Cranky Fibro Girl

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

November 9, 2010 By Jenny Ryan 3 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Doing The Best I Can, I REALLY Hate Being Sick, Sometimes I Get Sick, This Is What Having Fibromyalgia Looks Like, This Totally Sucks

Dear Life: Why Do You Hate Me?

June 30, 2010 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

My husband: “So, how are you feeling?’

Me: “Well, I have cramps, fibro pain, AND a migraine. I really want to go find Life and punch it in the nut sack.”

My husband: “Hey, wait a minute. You’re assuming that Life is a guy.”

Me: “OK then, I want to go find Life and stab it in the face.”

My husband: “There ya go.”

Filed Under: Chronic Illness Is Really Really Hard, More Pain Are You Kidding Me, The Universe Has Some Explaining To Do, This Totally Sucks

Cranky Fibro Girl And The Hostile Takeover, Pt. 2: A Place To Hang My Head

June 11, 2010 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

So when last we left the spellbinding story of my Gallbladder Adventure my husband was transporting me to the Emergency Room so that, OMG! THE PAIN! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

So we finally got there, just in time for us to…hurry up and wait.( FYI-apparently midnight Saturday night is the primo time for visiting the ER.) But happily, between his iPod and his Blackberry my husband was able to entertain himself. And I passed the time by hanging out in the hospital bathroom.

Now, I must tell you something about myself. (YOU: And this is different, how?) And it is that I have a MAJOR problem with germs, real or imagined. And I am S-E-R-I-O-S-L-Y OCD about this.

For example, let’s take the “towel situation” here at home.

We of course have dishtowels here that we use to clean the kitchen. But I am only able to use them if I am the one to take a clean towel out of the drawer and if I am the only one use it to do the kitchen chores. Once I hang it over the handle of the dishwasher I physically cannot use it anymore. I just can’t. Because, even though it is just the two of us here, living together in the bonds of holy matrimony for fourteen years and germ-ing it up together, if I even TRY and touch the towel again, or look at it, or stand on the same side of the kitchen as the dishwasher, I can feel in my nervous system each individual germ marching up from the towel onto my skin, cheering and chugging back some beer as they prepare to have their raucous way with my body.

So needless to say, public bathrooms are kind of a problem for me.

But people, on this night I was SETTING UP HOUSE in that hospital bathroom. If I could have, I would have moved in an air bed and a La-Z-Boy, because that’s just how much time we were spending together, that bathroom and I.

(And have I mentioned yet that I was wearing my jammies, my jammies that I dearly love, my jammies that have gotten me through so many bad days over the past 3 years, my jammies that are like a second skin? In the public bathroom? Touching Public Bathroom Stuff? AND I DIDN’T EVEN CARE? That is what pain can do to you, my friends.)

However, three-and-a-half hours later and four visit to my new little hidey-hole later I was starting to feel some relief, so I decided to tell my husband that we could go back home. But then, suddenly, I heard, “Ryan?”

And let me tell you-if a multitude of the heavenly host had suddenly descended from the sky in that moment and started serenading me, it would not have sounded sweeter than the sound of someone calling my name, telling me that I was next.

So I burst out of the bathroom and my husband booked it down the hallway in order to let The Name-Calling Man know that, “Yes! I am here! Please take me back to a room and heal me now!”

So I blissfully (if somewhat hunchback-edly) followed The Wonderful Man Who Called My Name back to the treatment rooms, right into Room 7, my new home away from home. And once I changed and got into bed I was finally able to…hurry up and wait some more. (Unexpected Bonus Information I Received While In The ER: Apparently walk-in patients come third, after people who arrive in ambulances and people who are complaining of chest pains. Whatever.)

However, the representatives from Admission, And How Will You Be Paying For This? could not have shown up more quickly, offering me the soothing panacea of approximately 8 trillion forms to sign, plus explaining, in loving detail, the entire history of hospital policies and procedures since the beginning of all time. Like I wasn’t in enough pain already.

Thankfully my husband was there to perform the role of Someone Who Was Actually Listening To What They Were Saying, and he didn’t seem to hear anything sketchy or objectionable.

But honestly, I don’t have a friggin’ clue as to what I signed that night. I would’ve signed anything they wanted if it would’ve made the drugs come a little more quickly. So it is entirely possible that a hospital representative could appear on our doorstep one day bearing proof that I accidentally signed away my husband’s flat-screen TV. (Although I really hope not, because I have no idea how I would explain that to him. The surgery card only goes so far.)

But finally, FINALLY, once the nice bureaucrats left, and once I’d completely abandoned all hope of any pain relief ever, in this lifetime or the next, there in my doorway,  shimmering in the glow of a glorious golden light stood the ER doctor or, as I preferred to think of him, The Man Who Could Get Those Drugs A-Flowing.

To be continued…

Filed Under: More Pain Are You Kidding Me, This Totally Sucks Tagged With: Are You KIDDING Me?, More Pain

Some Hard

April 13, 2010 By Jenny Ryan 5 Comments

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.

Filed Under: This Totally Sucks

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