot of unfortunate experiences were still there, no matter how hard I tried to ignore them. And I tried so goddamn hard.

So I went to University next, still telling myself that I was fine. I tried to do everything, five classes, on the cheerleading team, part of several Uni clubs, go go go. As one can imagine, it took its toll on me pretty quickly. At first I thought it was just because I was pushing myself too hard. Eventually, I had to admit that my symptoms weren't just from overwork. I was having symptoms similar to the ones from my Hashimoto's Disease: hair loss, weight gain, exhaustion, highly emotional, and I still couldn't kick that self-harm habit. There were some new ones too, the most notable symptom being in severe pain all over my body every single second of every single day, as well as fainting spells, cognitive issues, confusion, sleep problems. I thought that maybe I just needed a higher dose of my thyroid meds.

I went to see several doctors, they all ran the blood tests, every single one said my thyroid looked fine. But that didn't stop me from getting worse and worse. I ended up having to withdrawal with cause from a bunch of courses, quit some clubs, and couldn't go with my cheerleading team to the big competitions, which was upsetting. Finally, a doctor had the sense to test for other things besides my thyroid function.

I had the blood tests run. I'd had an appointment booked for two weeks after, but I got a call a few days after the blood tests had been run. It was the doctor, and she needed to see me immediately. After a lot of schedule juggling we booked an appointment for a godawful early hour two days from then. I had two days to stew in anxiety, which wasn't very fun.

Finally, the day rolled around, I dragged myself out of bed and went in, only to find the doctor looking very grave. She had a couple sheets of paper that were my blood test results. She gave me the papers, and then explained what all the numbers meant. As usual, my thyroid was fine. But my cortisol levels were practically non-existent. The doctor was actually really amazed that I was still going to classes and clubs and running around, so I guess that says something about how stupidly stubborn I can be. More tests were run, and it was confirmed. My adrenal glands had failed.


I asked why. The doctor said she couldn't be 100% sure yet, but that it was most likely the same autoimmune disease that was attacking my thyroid. I thought "Okay, great, gimme some cortisol pills and we're good to go!". Nope. She apologized and told me that because I had the adrenal failure in conjunction with the thyroid failure, I was looking at a diagnosis of Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome, or Lupus. APS is terminal, Lupus has a high likelihood of being terminal. In my first year of University, I was told that I was going to die young. I asked her how many years I had. She said she couldn't be too sure, and it depended upon which one it was, but if it was APS I probably wouldn't make it past 30, and Lupus was just anytime. She referred me to an endocrinologist to get the tests done to properly diagnose me. I was given prescriptions for cortisol and an immuno-supressing drug.

I walked out of that room numb. I didn't cry, not then. I was still pretty heavily in denial. It was so hard to wrap my head around, the fact that I, who fought tooth and nail her whole life against the illnesses she already had, who (at the time, I believed) had overcome those illnesses, I could finally see the light the end of the tunnel, and that light was just snuffed, just like that. Poof.

The specialist I had an appointment with was in Calgary, along with my family doctor and most of the other specialists I was seeing. So like any reasonable person would I pushed the pause button on my education and went home so I could focus 100% on getting myself as healthy as I could be.

Lol j/k nope I continued to flaunt that mile-wide stubborn streak, and kept on doing what I was doing, against the better advice from my doctors and my parents. I set out to get a University degree, and I was damn well going to get that degree, even if I never lived long enough to put it to good use.

It's hard to describe how much life sucked after that. I was still having all these symptoms, and now I had been told that my body was killing itself (I found it so ironic that now that I actually wanted to live my life, I was going to die). My grades plummeted, I had to drop more classes, I had to sit out competitions for the cheer team, and most of all, I felt I had to still pretend that everything was okay. I pushed away my friends, family, and potential friends. I thought it would be incredibly selfish of me to get close to people, and then when they cared about me they'd have to watch me die. I cut contact with a lot of my friends, avoided social events, withdrew from everyone around me and drowned in my own misery.

So here I was, alone, isolated, sick, and probably dying. I hadn't seen the endocrinologist yet, but I kept getting worse and worse every single day. I cut my hair really short, because most of it fell out, and the bald patches were painfully obvious with longer hair. I put on a happy face, but spent hours curled up on the floor in the shower sobbing, because the walls in residence were thin, so the only place I could have a breakdown without people hearing it was while I was taking a shower, when the water drowned out my cries.

Why was this happening to me? What had I done to deserve this? Why was my happiness being snatched away, right when I'd finally, finally earned it?

I went to Calgary for a day to see the endocrinologist, and other doctors. I had a bunch of tests done, then went home to Lethbridge and tried to keep my grasp on my life, while continuously getting worse every single day. Tests results came back showing nothing was wrong from other doctors. Finally, the next appointment with the endocrinologist rolled around. The test results were in. I resigned myself to my fate. I'd been tested for everything else, this was all that was left. At this point, I just wanted the diagnosis, even if it was grim, because then at least I would know, and I could start getting used to it.

