Hello everybody,
Well, where and how do I begin? My name is Aydin and I’ve been an MS patient for the past 13 years. And my life has been one spiralling downslope ever since.
I used to be an English teacher(I live in Antalya, Turkey, btw). About a year ago(and after a very severe attack), I realized I could not go on working anymore and applied for a disability retirement. I got retired from my job about 7 months ago and oh boy, was that a big mistake. You see, I’m one of those really unfortunate people who could not move out of ma&pa’s house. It was 5 years ago that I was finally able to get steady employment through disability and I came to a point where I could simply not continue working.
Why am I complaining? Well, first off, my salary got a 60% slash(I was already making lousy pay so imagine the position I’m in now). To add insult to injury, I have to live with a father who openly told me that he hated me and a mother who said she had “written me off the books.” 6 years ago, when I first started taking copaxone shots, everybody was in line trying to help me. Fast forward 6 years, nobody gives a crap and they are NOT shy to say that they don’t give a crap.
I’m currently on my 4th prescription of sleeping pills(the other 3 didn’t work) because for the past 4-5 months, I’ve been losing sleep(2-3 hours a day max). I’m excessively unhappy; depressed even and I can’t see a way out of my current predicament because I’m stuck with toxic people and I can’t even afford my own place if I wanted to move out(a move that everybody is looking forward to, apparently).
On the MS side, I’ve been on Gilenya for the past 3 months as copaxone could no longer contain the situation(having had yet another attack 3 weeks after getting retired and spending a week at the hospital) . The right side of my body has been severely affected; especially my right leg is almost completely dead as I can barely move it anymore(it is always numb and stiff). As for right arm, it is slightly better but if and when I get really tired, half my arm goes numb. In that case, I can move my thumb, pointing finger and middle finger but my ring finger and pinky are a different story.
Like I said, it’s been 13 years since I’ve been diagnosed and my life has been a spiralling mess for most of that period. I graduated college with a fast deteriorating state of health, and even went on to finish a second. I served in the military(Turkey being one of the last 3rd world countries that has conscription) which of course only lasted 1 month(but probably stole 10 years of my life) because I was deemed “unfit for duty” and I’ve become a crutch wielding cripple throughout the last 7 years of my life(from a 100m in 14.72 seconds sprinter). I’ve never had a girlfriend, of course, seeing how shallow women of my peers are that they could simply NOT see me as dating material. I’ve thought long and hard about killing myself because I realized for the past 6 months, I’ve done nothing but: Go out, have the only meal of the day, go back home and sleep off the intense fatigue that such a trip has upon me, surf the Internet, play ages old video games and go to bed. I know this sounds more like a suicide note that anything else, but having absolutely no friends(and I mean none as is not one) I have nobody to talk to and share my problems with. Can someone give me a piece of mind because I’m literally at the end of my rope, thank you.