Why do I have good days?

This week I have had days where I wake up feeling really good and there have been days where I’m ready to throw myself under a bus and this got my thinking, why is it some days I wake up feeling better than others.

I had one morning in particular where I woke up and the fogginess and confusion didn’t seem to be hanging around and it’s days like this that I want to bottle this feeling and it makes me want to get all the things done that I can’t do when I’m having a bad day.  Anyway back to why I have good days and I realise that I have subconsciously made some changes to my life and I like to think that this has played a part

•  Drinking lots of water, sometimes up to 2.5 litres a day, lucky for me I love water so this has been an easy one for me to stick to but I have found when I don’t drink enough water I feel sluggish.

• Cut out a lot of junk food/processed food but still indulging maybe once or twice a week.  I found myself whinging about my weight gain whilst shoving a biscuit in my mouth!!! Medication plays a huge part in the weight gain but eating crap is just not helping my cause

• Routine…now this is a big one for me and it’s one that has taken me a while to get down pat.  Waking up at the same time every morning and going to bed at the same time every night has allowed me to take my medication at the same time each day and it has also helped with getting the correct amount of sleep at night

• Embrace the good and letting go of shit.  There are just somethings that you just need to not waste energy or emotions on.  For pretty much the whole time my husband and I have been together he has always said “don’t stress about things that are out of your control” sadly it took me to get sick to finally realise this – don’t confuse this though with frustration because this condition can leave you feeling frustration beyond belief but these days I just let a lot of things slide because there are much more things I can be using that energy for.

• Having a bath every night – now, this one is just something everyone should indulge in if they can, it not only helps my muscles and joints it also allows me to just lets me block out all the white noise in my life and just be in the moment.  My perfect world would be to sit in a bath 24 hours a day at optimum temperature of about 24 -25 degrees, absolute bliss :)

• Laughter  -  Everyday you can pretty much guarantee that I'm laughing and its usually because of something I have done or said, one must learn to laugh at themselves.

Now I can’t say that all these things are the magic answers nor does it stop me from having really bad days, but it has helped bring some order and structure to my chaotic life.  

Now tomorrow could be a complete disaster and everything may go to pot but, I’m in a better place now than I was 6 months ago when I had no structure and quite frankly feeling like fish out of water 

Why do I have good days?

This week I have had days where I wake up feeling really good and there have been days where I’m ready to throw myself under a bus and this got my thinking, why is it some days I wake up feeling better than others.

I had one morning in particular where I woke up and the fogginess and confusion didn’t seem to be hanging around and it’s days like this that I want to bottle this feeling and it makes me want to get all the things done that I can’t do when I’m having a bad day.  Anyway back to why I have good days and I realise that I have subconsciously made some changes to my life and I like to think that this has played a part

•  Drinking lots of water, sometimes up to 2.5 litres a day, lucky for me I love water so this has been an easy one for me to stick to but I have found when I don’t drink enough water I feel sluggish.

• Cut out a lot of junk food/processed food but still indulging maybe once or twice a week.  I found myself whinging about my weight gain whilst shoving a biscuit in my mouth!!! Medication plays a huge part in the weight gain but eating crap is just not helping my cause

• Routine…now this is a big one for me and it’s one that has taken me a while to get down pat.  Waking up at the same time every morning and going to bed at the same time every night has allowed me to take my medication at the same time each day and it has also helped with getting the correct amount of sleep at night

• Embrace the good and letting go of shit.  There are just somethings that you just need to not waste energy or emotions on.  For pretty much the whole time my husband and I have been together he has always said “don’t stress about things that are out of your control” sadly it took me to get sick to finally realise this – don’t confuse this though with frustration because this condition can leave you feeling frustration beyond belief but these days I just let a lot of things slide because there are much more things I can be using that energy for.

• Having a bath every night – now, this one is just something everyone should indulge in if they can, it not only helps my muscles and joints it also allows me to just lets me block out all the white noise in my life and just be in the moment.  My perfect world would be to sit in a bath 24 hours a day at optimum temperature of about 24 -25 degrees, absolute bliss :)

• Laughter  -  Everyday you can pretty much guarantee that I'm laughing and its usually because of something I have done or said, one must learn to laugh at themselves.

Now I can’t say that all these things are the magic answers nor does it stop me from having really bad days, but it has helped bring some order and structure to my chaotic life.  

Now tomorrow could be a complete disaster and everything may go to pot but, I’m in a better place now than I was 6 months ago when I had no structure and quite frankly feeling like fish out of water 

The Week I Wish I Could Forget.....FAT chance!!

This week has been a hard and long slog. What started out as a good week turned into a week fraught with pain and discomfort?

