Digital Nails

Living with an Invisible Illness

Ok, if you're reading this at this point, chances are that you know me. You either grew up in the same town as me, went to school with me at some point, or are possibly related to me. You're reading this because we're friends. Since we are friends, you also probably know that I have a neurological disorder called Fibromyalgia. It's this thing where my body makes too many pain signals, even when it shouldn't. If I had to describe it to a stranger, I'd liken it to this:


You know how you feel the first day that the flu is coming on? Weird, and achy and tired, and easily distracted? Ok. There's that feeling.

 Now, let's also add in that feeling that you get when you went to the gym that one time and totally did too many squats trying to impress that hot girl in the spandex tights. Remember how much your back and legs hurt the next day? Good.

Ok, last one - I promise! The last time you took daytime cold medicine and went to your Calculus II final and sat there looking at the formulas thinking "when did I learn what all of these funny looking squiggly symbols and lines mean?" That moment of lost-ness and total confusion? Add that in there too. SO. So far, there's flu-like achiness, post-workout muscle & joint pain, and also my least favorite, the confusion that is know to the rest of the FMS world as "fibro fog".

Now, don't get me wrong. I am the opposite of a negative person, and not every day is total agony. I have to admit that in the last 6 months, since I started going to the gym, I have felt much better than I have in YEARS! Like, 9 years. That's a LONG TIME! Yay! I still have a ways to go to reach some of my fitness goals ( ONE pullup! That's all I ask, upper body!) and then to keep at it, so I can maintain that level of fitness, and therefore this level of "pretty-good-feeling-ness". That's a word I just totally made up. 

Here lately, as a central Texan I have been subjected to ABSURD levels of mountain cedar pollen, and along with 85.7% of the rest of Austin, have been suffering from crazypants cedar allergies. Well, during my month-long cedar fever hiatus from feeling "normal-for-me", I haven't really been able to do much. I do my best to keep up with my teeny business, and try to keep the house not-in-shambles, which is just under the "presentable" on the scale of house cleaning, and a couple notches  above "You have rats for roomates?".

Sometimes with fibromyalgia, I wake up feeling kinda better than I do 99% of the time and it makes me all excited that "Whoa, today I feel sort of OK, awesome!" instead of the usual, which is moderately crappy to pretty terrible. This morning, I woke up & rolled over, checking my phone for texts, or missed calls or to see if anyone bought anything from my etsy shop (woot!) and I stretched and felt.... ok. For you, OK is just, well - OK. For me, OK means I want to climb to the nearby tallest hill and shout from the treetops "I DON'T FEEL LIKE CRAP TODAY!" followed by some singing and dancing, and frolicking in a meadow with bunnies and deer while wearing a beautiful flowing dress while birds tie bows in my hair, and butterflies land on my fingertips.  

Then, in my state of temporary feel-kind-of-OK euphoria, I decide that since I feel not-terrible, that I should get a few things done around the house, and have what ends up to be a semi-productive morning, only to feel way worse than I usually do for the remainder of the afternoon because I over did it in my very temporary state of Ok-ness. Awww, man. 

(Insert that sad trombone noise here: Wah wah waaaah!) You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, after living with this for so long, but even still my brain tricks me into thinking "LOL UR FINE" when it really should have added a "J/K" on the end. Scumbag brain. 

 

  Sometimes having an invisible illness like this you have to even remind yourself that even though you look normal and you kind of feel OK, you have to take it slow and easy just like always or you're going to pay for it later. It's a challenge every day, some more than others. It's really hard for me to contain my usual geek-out level of "YAY!" when I have these rare moments of perceived normalcy.