Weight Loss and Fibro

Fibromyalgia likes to kick you when you are down.  Or up.  Or in the middle of the day when you are feeling great, there fibro is ready to make your skin feel like it is crawling.  Or in the middle of the night, it wakes you up with pain in your legs and there isn’t much you can do besides try to fall back asleep.

Now when you decide to change up things a little.  Do some extra exercises.  Change your diet.  Man, that is when fibro decides to fly down, or up, and slam you with a migraine, or joint pain.  Whatever.  Do you push ahead and continue with changes, or do you give in and let fibro when.

What I guess I am saying is that fibro, as it’s own entity, hates change.  Fibro hates change so much that it will do anything to get you to revert back to your old ways.

I am not reverting.  I am trying to push forward.  I am not going to give in to fibro’s problems with me trying to change.  I know there are times when you have to give in.  When you have to say “I’ve gone too far today, I better stop” because you know the dragon fibro is right around the corner thinking about using it’s fire breath.

Like I said before, I am uncomfortable in my body.  I feel like I am at post-pregnancy weight, but the last baby I had was 7 and a half years ago.  I just want to feel comfortable in my clothes.  I don’t want to buy new clothes, I just want to fit into the ones I have now.

I want to feel okay going to water aerobics and not use my insecurity allow me to turn around and not go.  I want to feel good in a swimsuit.

In no way am I at the point that if I was thinner I would be happier.  Well, I would be happier because I wouldn’t be uncomfortable.  But I also want to improve my health.  I want my joints to have less weight to carry.  I don’t need to be at my fighting weight from high school.  I just want to feel comfortable.

Comfortable.

Liver Cleanse Part Deux

I decided to do a liver cleanse because I had read about how much our livers actually do.  I didn’t realize that our livers complete over 500 functions.  Amazing!  Our livers can get congested just like traffic, so why not do a little cleaning of the liver.

It’s pretty simple.  It takes six days.  The first five days you drink one liter of apple juice-I try to buy the apple juice that is pressed and is not from concentrate.  I also drink my apple juice with water.  I cannot believe how sweet apple juice actually is!

Anyway, I am on day 3.  The apple juice really helps to get things moving, no more constipation here!  There are a lot of other liver cleanses that require you to take funny things, or eat weird things, or drink weird tea.  I like this one because it is so simple.

The book is called : The Simple Liver Cleanse Formula:  Detox Your Body, Eliminate Toxins, And Feel Like a Superhuman   by Jennifer Hayes

I don’t know about the superhuman part, but it is helping with flushing my body as I spend more time in the restroom then normal.  The part I am a little apprehensive about is the the 6th day.  That is when you have to drink water with Epsom Salt.  I just don’t know how that is going to go, but I guess I will find out.

On a totally different subject, I figured out that I am allergic to milk and all dairy.  That really sucks because I love cheese and drinking milk.  However, if I continue eating dairy, my body has real issues.  I have also found that my acne flares up when I eat or drink dairy.  I guess I will just have to make another change!

Cheers with my glass of apple juice/water!  I am hopeful that it will help me!

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

I think I have backtracked quite a bit lately.  I don’t know why, but everything just seems worse.  Fibro flares have been fairly consistent, and I can’t pin it on one thing.

Usually the pain is in my muscles-or soft tissue.  But lately it has been in my joints, making it unbearable to get up from a chair, or change positions.  I feel like I am 100, not 38.  I am not sure what to do about it.  I started walking to see if that would help-because movement is suppose to help, right?  Walking almost makes it worse.  Maybe I just need to get over some hump in which the walking will prove to be helpful in the long run.

But this sucks!  There is a reason I call all of this the suckiness.  Because it all sucks.  I’m tired all the time, I just can’t seem to get the brain moving.  I am constantly forgetting things, mixing up words, and being stuck when I want to say something, but the words are just stuck in transmission.

Maybe it will all pass.  Maybe I will wake up one day with an extra spring in my step.  Maybe…..  It is so hard to stay positive with the suckiness.  So hard.

