The Pain is Headed Down!!

I was so relieved to wake up Monday morning with my pain down to a Level 4: The pain is getting stronger, you are taking more OTC medications but they don't last long. You begin to cut back on your activities in favor of just sitting down!  I can function at this level! Not very well but compared to where I was Saturday night this is progress.  After all the Level 7, 8, and 9 pain that I've had this week, it is such a welcome relief.  I have to admit that to keep the pain at Level 4,  I took a good bit of my breakthrough pain meds. I don't like taking much of it but sometimes it's necessary and the last few days has been one of those times.

I have no idea what brought on this flare.  Sometimes I can trace a flare back to a specific event.  The only think I can figure this time is the extra stress that I've had the last couple of weeks.  I was excited to be able to curl up in the recliner at a friend's house, prop my feet up and enjoy watching the kids playing and everyone having a good time.  I even got to ride the Gator up to the horse barn and pet the horses.  It's been a long time since I've been able to do that.  I didn't last long at the barn but I made it up there.  Don't care if I did have to ride the Gator, I made it there.  When you suffer from a disease like Fibromyalgia, you get excited about the smallest of victories. The difference between my Saturday pain and my Monday pain showed how wide of a range of pain fibro suffers can have. It pretty amazing how quickly that pendulum can change and how wide the change can be. When the pendulum swings toward lower pain, it's a victory I'll take.

Stress plays a huge part in the pain levels of someone with Fibromyalgia. The last couple of months that I worked proved that.  I don't think I'll ever forget how horrible the pain was when I had to give up and stop working.  My stress was so high because my working was a necessity and I was not doing well at it.  I had worked so hard to get my degree and it was becoming pretty evident that I wasn't going to be able to use it much longer.  I worried about how we would survive financially and if Bill would find a job with medical insurance.(His employer had gone under when the economy crashed in January 2009.) Not being able to remember was frightening and stressful because I knew it was going to cost me my job. I worried that I would begin to forget things that I had known for sometime.  When I went out on FMLA that last day, I fully expected to go back to work.  Little did I know that it would take almost a year for me to get back to a semi functional person.  It took a good while to accept that I would never be the person I had been .  Sometimes I not so sure that I've accepted it after all this time.

Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Myofascial Pain, Neuropathy and is the deck of cards I've been dealt in this life.   I believe that the Lord has a reason for this and I'm determine to use it for His Glory.