Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Reassurance

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So yesterday I went to see my fibromyalgia doctor because ever since my surgery I have been having really bad pain. Because-of course-physical trauma is one of the things that can cause fibromyalgia in the first place. It’s just such a lovely little circle I have going on here. (And do not even get me started on the migraines.)

I was trying to describe everything that was going on and, since I am a writer (and, ahem, something of a Drama Queen and Rampant Abuser of Creative License), there was much wild gesturing and saying of things like, “And then after being in pain for so many days I just go into this downward spiral and think things like, ‘Am I going to die?’, or, ‘Is this all there is to my life-just managing pain?’ ”

So he came over and started doing his physical examination and, wanting to be helpful said,

“Well, you will die. But not from this.”

And somehow, I was oddly reassured.

Just When I Thought I’d Never Feel Funny Again, I Get A Phone Call Like This

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A couple of weeks ago my parents went out of town to do a favor for some elderly relatives. My parents were going to open up our relatives’ summer residence to air it out, clean it up, and make sure that no repairs needed to be done before it was time for our relatives to come and take up residence there.

So on the day that they were going up there I got a call from my mom. I thought she was just calling to let me know that she and my dad had gotten there safely. But I was wrong.

“Hi, Jen,” she said, when I picked up the phone.

“Hey, Mom,” I replied, “how are you guys doing?”

“Well,” she said, “suppose that you had gone on a trip specifically to get a house ready for summer. What would be the one thing you would not want to forget?”

“Um, shorts? Sunglasses? Your computer! (And so you can all see where my priorities lie: creature comforts and Internet access, BABY!)

“Well, let me ask this in a different way,” said my mom, taking pity on my pathetic guessing skills. “What if you had to get inside the house in order to work on the house? What would be the one thing you really need?”

“Oh-keys!” I shouted, so proud of myself for coming up with the right answer. And then the consequences of their not having keys dawned on me. “Oh. So what are you gonna do?” (I should mention here that this town is very, very far away from where my parents live, and possibly involves needing 2 separate, specialized planes to get to. So there was no question of anyone just running home to pick up a few forgotten things.)

“Well first we went to Lowe’s, because we thought that maybe they could just magically make us a key. And they laughed at us, Jen-they actually laughed at us.”

“Uh,” I replied, struggling desperately to control my own laughter, “what about a locksmith?”

“Well, ok, about that-the only locksmith around here is 30 minutes away,” she said. (And I can’t remember why, but he couldn’t-or-wouldn’t-drive out to where my parents were.) “So what they told us to do at Lowe’s was to call someone who has a copy of the key, get them to take it to a locksmith where they are, get that locksmith to decipher the magical, mystical alchemical formula of the key, and then have that locksmith call the locksmith up here, and then he could make us a key, and then we could go and pick it up.”

Um, yeah.

So I know that you will be shocked-SHOCKED!-to learn that that multi-step, multi-person, multi-state plan completely fell apart at like, Step Zero and A Half.

So then my dad called the relative whose residence this is, and he said, “Well, there is another way in. Just get a pry bar and break open one of the windows.”

Hm. Never would’ve thought of that one.

“So where are you now?”, I asked, wondering if they had some kind of Plan B.

“We’re on our way back from Home Depot with a pry bar in the backseat,” replied my dad

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Cranky Fibro Girl And The Week That Was

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In the fun Friday tradition of Havi Brooks, I’ve decided to post a little update on my own week. So here we have, “The Week That Was: The Good, and The Hard”.

The Good

We have discovered two new TV shows to watch over the summer-“Leverage” and “White Collar”.
Even More Good: “Leverage” stars Christian Kane. Oh, The Hotness!

This weekend I am reorganizing my office to include these, to help me better organize all my ongoing projects. Oh, how my soul doth love to organize. Especially when it involves getting to buy cool organizing products!

This was the second week of the Healing Internet Hangover class by the wonderful Hiro Boga.

I went to check in with my Primary Care Physician this week to tell him all about my surgery and get some blood work done. I really like to see him because when he examines me he says things like, “Oh, your scars are looking good. You can barely tell they’re there. So I guess that means he [the surgeon] didn’t spill any goo inside ya.” Also, when I showed him my heels, [OMG, you guys, my heels! It’s like I’m growing goat hooves down there] he said, “Oh, they’re fine. They’re just a little crusty.”

A new book by Scott Turow to read on my iTouch.

My parents calling me from a trip to tell me one of the most hysterical stories I’ve heard in a long time.

My weekly session with Lynne, who always reminds me to be kind to myself, and to be easy on myself, and to let myself off the hook.

