Category Archives: health

#chronicillness, #chronicpain, #fibro, #fibromyalgia, #fibrowarrior, #illness, #migraine, #poem, #poet, #poetry, #spoon, #spoonie, #spoonielife, #spoons, #writer, Chronic Pain, Chronic pain, grateful, gratitude, Haiku, Haiku Friday, Haiku Horizons, headache, Healing, health, Hope, Migraine, poem, poet, Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Spoonie, Spoons, Spoons

Dr. Fallible…

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you listened to me
and when my body’s tale changed
you tried something new

saying they were just
words put on symptoms for the
insurance company

and not the be all
end all final sentence of
my one existence.

you treated my whole
not just the sum of my parts
saying it’s an art

not only a science.
when we fail to find a fix
we should always ask

are we looking right
where we should be or do we
need to start anew?

I’ve never met a
single other doctor quite
as lovely as you.

— mmorehead 03-04-21

#fibro, #fibromyalgia, #fibrowarrior, #spoonie, #spoonielife, #spoons, #topomax, #topomaxsucks, #writer, Chronic pain, fibromyalgia, health, Spoonie, Spoonie Tips N' Tricks, Spoons

Too hungry to sleep…

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yet too full to eat. Last night was a special kind of party. I lay awake with a rumbling belly, thinking about all the food I have enjoyed eating over the years in great detail, while I tried desperately to keep down the 1/2 cup of meat and veggies I managed to eat at dinner.

It was an experience I am not looking forward to repeating. In fact, right now I’m writing here instead of sipping at the disgusting copper-flavored vanilla protein shake I am too full to drink despite having eating nothing since 7 pm last night.

On the upside I have now lost 11 pounds since this all started. Only a month left to go. I have the excess weight to lose and if I can use this miserable experience as a jumping off point for exercise then I can actually start running again and maybe keep it off.

My amazing neuro told me that Fibromyalgia is a syndrome that attacks and destroys the small nerve fibers in the body, hence the pain, itching, tingling, etc. However, the good news is that exercise and motion of any kind creates new small nerve fibers, so movement literally floods our bodies with new soldiers for the fight, which is why it’s important to keep moving. I was doing a really good job with Couch to 5K but the combination of gaining muscle weight and then Lyrica weight made the running too hard on my knees so I had to stop, but I miss it. I would like to do it again and I know my puppy would like to join me. So, maybe this month will be a good place to jump start running.

See, silver lining. Not all bad. Gonna take a disgusting sip of chalky copper vanilla shake now.

Yuck.

I would just slam it to avoid the flavor but I did that yesterday and spent an hour trying not to throw it up. So, the good news about rebuilding those nerve fibers is that it’s not exercise per se that does it, it’s movement. One of the ways I make sure I move some every day, even on the worst days, is I make my arms and feet dance every time there is music played during a movie or TV show.

I also routinely perform wrist rolls, ankle rolls, and neck stretches as I rest. While there are a ton of exercises and programs out there, Yoga, VR boxing, dancing, etc., my doc was clear, movement is the key to helping out our bodies so that is what I focus on. Sometimes my only movement in a day is doing my laundry or vacuuming my floor because that’s all I can do, and that’s ok.

Stay safe loves, I’m going to try and finish this shake and maybe, just maybe, get all the stuffy fluff my puppy has strewn about the room into a trash can so I can pretend, for a hot second, that I live in a clean house.

#chronicillness, #eatingissues, #fibromyalgia, #intestinalblockage, #spoonie, #topomax, Chronic pain, fibromyalgia, Food, frustration, health, Spoonie, Spoons

My kinky side…

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I’ve lost ten pounds in the last nine days because I can’t eat more than a few hundred calories. Every day I can eat less than the day before because every day my stomach shrinks and my sense of feeling fuller happens after less food and my sense of “OMG I’m going to pull a Exorcist at the table” happens after fewer and fewer bites.

Today it was half an avocado for breakfast. I didn’t even make it all the way through before I felt ill.
For lunch I drank a protein shake and felt pretty good about finishing it before I realized it only had 190 calories and not the 390 I thought it did.
Then I managed a whole 5 Hershey’s kisses.
Just now I ate 1/2 of dinner consisting of cream of broccoli soup mixed with ground beef, steamed veggies, and nutritional yeast.

I feel as though I have eaten Thanksgiving dinner. I’m trying not to hurl.

Only four and a half more weeks until surgery to fix the “kink in my hose” as the surgeon described the portion of my small intestine wrapped around scar tissue in my abdomen. Until then it’s my own personal version of Biggest Loser, Starvation Edition.

To add a fun element to the party I am tapering up on Topomax which kills the hunger signal, makes me feel full(er), AND makes every taste as though my mouth is coated in blood or pennies. (As an aside, I would not make a good vampire. Their diet is disgusting. There will be no Un-Deading it for THIS girl.)

So I am also popping pills every night that make eating even more difficult and less fun. Further, the pills make me feel as though I have the flu so I have spent the past week feeling all over body aches and bone and joint pain well beyond the normal Fibro party.

Kids, Don’t do Drugs. They seriously mess with you.

Well my husband just arrived with a nice bottle of wine from the 19 Crimes collection. I will probably have a sip or two before I am tempted to spit it out as it will taste revolting BUT damnit I will have some!!!

Stay safe loves.

UPDATE: The wine tasted like soap. SOAP! Everything else tastes like copper but the wine tastes soapy? I couldn’t even manage to sip enough to get the slightest bit loopy, even on so few calories. I feel cheated.