On the 24^th August I was called “fat”.  Now I’m not very good with dates and remembering things but being called fat is something unfortunately you don’t forget.  Now I’m not naïve to the fact that I have put the weight on and I don’t feel that I need to justify it but I do feel that my weight is something that I need to get under control.  So Monday after work I started my new workout regime with low impact exercises and some weights thrown in for good measure, as I’m not really keen for the tuck shop lady arms and after I was finished I had a soak in the bath and felt quite good about myself…

Tuesday morning I woke up to feeling quite horrendous – my whole body had decided that it was going to slowly but surely malfunction.  I had pins and needles in my feet, my muscles were burning, my head was pounding, my back was spasming, my foot was burning and I felt like I was getting a head cold as well.  Throughout the day the pain intensified the more I was cleaning and walking around and all I could focus on was getting to the 3pm mark and just going back home, I even messaged my husband and said please don’t call me pain is insane and I just can’t conduct a conversation in the foreseeable future and as the days progressed the pain was still there but was settling as each hour passed until we finally got to a usual pain level of 4-5 which is normal for me.

Now that I am at Friday I do wonder if it was from the exercising or was it my body just telling me it’s time to really slow down and just rest.  What scares me the most is that I use to be that person who would go to the gym every day and exercise my ass off, I would be that person who would occasionally go for a run, I even ran the 10km Sydney Bridge run 4 months after fracturing my wrist in two places and enduring 2 operations with a further one a few months after the run, so to not be able to do low impact exercising and to not be able to do my job to my full capacity infuriates me and scares the shit out of me.  It’s not just the fibro it’s the foot injury which is a big part of the problem and from the looks of things it’s never going to get better or back to its former self, so I know find myself at a real cross-roads, and which ever path I travel unfortunately it will be out of my control.

So after the week from hell I’m now following doctor’s orders and only working 4 days a week with Wednesday as my rest day. As for what my working life holds for me, I can’t be certain and only time will tell but for today I feel like I’m through the pain fog and will start back on the exercise regime next week and fingers crossed all will be ok….

Let’s hear it for socks & shoes

Last week I have hit another milestone.

After 9 months of only wearing ballet flats I have finally been able to place a shoe and a sock over my injured foot…YIPPEE and insert gentle happy dance!!!!

My injury from last November has left me with a foot that may never return to its former self and while this has left me feeling frustrated and at times feeling like a spectator in life I needed to come up with a game plan that would allow me to feel like a participant and not a spectator.  My plan was to increase my medication regardless of the side effects and just plough ahead and it looks like my plan worked. 

Now anyone that knows me knows that once I start to feel good then there really is no stopping me, so my excitement was off the scale when my doctor and Injury Manager agreed to me working 3 hours back on the floor alternating with 1 hour admin and 1 hour cleaning on a daily basis for the next fortnight and then review again with the hope of me being cleared to resume normal duties. So I have started my new regime and have found new energy and whilst my foot bloody hurts together with the rest of my usual hurting areas, I find that I can almost ignore it whilst I’m busy being productive and using my body again, but of course I possibly overdid and spent Saturday in almost complete shutdown which I suppose was to be expected, but waking up Sunday morning feeling better I know that my body can and will sustain what I throw at it but I am always remembering the many voices of those closest to me when they say - slow down and take it easy, don’t over-do it and to quote my mum “Rome wasn’t built in one day and it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as you are making progress”.

While I will always have Fibro and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and many other issues, and that will never change I now feel that I have a bit of my old life back and each day I will push myself harder than the day before because I know that I can do whatever I set my mind to and I as a side note, due to the increased walking I have lost 0.6kg – life is good #mynewnormal

Listen to your body

The last couple of weeks have been an eye-opener for me, quite literally J

I have been noticing some visions issues of late ie, things blurry, not able to focus on things until I put my glasses on, things still out of focus even with my glasses on.  I had even noticed that it felt like there was a film of gel over my eyes and no matter how hard I rubbed them nothing made any difference so I would just wait it out and eventually my vision came back to normal.

About 9 days ago I was walking to the station and out of the blue I lost complete sight in my right eye, again I did the usual rub the eye – nothing, clean my glasses – nothing so again I just waited it out for about 10-15 minutes and made my way slowly to the station.  By the time I got to work I was ok but feeling slightly off but continued as usual throughout the day at work with a slight headache.  

Now at this stage I just put the vision loss to a potential migraine but thought I will just mention it to the doc when I see her in two days’ time.  Imagine my surprise when I tell my doc and her reaction was "ummm this can be a sign of a stroke and probably should off gone to the hospital".  So she ordered an urgent ultrasound of my Carotid Artery to ensure that there was no blockages and strict instructions to go to the hospital if it happens again.

