Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

The Skill I Wish I Didn’t Have

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So lately, I have not been doing all that well. There has just been a lot of shit going on around here lately:

-many, many, MANY days of spiking an 8, 9, or 10 on the pain scale

-helping my husband prepare for his job interview, and then waiting to see whether or not he got the job

-two weeks without any sun

-the Atlanta flood

-and the worst migraine I have had in years

And given the fact that I was on shaky ground to being with, it’s been re-a-ll-y hard for me not to go to the dark place in my thoughts and in my feelings. Especially since I was recently diagnosed with “rapid mood cycling”, something which falls somewhere along the bipolar spectrum. I haven’t wanted to talk about that here, because for some reason, even though I talk about everything else I have to deal with, I thought that if I mentioned this, then it would be the final nail on my crazy coffin.

So I’ve pretty much been at ground zero as far as participating in life goes-hitting the bottom and then s-l-o-w-l-y coming back up again.

And it’s particularly hard right now because it seems like everyone around me is making huge strides on their big dreams, and I am so far away from that place that my dreams are really painful. There’s nothing to say that I can’t have them at some point in my life, but I can’t have them right now. And that is really, really hard. I’m happy for those people, AND I am sad for me. Because the things I can do right now are so small, and feel so inconsequential, that it feels like nothing I do really matters or is in any way contributing to life.

So these things that I can do, I’ve heard them called many different things-connecting the dots, doing the next logical step, reaching for the thought that feels better, doing what’s in front of you. And so that is where I started this morning.

First, I was inspired to go and sit in the sun, the sun which I am especially grateful for after the week we had (because, did I mention there was a FLOOD? Here in THE CITY! A city which HAS NO PLACE FOR FLOOD WATERS TO GO!)

And then I did a little EFT: “Even though I feel so disconnected from myself, from God, from life, and from the creative flow, I’d really like to see if I can find a way to reconnect just a little bit.” “Even though I feel so empty and used up, I woke up this morning, and I’m still breathing, and still thinking, so I guess there’s some more for me here somewhere. I guess this isn’t ‘it’ for me.”

I just had to lay it all down-dreams, ideas, wishes, relationships, meaning, purpose, illness-I just had to put it all on the altar and let it go, because gripping onto these things so tightly was preventing me from being able to hear my next step, and from being able to find any peace or relief.

So after I had soaked up some sun, and surrendered, I looked over and thought, “Huh-I guess I could pull the dead leaves off of this chamomile plant.” And there it was-my next step.

And then as I was trimming the plant I heard, “I think you would probably feel a little better if you took a shower and got dressed in some of your cute new clothes.” Once again-there was my next step.

And then after I was clean and dressed I heard, “You know, it might just perk you up a little bit to do a load of laundry. But, hey-make sure you pay attention to me on this. I AM NOT TELLING YOU TO GO AND CLEAN THE ENTIRE HOUSE, DO YOU HEAR ME? One load of laundry, that’s it.”

And then I remembered that today is the day the new episode of my favorite podcast comes out.

And so it has gone today.

And eventually it will be time for my husband to come home, and I’ll have some company. And then it will be time for pizza Friday. And then it will be time to watch last night’s episode of “The Mentalist”. And then it will be time to watch my husband play his current video game, even though the music makes me want to rupture my own ear drums, (which I’ve actually done before-but not on purpose). And then it will be time to go to bed.

And then I will not only have survived, and made it through today, but I will have actually have thrived. Just a little bit.

Life

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Having fibromyalgia, which needs to be treated with Lyrica, which drastically reduces your pain (AWESOME!), but which also causes quite a bit of swelling (LESS AWESOME), which causes quite a bit of pain (NOT AT ALL AWESOME), which necessitates fucking with tweaking the Lyrica, which could take you all the way back to square one, which truly makes you question the idea that there is any kind of benevolent force in charge of the universe AT ALL.

There seriously needs to be some kind of Universe Official whose nuts you can punch on days like these.

I Can Haz More Medical Problemz?

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

When my brother and I were growing up, my mom used to joke that he ought to have his own Frequent User Pass to the emergency room, since she ended up having to take him there so often. That’s how I’m feeling right now about every single one of my personal health care professionals, because I have to spend so much time in their offices these days. It’s a good thing I only have 2 tutoring clients right now, because managing my health care situation is a freaking full time job.

Fortunately, I have found really good doctors in all of the areas in which I need assistance. Unfortunately, none of them are near me, and none of them are near each other, either. So if you imagine Georgia as the entire Southeastern United States, then, say, on Monday, I will be seeing a doctor in Florida, on Tuesday I will have to go over to Tennessee, and on Thursday I will need to be up in North Carolina. If I could figure out how to get some kind of “frequent driver miles” deal, like people have with their credit cards and airline miles, we’d probably have enough points for round trip tickets to Hawaii by now. Not that we could actually go, since I can’t really travel much farther than my own living room right now, ON ACCOUNT OF ALL MY FUCKING HEALTH ISSUES!! It’s a vicious cycle.

So anyway, I had to travel to Metaphorical Alabama yesterday, since my left knee apparently thought it would be a good idea to spend the past week turning itself into a liquid pool of raging fire, and my pain management strategy of stabbing it repeatedly with a very sharp knife really wasn’t working all that well for me. So I went in to be seen for my knee, and I came out with…a diagnosis of high blood pressure. Which was weird, but kind of a relief, since I’d spoken with my doctor the night before and he’d mentioned the possibility of “aspirating the knee”, which I made the mistake of googling, and which turns out to mean something like, “sucking out the offending fluids with a syringe.” Which is attached to a needle. Which HURTS. But taking a pill? Hell, yeah, that’s easy. I’ve actually done that once, or twice, or eleventy thousand times before.

The high blood pressure thing wasn’t totally a surprise-it’s been slowly creeping up on me over the past couple of years, and there’s a long history of it in my family. But it still sucks. And after I recovered from the giddiness induced by Not Needing To Be Stuck In The Knee With A Giant Needle, I started contemplating how this new medical condition just provided further evidence of my epic failure as a human being. Because that’s what I do. Because deep, deep down inside I know that if I could just figure out how to “be better“, then none of this stuff would have happened to me. Because, as we all know, fibromyalgia, and sleep apnea, and high blood pressure are all questions of morality, and are personal judgments on your particular worthiness as a human being. And a heaping scoop of inner-directed loathing, topped with some intense self-hatred makes everything better.

It doesn’t help that I weigh more than is healthy for me, and so it’s easy for me to go off into the magical thinking that says that, if I could’ve just figured out how to stay thin, then I wouldn’t have any health problems. So I was hanging out in this story yesterday when, much like Saul of Tarsus, I was knocked to the ground by The Blinding Light Of The Universe Laughing Its Ass Off At Me. Because, HELLO, HAD I FORGOTTEN WHO I WAS?! I have always had health problems, since the moment of my birth. They started with a belly button that refused to heal and eight weeks of colic, and have continued apace right up until this very moment. As a matter of fact, I believe I spent all of grades 1-4 in my pediatrician’s office, being treated for one, unending ear infection.

Which doesn’t make this any easier. But it did at least snap me out of longing for the Imaginary Good Old Days of never being sick, and allow me to start pondering what’s next: finding out if there possibly is such as thing as low-salt salt.