NCIS

4 weeks so far of doing really well at learning how to rebuild my diet. Actually learning how to cook and enjoying it for the first time ever.
Plus all the cool benefits that eating much more healthily brings.

3 out of 5 days with no doctor’s appointments

After seriously scorching two of our pots, buying myself a way cool new rice cooker. And my next door neighbor, who introduced me to  Citrus Safe, the Scorcher-Getter-Offer.

The Hard

Pain. Too many days of it.
Fibromyalgia flare-ups that would shoot from 0 to 8 in an instant.
Migraines.
Pain from the swelling caused when I went up on the dosage of the medicine I use to manage the fibromyalgia pain.

Being in pain for so long that it made every step of every thing I did this week feel like climbing Mt. Everest.

My husband was away at a conference for 2 nights and 3 days, and even though he was just at a hotel downtown, I was totally overwhelmed by having to be the only grownup around here for all that time.

Our toilets, AND HOW I HATE THEM WITH THE WHITE HOT INTENSITY OF A THOUSAND SUNS!!!!

OMG, TUESDAY NIGHT!
Both toilets were broken at the same time
I failed at learning how to plunge a toilet while being talked through it over the phone
I was scarily upset at my inability to learn and master this new skill
There was cat sh*t in my tub-so much for a relaxing bath
There was cat barf e-ver-y-where you looked, with no signs of stooping
Having used up all of my very limited energy buying the groceries I had absolutely no energy left with which to cook with them
Stupid new healthy diet meant I couldn’t just go and get some fast food
2 doctor visits, both of which were far away, in 2 days
The 1 1/2 hrs needed to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen, just in case I managed to find a few, tiny bits of energy for cooking a meal
Having to hold my sh*t together all by myself for 48 hours straight while being outnumbered, 3-1, by the cats
The cats
And Then Some MAJOR Good-a husband who drove 30 minutes home and 30 minutes back to his conference just to spend 15 minutes here rescuing me from the cats and the house, and who was happy to do so because he loves me and always takes care of me.

Despite my magical thinking that somehow all my health problems would magically be solved by my gallbladder surgery, I still have fibromyalgia. I feel like I’ve let everyone down by still being sick and by having to admit that I really don’t feel well a lot of the time. (Even though the only place I’m hearing that is from the mean voice inside my head).

Doing  too much and reactivating my post-surgery pain.

So this was very much a week of both/and for me.

Please feel free to share with us how your week went, if you feel so inspired.

Also: ANY suggestions on how to reverse the goat-hoof-heels trend would be MUCH appreciated.

A Love Letter From Me To Me

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Sweetie, you are going through so much right now. And beating yourself up over all the things that aren’t getting done is just wounding you more and making you feel so much worse.

Remember how, when you are having fibromyalgia burning, and the kind of exhaustion that you can feel in your bones, and are recovering from major surgery, that this is the time that you are extra vulnerable, and so this is the time that we stay away from our blog, and any classes, and email, and housework, and the computer?

And remember that you have a fantastic husband who just needs you to ask him to do something, and then he is happy to take care of it? Remember that you guys are a great team, and that you do things together? No one has to go it alone around here.

And finally, remember all the other times when you have been in this same place, but that it didn’t last forever, and eventually you were back, feeling great, and ready for all the work you love to do?
If not, I’ll remember this for you, until it comes back around again this time.

Remember that you are very loved. And completely supported.

XXOO

Cranky Fibro Girl And The Hostile Takeover-Part One

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So it’s been three weeks since my surgery, and I was really hoping that my funny writing mojo would’ve returned by now. But I guess most, if not all, of my creative energy is being used to heal my body, which, ok, I guess I can live with that.

But I also want to get past this “not-writing” energy habit, because I could easily see three weeks of not writing turning into three months or more. So today I am going to write something (with no guarantees about its quality) so I can start to break through this invisible force field of resistance.

So I guess I will tell the tale of my little adventure in surgery, because otherwise this post would just consist of me yelling things like, “Dammit, Tigger! Stop peeing in my office!” And you know, there’s only so much narrative juice you can squeeze out of something like that.

So that lovely week started off as so many of my weeks do, with multiple doctors’ appointments, neither of which were close to me, and neither of which were close to each other.

At one appointment I got to have some more blood drawn due to my elevated liver function. That was really scary for me, because the doctor didn’t really explain what that was or why that was happening, and then he murmured something about possibly needing an MRI of my liver, and so that was when I pulled a hefty dose of Denial out of my toolkit and did everything in my power to pretend that that experience was not actually happening.

