I may have flown too close to the sun and burnt my wings off... I don't know. I may have spoken too soon. First, It turns out I didn't start working until June, so I called myself undisabled a month too early! But there's more. While I was doing well at work, I ended up with a stomach flu, which can be deadly for someone with my disease. I got through, got back to work, and I thought all was well. Until one night when I started feeling very strange. At first I thought it was another seizure, so I quickly took a Neurontin. When that didn't help, and I started feeling worse, I called 911. They kept me overnight for extremely low Potassium, something that is not supposed to happen to someone with my disease. We're always taught to look for levels that are too high. I am, once again, a freak...
And the symptoms for how to tell if my potassium is too low or too high are exactly the same as symptoms I already get for other reasons, So I have no way of knowing until it's too late, and tool tale can mean dead. Fun times! I can buy a potassium meter, but they run around $400, because it's also rare that someone wouldn't be able to tell...These things are usually used in labs, not on people. But I simply have no other way.
Furthermore, it looks like I miscalculated, and I'm not officially "no longer disabled" until September fisrts of this year. I may actually miss that milestone....
I'm not sure how I feel about that. This new Potassium scare has me worried that I am not actually be able to push myself as hard as I need to in order to join the ranks of non-disabled. This whole working full-time thing might not be a good idea. It's the only way I can afford things (like the two root canals I needed last month...that completely wiped out everything I had saved since the beginning of the year...). It's felt so good to be able to pay off my bad debt too. I was taking calls from my creditors and paying them off cheerfully. I was back in the world of the healthy, and finally could tall anout the things they talk about (like complaining about a bad commute or the latest snafu on the job). it felt so good to be among their ranks again.
It felt so good to be WORTH paying, rather than on charity. It Doesn't matter that I paid into Social Security... I qualified to draw that money based on my pitiful state. That's still in the spirit of charity, even if that charity isn't a hand-out.
Time will tell...
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