HAWMC

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Thank you! HAWMC’S Most Riveting… Wow!

I woke up this morning and checked my blog and wow! I have hit 11,000 hits… this is so incredibly amazing to me. I would never in my wildest dreams imagine that people would read my blog, much less have 11,000 visits.

THANK YOU!

Just as incredibly cool to me, yesterday I received an email from Amanda Dolan, Editor at WEGO Health. I was awarded a Superlative Badge for the Most Riveting post in the 30 day writing challenge last month. I am proudly showing it off (on the side of my blog as well :) ! If you click on the badge you will see the rest of the winners.

Awesome day… surrounded by the most cool and awesome people on the internet! Thank you for the motivation and inspiration.

Stay super cool!

Tamiko

Here’s the posting that received the award for Most Riveting:

Day 2: Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most…

For more information on WEGO Health, check out any of the following:

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Day 26: Health tagline… Invisible Illness… Visible Me.

Today’s Prompt: Health tagline. Give yourself, your blog, your condition, or some aspect of your health a tagline. Make sure it’s catchy!

my foggy brain

invisible illness… visible me.

My life with Fibromyalgia, Depression and ADD.

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Day 21: Health Madlib Poem… Captain Barbossa and My Gut

I have had one hell of a week. I have been to the doctor just about every day, yesterday twice. I have had my blood drawn three times and I’m waiting for all these results to help figure out what the heck is going on. I have found out I have iron deficient anemia. Now it’s on for the search for where the blood has gone… is going and where it’s coming from. I gotta say, I am happy that there is a valid, medically tested and confirmed reason for why I am so damn tired and having such a hard time focusing. I never go to the dr. for these things as they have become a way of life for me… this was just a very good reminder to check in every once in awhile. Coincidentally, Adrienne Dellwo, writer for about.com’s Fibro/CFS page posted up this article about anemia and FMS the day I found out. If you haven’t stopped by her site, you are definitely missing a crucial tool in your resource box.

Anemia & Fibromyalgia: How’s Your Iron Level?

It’s funny, the doctors and nurses are amazed at how I am still working and generally still somewhat functioning despite the level of pain and this new found anemia. It’s been kinda nice to hear, considering I have been feeling so lazy and dumb for the past couple months. I don’t mean that in a critical way, it’s just the easiest way to say how I’ve been feeling… and it’s true. In actuality, I haven’t really been completely depressed about this (wierd, right?), sadly I think I just accepted the reality of FMS. Maybe some of the realities of this illness should not be accepted so easily.

Figuring out when to call the doctor and when to carry on is so difficult. We are all so used to leaving the doctor’s office feeling like “that was a complete waste of time” (and I usually have a word that begins with F in that sentence even though I am trying not to use words that start with F…). I think we all start to give up on ever feeling good again. I had definitely given up on even thinking I would feel good about eating again. I always feel, for lack of a better term… yucky. I really want to eat something (because I LOVE food!) and then when I do… I feel like crap after. I was telling my husband, it’s like when Barbossa is telling Ms. Turner in his quarters what it feels like to never really live or die and he explains… “The more we gave ’em away, the more we came to realize the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner. Compelled by greed, we were, but now we are consumed by it…“, he goes on to say “For too long I’ve been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I’ve been starving to death and haven’t died. I feel nothing…“. I sometimes wonder if i was on that quest and I took some of those gold coins. Someone please tell me where I put those (as you must know I forgot). I’d like to put them back.

For fun, here are a couple sites to see Barbossa’s quote:

Well, I should get on to what the prompt was for today since I am participating in the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. (Please visit WEGO Health’s blog and the WEGO Facebook page to find other writers tackling the same topics—or sign up for the challenge yourself!)

Today’s Prompt: Health Madlib Poem. Go to : http://languageisavirus.com/cgi-bin/madlibs.pl and fill in the parts of speech and the site will generate a poem for you. Feel free to post the Madlib or edit it to make it better.