When looking at the signs for a TIA or Stroke I can honestly say that I get these symptoms on a daily basis and when living with a Chronic Illness it is very hard to know what is part of the illness and what is a new symptom – there has been a few times my doctor has said to me “your really should of gone to the hospital” Now I’m sure there is an inner voice in me that does tell me to go to the hospital but I obviously ignore it for the same reasons we all do – I’m too busy or I really don’t want to sit in the ER for hours on end, I will just take a couple of Panadol and get some sleep, I need to cook dinner and the list goes on and on. Without getting all preachy I cannot stress enough how important it is to LISTEN TO YOUR BODY…Its turned out for me that I wasn’t having a stroke or TIA thank goodness but I spoke up and said to my doc things are just not right, there has been a shift in how I’m feeling and some days’ it feels like I have regressed back to the beginning, so that been said I now have to make an URGENT appointment with an Eye Specialist and when I see my neuro next month request that we run another MRI just to be on the safe side – it’s possible that all the vision issues are due to migraines but as I wasn’t getting a slap around the head migraine thing happening it best to get the MRI done.

So to everyone out there that has something niggling or just doesn’t feel right, I plead with you to get it checked out, even if you think it is nothing it could very well be something, without your body working to full capacity then you cannot be the best version of yourself and as for me well I like to think I’m unbreakable which can only mean I’m close to perfection J

Fuck it!

I remember the days when it would take me 24 hours to generally recover from a hangover and I would to think that was hell, now I find myself taking nearly two days to recover from a bit of light walking!!!

Saturday I decided to make the most of the nice day and headed into the city for a bit of walking around and maybe treat myself to a coffee.  Now, I find myself on most days having an internal argument which goes along these lines “grrrr I’m hurting, yes but you need to go to work, yes but I don’t think I can do it, yes but you know once you get there you will be fine and on and on it goes!!! When it comes to working and life I set very high expectations of myself and anything less is not acceptable and I’m finding now that this is my stumbling block.  Having time in the office due to my foot injury it has given me time to reflect and figure out what I really want and the conclusion is “physical work is just not for me anymore” and when I think, oh I can do it, it will be fine, I think back to the nights I would come home in such agony from walking and pushing my body beyond it capabilities and all because I set the bar so high for myself.   For the last 8 months I have forgotten what that pain felt like until this weekend.  It was suggested by my doctor and Injury management that I try some light duties back on the floor at work and see how my pain levels and overall health goes – so I have agreed to a one week trial for 1 hour each day because if you don’t try you will never no, but more on that towards the end of the week. 

Back to Saturday, whilst it was enjoyable I now feel like I have a hangover that just won’t go away….I hit my low on Saturday afternoon when I had to ask my husband to dress me after getting out of the bath, as the urge to puke and pass out while lying down was too overwhelming…and Sunday afternoon was a real treat,  I realised that slowly the pain is becoming a 12/10 – nothing is working, the pills don’t work, and It’s another 7 hours before I can take anymore, the hot water bottle is not working, sitting is painful, lying down is uncomfortable, the body starts to sway when walking,  it feels like a force is pulling me back when I’m standing still, the head is full of stuff and even my toes and finger tips ache – they are hurting now while typing and all I want to say it fuck it – fuck you fibro, fuck you vertigo, fuck you meds for not working

And here we are Monday morning and again the internal argument started but the perfectionist in me won and the pain is probably a 10/10…so today whilst I’m at work and feeling really pissed that I feel like a 73 year old, and that my body has gone to pot again, I’m going to sit and whinge to anyone that will listen and also count down the minutes until I can go home and whinge a little bit more…

Thanks for listening ♡

When you get out of bed

There are days were the desire to do anything other than sloth on the couch, with my blanket and just watch mind numbing television are quite appealing but then there are days where you are present and accounted for and this particular Sunday I was present.

We ventured out as family for a bit of car shopping.  Our Son had finally gotten his P’s and was now ready to put his big boy pants on and hopefully purchase his first car and after looking at lots and lots of cars he finally found one that he loved. 

Life is full of opportunities and missed opportunities and I for one was not going to miss this “first time” milestone.  I’ve never been a competitive person, I’m always happy to come second in the middle or last, but I have found myself lately competing against “fibro” and finding that I’m coming out in front.  It makes me feel that I’m living how I should be and not to the confines or constraints or my illness

So congratulations my son on the purchase of your first car, I hope it gives you many years of enjoyment and memories and I’m so happy that I could share this moment with you. Drive safe :)

PS….when are we doing a maccas run….