@Sprung87 I just had a scan for osteoporosis today, which my grandmother and aunt had. I have severe osteoarthritis everywhere throughout my body… knees are finished - so bad they can barely even accomplish replacements on them. Hips are starting to go, wrists, fingers, feet that like to shatter in the middle of the night, teeth falling out like crazy because they’re shrinking despite tons of extra care (my dentist ordered the DEXA scan today), bad neck and back, sometimes bad shoulders. Two kinds of cancer already. I’ve been putting off the knee replacements for 10 years already, thanks to taking so much Aleve and Tylenol that I’ve messed up my intestines. Ive been getting quarterly corticosteroid knee and neck injections for a decade. I’m only 46. This is as good as it gets for me and it’s already hell. The only thing I really enjoy any more is my cat and the few times it barely snows now, thanks to stupid global warming. I haven’t been pain-free since 2009; I can’t imagine more than maybe one more decade of putting up with this shit; there’s no way I will make it for multiple decades. Good thing I knew by age 19 that I had my grandmother’s knees so I skied and backpacked and rock and ice climbed and worked on movie sets like crazy while I was young because once I hit 40 a few years ago, it’s been a sedentary life for me ever since. Even once I get my knees replaced, that won’t change my spinal stenosis nor repair the 50% of my vertebral discs that are severed. Suicide has been on my mind multiple times per day for years already (no, I never go through with trying, yes, I have a psychiatrist, yes, I have an LCSW therapist, yes, my friends and family know how I feel). Sometimes I think I shouldn’t even bother going through the agony of getting knee replacements because I don’t know how much longer I have left in me. The broken bladder is the icing on the discomfort and inconvenience cake. Then there is the expense of all my meds and procedures and how obnoxious it is to have work under these conditions. Life is just getting to be less and less worth fighting for, just to be stuck feeling miserable. Yes, I write gratitude journals, no, they don’t really help, and pumpkin seeds? Give me a break!
Yet a few days ago somebody on this forum had the audacity to ask me for sympathy for *their* pain, like 98% of us on the forum *aren’t* in severe physical physical and emotional pain, also? That person knows who he is.
I know there are people on the forum who are way worse off than I am, like ThatFLGuy and MezaJarJarBinks, and I absolutely feel for them, because I know that others aren’t able to, or refuse to, empathize or sympathize with me, also.
