Has It Really Been Two Weeks?

Yup.  

I haven't wanted to think about fibromyalgia lately.  My experience with the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Center ended in a strange way.  Business model changes meant my doctor was no longer with the organization and the doctor taking over the patients in the practice was one I had seen years before with no real success.  I felt stranded but since I was in a good place physically, I thought I'd get along with the support I've been getting from my primary care doctor.  I had made significant changes in my diet.  I started exercising.  The medication and supplement regime I was on seemed to be working. The weather was doing it's part to cooperate.  All good.

I fell off the food wagon beginning with Halloween.  I stopped taking my supplements.  Still, I was cruising along when little things started happening - my skin broke out, I noticed more morning stiffness and more IBS symptoms.  Then work stress hit - layoffs, medical leaves and a resignation have left us with half the people we had at the end of the last year.  A fibro flare hit. 

I wonder how much of the flare would have been preventable.  If I had been more diligent with self-care, would I be in less pain now?  Why is it so hard to behave in ways that make me feel better?  Sure, cookies and fast food are great but are they worth pain?

On a happier note, thanks to Crate and Barrel and my habit of saving all of the $5 bills I get during the course of the year, I am now the proud owner of the Kavari 57" media-storage console.  It looks beautiful in my living room.  It's great to get to the stage in life when you can buy and own grown-up furniture!

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Read the shelf project update: 

I just finished Only Pack What You Can Carry by Janice Holly Booth.  It wasn't at all what I expected, but an example of how the right book appears or, in this case, gets read, at the perfect time for the reader.  Some travel but mostly thoughts on courage and commitment.

One down, 51 more to go.

Next Steps

I've been thinking about why people don't do things they know they should do to live healthier, happier lives. Of course when I say this, I am really saying I've been thinking about why I don't do things I know I should do to live a healthier, happier life.

Like taking care of my health.

I do the big things to manage my fibromyalgia - the doctor's visits and medications and supplements - but I haven't been doing the everyday things like eating healthy food, exercising, getting enough rest, meditating, using pacing techniques, setting priorities, and having some fun. Frankly, even thinking about adding any of those things to my day is exhausting. But here is the plan for my brave new world - I'm going to do them.

Shifting my perspective from thinking that I won't be able to do it and then making these changes will be one of the most difficult things I have ever tried to do. Vital to my well being and totally necessary but extremely difficult. So I'm going to blog about it for fun and to keep myself on track.

I'm starting with exercise.

I've always had good luck working out at home but I need to get out more so I stopped by a local health club today to see about membership. It's nice. It's close to home. The ladies' locker room smells really good. The people exercising seemed normal. When I asked about the cost of memberships, I got sticker shock. Yikes. It costs a lot to join a nice, close to home fitness center with good smelling locker rooms where normal people exercise.

Of course, a lot is actually less than one month's board for T so I guess it's relative. Balking at the cost is also a first sign of resistance since my company has a fitness allowance that will pay for most of the membership.

I got a free pass for a week that starts on Thursday. I'll be working on all my "why I can't exercise" excuses between now and then.

Tomorrow night I'm going to a networking event for women in HR. I have nothing to wear and many other excuses for why I can't go, but I'm going anyway. See. Brave new world.

Fibro Update

Stupid fibromyalgia.

I'm feeling the effects of added work hours (how do people work full time???) and the damp (Michigan weather - ugh!!!) and non-restorative sleep and the stress of starting a new job and wanting to be super-employee (dummy me!!!).

I had been doing OK pain-wise. In fact, I was surprised that I wasn't in more pain until yesterday when the burning pain started.

Instead of spending the weekend resting on the couch, I did stuff. After two days of riding, running errands, doing laundry and trying to catch up at home, I'm about done in and facing another full week of work. Great.

But here's the thing. I've decided that no matter how bad it gets - within reason - I'm not spending any more weekends on the couch. That's too much life wasted and I feel so much happier when I see something of my bit of the world that's not work related. I'm not sure how long I'll survive like this but that's the plan.