Well….. I did this. I followed the prompt, went to the website and I gotta say… not impressed. This isn’t the best use of my blog, but I’ve already used my two “get out of post” cards.

This is the poem as it was turned out by the madlib…. like I said… not impressed. I look forward to the next prompt.

mysterious dog’s mysterious dog

ccarefully i have never imagine, loudly beyond
any bed, your fibromyalgia have their funny:
in your most adventurous palm tree are things which endure me,
or which i cannot listen because they are too quietly

your clumsy look somewhere will unovercome me
though i have photograph myself as rainbow,
you pretend always doctor by doctor myself as park sleep
(understanding accidentally, absentmindedly) her beautiful flower

or if your toy be to whisper me, i and
my hammock will escape very painfully, courageously,
as when the banana of this bed gather
the beach irritably everywhere promiseing;

nothing which we are to reach in this kitchen talk
the car of your quirky mom: whose dad
walk me with the sister of its brother,
runing illness and depression with each danceing

(i do not dream what it is about you that wish
and write; only something in me believe
the grandma of your fibromyalgia is strong than all park)
grandpa, not even the caterpillar, has such amazing monkey

– sing & e.e. cummings

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Day 17: Learned the Hard Way…

What’s a lesson I learned the hard way? Hmmmmmm, which lesson do I choose? There are so many possibilities.

A lesson I keep learning… the hard way… is that exercise makes a difference. Another lesson? That my diet makes a difference. It’s like I know what I am supposed to do, but my brain says otherwise. Take my meds everyday at the same time, manage my stress, manage my time… there are so many things I know I should do. So I guess I haven’t really learned my lesson(s)… yet.

I would have to say the biggest lesson I have learned is the “overdoing it” one. I am much better about stopping when I should, not over committing, holding back when I want to get something done. I realize the consequences of my decision mean I will be out of commission for days on end if I don’t restrain myself.

My perfect day on Sunday, we went to the zoo. Normally I would take my cane, but I knew there was no way I could make it from the car to the entrance without my pain making it so uncomfortable it would start the day off badly. I used a wheelchair. This is letting go of my pride to the infinite degree. I really just had to accept this was the only way I was going to get through the day and have fun. I can tell you, I was simply exhausted at the end of the day. The wheelchair saved me, but it didn’t alleviate the pain or exhaustion. I thought I’d experience less pain, but I didn’t allow it to ruin my day. I also didn’t overdo it. I had my perfect day.

It’s so easy for all of us to overdo it. Overdoing it can mean vacuuming the house or washing the clothes or making dinner. It could mean working a normal 8 hour day. Living within our boundaries is not easy. Trading one activity for another could mean working and not participating at our child’s sporting event. It’s not fair, but these are the decisions we are faced with. We need to feel okay about it or we tear ourselves up for it. I am not a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad employee… I’m not a bad person. I am someone living with a health issue and I’m doing the best I can.

The lesson I learned (and continue to learn everyday…)? Balance. I can say I’m sitting about even, feet dangling off the see-saw. I definitely have my up days … and my down days. I have learned, but the actual daily practice of this balancing act is crazy hard.

What about you?

Thanks for stopping by.

Tamiko

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Day 16: Pinboard…

The prompt today is to create a pinboard for my health. I created one just before I joined this writing challenge. I have been posting most of my prompts from this challenge there.

My three favorite prompts so far in the challenge are:

Day 5: Ekphrasis Post… WHAT? Ekphrawhatis? #HAWMC #Fibroymyalgia #Depression

Day 7: TUI… Talking Under the Influence of Pain #fibromyalgia #depression #HAWMC

Day 11: THANK YOU! Remembering my very first post: The F word… Fibromyalgia #HAWMC

Short and sweet today… it’s been a rough one for me. Rough or not, I can’t forget to wish my dad the very best birthday in the world!! Without him, I would never have this ability to communicate.

Take care everyone!

