Grieve and move on!

When confronted with the diagnosis of a chronic health condition like fibromyalgia, we can often grieve for the stronger, healthier person we were before it and it's like any other form of grief. 

We are angry, we bargain, we accept it, we move on. The hardest part in moving on is linked with acceptance: we have to find our new normal. 

I find there's a period of anger and denial, then acceptance. And it varies with each of us.  

Acceptance is the pathway to moving forward. So it is critical that we come to acceptance by focussing on what we have left, rather than what chronic illness has taken away from us.

As in all grieving, no one can say how long it will take us to come to acceptance, but it must come so that we can find our new normal and live our new life in that new normal.

What chronic illness takes from us is more than the physical. But even so, despite feeling down emotionally, we should and must focus on what it hasn't taken.

I have days where I still mourn the loss of basic abilities like home cleaning, showering and walking far. Today is one of pain with fibromyalgia to the point that I can't straighten my fingers and even my eyes ache.. 

My to do list today is not big, but it. is. what. it. is.

• Clean the kitchen
• Cook dinner
• Shower sometime before bed

Keeping our head up

 

So yesterday we watched the election most of the day. We prayed for justice to prevail and praised God. By the afternoon, we were feeling such a heaviness that we turned it off.

I came into my study and praised and worshiped God until the heaviness abated. 

I didn't get a lot done in my house except wash my dishes and do a load of washing. I sat watching the news events unfold as I folded the clothes.  

Dinner was a frozen dinner because we both found we had lost our appetite. With my fibromyalgia  worsened by stress and flaring again, it was an easy fix!  

Today, we have an errand to do and a check of our Post Office Box is necessary, but that will be all outside the home for now.

We remain in a state of prayer and will bring all this deception before the LORD. We are also praying for all who long for justice and righteousness to prevail. 

God is still in control... but we who follow the path of justice and Truth will be having a bumpy ride.

We all have to remember that as the picture here says: we have to live though these bad days to get to the good ones.   Let's be keeping our head up!

She would have made a great mother!

So last night I was watching a FB video on a cat which had recently had kittens. They were squeaking loudly, all trying to latch onto their mother for their milk, and I just watched, enjoying those cute little fluff balls.

Suddenly, Xena jumped up to my computer and parked herself in front of the screen, totally absorbed with the vision in front of her, her ears forward as she listened to the babies and their ear piercing hungry cries.

Just after I took this picture of her, she stood up and frantically looked at the back of the computer, walked around it, sniffing and was totally distraught.

She turned to me in desperation, totally convinced there were kittens there who needed attention. It was sad to see her imploring me to do something. I did.

I turned the video off and comforted Xena. When she had calmed down, I decided that it was not fair to do this to her.  As a rescue cat, she was spayed at 7 months, so she never got the chance to have kittens. 

She would have made a great mother.

Today I have to reserve my spoons as I battle fibro and have some errands to do. On my to do list is:

• Go to chemist again for scripts they had to get in
• Buy some groceries that I couldn't get online
• Do washing
• Cook a shepherd's pie for dinner

The kettle's always on!

In our house, I think apart from the computer and our TV, the most used thing is the kettle. It is on from the moment we open our eyes until we close them. And often in between.

Tea soothes one so much. Anything from bad news, loneliness, a coming together for fellowship, a celebration, or a pick me up for depression. Certainly it's a helpful balm for dissolving pain killers and such, and it's a comfort in times of illness or pain of fibromyalgia. Oh yes, all these things and more is an excuse for a cuppa at our place and so the tea kettle is nearly always warm!

Such is our love for tea that even our kitchen curtains have kettles and tea cups on them. 

My plans for today are:

• Clean kitchen
• Order groceries online and pick them up
• Go to chemist
• Cook steak, mashed potatoes and salad for dinner

My bed's calling my name!

 

It's raining cats and dogs here and the temperature is cold. It's supposed to be summer here in Australia, but it feels like a winter's day.

After having the cooler on yesterday, in stark contrast, we have the heater on. I am so glad that I don't have to go out today.

This changeable weather is causing havoc with my fibromyalgia. It's predictable that it would. So today I have just a few tasks planned.

