I’ve been a bit quiet on the writing front.

Despite the fact that I schedule 1.5 hr every week to ramble, edit, find a good pic and publish, my unexpected and sometimes tumultuous life just gets in the way.

I also do a lot of marinating (and perhaps procrastinating).

What I’ve read. How I’m feeling. The latest blood test results. What the naturopath is suggesting. What the latest science journal says. What the latest podcast proposes.

The next holiday. The next bike ride. Will I ever be able to do more than 20 mins a day? Will I ever enjoy the freedom of hiking faraway trails, pitching a tent and for a moment, just be there…in that space.

And then I have to remind myself to stop the nostalgia shit. It’s not helpful.

Today is different. From yesterday. From last month. From last year. From August 27, 2012.

My ever-evolving auto-immune world, continues to spin on its merry axis. It would be nice to know where to next though.

Confirmation that I have HPA axis dysfunction, bordering on Addison’s disease. Yet more labels. More tests. More peeing in funnels.

I’ve basically fried my brain’s circuit board that controls the messages to my body to manage hormones. In its crudest term the 4 S’s are completely out of whack – sugar, salt, sex and stress.

Was it all the steroids I was given to control the severe bouts of inflammation or was it the enormous stress driven by the need to achieve, perfect and be seen?

Was it the perpetual flight/fight response turned on early in my childhood? Was it because I never felt safe, until my mid-30s, to put down the armour?

It doesn’t really matter, but it does explain some basic physiology and the development of dis-ease. No testosterone, too much progesterone, a spluttering and spurting thyroid, layers of endometriosis and simply not enough cortisol.

What a relief!

No more beating myself up over that second soy latte at 3pm, which can be bad for most people, let alone those with various auto-immune disease.

My body simply doesn’t create enough get-up-and-go over the course of the day, so right now I’ll keep investing in my local coffee haunt, which Franki doesn’t seem to mind either.

It also explains that when I push that little bit more, don’t give myself enough rest over the course of the day, run from one thing to another (99% of the time in my head), or have a crap night’s sleep, I can guarantee I’ll wake up to aching hands, grinding knees and an overall feeling of heaviness. There are days where I can even feel the weight of my eyelids and every single blink.

On those days, it’s simply a case of cause and effect – I’m spending pennies I don’t have. And then I remind myself.

This makes sense.

Because the most frustrating part of the last 2.5 years hasn’t been the multiple diagnoses, the furrowed brows, the experimental drugs, the grinding pain, the overwhelming fatigue, a life that has changed.

The frustration was that it simply did not make sense.

I couldn’t see a pattern. I couldn’t manage my day. I was fighting wildly, valiantly…but blind.

It’s a slow, painful and frustrating experience (call it journey if you’d like).

It requires patience I didn’t know I had. And patience I didn’t think I could muster. But then I heard the definition of patience from a 4 year-old, “Patience…wait & whinge.”

Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time waiting and even more time whinging. Because sometimes you’re waiting for the light to turn on, for a chance to put on the gloves, prepare yourself, so the fight is fair.

Upfront, in your face, visible.

But most of the time it’s not.

So I guess I’ll just need to learn to swing, duck and brace at the right times. And if I can’t see, and I don’t know where to aim, I’ll need to learn to feel and to sense.

Perhaps even trust myself. The innate. The gut feeling, once again.

And when I go down…at least I’ve already learnt how to get back up.