What I’m dealing with

I’m really not even sure how much I’ve talked about my fibromyalgia. I think I mentioned it a while back and about how someone suggested that I’d become one of those people that post memes about it all the time. I do my best not to whine about it. People ask how I’m doing and I usually say I’m alright. No one really wants to hear about the trials and tribulations of living with this incredibly wretched disease. A lot of people don’t really know what it is and on that note, I took the liberty of grabbing this definition from the Mayo Clinic’s website:
Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain processes pain signals.

That’s putting in the plainest terms possible. It almost sounds like a list of possible side effects from one of those prescription med commercials. To give you a genuine look at what it feels like would almost be impossible. There are good days and bad, but the bad days are so awful that its often too painful to even get out of bed. If you’ve ever had the actual flu (not a bad cold that you called the flu), then you may have experienced a rather small percentage of fibro like pain. It can be quite similar. Even that is not a fair comparison, because some days it feels like I’ve been in a car wreck and I’m covered in bruises. While other days it feels like every nerve ending I have is on fire.
There are days when I can’t sleep and there are days when that’s all I can do. There are days that I’m extremely motivated and days that I can only describe as mental vacation. It’s like my brain just checks out and I can’t focus to save my life. Then there are the mood swings. I could be in the best of mood and then a wave of pain washes over me out of nowhere. I can’t imagine anyone would handle that particularly well, but when your moods are already questionable it makes matters much worse. As a result of all this, I’ve become much more reclusive than I once was. I tend to isolate which can lead to loneliness, but at least I’m not at risk of lashing out at anyone for no rational reason. Meh, I’m in the middle of a bad wave of pain…spent most of the day in bed…so that’s why I chose to write about it now. I hope it wasn’t too much of a downer. I tried not to make it whiny, but there are times when I just want the world to understand what I’m dealing with here. shrugs

morning