• Clean my kitchen
• Make our bed 
• Cook curried beef with vegetables

My fingers are throbbing with pain today, as is my coccyx. With it being broken, it is also to be expected. I may apply some heat to it later on as the cold seems to make it ache more.

I think my bones may be brittle after years of prednisolone for my polymyalgia rheumatica. Hence the break of the coccyx. Yet I can't take extra calcium because I am a chronic kidney stone maker (over 50 bilateral) My stones are calcium oxylate bathed in uric acid. I am on Zyloprim to reduce the acid.

It's a predictable start to the New Year. I have been feeling a little reprieve from fibromyalgia pain and then- boom! inclement weather has blown me away again!

So I best get off my computer and start on the dishes. I can see a nana nap in my future and that's not a bad thing given the circumstances!  I can hear my bed calling my name!

New Year's ponderings

Happy New Year everyone! Well, it's been 2 years today since I started this blog. It was just after giving up the nomadic lifestyle in our RV and moving into our rented country cottage.

So like most people, I am thinking about my direction for the New Year and in particular the plans I have for this blog.

I want to share about my battle with health issues, particularly fibromyalgia and how it effects our life as homemakers. Who I call "Sacrificial Home Keepers" 

I also want to include medical events for my reference and also I want to share news du jour for us.

One of my goals in blogging here is to plan my day and list it. I will truthfully cross off that which I have managed to do and hopefully I will follow it on to the next day.

I also want to read the Bible through in a year. Well, listen to it, anyway! I listen to  it on YouTube.

Another goal is to bring my life verse, Philippians 4:8 into my life by focussing on what is good and true.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are  true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Praying for a happy year and a safe one for you. Remember that the Bridegroom's coming for His Bride soon! Let's dwell on that and look up! 

Read the Bible  https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-reading-plan/thematic.html

• Wash clothes and fold them
• Cook vegetable lasagna for dinner  
• Clean kitchen

Flying with the birds

 

We came home on Boxing Day from spending Christmas Eve and Day with Chris's daughter. Xena was especially glad to see us- almost as glad as she was seeing the birds coming into the back garden to feast on the remains of the nibblies platter I ordered. (I took a photo for you!)  See the kingfisher on the door mat that the wind blew over?

We had a lovely Christmas with family and it was very relaxing. So much so, that my fibromyalgia flare is lessening. I actually woke feeling refreshed and my muscles weren't feeling like they were tearing like they usually do.

It's been so long since I have had a respite from fibromyalgia flares that it felt strange. Good, but strange. Isn't it sad that one lives on the edge of agony so much that when the pain even abates just a little, you find the sensation agreeable but foreign? Such is fibromyalgia!

I received some nice presents for Christmas, but my favourite gift by far is some spoons or energy! I feel like I have won the lottery! Now if my broken tail bone would hurry up and heal, I would be rapt!

You know too how I said we have a lot of kingfishers around? Well, yesterday I was washing some dishes and I saw a kingfisher on the fence in front of me. I grabbed some offcuts of  beef that were on the chopping board from the stew I was preparing and quietly opened the back door. I pitched the meat towards it and it came down to eat it, but its mother, who was quicker flew down and carried it off, much to her baby's consternation.

She flew off with the beef dangling from her beak and her baby followed squawking in protest. I am sure she would have been a good mother and shared it with him. It made my day. I have found God often treats me with little scenes that delight me like that. I call them Love Glances. Just between Him and I...but I digress..

Having a few spoons has brightened my spirits. I have washed clothes, done dishes, made our bed, cooked lunch and prepared dinner. 

I must hold back and pace myself though or I will crash and burn and be of no use tomorrow. It's a trap that I have fallen into before. But meanwhile, I will pace and plan cautiously even though I feel like flying with the birds! 

My razzle dazzle is now frazzle.

Well, it's the day after Christmas Day, known as Boxing Day here in Australia. I have battled the Mother of All Fibro Flares the days leading up to Christmas. I should have won an Academy Award for acting the part of the festive bearer of gifts and delicious goodies whilst feeling like any second my body would fail me in a catastrophic way.

By 'catastrophic' I mean embarrassing, debilitating, humiliating and last but not least, painful. 'Embarrassing' as in losing control of my bladder, 'debilitating' as in sucking the last of my energy off my one remaining spoon, 'humiliating' as in falling asleep at the Christmas dinner table and 'painful' as in all muscles cramping and tearing as I move them.

