Well, as promised, I have set myself the challenge of bringing to the attention of as many people as possible the awful 'Fibromyalgia'! I am following in the footsteps of my wonderful friend Sara Diana Williams, who has the most incredible blog about her fight against breast cancer! To me she has been my inspiration, and the reason why I pushed myself this summer to take part in the Race for Life to raise funds for Cancer Research! It also makes me feel grateful every day that although I have Fibro (this is what I will call it from now on!!), and it is a chronic illness, it is not life threatening!! For this I am extremely grateful, because I don't think I could cope with something so awful!
Yesterday was not a good day, it is now 1 am on New Years Eve, and I am sitting typing this to tire myself out in the hope that I will sleep! My eldest son, Aaron, returned home to Leeds yesterday after being home for almost 2 weeks, and this always leaves me feeling low, and when I am low, my aches and pains seem to know this and decide to attack too!! I feel annoyed with myself for feeling like this, because I have had a fantastic Christmas, with my three wonderful 'boys' around me, and I know I am very lucky! I have the most incredible husband who is very supportive, although at times he doesn't understand just how much pain I am in. We recently had a heart to heart because things he was doing and saying were getting to me (the raised eyebrows when I asked for help with something in the house, the muttering as he walked away when I had said I was in agony) and he told me that he misses the wife he used to have, who was always active, always doing something, and kept a good house and cooked a meal to come home to every day! It never ever once occurred to me that he was struggling to come to terms with my illness, how selfish is that! He has never been the kind of husband who insisted on a meal every day, he was often happy to come home and cook a meal, he loves cooking, so it was not that big a deal, what was a deal was how much I was being affected by this awful fibro!
I also have my younger son living at home, Luke, and he is an absolute star! Although I no longer work, and both my hubby and son do, they never complain when I ask them for help with the things I have not been able to do during the day. I no longer work, and as someone who was once a nurse, and loved her job and caring for others, this has been my biggest problem! I hate not working! I hate not having my own money! I hate having to ask others to care for me!
But, out of all the problems that Fibro has caused me, the worst of them all is the 'Fibro fog', my memory is shot to pieces! I have had to write down the name of this blog, because when I wake in the morning I will not be able to remember what I have called it, and how to get back into it!! How awful is that!!!
I used to save peoples lives, I used to work on a busy medical ward where there were people on heart monitors, and I had 26 patients in my care, and I had to remember what every single one of them had wrong with them, so that if a doctor was called to the ward I could tell him their history! Now I am lucky if I can remember my name some days!!! I am laughing now as I type this, because while my eldest son has been at home, I have frequently called both my sons by the wrong name, good job I only have the two of them!!!!
I also have my wonderful life saving Black Labrador called Jess, she is my absolute star, she seems to know I am having a bad day and never leaves my side, and on the few good days I do have, when I manage to walk to the field nearby to walk her, she never even needs to wear her lead, because she stays right by my side and never leaves it! Strange that an animal can sense that something is not right and treat us humans with such respect and dignity, yet some people who call themselves my friends have backed away from me because I am not the person I used to be!!! Perhaps the humans need to take lessons from the animals!!!
I am going to finish this first blog now, because it has done the trick and I feel very tired! I also feel positive about this, and I hope that people will start to read my blog and it may help all those people out there who suffer from this chronic illness, and it may also make those people who think that this is not really an illness but just in a persons mind, to understand that this is real, and if a few of those people go and look up Fibromyalgia and chronic illness, they will understand what we are going through!!
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