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The one good thing about my new commute is that I have more hours to listen to audio books. I just finished a good one - Christopher Moore's Fool - a retelling (mostly) of King Lear with Pocket the Fool as hero. The first lines warn that it's bawdy (it is) but it's also funny and swashbuckling and has some twists. Good stuff.

Thematic Living

Life's been good and interesting this past couple of days. I've been riding T which makes me happy especially since I didn't have any pain while riding. While I was at the barn I talked with some riding buddies - actual face to face conversations. That makes me happy too.

I've also spent some time thinking about what I want to accomplish this year. Instead of setting resolutions that will fail, this year I decided to live around a theme of wellness. Kathy Freston talks about leaning into wellness in her book Quantum Wellness, Jenni Prokopy talks about being as well as possible (AWAP) on her ChronicBabe blog, and Laurie Edwards has a section called Reentry in her wonderful book, Life Disrupted. So that's it for me this year. I will reenter life by leaning into wellness and will do what I can to be as well as possible.

While I was doing my deep thinking, I remembered why I started this blog in the first place. I want to write more. So here's an actual SMART goal - I will post three times a week.

Post-Exertional Malaise

Thank goodness December is over. I know that I should be saying Happy New Year and all that but I'm really, really glad to be done with last month so I'll stick with thank goodness December is over.

People with chronic fatigue know that if they do too much, they may be fine while they are overdoing but will feel like they got hit by a truck a few days later. The doctors and other experts call it post-exertional malaise. That's the official terminology but the splat after the truck more accurately sums up last month for me. I have post-exertional malaise of the body and spirit.

It was hard for me to recover from my full-time work in November. I am still grateful for the chance to try because the extra money helped. Plus I needed to see if I could do it in case it becomes necessary in the future. I think I could. My work life balance would be nonexistent but...

We had lay-offs at work last month. Three people in my department and one other person who sat in my area were released. One of the people was N, my next-cube neighbor, who has appeared in this blog. I miss her and the others a lot. My work days are definitely darker without them. I'm still dealing with all the emotions that come with surviving a lay-off: anger at what happened, guilt for still having a job, and fear that I'll be next. The big wigs are still talking behind closed doors so I'm feeling vulnerable especially as my boss and her boss both want me to work full-time. And have mentioned that fact to me several times.

Trouble with my medications has left me feeling nauseated, unable to concentrate and slightly stoned (but not in a good way). The last time I saw my doctor I wasn't able to articulate how I felt so the adjustments she made were not successful. After talking with the case manager who talked with the doctor, I was able to change some things back to prior levels which means that while I no longer feel like I'm having a heart attack, I still feel drugged and slightly sick to my stomach. And slightly disheartened because I am so ready to feel well.

However, it is the new year so in order to get into the spirit I'll share bits from the blogs of two of my favorite writers.

Barbara Samuel picked up on a morning news show's three words bit. She asked readers to describe 2008 and 2009 in three words. My 2008 words are searching, unwell, and stuck. My 2009 words are healing, happy and connected. Try doing this. It's fun and since words have power, maybe it's the best kind of new year's intention setting.

Jenny Crusie listed her resolutions, the last of which was to not be negative. "It's not that the glass is half empty or half full," she writes, "it's that I'm so damn grateful to have a glass." Given all that's happened in 2008 and the challenges of 2009, I feel damn grateful to have a glass too.

Happy New Year.

Fibromyalgia and What I Learned

When I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I tried to tell myself that many other people were much worse off than me. This is undoubtedly true. As bad as my worst flare-ups would get, I knew that eventually I'd feel at least a little better. I learned that fibromyalgia is not degenerative. It can be debilitating but it wasn't going to kill me. So, I told myself to suck it up and get on with life.

That worked for me ... uh, not at all. I never fully admitted that my life had to change. I threw myself into the vicious cycle of doing too much, having a flare-up, crashing, recovering, doing too much, and so on and so on.

