Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Isn’t It Ironic-Don’t Ya Think?

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Today marks the 4 week anniversary of my hiring a personal trainer and-even more importantly-my actually showing up for the appointments.

I finally got tired of being unhappy with my body, and I decided that if I were going to figure out how to fix that on my own I would have done so by now, seeing as how I’ve had the past 33 years to try.

I had very specific requirements in mind for the person who would fill the role of my personal trainer. Specifically, they had to be someone to whom I could say, “I hate you, you evil sadistic bastard!”, and they would say, “That’s fine. You’re still doing squats.”

OK, so I would never actually say that out loud to anyone. But clearly I am speaking volumes with my eyes. Because occasionally as I’m working out my trainer will tell me to start a new exercise, look at my face, laugh, and then say, “I know. You’re welcome.”

So I’ve been doing really well this last month. I’d love to have dramatic photos to post here for you, but while I personally can see differences, they are not yet pronounced enough to produce a stunning visual contrast. But I did reach an important milestone today-I received my first training injury.

And if you know me At All, you will know exactly where this injury occurred. Yes, that’s right: I hurt my ass working out.

“Hm,” you might say. “I didn’t know that there was anything to hurt in your ass.”

You would be wrong.

Listen. Can you hear it? That is the sound of the Universe laughing.

(“Hm, so you like to use the word ‘ass’ as much as possible in your stories, do you? Well OK then-here ya go!”)

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: People Who Do NOT Pay Attention

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So I had to go to the doctor today thanks to The Gamers, who have apparently been spending this last month taking turns being the host body for this really icky sinus infection.

As if I weren’t feeling badly enough already, what with the illness, and then the having to step onto a scale and get weighed IMMEDIATELY upon exiting the waiting room, the doctor apparently decided to go ahead and diagnose me without all the pesky bother of actually examining me.

“So you’re 4 weeks into it,” she said as she came into the room. “Are you late often?”

What? WHAT?! Whose chart are you looking at, lady?! I know I’m a little out of it, but those are not the answers I gave the nurse when she was taking down my symptoms.

I’m not here because I think I’m pregnant. I’m here because I think I have a sinus infection. Because, as far as I know, being pregnant does NOT cause you to feel like there is a monkey trying to hack its way through your eardrum with a very dull hatchet which has been heated to the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

Fortunately she did condescend to examine the parts of me that were actually affected, and at the end she actually gave me an actual prescription for actual medications for the actual condition that I actually have. And she did not try to force me into the stirrups so that she could take a little rambling stroll around the inside of my pelvis. (An excellent choice on her part.) I guess the bulging volume of infected fluid pounding against my eardrum convinced her that I was not “faking” the symptoms of a sinus infection in order to mask the fact that I was actually there to receive pre-natal care.

So here I am two prescriptions and two injections later, realizing that there is nothing quite like Someone Who Ignores Your Truth to make you feel invisible and 5 years old again. That, and having to take your pants off in order to get your shots.

Once An Overachiever…

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After officially having a migraine for one week and one day, I finally stepped out of my denial today and admitted that it wasn’t going to go away on its own. So I called the doctor and was able to see both my chiropractor and my massage therapist today.

As I was lying on the table being worked on, my massage therapist said, “I’ve never felt a [some muscle in my neck] this tight before.”

“Well,” I replied, “I always like to excel.”

Let’s Get Physical

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So we had a little excitement here this morning, when my husband called me into the bathroom to show me how one of his eyes was bleeding.

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, normally in our marriage my husband is The Person In Charge Of Being Calm, and I am The Person Who Gets To Freak Out. But clearly that arrangement wasn’t going to work for us today. So I dug down deep inside myself, and was able to come up with a tiny reservoir of calm. In this way I followed the wonderful example of my mother who, I believe, developed her inner reservoir of calm as a result of Raising A Son.

My brother is a chemist, and one of the things that makes him such an excellent scientist is his curious, inquisitive mind. However, what that meant for him as a child was that he was totally unafraid to try anything. And who had to be there to deal with the results? My mom.

When my brother decided that it would be really cool to have a pet snake, who was in charge of feeding the snake and cleaning out its cage? My mom. When he decided to start lifting weights and built his own personal gym in our attic, who was his spotter? My mom. When he needed to be taken to the emergency room so many times that we joked that he had his own frequent visitor card, who was always there to play Florence Nightingale? My mom.

In retrospect, despite all of his various injuries my brother might actually have been an easier child to deal with than I was. All of his stuff was pretty straightforward-blood, bruises, and broken bones. I, however, was the child who, at age seven, asked my mother to explain to me how it was that a person could have a body that would die, but also have a soul that would live forever. I was also the child who came to her in tears at age twelve, caught up in an existential crisis triggered by the fact that I had just realized that I was powerless to stop the passage of time. So in comparison, dealing with a child who had a concussion after falling off a bike without a helmet on might actually have been a refreshing change.

