Category Archives: exhaustion

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It’s Monday… What Kind of Week Do You Want to Have?? You have the Power to Make it a Good One!!

It’s a Monday night… almost 10:30 and I’m sitting here thinking to myself… “What kind of week do you want, Tamiko?”. I have the control to determine my week. I have to keep remembering this. I can complain and end up discouraged and having a negative vibe or I can praise and feel encouraged with a positive vibe. Hmmmmmmm, seems an easy decision… an obvious decision – but habits are hard to break. I choose to take one minute at a time. I have decided to start tomorrow and only say positive things, not gossip and not complain. I’ll forgive myself if I make mistakes, but at least I know I’m going into it with the right attitude. I just have to wake up and start the day right… right?

A couple momentous events have occurred, even since the last time I posted… First, THANK YOU! My blog reached 20,000 hits. I can’t even say that and begin to believe it. 20,000 hits! That’s awesome!! My second, and I should say equally as momentous event is… and I’m going to write this in bold…. I walked 15 miles last week. Let me say that again… I walked 15 miles last week. I have never done this before. I don’t think I have ever walked 5 miles in a week. I walked 1.5 miles at a time in the beginning, sometimes twice a day and at the end of the week I was walking 3 miles straight through. I still can’t believe it.

Let me tell you what I did differently than before:

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Views while walking in the rain…

  • I purchased some new shoes. I had the same shoes for years… I decided to get some good shoes (Sports Authority, $40 Nikes).
  • The first time I walked, I went out by myself. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a deliberate decision to go alone. I put a podcast on and I walked at my own pace. Which let me tell you… was pretty slow. I walked up the hills with very, very short strides and with my back straight so I wouldn’t put a strain on my shins or back. I took my time. I took in my surroundings and didn’t walk to hurry and get to the end, but I walked to learn how to enjoy being outside and breathing in fresh air.
  • Each time after, I kept the same, slow pace being very cognizant to not go overboard with my pace or stride. Learning from my past… Every time I have started walking like this, I ended up getting shin splints and having to stop for weeks… which then resulted in me stopping all together.
  • I tracked my walks in an app on my phone… duration, pace, distance (uses GPS). I have a couple of friends that see my activity and we encourage each other. Seeing my accomplishment in this app is very motivational for me.
  • I didn’t let the weather stop me… and I was happy that I went out in the rain/ sprinkles… it’s just water!

If I can accomplish these things… YOU CAN TOO!

So, what kind of week do you want to have? I want a good one and it’s in my power to make it happen!

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week!

Gentle hugz.

Tamiko

P.S. Let me tell you… after I finished writing the content for this posting, I went to insert the picture that you see. I have been tested. It has taken me almost 20… TWENTY minutes to get the picture into this post. I am not complaining, I am saying I have been tested. So… I just practiced my breathing and reminding myself the point of my post. LOL!! :)

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Another Day in the Life… It’s Good to Laugh… at Yourself.

Well hello there… how have you been? I can’t believe it’s been almost two months since my last post. Well, actually I can, I just don’t really want to. Where have I been you ask? I have been traveling through the land of Myself, specifically the area of “Feeling Sorry For”. I don’t really recommend this place, but if you have to go there try not to stay as long as I have. I had been given ANOTHER f’ing diagnosis with no cause or cure and it just put me in a downward spiral that left me feeling like WTF?! Instead of taking this news and putting more emphasis on managing my health I basically went on strike. I stopped doing anything related to all these fun and fabulous no cause/ no cure conditions I have. Literally, cold turkey. No reading, writing,  journaling, looking at my blog, exercising… yeah, I showed… ummmmmm… myself? Yeah, that’s it! I showed MYSELF! Dumb, dumb ,dumb…. I went on strike and who exactly was impacted by this? Me. Oh and by the way… Essential Tremor, this is the newest addition to my list. If you have an uncontrollable shaking of your head or hands then you may want to look into this. I guess having an invisible disease, the thought was… I should have something that folks can see, yeah let’s make her head shake (it’s really more like a nod). Ahhhhhh, someone up there has a sense of humor, I’m just trying to find my way to see the lighter side of this.

On the more sunny side of this place I have been in for the past month, I have been watching my diet. I was also diagnosed with gall stones a couple of weeks after my Essential Tremor diagnosis so I had my gall bladder removed last week. Finally a problem that has a solution! Yes, it meant having a body part removed, but I am really hoping that this resolves a lot of my GI issues I have been dealing with for a long while. In watching my diet, the last few weeks I have been drinking protein shakes as a meal replacement for two meals a day. Incredibly, this has helped a lot. It seems like the only time I feel somewhat okay is when I drink the shakes. Food and I are still having a love/hate relationship. I love to eat, but the food and my body hate each other. This is really uncool, can’t we all just get along?