I was depressed, in pain and exhausted all the time. I finally broke. I took advantage of my company's employee assistance program and made an appointment with a therapist. She told me something that changed my perspective. She said that it didn't matter that other people were worse off than me. She said that there would always be someone whose situation was worse. That didn't mean that I had to discount what was happening to me. It didn't mean that I couldn't feel bad about what was happening to me.

I got permission to feel sad and angry and afraid about the changes in my life. Sometimes I still feel sad and angry and afraid. But you know what? I don't feel guilty about it. I learned that masking my feelings about my illness is not productive. I learned that I have a right to mourn the life I lost. When those lessons sunk in, I started to see that I could make a new life for myself. I could see myself living a good life even though I have a chronic illness.

Happy Anniversary to Me

The other day I realized that I missed an important anniversary. It's been nine years since I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I can't remember the exact date of the diagnosis because between perimenopause and fibro, I'm lucky I can remember my own name, but I do know it was in the fall of 1999. In honor of the past nine years, I thought I'd spend the next couple of entries talking about:

1. things I've learned since being diagnosed
2. things I haven't learned
3. things I think I've learned but apparently have not based on my actions
4. things I hope I learn and act on going forward

If I have any anniversary wishes for myself, I'd wish that I would acknowledge that I've done my best dealing with this illness for the past nine years and, more importantly, that I live my upcoming years with joy, love and wisdom no matter what health challenges I might face.

Hope and Cynicism in Politics and Fibro (and Sports for Good Measure)

Relax. I think I'm almost done with my mild foray into the world of political blogging. And the rants about work? No more of those. At least for a while. 'Cause the potential for a work rant? Right there under the surface. Always.

I said in my last post that I was done with hope and gloating. I haven't gloated for two whole days. Really. But that darn hope. It keeps creeping up on me.

Hope is a pernicious thing. It slinks in and makes me think about how things could be. Hope isn't about hard work, choice and compromise. Hope is about seeing my world, your world, our world as a better place where the impractical, the improbable can be. Hope is that tiny, burning flame in the heart. Hope is a country where any child can grow up to be President. Hope stirs in late August when the Detroit Lions fan imagines a winning season. Hope is me doing work that has an impact, that is interesting, thought-provoking, fun.

When hope crashes, cynicism storms in.

I finished my first full, 40-plus hour work week in over four years on Friday. I had flashbacks to my life four years ago - go to work, go home, go to bed at 8 p.m., do it again the next day. I was afraid that I knew what would happen and it did. On Saturday night I was insanely tired - drunk, drugged-up, stumbling into furniture tired without a drink or drugs to explain it away, to make it normal, to give it a rational explanation. Cynicism roared, happy to be proven right once again. I can't do this. What was I thinking? I almost wanted to cry. It would have taken too much energy.

Wait though. There is another player on this team inside me. Pragmatism.

It is still early days in my treatment. It's too soon to judge it a success or a failure. It's too soon to imagine that I can work full time without feeling the physical effects. Pragmatism reminds me that I don't want to spend my work life filing or putting together open enrollment packages. This adjustment to my current gig is temporary. It's a way to make some additional money. It's not my life. Or the end of my life.

Governing the country will be harder than winning an election. The Lions may not win this season. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue may never have a cure.

I may not know how to balance the demands of illness, work and a fulfilled life but I still have hope that I can learn. I'll keep that tiny flame burning. I'll listen to cynicism and its fear of all that could go wrong. I'll let pragmatism balance the two and run the show for a while.

Losing My Mind and Other Disorganization

It's confirmed. I'm totally insane.

I asked my boss if I could up my hours and work full time for a while. It would help me out with some extra cash for bills (both medical and new computer) and help out at work. We're changing benefit providers and some of the grunt work is not getting done. Things, like filing, are a total mess. I thought it would be a no-brainer. And yet, apparently not. Even though I first asked about this almost three weeks ago, I didn't find out until last Wednesday that it would be OK for a two week period with the possibility for more. I start working full-time on Monday.

