I am talking about medication and chronic pain/chronic illness, but the tone of the post is good. things are getting better.
I have been suffering with chronic migraine for the last three (ish) years. Luckily, the majority of those years has been under treatment with medication (it was a very rough few months, in the beginning) to limited effect. I started with Propranolol, and worked up over the course of a couple years to the maximum dose they would let me take (240mg/day). That took me from blocking out the sunlight in my dark bedroom to being able to sit a room with the lights on interact with other people again. My daily pain went from debilitating, to a buzzing in the background, worsened to nausea and vertigo by even a minimal exposure to triggers.
My biggest barrier to daily life is a debilitating light-sensitivity. This can mean bright and flashing lights, but most of the time it relates to the light coming from computer screens. I couldn't look at phones, look at my computer, watch TV, for any meaningful length of time without the migraine symptoms ramping up into severity again. I could leave my bedroom, I could even go outside. I got a sliver of normalcy back but it still wasn't enough to function in the real world. Our daily lives are dominated by screens and you can barely hope to work a job that doesn't require one function, and the ones that don't often require physical labour that my other disabilities can't handle. I can't do labour, I can't do remote work, I can't do a desk job. I still can't live a normal life. Not to mention, about a year ago, I started noticing the Propranolol was beginning to lose some of its effectiveness. I was losing ability and tolerance, rather than keeping or gaining it.
(you may be asking - how could you be on Pillowfort all day if you couldn't look at a screen for more than 20 minutes? this issue was so bad and lasted so long that I dropped £300 on an e-ink tablet, which does not emit any light to distress me, and this tablet sees more use than my mobile phone on a daily basis. its my lifeline to the rest of the world.)
For the last two months I've been given a new medication to try. Right now I'm settled on 40mg of Amitriptyline (on top of my other medication. they weren't going to make me stop one and start another at the same time), and I'm still kind of in shock at the difference. It's the same kind of feeling I had when I first started noticing the Propranolol working three years ago. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but things have just been getting better. The screen sensitivity is much less severe of a problem, to the point where I might actually be able to get through a work day (with some adjustments), where it would be out of the question before. Not that a person's value is based on their capacity for work, but I want to be able to lead an independent life and working is a part of that. I have also had the secondary benefit of it improving my fibromyalgia & anxiety symptoms a little, which I will accept with glee. It makes me very emotional to see the progress after being stagnant for a long time.
I feel a little bit more like a person again. It has me tearing up to think about it too long. I'll never live a normal life with all my disabilities, but my world just got a little bit bigger. That's enough to feel hopeful again.
I don't really know what the point of this is, just to say: medicine good. I love a good old fashioned fries & coke when the symptoms are mild but there is only so far a TikTok lifehack will get you. I think I have seen 101 of those videos by now and can you tell I am a little frustrated with them. Some things are useful on top the medicine, but you can pry my antidepressants from my cold dead hands.