Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Wow-And Here I Thought I Already Was Worrying About Everything Humanly Possible

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(See: Worrying, Perfecting The Art Of)

But apparently, I was wrong, as I learned to my dismay last night.

I was watching The Discovery Channel explain to me the gentle art of making ketchup, a process in which, up until that moment, I had had total faith and confidence, assuming-incorrectly, as it turns out-that it required not an ounce of my attention or concern in order to take place.

But I soon discovered just how wrong I was when I heard the narrator announce in a chilling tone that, “The velocity of ketchup is a huge worry.”

I cannot believe I let this one slip me by. But fear not! Because now I am ON THE JOB!

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.”

I Bet They Had These Exact Same Kind Of Conversations Up On Walton’s Mountain

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Back about eleven years ago, my husband and I took a trip to Spain. On our last day we took the overnight train from Granada to Madrid, where we were catching our flight home the following morning.

My husband and I were in our mid-twenties back then, just a couple of years out of grad school, so we were pretty much still in the “poor college student” mode when we took this trip, which meant that we booked ourselves into what I’m pretty sure was the eighty-seventh class compartment, which meant that we each had a bunk in a room that slept six people-and we were in the middle two bunks-which meant that we spent those eight hours in a space not unlike those prison cells they build where you can neither sit, stand, nor lie down.

But, I digress.

The two travellers sleeping above us were a guy and a girl from Ireland, and the two below us were from Columbia, and after I was able to calm down a little bit, because, OMG, CLAUSTROPHOBIA! AND STRANGERS! SLEEPING WITH ME! IN PRISON!, we all had a good time getting to know each other.

At what was apparently our officially designated bedtime, a railroad employee came by to turn out the lights in our cell compartment. And then, in one of those totally spontaneous, yet perfectly scripted moments, from the Europeans above us, and the Latin Americans below us came a chorus of, “Goodnight, John Boy.”

I bring this episode up now because I was reminded of it the other day by a conversation I overheard my husband having.

His cell phone rang, and when he answered it I heard a woman’s voice respond to his, “Hello?”

“Oh, hey,” he said, in the relaxed tone of someone speaking with a friend or a family member. “How are you doing?”

There was silence as he listened for a moment, and then I heard him retort, “Well, f*%# you!”

“Oh,” I said, as the light of realization dawned upon me. “It must be your sister.”

And it was. Just like it was up on Walton’s Mountain.