REASSEMBLE (ME).

Where has time gone this year? It feels like I’ve been asleep the majority of this year as times has really slipped through my fingers but parts of my life have been an ongoing nightmare. I wish I had been asleep for most of the year instead.

The thing that I had been putting off for a very long time, going back to the doctor’s to start the process of (literally) everything again. This took two separate appoints in the end - my list of issues was slightly too long. This lead to a referral for gynaecology, specifically the endometriosis clinic (which I have not had access to before) and rheumatology for my joint pains. I waited three months for rheumatology and my endo clinic appointment was originally a six month wait and then it got cancelled and has turned into an eight month wait (to talk to someone). We know these waiting times aren’t changing anytime soon. Rheumatology turned into an hour long appointment because I started crying and the junior doctor didn’t know what to do so brought a senior consultant in (who proceeded to repeat everything the junior doctor had already done). To be fair, they already did 10x more than the previously rheumatology department I visited. They then referred me for an MRI.

The MRI appointment came within two weeks of my appointment, the end of May, which was good but it meant being in a mobile MRI at 7am for nearly 50 minutes. I never used to feel any sort of claustrophobic but nearly 50 minutes head-first into an MRI will change that. However, it took two months to get my results from the MRI. Turns out my hip, that I’ve had issues with for over ten years, has a tear with possible hip dysplasia as well as a compressed L5/S1 in my lower back - which is the pain that I struggle with the most as I get this pressure in my lower back as I stand still or I am walking in less than a couple of minutes and doesn’t go until I sit down. Just what I needed, more things wrong with me than could lead to further issues if left untreated.

September is becoming a month of appointments. I have my rescheduled first appointment at the endo clinic (hopefully), I’ve just had a referral for orthopaedics with a hip and knee replacement specialist (I know I am getting closer to 30 but it didn’t need to be this drastic) and then had a referral from the integrated musculoskeletal service…I had been referred to them for orthopaedics, I think it’s for physio therapy. So I am now waiting for an appointment for that too.

It feels like the list of things wring with me is getting longer and longer and it’s all pain. Never-ending pain. I just feel very lost, broken and discarded Who would want that in their life? Who wants someone broken.

Journal pencil sketch layered with tracing paper and text. “I am nothing but a hollow shell…”