Just Keep Swimming

Awhile ago while I was still in ADT, we did a project where we made a poster that would inspire us.  I picked pictures of places, gardens, waterfalls, beauty.  My saying was “Just Keep Swimming”.  Although this came from a children’s movie (Nemo), it is so true.

The saying is applicable in a number of situations and you could put walking, moving, whatever in place of swimming and it would generally have the same meaning.  Just keep moving FORWARD.

My goal in this whole journey has been to feel comfortable in my own skin.  To feel as though I am sitting in a nice comfortable chair with my feet up, of course.  I think I would like to include that this chair is somewhere on a beach and I am enjoying the sunset.  But I digress.

So my mantra for each day is “Just Keep Swimming”.  If I am focused on moving forward it is much more difficult to look to the past and ruminate on regrets and dreams lost.

I’m Not Sure What To Do

So, I went through all of this therapy, group therapy, going into the mental hospital.  All of it to see if I could help myself, help me become a better person.  I learned so many new skills throughout this short journey, but it is pretty hard to feel accomplished when your partner is nothing but negative and makes sure to point out every single negative and bad thing I do.

I haven’t cried for about a month and a half, mostly because I haven’t had anything to cry about.  I have tried to brush off everything he says.  I try to let it go, but it’s not working.

I mean, the most difficult thing I struggle with is the anxiety and sometimes dread when he comes home from work.  I am so afraid of being belittled, of being put down, of feeling ashamed.

I love my kids.  I love them to the bottom of the ocean, depths that every mother knows.  I love them that it aches at times.

I have shared how I have had to quit working because there are so many things that hinder my ability that I sometimes feel more like a hindrance then a employee.  I am constantly reminded how worthless I am, that I don’t work and that we are struggling.  Struggling financially in ways that we shouldn’t be.  My husband has a good job.  He works hard.  I don’t take him for granted.  I tell him how much I appreciate him all the time.

Yet, here I sit on the verge of tears wanting to run.  I want to drive and just keep on driving.

Maybe I am being selfish.  Maybe I am over thinking things too much.  But I feel beat up.  I feel like I stretch myself beyond what my limits should be.  I stretch myself to a point where I spend days in pain.

I am beginning to wonder if it is all worth it.  This relationship I mean.  I just don’t know if I can ever find myself, find happiness when I am around someone who is constantly reminding me of my failures.  I don’t know if I be around someone who makes me so anxious I just want to curl up and hide.

I don’t know if I can do it.  My visit to the hospital-he saw this as me attacking his career.  This whole journey has been nothing but holding him back.

I get that change is hard.  I get that it is hard to change, especially when it isn’t your choice.

I just don’t know how much more trying I can do.

It’s Been Awhile

I took a brief vacation from this blog for several reasons, many of which pertain to the theme of this blog.  I had been going down a hill that just seemed to never end and the bottom was no where in sight.  I was trying so hard to jump out and quit “the game”, but I was sucked in and there was no escape.

Or so I thought.  I ended up doing a bit of research and spoke with my therapist and found that there was a program called Adult Day Treatment.  Let me tell you, I did a lot of self talk-some of it good a lot of it was trying to talk myself out of going.  Giving in to another form of mental therapy would be like waving the white flag.  I was way past waving any sort of flag.  I needed help.  Any and all kinds of help.

I started in January and just finished the program.  There were a few hiccups along the way, but I was determined.  I was determined to get off this hill.  I didn’t want to see the bottom.  I had been close enough that I knew there was nothing I could do on my own.  I had to do something.

So much of my journey at the beginning had to do with accepting my disease.  Really the journey has turned out to be more than that.  It has been a journey to accept me for who I am.  I am beginning to really like me.  I have a lot of great qualities.  Hey, I am not perfect, but there is no perfect.

What I have found is that I have been trying so hard to fit in where I don’t necessarily need to fit in.  I am an introverted person who enjoys my time alone.  I found this great quote by John Mayer.  It might not be exact but this is how I remember it.  “Don’t be afraid to walk alone.  Don’t be afraid to like it”.  I do like walking alone-not all the time, but I don’t mind being alone.  I like it.  No, I love it.  I really love being able to walk in our woods with my dog, just walking and listening, looking for new things.  I like being piece of the world around me without excessive noise.  I like me.