I'm sure that I've made a stupid move. I should have just tried to get a holiday job at Kohl's or Border's and kept my mouth shut about it. I have a feeling that I've killed the tiny, gasping remains of what used to be my career. And ruined any possible chance to go back to my reduced schedule. It's not like I have any kind of future at my current employer. I know that. Still, doing myself in like this? What was I thinking?

I was thinking, hoping, that maybe it's possible for me to work full-time with fibromyalgia.

I blame Rosalind Joffe and Joan Friedlander who wrote a book Keep Working Girlfriend: Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease. It inspired me, darn it. It made me think that I could balance my symptoms with engaging work. And get a bigger paycheck. My first step on that path was to see if I could work a full 40 hour week.

What I failed to take into account is that I'm still not feeling all that great. I've been going to the fibro center for three months now and I don't feel that much better. I'm tired all the time, not sleeping well, and in pain. The only positive thing that I can honestly report is that I don't have sugar cravings any more. That's good but it's not relief from fibromyalgia symptoms.

My mind wants to do more. My brain keeps sending funky fibromyalgia signals to my body. I'm stuck in the middle.

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On the upside, my concentration has been good enough that I've been able to read again.

• Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend by Laney Katz Becker. Young mothers with cancer. I cried.
• Chocolat by Joanne Harris. Chocolate, mothers, insane priests, gypsies. No tears but I felt sorry for the priest.
• Casting Spell by Barbara Bretton. A paranormal from one of my favorite writers. (Girls of Summer is on my all-time favorite list.) Sigh. I was disappointed.
• Wish You Were Here by Lani Diane Rich. Contemporary romance, a little mystery, father/daughter and mother/daughter relationships and not a paranormal element in sight. Hooray. Another favorite writer.
• The House on Tradd Street by Karen White. Yet another favorite writer moving to the dark, err, paranormal, side. This had the feel of an old time Gothic so it worked for me.

Next up, The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter. It takes place in Ann Arbor, one of my favorite places, and has this great bit. Charles, the narrator, is walking off a combination of bad dreams and insomnia -

Above me in the clear night sky, the moon, Earth's mad companion, is belting out show tunes. A Rodgers and Hart medley, this is, including "Where or When." The moon has a good baritone voice. No: someone down the block has an audio system on. Apparently I am still quite sleepy and disoriented. The moon, it seems, is not singing after all.

Don't you love that?!

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Oh! The other disorganization? That'll have to wait. It's still all spread around my office floor.

Missing the Boat?

I was up early this morning unable to sleep because my legs and hips ached. After I organized my pills for the week, I got online.

About four years ago, I met Pixie Campbell at a Writer's Spa retreat in Taos, New Mexico that was led by Jennifer Louden and Suzanne Falter Barnes. I've followed Pixie's blog since. This morning I was clicking on links to Pixie's blogroll and came across Jen Lemen's blog. There was an entry where Jen writes about meeting and interviewing Cokie Roberts. At the end of the entry was this paragraph:

"I wish this were a beautifully written post that really captured all the power and wisdom of these tiny moments, but all I can say is that I’m really deeply grateful for today. I hope I can be the kind of older woman someday who inspires somebody younger to be brave and to take incredible chances for love and wholeness and peace (because I did it myself), all the while being willing to endure the pull with dignity and grace. That’s the most any woman can hope for, don’t you think?"

While Jen's pull is family and career, I couldn't help but apply her words to my own pull between fibromyalgia and life. I worry that my illness is winning the tug of war. It's easy to go inward to the place that's all about being sick because, let's face it, some days it is just so darn hard to live with the chronic pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia. But I want more.

Like Jen, I want to be the kind of older woman who inspires others. I'm far to close to older woman status to waste time not living fully.

Thanks to the women who inspired this post:

Jen Lemen - http:// jenlemen.com/blog
Pixie Campbell - http:// pixiecampbell.typepad.com/pink_coyote

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By the way, one day I'm going to figure out how to post my own blogroll. Promise.

Two Down

I read two books this week. Only thousands more to go to finish my shelves. Progress can be slow.

The first book I read was a loaner. I bought it for A for her birthday and gave it to her with the condition that she had to loan it to me so I could read it when she was finished. (How rude was that?)

