It's getting harder and harder by the day. Sometimes I'm not even sure I want to get better. I don't remember what 'better' is, for that matter. It feels like another life that I lost somewhere a long time ago. Most of the time, I simply try to survive - I can't do anything else.

The nausea and dizziness are with me all the time now. There's a bouncy ball wrecking havoc on my stomach, and I can barely bring myself to eat anything except toast, and even that is a challenge most days. Any time I'm upright, even propped up in bed, my head turns into one of those coin whirlpools that used to be in shopping malls, my brain a little tugboat spinning round and round on its way downward into darkness. Then there's the blacking out. It's only for a second at a time, but that's far long enough to lose one's footing and crash into something or fall down. I used to feel okay driving, but I had one of those blackouts while driving downhill on a windy two-lane road, so that was the end of that real quick.

I wish someone had told me about the long-term side effects of having these nerve block injections and trigger point injections. I may well have acted more cautiously and not had the shots quite so often. Huge, dark purple stretch marks now cover my upper arms and upper legs indiscriminately, and they're beginning to creep down towards my elbows and knees and across my chest. They've all popped into existence overnight - I didn't notice any strange marks on my skin one night, the next night there were white stretch marks, and by the next night they were purple and tender and indented.

I keep trying to tell myself that by the end of this, I'll have some wickedly cool battle scars. But I can't bring myself to believe it. I can't even believe I'll get better.