Because on top of my fibromyalgia flare, I have broken my coccyx and cannot sit or even stand without yelping in pain. Truly I walk with the grace of a pregnant elephant, as the break in my coccyx has caused the other spinal injuries to flare and has resulted in slight bladder loss. Hence me saying that I should have won an Academy Award for acting "well"

So unless you knew me as well as Chris does, you would think that I was only as fatigued as the average woman who prepares for Christmas guests and sumptious fare and gift shopping.  I was able to feign excitement as the grandchildren opened presents and I scintillated with festive razzle dazzle.

At the end of the day as we made our way up the stairs- (groan) for bed, even my jaw was tight and sore with TMJ through smiling a lot... but it was worth it because at the end of the day, we made some lovely memories and I felt that I was living my life, not just enduring it.

Whether I stayed home or participated in what is usually a happy celebration of the birth of Christ, I would be in pain. So I decided (not for the first time) that sometimes you have to push through your comfort zone to live a satisfying life, even though you know you will pay for it the next couple of days or so. 

You can believe me when I say that I feel it already as I unpack our luggage, and I know I will pay for it tomorrow, but sometime's it is totally worth it even when broken bones and Fibromyalgia flares make anyone's scintillating razzle dazzle turn into a frazzle.

 

Today is going to be cancelled

 

I am beside myself in pain with my fibromyalgia. My muscles are feeling like they are being shredded as I move them. It is agony to extend them and typing kills me...

The weather has been inclement- very changeable with summer/winter in one day and frequent showers. It plays havoc with my fibromyalgia.

With Christmas so close, I am trying to visit family so that all the family have been seen without trying to do it all in one day, but with today's pain, I am not sure if our visit to my granddaughter is going to happen.

I am done in. Truly done in. I cannot stand the pain and need to sleep forever... yes. forever. just to escape. the. pain. and I painfully talk to you,  tapping out letters like a woodpecker. 

Driving Chris home from his heart scan yesterday has pulled every muscle in my neck, back, shoulders and arms and my legs hurt from trying to reach the pedals to drive. I cannot lift them to walk. Even my eyes hurt.

The depression and sense of failure threatens to overwhelm my consciousness: I have no friends to speak of for I only have enough emotional energy today to try to continue to exist without taking all of Chris's Tramadol as a desperate way of going on...

It's a lonely path.  However,  I just realised that I do have a friend who requires no emotion of me: my bed. Yes it's my one only true friend at the moment.  I am giving in. Today is going to be cancelled.

"Let nothing you dismay!"

With the continuation of my fibromyalgia flare, I have been simplifying my Christmas decorating, gift buying and so on.

Chris put a wreath on our front door and I decorated our mini Christmas tree. It sits on our coffee table measuring eighteen inches and has lights.

I have a couple of small nativity scenes on side tables in our living room- that is it for decorating this year.

I have no spoons to go shopping and have done most of my Christmas gift buying online over the year. It has saved me so much energy. These days, just getting dressed is a struggle, let alone going out shopping.

Woolworths supermarkets have a delivery service for online shoppers and I take advantage of that. I have my food list for the festive season and I will be ordering from that.

Cooking wise for Christmas Day, I will be preparing a trifle and bringing a store bought platter of nibblies and a slab of Coca Cola. We will be sharing a meal with family and friends who are all going to bring something.

I know I will be very tired after doing Christmas Day, so we will be staying overnight with family as the trip back home is nearly two hours. It's a long drive.

Gift wrapping is not a job I enjoy and with a fibro flare in full force, I feel even less like doing it. But my little granddaughter is coming to stay with us for the week, and she is chomping at the bit to help me. I can do with all the help I can get! 

Christmas with a chronic illness like fibromyalgia is a stressful time, but with a bit of planning, it is possible to get through and maybe even enjoy the day.

So I find myself ad libbing to the carol "God rest ye merry gentlemen!" by singing "God rest ye tired Glenny Hen!" followed by "let nothing you dismay..."

Let's resolve to make this Christmas a simple affair and enjoy the festive season as much as possible in spite of fibro. And remember- we will be making memories that will always be cherished in years to come. "Let nothing you dismay..."