I will be back, but I don’t want to fill pages and pages about my journey over the past four months because it is just too much.

 

Setbacks are a part of life

I admit, I have been ignoring this blog.  Purposely or not, but I haven’t felt up to writing about anything.

After the holidays, I had a major setback in my mental health.  I spiraled into an abyss I haven’t yet been to.  It was everything-the stress of a loved one being so terribly ill, the holidays themselves, a frustrated husband, a disease that will never go away.  It all was thrown into the bucket of a front loader and dumped on me.  It was stinky, slimy and unwanted.

On top of it, I started having a flashback of something that happened to me several years ago.  It was quite traumatic and turned my entire world upside down.  I left the love of my life.  I walked away from everything.  Well, I more ran then walked.  This traumatic event still haunts me today.  It haunts me at night with vicious nightmares, and vivid imagery of the sweet man I ran from, and from waking up and realizing what was happening to me.  It makes me sweat.  I mean, I am completely soaked.  I feel like I just jumped out of the shower without a towel and laid down in bed.  It’s pretty gross.

The flashbacks haunt me during the day as well.  I see these images before my eyes that remind of the past.  My brain is trying to tell me to deal with it, but I don’t want to.  I am constantly screaming inside.

Except when the screams don’t stay inside.

Last month, I was routinely crying in my room, or while mopping the kitchen floor.  I was just so damn sad, and I didn’t want to remember all of these things.  I didn’t want to remember that I ran instead of dealt with the situation.  I ran and still feel like I am running.

With that, I ended up in the hospital-more like the mental ward of a hospital for three days.  I needed to go.  I needed to figure out how to deal with this situation.  I needed to fess up to my problems and quit coating them with ignorance.

But ignorance isn’t working.  I feel better about it because I actually told my family about it.  My shoulder felt lighter.  I felt a little better.  But even as I write, I still have a knot in my chest.  A knot of regret.  A knot that remembers the love I felt for someone that was so genuine, so pure, so real.  And I have yet to feel that way about anyone else.

I love my children, but it is not the same.  He was my best friend.  He was my everything, and I ran from it all because of something someone did TO me.  I didn’t choose it.  I didn’t want it.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.  After we recently moved, I found a journal I had kept during that time.  In there I wrote how I was going to be the only Mrs. **** *******.  It was just me.  I couldn’t imagine life without him.  I still sometimes imagine life with him.  Laying out on the grass at Waterfront.  Playing pool and losing and having to run naked around a nice Denver neighborhood.  Holding hands while walking down Hawthorne.  Driving across the country multiple times and all the people we met along the way.  Meaningless jobs.  Different crazy apartments.  Mostly just knowing that I was loved and would be loved by such a wonderful man.  I miss him every day, and with the flashbacks it makes me miss him even more.

I want to reach out, but I have already.  It didn’t go so well.  Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he wouldn’t talk to me at all……

So the setback anyway involved depression, PTSD, and other yucky things that deal with the brain.  Maybe I will come back soon and not do so much gushy reminiscing, and more discussion about trying to accept me for me and not try to be the me I think everyone else wants me to be.

I Would Just Suck It Up, But I Have Nothing Left in the Tank

For the past month and a half, I have been on this conveyor belt of yuckiness.  It’s the holidays, so the stress level is insane, which makes the fibro flares inevitable and disgusting.  On top of it, I spent a considerable amount of time away from home due to a family issue, and I feel like I am continually tripping over things I need to get done while I am running to keep up with the things I need to do every day.

I would ask for help, but that just isn’t in the cards.

I feel like the 16 year old me who was trying to pass the lifeguard test, but struggled with the minute treading water with a brick over my head.  I am treading water, but barely keeping my nose above the water, not to mention the rest of my head.

My house is in constant shambles, my finances are even worse.  My laundry room is overflowing and the kids are looking for clothes that are buried.  I just feel like a slowly sinking ship.