Then at my second appointment I got to check in with my sleep doctor and order more supplies for my CPAP machine, including my “mask of choice”, AKA “The Pig Snout”. I was also all set to practice some personal sovereignty, defined as Being The Queen (or King) of Your Own Internal Space, which I’ve been learning about lately  from Havi Brooks and Hiro Boga. Because I absolutely LOATHE having to be weighed and having to talk about my weight every single damn time I have to go and see a doctor, because DUDE-I’ve already got enough stuff to deal with without having to add Feeling Bad Because Of My Weight to the mix.

So this time I just told the nurse what number to write down, and then while I was waiting for the doctor I decided what I would say to him if he dared to bring up “The-W-word”. Namely this: “I’m sorry, but we’re not currently accepting feedback on anything related to weight at this time. We are only accepting feedback related to CPAP and sleep issues.”

So I was all set with my fun answer, but as it turned out he never even mentioned “The W-Word at all.” Apparently my inner sovereignty was so powerful that it flowed out to meet him before he even came into the examination room. So, YAY me!

And then I made it through the rest of the week until about midnight on Saturday, at which time commenced The Battle Between My Body And The Agents of The Hostile Takeover.

A few hours earlier I started having the most God-awful pain in my right side. This had happened to me before, and it was really scary because  nothing I did seemed to help it at all. And while it was here I was absolutely incapable of finding any relief. No pain medicine even touched it, and no position, no matter how much I contorted myself, brought me any relief.

Now you all know I have fibromyalgia (a chronic pain disorder), among MANY OTHER health issues, so you know I know from pain. But I’ve got to tell you that this was absolutely The Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. But I was prepared to white-knuckle my way through it-AGAIN-until I started throwing up, which had never happened during any of my previous attacks. So that, combined with the fact that I was unable to manage the pain AT ALL, convinced me to ask my husband to take me to the emergency room, where our adventure will pick up next time.

See-I Always KNEW We Were The True Superheroes Of The World

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From McSweeney: The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid Is Your Liberal Arts Degree.

“I’ve seen your work and it’s damn impressive. Your midterm paper on the semiotics of Band of Outsiders turned a lot of heads at mission control. Your performance in Biology For Non-Science Majors was impressive, matched only by your mastery of second-year Portuguese. And a lot of the research we do here couldn’t have happened without your groundbreaking work on suburban malaise and its representation and repression in John Hughes’ films. I hope you’re still that good, because when you’re lowering a hydrogen bomb into a craggy mass of flying astronomic death with barely any gravity, you’re going to need to draw on all the multidisciplinary reason and analysis you’ve got.”

And in other news…

From the land of, “Well, this is a total bummer”: Apparently, having your gallbladder removed does not magically cure your fibromyalgia.

So that would be Magical Thinking-0; and, uh, Non-Magical Thinking-“Ha Ha, Neener Neener, {{giant raspberry}}!”

Some Suggestions For Your Friday Afternoon Perusal

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So it’s been a week since my surgery, and my recovery is going really well-YAY!

I’m not feeling inspired to write anything just yet, but I did want to share these two great blog posts I read today.

The first one is by Gluten-Free Girl, “Carry That Weight”:

“In the past, when I tried to lose weight, I thought the pounds were the point. I hated my life. I wanted something more. I believed I could never be okay at that weight.

Now, for the first time, I’m not trying to change anything about me or my life. Danny adores me, wherever I am. But he wants me around for a long time too. In these past five years since I stopped eating gluten, I have learned more and more, in ever widening circles, about where my food comes from and what works for my body. This time, I’m listening to it.

I love my life. I just want to walk through it more lightly.”

And the second one is by Rebecca Leigh of Smart Fresh Writing, “Gut Time: The closest I’ve come to the secret of life”

“A month ago I gave a presentation to a group of teenagers with IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). I had so much I wanted to say, it was hard to decide what to leave out. That’s probably the greatest challenge of any speaker or writer — letting go of almost everything so that what is left is clear and unemcumbered.

What was left with is partly to do with IBD, but mostly to do with life. It’s what I’m still learning everyday. This is what I talked about…”

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Happy Friday!

Some Hard

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So I just wanted to mention the fact that I probably won’t be around very much for the next week or so as my gallbladder caused me and my husband to pass a pleasant 7  hours in the emergency room early Sunday morning, listening while it communicated the urgent message that, “I need to come out now, Now, OMG RIGHT NOW!!” (Note to the rest of my internal organs: Next time, please just send me a Tweet.) So I’m pretty busy dealing with all of that right now, as well as discovering that, wow, despite my Herculean Health Odyssey of the past two-and-a-half years, there are still some medical procedures left that I’ve not yet had the pleasure of undergoing.

Depending on how all of this shakes out, I may have Mr. Cranky Fibro Girl post an update for me every now and then.

And as always, any rituals designed to invoke the presence of The Divine that you would be willing to offer on my behalf would be much appreciated.