My Health

Dear Readers,

This will be an essay on what I have learned about  my health in the past few years. I have worked in healthcare since 1997, and over the past four or five years I have come to need more and more healthcare for myself. A mysterious illness or syndrome was coming and going with increasing regularity, yet all test were "normal".  Poor sleep, flu-like aches and pains, gastric distress, and the worst stiffness imaginable in the mornings. At first I was sure it was the onset of MS or Parkinson's or perhpas ALS or MS....But although the episodes were awful, I was not becoming more debilitated. I went through a lot of additional tests and nothing was found. Finally my doctors told me that by a diagnosis of exclusion they had determined that I have a chronic pain syndrome known as fibromyalgia.

This illness has changed my life, and I am trying to keep it from changing the essential me. Although many sources say that the condition tends to be time limted and may  even lessen over time, I  and many other sufferers dispute that.The newest research also counters that supposition.  Certainly my episodes of malaise have increased in frequency and my medication dose has had to be doubled to have the same effect it was having previously.

More often than not I struggle to get out of bed and face the day . The morning may bring headache, joint pains, stomach issues, neck and shoulder pain, or extreme fatigue, singly or in evil combinations.  The temptation is to call in sick and spend the day under the covers. Sometimes it takes every ounce of determination I have to keep from doing that, and to push forward, telling myself, "It will get better" even if I don't really believe that "it" will..

Part of the curse of this condition is that it is invisible. Once I am dressed, hair fixed,, make-up in place, no one can tell that I have pain throughout my body and all I want to do is sleep.I guess that is both a blessing and a curse. But even the common cold wins some support for you when you drag yourself in to work in spite of it. This thing I have gets me no points, no sympathy, no one offering to bring me a hot tea, or do a task that I don't feel up to doing myself..It is just me and my body facing this awful day...alone.

The upside is that on the good days I am so filled with appreciation and gratitude, and wonderment that feeling 'normal;' can be such a delight! So fibromyalgia, my nemesis, my demon, my plunderer, has also become my benefactor, in an odd way. It is an ill wind that blows no good, the saying goes, and it is a true one.

Charlotte Christobel Petunia, My Comfort

May most of your days be good ones.....or at least delightfully normal.