Chronic Pain

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today’s a bad day…

Blue skies and windy outside and I am still laying down for the fourth day in a row. I think I have become a professional facebook gamer. It’s a good enough distraction from the pain, but it is starting be a constant reminder that I am doing nothing.

I stare outside the window and pretend I’m looking at the ocean. I wish I were scrapbooking or capable of reading a book. For all the hours I have sat and played facebook games, I could have completed many scrapbooks or read books that could enrich my life! It’s my life wasting away and it is THE MOST frustrating experience ever. I’m too anxious to read and I’m in too much pain to sit and scrapbook.

The last 3 days I have been in a deep depression. I feel like I am in a dark cave and I can’t see my way out. The fibro Twitter gang that I follow have been great! I feel like they can relate to what’s going on. My friends are worried and I feel incredibly sad about that, I just don’t know what to say or do. My husband is worried and I’d like to just snap my fingers and feel better. It just doesn’t work that way. I have to claw my way back to the light that is reality and make myself feel again. I feel broken.

I know I will have days that are good and days that are bad. I’m looking for my next good day to come soon…

Thanks for reading… stay cool!

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celebrate the small victories…

I had this crazy pain today in my feet that felt like the most intense type of pins and needles… like my feet went to sleep… It started to shoot up my legs and I just froze. It was so painful, I just froze. I called my husband when it first started to come and help me, do what? I’m not sure because when he came in the house I could not speak I was in so much pain.

Can I tell you how frustrating this experience was? I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I intended to do some scrapbooking. I came and sat down and started to work and was highly motivated. FIFTEEN MINUTES into my relaxing scrapbooking project… BOOM! My feet just exploded in pain. WTF? I just don’t get it.

The pain lasted about 10 or 15 minutes… but my emotional state was not great. I was frustrated… very frustrated. I silently cried tears once again out of frustration for this pain causing havoc in my life. I was angry for getting emotional, which of course, didn’t help… Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours.

I did get up and push myself up and off the couch and back to my scrapbooking project. I am very proud of myself. I finished ahead of my goal for the day. I will celebrate that!

It was a very rough day, but I made it through! I need to celebrate the small victories more often… Today I was so much better than my FMS!!

It’s so hard to remember that we are more than our condition, stronger, better… we need to celebrate our victories no matter how big or small… we need to lift ourselves up when we walk around the block for the first time, when we have a pain-free day, when we can remember where we parked the car… I am learning, with this condition, I need to celebrate all my wins. I don’t know how much pain I will be in tomorrow, but I can do my best to control my environment and stay positive.

Be cool!

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Yo-ga! Yo-ga! Yo-ga!

Fibromyalgia is a real downer… there’s no doubt there are a lot of things about this condition that can bring a person down. I experience them on a regular basis, and on most occasions, for me, the worst of it hits on the week-end for some crazy reason.

I can be “Debbie Downer” with the best of them, but I created my Twitter account and this blog to try and bring myself up (and those who I hope read this). I want to share my experience and hopefully give folks ideas on how to improve and live better lives. Selfishly, I hope folks give me ideas back so I can continue to learn. This week I thought I’d talk about my experience with yoga.

After dragging my feet for years, Restorative Yoga is really the getting me out of the house. I have been a hermit for months and finally my girlfriends convinced me to try yoga. Restorative Yoga, or I believe it is also referred to as Yin, is extremely gentle. I haven’t been able to get out of bed for months. This Yoga class has 15 minutes of gentle yoga to warm up… I’ll be honest, I generally only do about 50% of this as I can’t handle all of it, but I either modify or just relax during this part. This warm up part is where you do a lot of stretching exercises. I can’t bend over while standing so you can just forget that stuff!

The restorative part is where I am diggin’ this yoga stuff. Lights out, candles lit, soft relaxing music… all of these poses are done on the floor… EXTREMELY gentle. Each pose is held for 5 minutes. This is very relaxing…

I get two mats for the poses where you are on your knees, otherwise I am in pain. For the second mat, I fold it over twice and put it on top of the first mat so I have triple padding. It’s perfect!

I am a pretty anxious person… the first time I went I wasn’t quite sure about the class…. the second time I was starting to like it… now I love it! I look forward to it!! Honestly, this is ME time. Time to just relax and clear my mind for an hour. I don’t have to think about my pain, work, stress, or what words I need to use to finish my sentence! I can finally shut my foggy brain OFF! Woohoo!!

My girlfriends are the best, they go with me… grab your friends and go. I hope you find it as restorative as I do!

What do you do that takes your mind completely off your pain??