I try really hard to keep up, but it seems like as soon as I catch up in one area and start a new one, I am stumbling around the mess just created.  I can’t sleep.  I am not eating right.  I am just one giant messy tornado that is out of control.  I told my therapist the other day that I feel like a giant mess.  But maybe it is just me in my head.  I have always felt like the world is twisting and spinning around me and my eyes can’t focus in order to find a place to jump in.

It is all quicksand, slowly sucking me in further into the suckiness.

I can’t concentrate.  I can’t focus.  I am so tired, words don’t come to me.  It’s as if the words get stuck and I am at road block.  I hate it.  I hate right now.  I hate that I feel like I am sinking.  I hate that I feel like this.  I hate that the way I feel effects those around me.  I wish I had just a little bit more in the tank.  I wish I wasn’t trying to beg to use up all of my reserves.

In Limbo, But It’s A Good Thing

I was doing a good job, or in my opinion I was, in writing on here about my journey through accepting the new me along with all of the baggage that goes along with it.  Life, of course, had other plans.

My mom, who is a healthy, 50 something woman, became very sick.  So sick she ended up in the ICU at one of the Twin Cities hospitals.  There were teams of doctors working on her case and between all of them, they couldn’t figure out what she had.  I spent about a week and a half going between my house, my parents home and downtown Minneapolis spending time in my moms room, the waiting room and the lovely cafeteria.  I felt pretty numb during all of it.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all.

It’s my mom.  She never gets sick.  And she certainly never takes time off work!  I wanted to be there for my dad and my sister.  Fortunately, my mom’s three sisters were there to help out.  And we had a slew of support from other family and friends, especially after utilizing CaringBridge.

I’m not going to get into the thick of it all, but the whole situation threw me for a full metal jacket loop.  It has been a few days now, and I still feel a little off center.  Like I just got off some speeding merry-go-round.  I realize I should be able to get back to normal, but I am just in this daze I can’t quite fix.  

I’m in limbo-between two states trying to figure out which side is up, but I think it’s a good thing.  I really feel like I have not only be ruled by fibromyalgia, but I have also been ruled by fear.  Fear of disappointment.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of the unknown. Fear.

While I was in the hospital, I spent time in the hospital chapel.  My religion is important to me, but I have thrown it in the backseat for reasons unknown.  Going into the chapel just to ask God for courage to face this situation, and for courage to be strong for those around me because I know they are going to need someone, just as I am going to need someone.  I decided to breathe out doubt, fear and the unknown and breathe in faith, love and courage.  After several minutes, I felt a lot better.

Since then, I have done the same thing, and it really helps.  It helps to talk to God on my own.  No constrictions of prayers in church, just me and the Big Guy.  I can tell Him about the things I am grateful for and to ask for help in my weaknesses.  I can ask Him for forgiveness without telling a priest I hardly know.  I can learn through the Bible the parables of Jesus that can help me to let go of my guilt of past transgressions, of my past of not having faith.  I can transform through my faith and I don’t have to be embarrassed about it.

The limbo consists of me accepting myself, allowing myself to choose faith in God, and choosing courage over fear.  I know God has a path for me, I have just been too jaded to see the path in the dark.

 

Picture from faithhopeandtruth.com

I Wish Sometimes I Could Have A Day Off

I think everyone wishes they could have a day off.  A day in which they could go on a mini vacation, or finish up some projects they have to do at home.

I want a day off from EVERYTHING.

I want a day off from the fog.  I want a day off from the suckiness.  I want a day off from feeling tired all day long.  I want a day off from pain.

I also want a day off from the big question  of “What’s for supper tonight?”  I am beginning to hate that question so much that I snap at whomever asks it.  I am beginning to hate cooking.  All I want to do is lay down in bed and sleep.  All I want to do is nothing.  But that isn’t in the job description.  My job as mom, wife, and on and on.

This is what I always wanted to do.  Be a stay at home mom.  Take care of everyone and everything.  Bake and cook.

But there were other plans for me.  God had other plans for me.  I haven’t quite come to grips of why He has set me on this plan, but I guess it is not for me to understand.  It is not for me to question, even though I continue to.  My faith is not helping me to accept this path.  All I want to do is understand.  I want to understand why this is happening, why I am allowing this disease to rule my life, run my life.

I also want a day off from thinking about this too.