But for me, having to deal with any kind of physical problem is always a challenge. I think it’s because I just forget about my body until something hurts really badly. Then I am always surprised to remember that I am, in fact, a physical being, and not just a giant disembodied mind, moving through the world and pondering The Meaning Of Life.

So that was my other problem today. In addition to just being really squeamish, I was also experiencing a burning arm agony so intense that all of my waking moments were spent fantasizing about hurling my body into something extremely sharp, like a jagged pane of glass or a harpoon, in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain.

Happily this did not prove necessary, and after visits to our respective doctors my husband and I are convalescing at home, waiting for the pizza guy to deliver our generation’s comfort food, and receiving the well-wishes of our three cats.

“I heard you were sick, so I threw up this hairball just for you.”

“In sympathy for your illness, I stole this place mat from the porch and chewed it into submission.”

“I’m so sorry you don’t feel well: Here’s my ass.”

Florence Nightingale’s got nothing on them.

Beauty or the Crone?

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I had an interesting experience the other day, and I can’t decide whether it makes me feel old or young.

Last week I had to go to the dentist for my 6-month cleaning and checkup. There are very few things that cause me greater discomfort than getting my teeth cleaned. (Pretty much all that’s coming to mind right now is anything involving snakes and creatures that sting.) You know that feeling you can get if someone scrapes their fingernails down a chalkboard? That is exactly how I feel when they are scraping my teeth. (Interestingly enough, I also get that feeling whenever I have to touch any kind of fabric with a nap-velvet, silk, suede, velour, etc. But I digress).

So as I was sitting in the chair, enduring, my dental hygienist said, “Today is my anniversary.” Always ready to celebrate longevity in marriage, and always ready to put off more teeth scraping, I was about to ask her how long she’d been married when she said, “Thirty-three years ago today I came to work here.”

Now, leaving aside for the moment the question of why anyone would want to choose a career that involved dealing with people’s insides, much less stay in that same career for thirty-three years, here was my quandary: next month I will be turning thirty-three years old, and so,  as I told her, “You came to work here the same year that I was born.” So, should this fact make me feel really old, or really young?

It certainly made her feel old, and while that wasn’t my intention, it was a nice role reversal from the conversations I usually have with my new tutoring clients.

Me: “So, what year were you born?”
Tutoring Client: “1990.” (and sometimes even later than that).
Me: “Hm. That’s the year I graduated from high school.”
Me: “Wow, I’m old.”
Tutoring Client: (silently, to themselves) Wow! You’re old!

And what I want to know is, just how did this happen?! I became an adult in the 1990’s, and the ’90’s were on the leading edge of everything. We were the ones with advanced technology. We were the ones with advanced degrees. We were the ones who elected the president who would take us into the 21st century. We were on the cusp of everything.

And now the cusp has passed me by, and it is time for my 15-year high school reunion.

So now as I sit in the suburbs, writing the check to pay the mortgage, listening to the music of the 80’s and 90’s being referred to as “oldies” or “classics”, watching shows like “Veronica Mars” satirize every single aspect of my high school experience, and seeing my tutoring students show up in their flip-flops, and their pants with the waistband down at their knees, and their backwards-turned tennis visors, and their attitude of complete self-assured coolness, I hold onto this hope: one day, someone will be laughing at them, too. Possibly even today, if I have anything to say about it.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

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Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my shoulder, partly because it’s been hurting, and partly because when I go to get a massage my massage therapist yells out things like, “Wow! That wasn’t there before!” as she’s working on me.

I never ask her to explain what’s gotten her all worked up, because I’m not really sure what I would do with more detailed information about muscles and medical conditions. As a matter of fact,  one of my most deeply held beliefs is that the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is totally wasted on those so-called “hot button” issues. Where it truly needs to be enforced is in the area of my not having to know what goes on inside the human body-most especially, my own.

You know how in the last few years companies have been sending us information about how we can opt into or out of their privacy policies? Well, I would really like to be able to sign up for The Right Not To Know Some Things. I would be more than happy to send in a form, or check off a box, or carry around some kind of card stating my identity as a “not-knower”, because then maybe I could prevent the kind of unexpected tragedy that took place in our home just a few days ago.

My husband and I were sitting in the living room one evening relaxing and watching TV, when suddenly, out of nowhere, he flipped to a channel that was showing a documentary on a woman who had an enormous tumor growing out of the side of her body, and somehow we managed to tune in at the exact moment where they made the first incision and you could see all of her insides.

These are the kind of situations that I just do not handle well.

I am the person who once, as an adult, burst into tears when the nurse came to prick her finger for a blood test as part of her yearly checkup.

I am also the person who, also as an adult, once required three dental technicians in order to get one x-ray of one side of my mouth; one person to press the button, one to stand next to me and tap my head in an attempt to help me relax, and one to catch the x-ray film the second I projectile gagged it out of my mouth.

Clearly something needs to be done here, and I plan on addressing this issue just as soon as I develop a process for un-searing images from a person’s brain.