Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Support-Of A Sort

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Yesterday’s conversations with two of my health care professionals:

At the chiropractor

Me (flipping over onto my back on the drop table and watching the Dr. examine my legs)

Me (deciding that as an adult patient taking responsibility for my own health, I should mention something that’s been concerning me lately)

Me (in the tone of someone preparing to open a serious dialogue with their health care professional) : “I think my fibro is making me bow-legged.”

My chiropractor (without missing a beat): “I think your fibro is going to your head.”

Me (bursting out laughing, because he is so right)

Talking with my coach/mentor/spiritual director/kicker-in-the-ass/therapist/listener/encourager/friend/fellow bad-ass babe and liver with a chronic illness who, for the sake of brevity, we will just refer to as Lynne

I am in the middle of trying to find a new medicine to manage my anxiety. It is not going well.

Me: describing the massive panic attack I recently had in my kitchen and concluding with, “And I was literally two seconds from passing out on the floor.”

Lynne: “OK. So what would’ve happened if you had passed out?”

(Important Side Note: I too am a Certified Life Coach, although I use my training with teenagers, to enable me to be a better tutor to my high school Spanish students. And so this is a question I myself have used many times with other people. But that did not stop me from sending Lynne nostril-flaring glares and rude gestures down the phone lines.)

Me: “Well, I guess I would’ve hit my head on the floor and gone unconscious. And then my husband would’ve found me when he got home from work. And then I’d wake up. And then I might be OK. Or I might be like Natasha Richardson, where everyone thought she was ok, but then she died like two hours later from her head injury.”

Lynne: “OK. OR-you might have passed out, started to relax, and then woken up.”

Me (grudgingly): “Maybe. But I like my answers better.”

Dear 2010: This Year We’re Gonna Do Something A Little Different

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Dear 2010:

So I know you’re showing up tomorrow and I’m glad about that, in that I’m glad that there’s more life for all of us to live. I feel like I’m just kinda getting the hang of things here in my ’30s, and I’d hate to have to stop just when things are starting to get really good. But there’s a whole lot of crap that people have started tossing onto this whole New Year thing, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m skipping all of that.

For one thing, I am just so unbelievably tired. Exhausted does not even begin to describe it. This fibromyalgia shit is totally kicking my ass.

And so I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to “Make 2010 The Best Year Of Your Life!” Whatever that even means. I’m just grateful to have a year, since there were so many times during this past year that I didn’t know if I’d even make it to 2010. Plus, who even made the rule that says that this is the only “acceptable” desire to have for a New Year, anyway? As if just wanting to have a good year means that you’re somehow lazy or “settling for less.” Says who? NOT ME. So, yeah, I’m rejecting that one.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of rejecting things, can we just stop for a minute and talk about this whole “get all your old STUFF cleared out, cleaned up, resolved, reconciled, and tied up in a pretty little bow before the clock strikes midnight” situation?

Because first of all, if you happen to have serious OCD issues like I do, then all that does is to launch off an ENORMOUS rocket of anxiety-fueled compulsive behavior, which means that even if I were able to rip out my entire house and break it down to the very foundations, it STILL wouldn’t be enough for me to think that I was ready to start off the new year “with a clean slate”. Because there’s never any end, with that as your guideline. Except maybe for dying, which, no thanks. Or maybe somehow rewinding your whole entire life and starting it all over again. And, NO WAY am I ever living through puberty and high school EVER! AGAIN!

Second of all, when is anything in life ever really “completed” and able to be stored neatly away in tidy little rows of white banker’s boxes? And also, what’s up with this whole time limit thing anyway? Things take as long as they take. Because believe me, if anyone could’ve found a way to make things happen on their schedule, it would have been me.

And finally, who was it that tricked us into believing that we have to contort our lives to fit around someone else’s  randomly declared external structure? Or go along with what someone else has said that this day is “supposed” to mean? As it so happens, January 1st is neither the beginning nor the end of anything according to my own personal calendar. It’s just a day. It’s in the middle somewhere, after one handful of days, and before another one. It doesn’t mean anything special for me. And that is okay.

