Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone

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But in this case, I was glad to see it go.

The past four months have been so hard for me, pain-wise. Which of course means that they have then been so hard for me, life-wise, as well.

Finally last week I decided to go and see my fibro doctor, to see if there was anything else I could do to help manage this STOOPID illness, and lo and behold, there was!

Instead of tweaking my Lyrica, which is so hard for my body to handle after a certain point, we tweaked an anti-depressant that also works like Lyrica, impairing your brain’s ability to feel pain.

And oh, how my world has changed in just one week. I started feeling better the very next day, when I realized that, in addition to the pain, I had also gotten stuck in a depression. That seems so obvious now, but of course I can never see it when I’m in it. The pain -and accompanying depression-ground me down so slowly, bit by bit, that it’s like every day another, slightly darker, filter is placed in front of my mind/vision, until the way I’m seeing and interpreting the world just seems normal.

And so, God Bless Antidepressants!

Unfortunately, whenever this happens to me I am unable to write. For one thing-and I am not exaggerating here-just the simple act of getting out of bed and walking to the kitchen to say goodbye to my husband in the morning feels like climbing Mt. Everest. And then add that feeling to every other action I have to perform merely to get through that day, and it is impossible for me to even pull my blog up on the Internet, much less use my mind to generate a post.

However: things are definitely looking up here in Cranky Land, and I am working on getting the words and the funny flowing again.

So thank you guys so much for sticking with me through all these ups and downs. It really supports me in being able to tell the truth about living with STOOPID fibromyalgia-even when it’s a bit (or a lot) dark and dreary.

OK-talk to you soon. And as always, May The Cranky Be With You.

It Was The End Of The World As I Knew It, But I Did NOT Feel Fine

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(As a two-year resident of Athens while completing my graduate degree, I just couldn’t help it- even though I was never blessed with my own personal “Michael Stipe Sighting”, like  other people I knew.)

So, anyway-onwards to the point of this post.

October used to be Way Cool Awesome for me, because it is the month of my birth. And the month when fall was most definitely here. And cool, fall Youth Group activities. And new beginnings.

But unfortunately, it now has a lot of awful anniversaries for me. So the bulk of October, and the first couple of weeks in November are really hard for me to get through.

Because it was at this time three years ago that I got the horribly wretched and awful illness that eventually tipped me over the edge into fibromyalgia. I haven’t been able to write about it or really talk about it until now. But I think I’m ready now to tell you my story. I guess we’ll see.

****

I have always had a weird relationship with my body. I think I always resented and denied the fact that I even had to have a body, and couldn’t actually survive as a disembodied brain just floating through the world and collecting experiences-even though that is exactly how I navigated my way through this world.

There were some understandable reasons for this. For example, I got sick ALL THE TIME as I was growing up, pretty much from birth all the way through my life until October of 2007. I was in pain, a lot. I was ill, a lot. I didn’t feel good, A LOT. So it was actually pretty understandable for me to flee my body and spend all my time up in my mind. I have always had a very vivid and entertaining inner world, so it was really no problem for me to entertain myself in there.

And I never said anything about it, because I though that’s the way everyone was. As a matter of fact, when I’d first seen my rheumatologist and we were waiting for the test results, my husband did not understand why I was so excited that I might actually have A Real Thing. So I told him that every single day, as far back as I could remember, there was always something in my body that hurt, or that didn’t feel well. But for one thing, the doctors rarely ever found anything wrong for me, so they really couldn’t help me. And for another, I thought that’s what it meant to be a grownup. I thought everyone felt bad every day, but that you just sucked it up and never said anything, because that’s just what happened when you were a grownup.

And then my husband looked at me, horrified, as though I had just sprouted four heads.

And I said, “You mean, you don’t feel that way?”

And he said, “NO, I DON’T FEEL THAT WAY!” (I think his head might have exploded a little bit at this point, because what I’d just said was so far outside his experience, that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.

And I said, “Well I do.”

And then he looked at me with compassion and concern, because he’d never known that before. Because I never told him. Because I didn’t think there was anything that anyone could do to help me feel better.

But that actually comes much later in the story.

The point where this story starts is the part where I somehow contracted the most god-awful, potentially fatal (although, THANK GOD I didn’t know this at the time) illness known as C DIFF.

And apparently, that is all I’m able to write about this for right now.

To be continued…

And This Is Why I Will Never Be A TRUE Gamer

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The other day my husband and I went out to dinner, and eventually the talk turned to all the video games that are coming out this fall, and the particular games that he was excited to play.

One of those games is called “Fallout: New Vegas”, a game about survivors trying to scratch out an existence in a post-apocalyptic world. (Cheery, I know.)

I’d watched him play Fallout 3, and really enjoyed the story (I like to refer to myself as his “gaming groupie”), and so I asked him about the plot of the upcoming game. Specifically, I asked if any of the characters from the previous game would be appearing in the new game.

And he said, in the tone that someone might use to announce that we need to add toilet paper to the grocery list, because we’ve just run out:

“Well, there is one character that has been in all of the games so far. But in Fallout 3 he turned into a tree. And since that game took place in Washington D.C., and this one takes place in Las Vegas, it would be really hard for him to get to the other coast.”

A TRUE gamer’s response: Nothing, because they wouldn’t even be having this conversation, because they would both already know everything there is to know about the upcoming game.

An up-and-coming gamer’s response: “Oh, OK. So it’s just like what happened to [some other character] in [some other game].

My response: “Did you hear what you just said?!”

So apparently, he’s a gamer, and I am not, and never the twain shall meet.