Tending Roses by Lisa Wingate was timely for me because it reminded me that money isn't everything and that things can work out at a time when I'm freaking out daily about how much I'm spending for health care. There's a quote in the second book I read that's fitting here...

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is possibly my favorite book this year. It takes place after WWII and is written entirely in the form of letters - mostly between the protagonist, a writer named Juliet, and some people on the island of Guernsey which was occupied by the Germans during the war. It's a little old fashioned (which I love) but it doesn't sugar coat the war or the after effects.

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Today was IV day at the Fibro and Fatigue Center. I was there from 11 a.m. until after 2 p.m. because the darn things didn't want to flow. The whole process does me in for a couple days. I'm taking it as a good sign, that the things that are supposed to die off are doing so, but I wish it was a little easier. Still looking for that miracle cure, I guess.

The Real Me, At Least Partially

I changed my profile name. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable blogging and thought that I might as well use my real first name. So, ta da. I figure that when I get over the whole bitterness and sarcasm thing, I'll be ready to use my last name too. That might take a while.

I spent a lot of time last week listening to an on-line conference for National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week. I came across the conference by chance and listened to the first session because the timing worked with my schedule. It got me hooked because it's not often that there's a conference that's actually easy for someone like me. Having archived sessions made it possible to listen for a while, pause, move around for a while, listen some more, and so on. I didn't listen to everything because some sessions didn't apply but most of the speakers I heard were interesting and helpful. The sessions are archived at www.invisibleillnessconference.com.

After thinking about what I heard at the conference, I realized that I don't often admit to myself that I have a chronic illness. Which is strange considering I spend so much time, effort, energy and money dealing with my fibromyalgia. What's even stranger is that I've spent the last ten or so years dealing with the frustration of trying live like I used to before I got sick and then being resentful because I can't. I'm trying to figure out what denial is getting me and why I'm afraid of going to a place of acceptance. Sigh.

I don't think that my current treatment plan is part of the denial. I think that staying up too late some nights and drinking too much coffee some days and eating too much sugar at times and not doing yoga ever are part of the denial. There's a whiny four-year-old in me screaming "it's not fair". That's denial.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this new insight. Not dealing with it sounds really good while working through the issue sounds far too much like healthy work, acceptance, a sort of yoga for the mind. Now that it's in the open, it'll come up again. The good news is that the conference gave me some new tools to deal with it.

Treatment starts and so do I

I thought I had started treatment at the Fibro & Fatigue Center. But no. All the stuff I've been taking and doing has just been the preview. Last week I got the results from all my tests so now there's a concentrated battle going on in my body fueled by IVs, medications and supplements to rid it of viruses and to make me well. I have hopes fueled by my doctor who was excited and optimistic. The other fuel - well, that's making me feel queasy all the time and draining me of the ability to think. It will get better. I will get better. That's my mantra as I try to visualize everything bad flowing out of me.

In the meantime, I'm getting the bug to get some exercise and to be a little creative. I've been doing some easy exercise videos - only 20 minutes of gentle aerobics and strength training. Just enough to get movement without crashing and burning. To help with the creativity bug, I broke out the scarf I started knitting two years ago. The scarf will look good with my brown tweed coat which needs wearing this fall/winter. If I ever finish it. I've even been thinking about dragging out my old sewing machine to see if it still works.

I'm also getting my hair cut. I'm not sure I'll like it - in fact, I'm prepared to spend the winter watching my hair grow out - but it's time for something different. I've had pretty close to the same style for at least 10 years - shoulder length or so with long layers. I'm going for a chin length bob.

I've been checking out other blogs. I need to get some pictures on mine. Once I have some pictures to add. And figure out how to post them.

How cool is this? Stuff to think about and do.

There is no we in illness

It's about 4 a.m. I've been up since 2. Sigh. Things are not going well with the sleep side of treatment. Since I've started at the Fibro and Fatigue Center, I've been adding and changing medications and supplements. It feels like my brain is re-ordering itself around them. It's a bit disconcerting but not really so bad. My body had been hanging in but since I added melatonin two nights ago, sleep has been strange - too many dreams and periods of waking up. Yesterday morning was a struggle to get out of bed. This morning was a struggle to sleep. Which would be OK but I'm so tired...