So on that note, the house is gonna be just as messy tomorrow as it has been today. Including the cat barf I just now discovered on the living room rug. And I’m pretty sure you’re just fine with that. I’ve heard a bunch of people say that however things are for you at 12:01 am New Year’s Day is how the rest of your year will be. And I say, bullshit. I am the one who gets to decide how my year is going to be. And whether or not all of my underwear is neatly folded and put away by midnight has nothing to do with it.

Also, I will not be “taking the bull by the horns”, “making a fresh start”, “visioning”, “setting goals,” “getting dressed all the way down to my lace-up shoes”, “shining my sink”,”eating [fill-in-the-blank] for good luck”, “moving for my good health”, or “taking action on my dreams”. I will however be scavenging for new applications for my iTouch, buying new digital books for Amazon, and drinking as many sodas as are left in my refrigerator.

So, 2010, as long as you’re good with all of that, then please make yourself at home.

From Cranky Fibro Girl With Love

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So if you’ve spent any time looking around here at Cranky Fibro Girl, you  may have noticed a page titled, “How Not To Be A Dumbass”. This page is the collection of all the wisdom and experience I have gained as a patient over the past few years, and is basically an open letter to doctors, letting them know how they can be better doctors for those of us suffering from chronic pain and chronic illness. Because, frankly, some people need A Lot Of Help in this particular area.

And then the other day someone told me that she’d actually printed that whole page out so that she could begin the revolution take in and show it to her doctor.

So that got me to thinking that if there is anyone else out there who wants to respond to our call to arms share that list with their doctor, then maybe we should make that a little bit easier for them. So we did.

So there is now a “printer friendlly” version of the Don’t Be A Dumbass list available to download. Just click the link at the top, righthand corner of the “How Not To Be A Dumbass” page and it will take you directly to the PDF.

Or you can just click here.

Viva la revolucion!!

I’d Like What You’re Smoking, Please

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Dear Anyone Who Wants To Hire Me As A Spanish Tutor,

If you call me at 8:00 PM on Saturday night to ask me to tutor your child, and then mention that their exam is on Wednesday, and that they’ve been having a really hard time all semester, and that they “had a bad teacher” last year, and so are basically asking me to catch your child up on a year and a half of Spanish in THREE DAYS, then don’t get pissy when I tell you that it’s impossible and that there’s nothing I can do.

BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO.

Oh and also-the fact that I specifically told you that I wouldn’t lie to you and take your money for something I couldn’t do?

Yeah-you’re welcome.

Hell Hath No Fury

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So I know it’s kind of late for me to be writing anything about Thanksgiving, but I’m gonna go ahead and play the fibro card, because if I can’t use it in situations like this then really, what’s the use?

Anyway. Last month when the six of us were all together for the holiday, for some reason the talk turned to comparing our really bad dating experiences, and of course when you get a whole group of people together there will be  a lot of stories to choose from. But here are the three that stuck with me.

The first one happened to me. And it actually has a title, as in, “Hey, Jen-tell that story about [first name] “The Good Catch” [last name]. This refers to a boy I dated in college who shall always be referred to in this way in my family, henceforth and forevermore, world with out end, Amen.

We spent a nice summer going out together-or so I thought. Then one day he picked me up and we went to the park to feed the ducks, and it became quite clear to me that we had broken up-but he had not found it necessary to share this particular bit of information with me.

So we were sitting on a little dock overlooking the pond where he explained his decision to me in that, “Well, I just know that I’m a good catch.”

Blink.

“Well,” I retorted, never at a loss for words, “SO AM I!” And then I glanced over his shoulder to see if it would be possible to push him over into the water. But unfortunately there was a railing in the way. Stupid railing.

How this story ended: The following spring my parents got a letter from X “The Good Catch” Y, in which he explained that he had been called to go on a mission trip to Russia, and would my parents please choose to support this ministry in the form of sending him some handfuls of money?

But unfortunately for him, that was the semester in which I was reading the book The Dance Of Anger. And as it turned out? I had quite a lot.

And so I wrote a letter to Mr. “Good Catch” wherein I explained that I thought he had a lot of damn nerve asking people for money to support a mission trip when he treated the people around him so badly. And then I stole the letter from my parents (who are nicer, much more generous people than I am) and threw it away. I REALLY SHOWED HIM.

[Read more…] about Hell Hath No Fury

Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays, Ed. 4: I Matter, Dammit!

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(Title inspired by Havi Brooks and her posts on The Dammit List.)

