THE MAKING OF THE FIBRO CAKE

It's amazing how a chronic illness can change you. You make plans and your body seems to sense that you need something else. You want to go beyond the borders of this invisible disease and right away, your body will betray you. The plans I now make are filled with exit contingencies, attendance caveats and anything else I can possible think of so that if the pain is unmanageable, I don't have to go.

Chronic pain chips away at the person called ME. It changes you. Some changes are for the worse and a few are for the better. I think I've realized what I want and who I am however the implementation gets a little fuzzy. So as the humidity rises and falls, I am again incapacitated.

Most people have no clue about this invisible illness. First and foremost there's the pain, then the unrelenting fatigue, the ever-annoying brain fog. I have low body temperature ( 97.1), low blood pressure, leg spasms that make me want to take a baseball bat to them. I feel like a vampire because my eyes are so sensitive to light. I am a human barometer. I struggle to remember information and do memory puzzles so that the few brain cells that I have I want to keep. Then there's sleep. What sleep?

Trigger points are tender? Sounds like chicken. Forget it, they hurt like hell. There are days, like today, that I can't stand to even be touched.

So lets make this Fibro cake.

Let's take the Type A personality

Add some obsessive compulsive tendencies

Add a dash of perfectionism

Throw in changes in lifestyle, divorce and subsequent financial issues

Mix well

Then add high pressure selling, hard and long hours and endless quotas.

Let this simmer for years.

Add menopause, mononucleosis, accident trauma.......

Finally it's done.

Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue will be served up momentarily.

BASKET CASE

I am a basket case.

It's beginning to sprinkle. The humidity is over 30% and I can feel every bone in my body rub against each other and it doesn't feel good.

Now comes the pain filled random thinking......

How did we come up with basket case.....hell in a handbasket.........a tisket, a tasket........what the hell is a tasket?

Random thinking......I love it. If I keep it up I may be able to distract myself from the excruciating pain that I'm experiencing today.

Now, I've taken pain medication about an hour ago and it will take at least another hour before it begins to take the edge off. I've been in the shower, the bath, in bed, out of bed, walking around because I'm tired of being in bed, rubbing my hands, finally giving into the tears that have been threatening since the humidity started climbing and finally giving in and accepting that it could be worse but that's not making me feel better at all.

So now, I need to find some humor somewhere.

You know you've got the fibro fog when...........what the hell was I talking about?

When the doctor asks for your records, you ask which volume he wants.

You know you've got Fibromyalgia when you call oxycodone..."the mild stuff."

Where does a person with Fibromyalgia have their grocery list when they go to the store? On the table back at home.

How do you snap out of the Fibro fog?

I'll let you know when it happens.

OW SQUARED

Chronic pain. Brain fog. Fatigue.

The bywords of my life.

I've taken pain medication for the fifth day. I refuse to be immoble but it hurts so fricking bad to even walk. I rub my hands because they hurt. It's hard to sleep because I hurt. I find it hard to read because I hurt and can't seem to see through the fog that shrouds my brain.

I've been researching chronic pain and found a study from Northwestern University. Dr. Vania Apkarian states in this study that chronic pain shrinks the brain 11%. Eleven percent! This is compared to 10-20 years of normal aging. The unrelenting pain was studied in patients that have had it over a year. The loss of brain density is relating to the level and duration of the pain.

The decision making ability, emotional assessments and the control of social behavior is caused from abnormal brain chemisty that chronic pain brings.

This is heartening. That means the reason I've lost brain cells and turned into a jellied mass of emotions is that the pain has been going on for so long that I'm literally

LOSING MY MIND.

I have tried to take part in the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue center comments. I've would welcome input on how other people cope with the pain, the unrelenting fatigue and brain fog.

What I can't handle is the complaining.

I can whine with the best of them. I grew up kvetching and will die kvetching but I don't want to listen to it from everyone else on a constant basis. I know we all hurt and I know most doctors think we're nuts.

Hell, for that matter, I think I'm half nuts with all this crap going on with my body.

What I want is something definitive. I bought a comfort U pillow 5 years ago and it has truly helped by taking the pressure of some of my trigger points so that I can rest. I tell people this is what I did and why it helps. That's all I want to know.

If you take supplements tell me what they are and why you think it helps.

For today, I just wish it would rain.

OW

Image by Pete Hunt via Flick

Today promises to be a day that will hurt. There were thunderstorms moving in and I've been feeling it in my hands and going through every bone in my body.

The last few days have brought back the pain to the heights that it reached a month ago. I take two steps forward and then three steps back. To compensate for my lack of mobility due to the pain, I've used the time to pause.

Pause. Take stock of what I have, what I don't have, what I want and how I want to get there. The acceptance part of the grieving process that I've gone through with my body is emerging. I no longer want to fight it and deny it. I realize my limitations again and will adjust my life accordingly.

I got word that a work colleague has died. She had a massive heart attack and passed away after they operated on her. When I asked about her one of her friends said, "she was just under so much stress." I am fully convinced that stress kills. We're not meant to survive on cortisol running constantly through our system. That type A personality that I joke so often about has to take a back seat to Type B. When we see, "don't sweat the small stuff," those people who wouldn't recognize stress if it jumped up and bit them; they have something there.

What really matters in the grand scheme of things? The quality of our lives rather than rushing around trying to get everything "just right." Life, love and health.

I'm learning lessons from my dog. My baby is getting older and he has a little trouble with his back legs but when he see's "his pack" you can see his happiness in his whole body. He smiles; he wags his tail with the vigor of a young puppy. He doesn't stop to think what he doesn't have, he concentrates on what he does. The unconditional love of his family and friends and he sleeps in the contented knowledge that he has all he needs.

He is my lesson in life.

MOVING DAY

My kids, one of my body and one of my heart are moving today.

I miss them already, but I know they need their own lives and their own path and it's way past time for me to find mine.

I still have mountains of papers and stuff all over my tables and on their bed. I did spend the afternoon and evening just cleaning their bathroom. You know it's funny.........what is it about girls and bathrooms? I try to keep mine clean but when makeup is involved something happens.

Where does the dust that gets caught in the hairdryer come from? How does putting on a little mineral makeup cause the powder to appear on bottles not even close to where you're standing? It seems I'm forever cleaning.

As I cleaned and put things in little piles that they can now put in their house, I felt the empty nest twinge again. It was pretty rough when my daughter moved across the country to Florida. She drove away and I felt that emptiness down in the pit of my stomach and it stayed there. For a very long time. She and I have always been close and I felt like I lost my best friend.

Then, as time always manages to do, I adjusted. After six long years her life changed and she left her home and her friends and followed her heart back home. She and her fiance stayed with me until they got on their feet. Here we are, eleven months later and they got their own home and packed up and moved.

Some think that I got my house back. Ok, I did and it will be a little cleaner than it was but there is something to be said for the messes your kids bring. I think it keeps you young. It gives you something to laugh about when you see them doing everything you used to do and laughter is a wonderful, healing thing.

So as moving day has come and gone I am supremely grateful for the opportunity to have my kids home once again. I'm not quite laughing but smiling.

Besides, they'll be back over again today.