It turned out that one of the medications I was on has the incredibly rare side effect of causing adrenal failure. The doctor said that if I went off the meds, my adrenal glands would most likely restart themselves. I lost it. I had a full on panic attack, bawling my eyes out in that little room, because that meant that the symptoms I was having were not caused by the adrenal failure (as I continued to get worse even with proper meds supporting my adrenal glands). The only thing I said was "Then what's wrong with me?". You'd think I'd have been happy, to know that at least I didn't have those terminal illnesses, but to me, it was all that work trying to figure out what I had, and then coming up empty.

I was directed to several different specialists as they went through a long list of what it could be. I had a lot of scary terms thrown at me: pituitary cancer and Multiple Sclerosis, to name a few. Each test came back the same: my symptoms were not caused by everything I'd been tested for. My adrenal glands bounced back and started working again, but I continued getting sicker and sicker. I have no idea how I managed to make it through the school year, but I did.

I went home to Calgary, and as the tests wrapped up one by one with no conclusions, my family doctor fortunately found the solution. I had Fibromyalgia, which is mostly a diagnosis of exclusion (along with being poked in trigger points). I did what I always have done, which is cheerfully tell myself that if I just try hard enough, I can ignore it. I started meds for it and got waaaay better. By the time the next year of school rolled around, I was super fit, eating right, in minimal pain, and feeling optimistic. No one was going to stop me from living my life the way I wanted to live it, not even my own body!

I did really great for quite a while, good marks in classes, keeping up with clubs, had a social life. And then I had the kidney stone. The ordeal of the first kidney stone is a long story that I shall not tell today, but to put a long story short, I had a complete obstruction by the time they found it and I needed to have it surgically removed. And that was it. I never bounced back from the surgery. I got kidney and bladder infections. I started developing abscesses, the symptoms just piled up.

I tried to keep on doing what I was doing, living healthy, trying hard. But it just wasn't working anymore. I got worse and worse. It started to affect my school life. My grades dropped, I had to withdraw from some classes, I missed appointments, I was late for everything, I was irritable, I was tired, and I was always in so much pain.

This time, I did not manage to force myself through the year. I crashed and burned spectacularly, missing two final exams, falling out with the clubs I was in, alienating my friends. My mom came up and helped me do damage control. I managed to get my withdrawals and flunks changed to withdrawals with cause, fortunately, and figured out a plan with the school to suspend my education until I got better. And I told myself I was going to get better. I had it planned out, I was going to take the summer to sort out my health problems, then go back to school in the fall. That didn't turn out as planned.

As soon as I moved back to Calgary for the summer, I crashed. I'd been focusing so hard on keeping myself going, and now that I had nothing to keep going for, my body just decided that this was it. I stopped going outside, only leaving the house to go to doctor's appointments or get more tests done. Every day was agony. Simple daily tasks I once took for granted became impossibly difficult. Buttoning buttons. Eating. Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. I spent most of my day in my bed, asleep, or in too much pain to fall asleep but too tired to do anything else. I had to take breaks while walking up the short set of stairs from the basement to the main floor. I couldn't walk a block without having to stop and take a rest. I was miserable.

August was when I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to be able to go back to school. My doctor had been telling me all summer, but I kept on being stubbornly optimistic. I cried the day I woke up and realized that I would never be able to go to school like this.

And thus began the process of attempting to get myself better. I got on waiting lists for specialists and therapists, registered as legally disabled, went to programs designed to help people like me, tried lots of new meds, and while sometimes it would seem as if I was getting better, I would just crash again. I had more kidney stones, which was just rubbing salt into my wounds.

My dog came into my life at just the right time. It was December, I'd been disabled at home for a bit longer than a year then. Quite honestly, I'd given up. I didn't think I was ever going to get better. I felt trapped, caged, a youthful, spirited mind and soul trapped in a decrepit, old body. I wanted to die. For the first time since that fateful attempt in my grade twelve year, I contemplated suicide. I was going crazy. I didn't want to live anymore. Surely death was better than remaining in this broken meatsack and yearning for things I could never have. I continued seeing doctors and going to programs, though I was more just going through the motions than actually striving to get better. I'd given up on getting better.

Earlier that year I'd attended some workshops for people coping with chronic pain. My mom came along. Somehow, the conversation came around to pets, and a lot of the people went on about how therapeutic their dogs were. People started sharing stories about their dogs and the way they'd changed their lives. It sounded wonderful to me, but my family has always been against getting a dog, and I never imagined that it could actually happen. I jokingly told my mom to get me one for Christmas. The other people at the workshop thought it was funny, and chimed in, agreeing that I should totally get a dog. The workshop ended, I went home, and thought nothing of it.

December came around soon, and one day, much to my surprise, my parents sat me down and told me that they would let me pick out a dog for Christmas. My mom had been doing research on therapy dogs, and my father was impressed with what the studies showed animal companions could do.

And the rest, as they say, was history. I got my dog, and my improvement succeeded beyond the wildest hopes and dreams of my parents, doctors, and myself. It definitely didn't go smoothly, but this is already too long for a post. Next time, I'm going to tell the story of just how I got my dog, and the interesting circumstances around that event. So no Life After Dog stories yet, just Life Before Dog and Starting Life With Dog in the next post, but after that I swear I will adhere to the title of my blog. The Life After Dog stories I have are funnier, anyways.