Anyway, I just read a newsletter from Debbie Ford who talked about a lecture she attended given by Dean Ornish. He spelled out illness and wellness on the board and then highlighted them - "I"llness and "We"llness.

I admit it's kind of cheesy but the truth of it struck home with me. Since I've become ill, so much of my life has been inward "me" focused. I hate it but sometimes I just can't summon up the energy to care about what's happening outside of my little fibro directed world. Old Maslow, of hierarchy of needs fame, was no dummy when he said that the survival stuff had to be taken care of before one could look beyond those basics.

I've been thinking about success markers - how I'll judge if my treatment plan is a success. Once I get beyond eliminating pain and getting restorative sleep, I think that consistently staying at the "we" level of that pyramid would mean that I've moved beyond illness.

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I don't want to forget to mention some of the upsides of not being able to sleep. The pre-dawn world is quiet. Traffic is hushed and there's a chorus of crickets outside my window. The air coming in smells soft with the scent of dew on grass that goes away once the sun comes up. It's lovely. So much so that I might not even mention that fact that at 4 p.m. I'm going to be semi-comatose.

My new part-time job

I've got myself a new part-time job. It's not glamorous. And it doesn't pay. In fact, I'm paying for the privilege. I started treatment at the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers.

The very best part of today's first visit was that I didn't feel like I had to apologize for having all this nebulous "stuff" wrong with me. Everyone at the center, from the doctor to the office coordinator, is there specifically to help people like me. The patients are all people like me. You can't know the sense of relief that brings unless you've been to doctors who've said "I can't find anything - are you under stress?" or those who've said, "well, you've got fibromyalgia - there's nothing I can do for you". At this center there are doctors and other health care workers who are saying, "yes, you have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. We can help."

The downside, and there always is one, is that I'm going to have to organize my life around taking care of myself. Just managing the transition off old medications and onto the new ones is going to take a lot of mental energy. When I think about adding supplements and office visits for other treatments into the mix, it's almost overwhelming.

That's why I am going to have to look at this as a part-time job. I show up for work and do the things that need to get done. I owe it to myself to have at least that much commitment to managing my illness and recovery.

Today's appointment was long and expensive. Frankly, I'm exhausted and more than a little freaked out by the cost and and the thought of coordinating all these new things into my life. Still, that glimmer of hope is shining bright. Thank goodness for that.

Just When You Think

Just when I think I've got a handle on the whole fibromyalgia and balance thing, I get hit with a flare-up: exhaustion, pain, headache, the whole works. I've been sacked out on the couch since this morning and am now just moving around a bit. Grrrr.

OK, so I regroup today and start again. There's no other choice.

Thank goodness for books. I just finished Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson. The soul of Franz Schubert invades the body of Brooklyn attorney, Liza. Suddenly, she can play the piano brilliantly and compose music. But Liza and Franz have to figure out how to work together. And Liza has to convince others that she's not going nuts. In my opinion, if your body is going to be invaded, Schubert would be better than fibromyalgia. Too bad that's not the way things work.

A Little Hope Springing in Summer

My summer is finally getting into gear because I feel well enough to do things. Well, thing anyway. With fibromyalgia, I have about enough energy to do one thing a day. If I work, that's it. If I ride, that's it. If I go shopping, that's it. If I go out to lunch with friends, that's it. If I go away, I always plan for at least one recovery day before I have to go back to work.

To be honest, the whole thing is kind of a drag.

I am thinking about checking out a new treatment center. One of my riding buddies, L, has been going to the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Center in Troy. I ran into her at the barn the other day and she looked great. Like she had energy. She says that the first few months of treatment were hard but now she feels better than she has since she first got sick. That sounds hopeful. Of course, there's a downside. The cost.