First, some guidelines:

1. No one has to read anything. There are no “shoulds” here. These are not assignments. This is just me saying, “Hey, I read this book and I thought you might like it.”

2. So therefore, it is impossible for anyone to get behind.

3. You can comment, or not. There are no “shoulds” there, either.

4. If you do chose to comment, you do not have to include passages from the books you recommend. (Although, of course, you can if you want to.) I just do that in order to give people a taste of what the book is like.

OK-on to the books

Of all the things I’ve lost since I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, one of the hardest ones I’ve had to deal with is the loss of my purpose; at least, the purpose I had all planned out in my head. And when  I can’t see past the pain, and the doctor’s appointments, and all the medication managment, that place of purposelessness-at least in my mind-is an impossibly scary place to be. That’s why I’m so, SO grateful whenever I come across books like these.

1. You Matter More Than You Think by Dr. Leslie Parrott

As she tells us on the second page, her message is very simple: “You are already making a difference-whether you know it or not-and the more you understand the difference you are making, the bigger that difference will be.”

As you might imagine I found the chapter on pain, titled “The Grinding Stone”, to be particularly helpful.

“A woman’s pain either makes her bitter or makes her better. I wince at even writing this hackneyed phrase, but it is true….Pain, in one way or another, eventually touches every woman’s life. And that pain either does us in or makes us the woman we aspire to be. Ultimately, the pain we carry in our hearts is the grinding stone that shapes us to love. It sharpens our capacity to be tender with another’s wounds and to empathize without judgment.”

She goes on to say that “Phillip Yancey thoughtfully calls pain ‘the gift that nobody wants’.” (Uh, YE-ah.)

“But make no mistake. It is a gift….Because of pain, you make a difference. Pain will give you permission to walk into places you’ve never dreamed you’d enter, and it can change your relationships like nothing else.”

And despite the fact that, Dear Universe: could I possibly have learned these lessons in a less brutal way?, I must grudgingly admit that she is right.

“So I ask you, friend, to consider the gift of your personal pain.” Um, ok, if I really HAVE to.

“I just want to encourage you to see that your pain is not without purpose.” I could hear this once a minute all day long, and it still wouldn’t be enough. But this is what I’ve desperately wanted to hear, so I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for a bit and take this on faith. At least for this moment.

“It can become the most powerful means you ever possess for making a difference. Consider whose life you can touch because of the pain you have endured. And consider how the pain of another person allowed them to touch your life in a way they would have never been able to do without it.

Pain, your personal grinding stone, has a purpose whenever it is used to make a difference.”

I really hope so.

2. She Did What She Could: Five Words Of Jesus That Will Change Your Life by Elisa Morgan

I stumbled across this little book by accident (or not!) the other day when I was just browsing around the bookstore. I skimmed through it and then put it back, but I kept thinking about it all the time over the course of a week or so, so I finally went back and bought it. And I’m so glad I did.

Once I read a couple of passages like this one, I was completely hooked.

“Most of us care, remember? We really do.. We care about our own lives, for sure, and also the lives of those around us. We care about poverty and injustice, about orphans and the sick. We care about the folks who live and work alongside us and about what happens in their families and their hearts and their heads.

We care. But too often we stop there because we think that in order for it to count, to make a difference that matters, we have to do something big. Or everything we could do. Or something no one else has done.” Hm, that sounds awfully familiar…

And so I’d like to pull out more amazing passages to share with you here, but the muscle burning is yelling, “Hey! Pain Meds! Right Now!” So I will just close by saying that her answer to this kind of “caring overload” is to examine each one of those five words: She, Did, What, She, Could-and give tons of real-life examples to show how I, in the middle of my fibromyalgia life, actually do have a purpose. That purpose being to ask myself in each moment, “What is here right now that I could do?”

I’ve been practicing this for maybe a month or so, and I have to confess that when I consciously ask myself that questions, there is always an answer. There is always something here that I could do to contribute somehow to what makes up my world. Important Side Note: I need to add a really important point here, which is that often the answer to that question is that what I could do right now is to take care of myself in that moment. That’s what I love about this question-my needs and others’ needs are equally important. This is not a one-sided giving on my part.

OK, off to rest now. As always, please feel free to suggest any books that you really like in the comments. And have a great Monday.