I have rambled a bit, but what really prompted this post is this funny (well, funny to me) thing that happened yesterday. My first instinct was to tell my husband, but he’s on a short trip away and I didn’t want to intrude on his time away. I would have texted him, but I don’t have the patience to type this into my phone (another device I have shied away from lately). Anyway! Back to my story (I am so easily distracted!). I have been trying to lose weight, the real reason for the shakes… yesterday I am in the bathroom weighing myself and I saw the number on the scale and I was like “What the hell?? WOW! No way I lost that much weight!!” Seriously, I’m standing there and my weight has dropped like 5 pounds overnight. At this point I’m trying to figure out how this could have happened… could it be real? Then I look up (since I’ve been looking down at the scale this whole time) and realize I AM HOLDING ON TO THE TOWEL BAR. Yes, as I’m quite sure you can all relate, standing up sometimes is challenging without some help. Well, don’t weigh yourself while doing this or you’ll go through this same fun experience. It’s like winning the lottery (okay, granted a small one – not the Mega Bucks one) and then waking up and realizing “Nope, still not a millionaire”. At this point I gently let go of the towel bar and the little scale thing moves, moves, moves to that point of reality. I have just woken up. I started laughing and thinking, oh man, I gotta tell my husband this one! I can see him shaking his head at me as I write this. I’d like to say lesson learned, but I’m afraid I’ll probably do that again, so I’ll just say it’s good to laugh at yourself everyone once in a while.

After enjoying some time with my folks, my incisions were screaming in pain (it’s hard to relax or move with all that screaming), I gave in and took some pain medication. I told my daughter this so she was aware and then did a few chores and went to sleep. I was KNOCKED OUT when all of a sudden I hear my door open, not open quietly mind you it was opened with purpose and my daughter comes rushing in and says to me, “Did you hear that? Did you hear that?”. Let me just restate… my husband is not here. My heart starts racing and I’m trying to wake up and this damn fog from the pain meds is holding me back… fear just grabs a hold of me as I try to be the grown up in the room. She continues on, “It sounded like a werewolf…”. Not what I was expecting. I am pretty sure I responded with something like… “Am I awake or is this a dream?”. Did she really say… werewolf? I think maybe she should not be allowed to watch that new Teen Wolf show. I mean, this can’t be a normal thing to rush in and ask in the middle of the night, right? Okay, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear a werewolf, but if there had been one, I would not have heard it (another reason why I don’t like to take meds that make me drowsy). So I’m like, “Why don’t you just sleep in here?”. Instead she takes the dog out of my room, goes back to her room and leaves me wide open for attack. I thought my solution was better. I’m completely freaked out, yet I’m so tired I just fell back asleep. Interesting experience, that’s what drugs do for you, put you to sleep so you don’t have to face the world… on that note, maybe I should ask her when she wakes up if that really did happen… but it had to because the dog was clearly NOT in my room when I got up this morning.

I bet when you decided to read this you weren’t expecting this! I hope I’ve given you a reason to smile today.

Stay super cool and remember… one day at time, one hour, one minute. I wish you all an awesome day of wellness and hope!

Tamiko

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Your Feedback Please… My Latest Wellness Journal for Chronic Pain

I only have so much brain power. I mean, as much as I’d like to multi-task, learn something new every day, solve problems of all sorts… I only have so much brain power. So how am I using it these days? I’ve been spending a lot of time creating a Wellness journal of sorts. It all started when I was participating in the Pain Program at Kaiser. I needed something to help me transition from this program to the real world where there was only me. Only me to hold myself accountable, not a support group every day or the doctors I don’t want to let down… just me. I have to continue on this path to a quality life by doing daily exercises, working on my diet, managing my stress with meditation and relaxation exercises… practicing everything I have learned! Just thinking about it doesn’t work for me. Writing down what I have done enables me to hold myself accountable AND celebrate my successes.

So… I created this document to hold myself accountable. It’s similar to the pain journals I have created and posted in my Tools and Resources page. There are many differences though, for one it’s not just a daily journal, it’s also a tool to help me figure out what areas of my health/ life I need to address that are out of balance. I created worksheets to identify my short and long-term health goals, my plan for what to do when I’m in a flare… I included a Quick Reference sheet with exercises that I use on a daily basis. It’s a work in progress. Here’s the break down of what I have included in the set so far:

  1. Wellness Wheel: tool used to help you discover opportunities for an improved quality of life and create goals based on those areas.
  2. Wellness Plan: worksheet for documenting your short and long-­‐term health goals and listing up to four key goals in the areas that you want to work on that will help you achieve your overall short and long-­‐term goals.
  3. Flare Plan: worksheet for documenting the tools that help you, both physically and mentally, when you are in a flare. It helps to document these so you can just flip to this page and use the tools that you know will help you.
  4. Exercise Quick Reference Sheet: there are countless exercises you can do to help with your pain, these are just some of the stretches and strengthening exercises I use on a daily basis.
  5. Daily Wellness Journal: worksheet for you to document each day; your exercise, food, pain level and how you addressed your pain, what you are grateful for that day and memorable moments/ accomplishments.
  6. My Priorities for Today…: worksheet to document your personal and work priorities on a daily basis.
  7. Automatic Thoughts Worksheet: template to help you manage your stress and negative thoughts.

