I’m having a really rough week. I couldn’t even go to work yesterday because everything hurt so bad I didn’t even want to get out of bed. Then today, due to the heavy rains I slipped and fell at work. Slipping and falling isn’t such a big deal for most people, but when you have Fibromyalgia it’s a snowball rolling downhill getting bigger and bigger. My knee is all bruised up and hurt for a little while. A few hours lately my whole leg started throbbing and burning with pain. Add that to the upperback/neck flare that I’ve had for the last week and a half. It doesn’t matter how many pain pills I take, the pain .. just .. never .. goes .. away.
I want to throw myself down and kick and scream and pound my fists into the ground in a full out tantrum, just as some sort of distraction from the pain if only for a few seconds. I get so discouraged and isolated with it. Even more, I’m angry at it.
I’m angry that I can’t be fixed, like you can fix a broken arm, or a headache. I’ve also come to hate the word “chronic” … I don’t want to be associated with that, I don’t want to live on the same planet as that but weeks like the one I’ve had, reminds me that I can’t get away.
Each week when I go in for treatment I talk to the ladies who are also getting IV therapy and we all tell our story. It’s almost like a support group while being pumped full of medicine. Some of these woman (and the occasional man) have amazing stories, and some of them are stories filled with sorrow.
One girl in particular who is around my age said that she lost all her friends, due to the mood swings, the constant fatigue, being hyper sensitive both emotionally and physically. She said the only ones that supported her before and after diagnosis was her parents and her husband. An older lady had the same type of story because her friends thought she didn’t want to do anything socially because she was being a snob, when in reality, she was bedridden and barely making it through each day. Then she started tearing up, saying she missed her friends so much. Naturally, if one woman in a room of women is crying, she was handed 3 boxes of kleenex and several hugs (as we tried not to get tangled in each others IV lines hooked to our arms.
I guess I’ve been lucky in the fact that I only lost one. Everyone in my life a few years short of a decade have stuck around and road the roller-coaster with me and it’s been one bumpy ride.
What gives me hope are the ladies that come walking into the treatment room with energy and light and you can see in their face they feel good. They always tell me the same thing. Hang in there, follow your doctors directions, take your medicine and supplements, and keep it up. It’s not an instant cure. There isn’t a cure. But there is such thing as living a healthy, energetic life with managed pain. These women have been going through this treatment plain with Dr. C for 8 months to 2 years. So, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I just need a bigger basket of patients.