I have been on the emailing list for the center for a couple of years now but have been afraid to commit to unknown costs - visits, supplements, prescriptions, etc., etc. - none of which would be covered by my insurance. A few weeks ago, before I talked with L, I got an email from the center explaining that they were establishing a comprehensive care package with set pricing. I'm still afraid to see the monthly cost but it might be worth a phone call and a few hours of sitting in their monthly informational meeting just to check it out.

Spring is the season of hope, but I might just be catching a glimmer of it this summer.

Good thing we brought another javelin

The bad thing about fibromyalgia is that I'm never sure when I'll have a bad day. I have to make a lot of accomodations because a flare-up can hit with no warning. Today was one of those bad days. I didn't have to work - my reduced work schedule is one of my accomodations - but I couldn't do much and riding was out. I was moping around and checking out the internet when I found a story about a photographer who got speared in the leg by a javelin.

Ryan McGeener of Provo Utah's Standard-Examiner was shooting photos at a high school track meet when he wandered into the area where the javelins where landing. Not smart. A javelin hit him in the leg, luckily missing anything vital. The ends were cut off by first aid people at the event and the rest removed at a local hospital. McGeener got thirteen stitches.

I have to tell you, that story cheered me up enormously. I might have fibromyalgia but at least I don't have a javelin in my leg. That's got to hurt.

As much as I admire the photographer for getting photos of his own pierced leg, my favorite part of the story is that the kid who threw the javelin, Anthony Miles, went on to win the event and the state championship. His coach was quoted as saying, "good thing we brought another javelin".

That, my friends, is fortitude in action.

Coffee Free Me

"Life is short. Stay awake for it." Caribou Coffee
cup

"Stay awake. Stay employed." My favorite coffee mug

"Coffee is the elixir of life." Me

If coffee is key to staying in the game, why am I considering giving it up? According to most of the collective fibromyalgia wisdom, it's evil. Caffeine destroys already fragile sleep cycles which lead to more fatigue and pain.

I've struggled through enough coffee fueled afternoons on the job to know that it's a no win - the more I drink, the more I need to stay awake. My bosses have not generally been the types who allow naps. The walk to the kitchen and the hot brew have often been the only things keeping my head from hitting the desk. When poking my brains out with a pencil is more compelling an option than looking at another spreadsheet, it's the coffee that keeps me sane. And my brains off the floor.

I love coffee in all its forms: the diner coffee that comes in thick ceramic mugs with unlimited refills; the first cup at home on a cold morning that warms my hands and wakes me up; the mocha with whipped cream at the bookstore; and even the tar-like remains in the pot at work at the end of the day. It's all great.

There doesn't seem to be any reason to give it up, does there? Yeah, but here's the thing. The last time I felt really good was after I recovered from a stomach bug that made drinking coffee a not so good thing. It took me a couple of days after I recovered to get back my taste for it. In the meantime, I felt alert and not tired. No really, not tired! It was something of a minor miracle. Then the siren call of the coffee got me and I went back on the stuff. I haven't felt that good since.

I don't know if I can do it. I'm afraid I will turn into a whiny, head-achy, nearly comatose wreck without it but I am going to give it a whirl for two weeks.

I'll post how it goes. If I survive.

In the meantime, have a Caribou turtle mocha for me, OK?

First Post

I'm way behind the times when it comes to cool technology enabled stuff but here I am blogging. I'm later to the game than most everyone but still ... yay! This is progress for me, the Luddite wanna be.

I've been messing around for the past couple of years saying that I'll write and that I'll take care of my health but neither has been happening. When I woke up this morning exhausted again, I thought enough! The fibromyalgia is not going away. If I want to have something to show for this life other than pain and fatigue, I'm going to have to do something about it. Why start with a blog? Honestly? It's a place to start.

The thing about me and fibromyalgia is that as time has gone by my life seems more and more limited. Now it seems like I've got nothing except work and the occasional outing that leaves me pretty much done in. That's no way to live.

I'm starting out here committed to posting every day for a week. I'm going to use this forum to stay accountable to myself for improving my health and getting some writing done. And having more fun.

So there.