So far, with a much older draft, the Kaiser folks have been encouraging me to publish this Wellness Journal. It’s a little intimidating. But it got me thinking. I want to keep working on this. I want to create something that anyone with chronic pain or any type of health issue can use to improve the quality of their life.

I’m excited about this. I’d love to get feedback on what I have created so far. If you are interested in helping me by reviewing, testing and giving me your honest feedback – I’d love it!

Shoot me an email or leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch with you right away.

Thank you!

Tamiko

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Pain Program… Day 2

I have done it. I officially started the Level 2 Pain Program at Kaiser yesterday. It is focused a lot around the concept of amygdala retraining. I have seen programs to purchase out there in the online world, and this program is part of Kaiser’s offering. This is the only Kaiser currently offering to determine the success. So far… I hear it has been extremely successful. I am optimistic. Optimistic for the first time in a very long time.

In talking with my intake nurse, who has also been supporting me for a long time through this process… one of the major difference between the programs I have seen online and this one is that we are meeting everyday for three weeks, followed by 3 weeks of meeting 3 times a week, followed by once a week for 4+weeks. Each session is 3 hours. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

We started with introductions, about 15 of us including doctors, nurses, psychologist and pharmacist. Then one of the doctors read an inspirational passage about fear from a book. I must say… it was good to hear from this particular doctor as when I first started this process years ago (after being diagnosed with FMS), I saw this doctor and he was a complete ASS to me. I remember crying after leaving my appointment with him. He is a convert and now understands chronic pain and the effects much better. It’s good to know folks can change.

After the reading, we did about ten minutes of Qi Gong… all of us and then all the medical folks left and the rest of us did Feldenkrais for about 40 minutes. We did Feldenkrais the last time I went through the Level 2 program, but only for a few minutes. This was interesting, not easy for me, but I definitely see the benefit in it. With more sessions, I know I will be able to relax more. It was difficult for me to relax and get into it. I was also having a hard time paying attention to the instructor, just my mind going crazy. I need to learn how to calm my mind down better.

After Feldenkrais, we had a 45 minute group session about a concept. Yesterday was about the 3 P’s. Planning, Prioritization and Pacing. This was ran by the psychologist but about the input from the group. Group therapy with everyone in the room on the same page… we are all in pain. A room full of people who can all relate to each other’s lives.

After this, everyone went for a group walk for 15 minutes… and then ended the day going around the room with parting comments.

I am optimistic (how often do we say that word?) that I am going to come out of this process as someone who can start living a higher quality life.

I have only had one day, I will start getting ready to go back today in a bit. Getting dressed and leaving the house every day will be a challenge for me since I am usually in the house Monday through Friday. I am also thinking about work a lot, so I need to let that go. This program is all about me and about me making my life more about LIVING than just getting through the day.

I can do this.

I wish you all a great day!

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Waiting… and Waiting…

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. This is what I am doing this week. I was the lucky recipient of the “oscopy” twins, one up and one down… on Tuesday… seems like  a long time ago, yet it was just yesterday (for me, I’m still up as you can see at almost 2am). The waiting before going in for the procedure was not fun. After drinking that yummy liquid, I thought I was doing alright when BAM! Nausea along with a nice little migraine followed by the chills hit me like a mack truck. I wasn’t able to finish all that stuff. It was lights out and pray for sleep. Thankfully when the nurse asked me “So, did you drink all the Gavilyte?”, I promptly answered with “Yes” and there were no issues as a result of my giving up on the strict instructions.The actual procedure was a dream, with IV in my arm and drugs streaming down the line… I was out. I woke up, got dressed and went home… I honestly cannot remember most of that day. All I know is I am thankful that I didn’t wake up during the procedure!

So, now I’m back to waiting. Waiting for the results of my stomach and polyp biopsies. I am going to stick with the assumption that everything is all good to go. Although at the same time I’d like to hear “Well, you have XYZ, which explains all the problems you are having with all the rumbling and tumbling in your tummy as well as the anemia.” I don’t have high expectations that there will be answers, it seems there rarely are… oh, other than “Well it’s part and parcel with Fibromyalgia… or Depression…” On those days, when I walk out of the doctor’s office, I mostly feel deflated and question my wisdom with going to the doctor in the first damn place. This last round has been fruitful, in that I know I have anemia which is a good reason for my exhaustion of late. What I don’t know is where the blood is going or why this damn flare is going on… and on… and ON.

Oh these are fun times, right? I am working as hard as I can at work and still feel like I should be doing better. It’s tough when you know you used to be so … well … good at your job. Yes, I used to be good at my job. I just can’t remember when that was. I believe it was about 3 or 4 years ago. I’m not sure. I know I have had bursts of goodness, but those are definitely few and far between.

ANYWAY! Here I am. Waiting.

Tomorrow’s going to be the day that I get my results back.

I hope.

Stay cool!

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Day 30: My Word Tree…

Today’s Prompt: Word Cloud. Make a word cloud or tree with a list of words that come to mind when you think about your blog, health, or interests.

Today is the last day of the WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. I did it! As the final post, I have created this tree in answer to the prompt… enjoy!