Tamiko

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Day 15: My Writing Style…

Today’s prompt: Writing with Style. What’s your writing style? Do words just flow from your mind to your fingertips? Do you like handwriting first? Do you plan your posts? Title first or last? Where do you write best?


In a perfect world, I truly love pen to paper. I am easily obsessed with stationary and pens and journals and all things paper. Put me in a stationary or nice card store and I’m in heaven. I would love to have hand written all my blogs and have them in a nice journal to reflect upon now and again. The reality is, I can no longer write without pain. Add to the pain that my writing looks horrible these days and it only leads to frustration and emotional pain for me. It ends up being just another reminder of what I’m facing on a daily basis.

Not to wallow in despair over this… I’m laughing to myself at that sentence I just wrote… “wallow in despair”? Seriously? I digress for a moment, but bear with me as I have been watching a lot of PBS Masterpiece Classics and Mysteries. I love Inspector Lewis, Downton Abbey, Sherlock Holmes… etc. I think I may have picked that up somewhere. That is definitely not something you’d just hear me say on a daily basis.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I am not sure what my writing style is. I try to stay positive, I’d love it if people smile or laugh when they read my blogs. I don’t beat myself up if I tend to have a down posting now and again as that’s what life is. Life is not always rosy, but my goal is always to end on a happier, positive vibe. I never want people to visit my blog and leave sadder or more depressed. There’s enough of that in real life, I believe most of us with these invisible diseases want hope, something to make us believe there are solutions out there. We want to know people are living successful, happy lives – or even “living” life at all. I mean getting through each day with some type of success to celebrate, small or large. It keeps us going.

When I am writing (or should I say typing?) My mind generally goes super fast and I have a difficult time typing as fast as the thoughts are coming. Many times I’ll be typing and half way through my mind will just go blank. Maybe it’s a signal to stop and review what I have typed so far, maybe it’s just my brain deciding it’s gone on overload and needs to reboot. Whichever it is, I either review and throw it away, re-focus what I have so far or keep on going after making a few edits here and there.

I don’t have planned days to blog. I am very inconsistent and go through phases where I don’t even look at my blog for months. When I am in a flare or particularly bad time of depression, I don’t really want to write. The words would only depress me and everyone else. I just don’t have the energy mentally to pull it together. This writing challenge has definitely been a true “challenge” for me. I am proud of myself for keeping up with the prompts and I have made it a goal to get through these thirty days. It’s been very pleasant and more relaxing and fun than I thought it would be. I find myself thinking about the prompts throughout the day.

On all of my postings, I will wake up thinking about something I want to write about or during the day I’ll mentally have a topic pop up in my head. I will think about it and mentally write something in my head and in the end if I am really feeling good about it I’ll jump on my laptop and start typing. There are a lot of days where I just think about a topic for hours and end up not writing anything – or I’ll start writing and decide I don’t really want to complete the post. I admire authors and writers tremendously for their ability to focus and get through writing a book or people who keep coming up with fresh ideas for their blogs. It’s not easy to hold people’s attention. Especially these days with anything and everything at your fingertips on the internet. When I hit the publish button on my postings, I always have a feeling of “did I just do the right thing?”, “will anyone read this?”, “did I say anything I shouldn’t have?”, “Am I the only one who feels this way?”. Receiving the positive feedback from people is always reassuring.

This blog, my diary of my journey with Fibromyalgia, Depression and ADD has helped me in so many ways. I hope, if you haven’t started a blog, this inspires you in some way to start one up. It’s not as much about readership as it is about self-realization through the writing process. It’s a great way to express yourself and help those around you… your family and close friends to understand what you are going through without having to articulate it verbally. I am not good at talking about what I experience and this is my way of communicating. I know my dad reads these postings aloud to my mother and it really makes me feel good to know I have my best supporters with me on this journey. My husband reads and comments to me each time I post something new.

Well, I am about to go and have my dream day… a trip to the zoo with the fam. I’m really looking forward to this day! I wish all of you a wonderful Sunday and hopefully this will be your dream day too.

Gentle hugz!

Tamiko