Time Is But The Stream I Go A-Musing In

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Time and I first became adversaries when I went off to college. Before then, I really don’t think we had a problem with each other. But that all changed as soon as I set foot on the campus of my
university.

I was so miserable in college-lonely, homesick, confused, you name it. But I was so young, and I didn’t know to tell my parents that I was so upset and needed help.So I gritted my teeth and
soldiered on, and that is when time and I became enemies.

I always felt like there was a race on between me and time; I was always running around, trying to find ways to fill up time so I wouldn’t have to feel my misery, and time was always looking for ways to f*** with me. It was continually shape shifting, trying to catch me off guard, trying to find gaps in my defenses and my strategies and my coping mechanisms where it could slip in and strike.

And overarching all of this was the feeling that time was a vice, and I was trapped inside it, and the clamps kept tightening, trying to “catch” my mind and trap it so that it would finally be stuck
in one place, conscious and aware, and completely at the mercy of time as time passed it by.

That’s my version of hell, actually-disembodied awareness and consciousness, trapped in endless time.

And although our relationship has gotten better over the years, I would say that time and I are still adversaries. Whenever I’m in pain, whether physical or otherwise, time seems to make it worse, because I have to be present in time, and pass through time, until I can get to a time when I feel some relief.

Hm-but now I’m wondering if that’s actually time’s “fault”. Maybe time is neutral, and my pain has been real, and, unfortunately for the painful times, the fact of being human and living in this world
means that time is what enables me to have experiences-some painful, some wonderful. But maybe the painful and wonderful actually don’t have anything to do with pain.

What if time is like the stuff you put on to prep a canvas for being painted? What if it’s like a stream running underground, or in the background, allowing everything around it to exist and live?

What if Being In Time is what allows me to experience things?

What if time is like air-just there, just being what it is? I can allow the air in, I can let in just a little bit but not a lot, I can resist air, I can refuse to let it in. But that has nothing to do with the air. Air is just air. Time is just time. In and of themselves they are neutral.

Just like there’s no life possible on a planet without water, there’s no life possible in me without breathing air.

And then as I’m living, experiences come to me, in some cases I can say “yes” or “no”, and go along my merry, breathing way.

But sometimes I don’t have any say over what experiences come (Fibromyalgia, anyone?!) and all I can do is choose how I interact with them. Will I stop breathing and resist them? Will I breathe a little bit and deal with it a little bit at a time? Will I try to take in too much all at once and overload my systems?

I didn’t choose to have this illness (this particular experience), but I can choose how I interact with it, at least up to a point.

What if time is just the backdrop against which my life is played out, against which it stands out as something that matters?

What if time is the mystical, alchemical substance, like gasses surrounding a planet, that animates human life and existence? And then air is what animates my particular human body? And then my
particular body is what animates and allows for my particular life experiences?

What if time is actually neutral?

What if it’s not actually my enemy, but my ally?

Whoa.

“Do You Know Who I Am?”, By Angela Thomas: A Review

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OK, 2 things first:

1-I am a mad, raving fan of Angela, and am completely in love with everything she does.

2-I am The Worst Book Reviewer In The Entire World. Seriously. So I have no idea where this will go. I guess we’ll just have to see!

I have had the privilege of knowing Angela Thomas since 1987, when I was in the 10th grade and she came on staff as one of the Youth Ministers at the church I was attending in Charlotte.

Then she moved on to other things, and I moved on to college, and I kind of forgot about her for a while.

Then one day about 4 years ago I was falling down the rabbit hole surfing the web, and I happened upon her website. And I thought, “Hey-I know that woman!” And as it happened, she was getting ready to speak at a church near me in South Carolina. So I went, and I got to hear her speak on the message from her book, When Wallflowers Dance: Becoming A Woman Of Righteous Confidence.

Attending an Angela Thomas event is like attending a Master Class in speaking and performing-the level of ability is just incredible. But she doesn’t just have the style-she also brings the content; all of her books are extremely well-written, extremely easy to translate into a spoken-word presentation, with messages that are easily received. As in, it’s all laid out there for you, so there’s no way to pretend you don’t know what you now know after you read one of her books.

So now I joke that I’ve become her “groupie”, following her career, and attending her events when I can. And then back in August I had the opportunity to be part of the live studio audience for the filming of the DVD Bible study that is based on her new book, do you know who i am? and other brave questions women ask. I was really excited to go, because I’d never been part of anything like that before. But I was even more excited, because it was the first trip I was able to go on all by myself since I got so sick three years ago. So I felt like I was gaining back a little bit of what fibromyalgia has taken away from me.

I have read all of her books, and have done her other three Bible studies, so I thought I had a good idea of what this would be like. But actually, it’s quite different.

[Read more…] about “Do You Know Who I Am?”, By Angela Thomas: A Review

And THIS Would Be Why I Need So Much Checking Up On

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or, “preventing me from taking those first, perilous steps down the road of Accidentally Becoming A Lying Sack Of Sh*t”.

Yesterday:

My husband calls me from work to check on me.

My husband: “So what’s your pain level?”

Me: “Actually, I’m not having any pain.”

My husband: “Great!”

Me: “Although I do have a really bad headache.”

My husband: pauses for a beat

My husband: “And that doesn’t count as pain?”

Me: “Hm…I guess I never thought about it like that.”

****

This morning:

My husband is getting ready to leave for work.

My husband: “So what’s your pain level?”

Me: actually taking time to tune into my body

Me: “Time to take an Ultram-level.”

My husband: watches to make sure I actually do, since pain flare-ups frequently result in the loss of my short-term memory

Me: “You know, it’s a good thing you asked, because I knew I was in pain, but I was just gonna wait to see if got better on its own.”

My  husband: “What a surprise.”