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.

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.

The Great To Be Read Pile

I did a quick calculation the other day. If I read one book a week from one of my bookcases that houses unread books, it will take me about 75 weeks to finish. That's over a year. And only one bookcase. And that assumes that I won't buy any new books.

The thought of all these books to read sort of makes me feel like Sysyphus. Except there are no rocks or hills involved. Just books. Still, that may be why I'm not reading much. Too overwhelming.

I did finish Whatever Makes You Happy by Lisa Grunwald. The Oprah Magazine recommended it but People did too so I thought it might be safe. It was touch and go at the 50 page mark. I stuck with it because of the real and fictional research on happiness and it's theme, the meaning of happiness. In the end, it was thought provoking but I didn't really like or care about the main character, Sally.

I was also a little disappointed with Julia Quinn's related books, The Lost Duke of Wyndham and Mr. Cavendish, I Presume. The books follow the same events from the perspective of two couples, Grace and Jack, who ends up being the real duke, and Amelia and Thomas, who loses his dukedom when Jack proves to be the real heir.

I didn't mind knowing what was going to happen or the writing repeats like some reviewers. I liked following the same scenes and conversations from the points of view of the different characters. What bugged me was that the real stuff - how both men dealt with their radical changes in situation - was glossed over.

If you're keeping score, that's one book from the shelves, one from the library, and one from the store. I'm toying with the idea of doing a year without book shopping but that's just crazy talk.

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.

Books Galore

My name is Alice and I’m a book buying addict.

I’m not mocking people in 12-step programs when I say this. It’s true. I have shelves and shelves of books that I bought because they looked interesting. Some of these poor things have remained unread for years. While I was dusting shelves on Thursday, I decided that I’m going to do something about my stash.

Winter is coming and I’m trying not to spend money, so I figure I’ll have plenty of time to read. Here’s the plan. I’m going to read my way through the to-be-read mountain and report on the books here. Also, because life is short, I’m going to do a page 50 evaluation. If the book is not working for me at page 50, I can move on to the next.

I won’t try to pretend that I’m not going to buy any new books but I intend to make it through five books before I get a new one.

And I thought give up coffee was hard.

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I always read bits of books while I dust the bookshelves. Today I came across this passage from Cathy Lamb’s The Last Time I was Me.

“Here’s a tidbit of info I have learned during my nervous breakdown: If you have worked your buttocks off for years and you suddenly find yourself in the position of being able to work for yourself or at home, or maybe not even working at all (by choice), it is almost unbearably impossible to put yourself back in the position of working those hideous hours again with strange, mind-boggling people you would not normally want to hang out with unless forced to by a gun. You feel like the life is going to be sucked out of you an inch at a time. Through your nose. And the sad reality is: You are right.”

That one’s for all you working stiffs. The sad reality is: She is right.

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.

The Downside of Audio Books

I've been listening to audio books in the car for over four years, ever since the last presidential campaign. I had been a huge fan of public radio but simply could no longer listen to the campaign rhetoric from either side. Commercial radio was filled with, well, commercials. My CD collection was getting tired of the heavy rotation. In desperation, I tried an audio book and totally fell in love with the format.

There's a downside to listening to books in the car. Words that stay quietly on the page of a printed book are out loud and in the open in an audio book. There was the time I took my car in for service just as a sex scene in a romance got hot and heavy. (Thank goodness I remembered to turn off the CD player before handing over the keys.) There have been times when I've been laughing out loud and then noticed the people in the next car over staring at me. The worst times, though, are those when the book is so touching that I cry.

In my current listen, Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos, holocaust survivor, Irma, tells M.J. the story of a treasured tea cup that had belonged to her young daughter who died on the way to the concentration camp. A former neighbor's tiny act of kindness in saving that cup from the Nazis gave Irma the courage to go on with her life. I, of course, started to bawl. The last ten minutes of my commute into work was spent digging Kleenex out of my purse and wiping my face so I could recover enough to face my co-workers.

It was a good thing that I was running late this morning and forgot to put on mascara. Nobody at work would ever notice red, bleary eyes at 7:30 in the morning. Raccoon eyes on the other hand? Much more difficult to cover up.

I'm starting to wonder why it is that the potentially embarrassing audio book moments happen at the worst possible time. I may have to start a scientific study to see if this is actually true. In the meantime, I'll keep the tissues handy for the conclusion of this excellent book.

Books, books, and more books

For me, there are definite moments for books. Sometimes I'll read a review or see a book at the bookstore for months before I actually buy it. Then it might sit on a shelf at home for another few months or even years before I read it. I have a bunch of books that are waiting around for the perfect moment to be read.

The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig is one of the books that has been on my yet-to-buy list since it first came out in hardcover about a year ago. It's a retelling of Hamlet set in modern England. The book got good reviews and I had come this close to buying it a couple of times but just never did. I was really happy to find it on the new fiction audio book shelf at the library (free!). I just finished listening to it today.

OK, so maybe I should have known that it wouldn't be all that cheery considering the Hamlet angle and all but, darn it, the first couple chapters faked me out.

Eleven year old Philip's father has just died in an auto accident when, at the funeral, Philip sees his father's ghost. The ghost tells Philip that his uncle Alan is responsible for the accident - that it wasn't an accident at all but murder. In order for Philip's dad to avoid the terrors for the rest of his ghostly existence, Philip must avenge the murder.

Not so light so far, right? But the author does a great job with voice in this. Told in the first person, Philip's observations of the people around him in the months after his dad's death are funny. Maybe because he's so sincere, naive and matter of fact, it's got that whole "kids say the darnedest things" vibe. I got sucked into that note until the end. I was sort of expecting a happy ending or, at least, for Philip to come out of the experience relatively unscathed. I won't do a total spoiler but I will say that I'm glad I won't be funding that poor kid's psychoanalysis.

The boy who read the audio book was absolutely brilliant and I'm not sorry I listened but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the next audio book is a little lighter. Whew.

Running Away

I have fantasies about running away - just getting in the car and driving until I find a cool place to stop. In these fantasies, the cool place includes wonderful people, fun work, a great guy (or two), and a hip, cozy place to call home. Oh, and a dog. I read a lot of books with this plot line because it's so darn appealing.

I will never do this for two reasons. I cannot leave my geezer horse, T, behind. Even if I owned a trailer and a vehicle to tow it, pulling the trailer endlessly until finding the cool place would be too big a worry. At 26, T doesn't need the upset. Plus, while running away is strange in a cute, quirky, I'm-finding-my-place kind of way, running away with a horse in a trailer is just plain strange.

The real reason, though, is health insurance. Everyone I know, including me, is totally terrified about life without health insurance. Why are the characters in the books with this story not concerned? You know it's fiction when they lose their jobs or their husbands or whatever and the first words out of their mouths are not "Oh my God! How do I get COBRA?!"

I could live with being the strange woman with the horse in a trailer. I tremble to think about living without health insurance. Monday, I'm back at work. (Hmmm... Could it be a national conspiracy between companies and the government to force people back to their less than inspiring jobs each week? Hmmm....)

For an excellent look at what could be done with health care in the US, see PBS.org for "Sick Around the World" hosted by T.R. Reid (who has been a huge nerd-crush for me long before he did this show).

The books that inspired me today: The Way Life Should Be by Christina Baker Kline and Love & Biology at the Center of the Universe by Jennie Shortridge. Both were were warm, funny and uplifting even if no one freaked out about losing health insurance.

Coffee free status update: pretty much want to kill myself but too tired to do so. (Note: herbal tea, while all very good in its way, is not coffee.)