Fibromyalgia sucks broken, pointy, shards of glass.

When I am not moving around I feel as though Medusa has cursed me with her snaky hair and I am slowly turning to stone. When I am moving around various body parts audition for the role of broken bone, sprained ankle, etc. These body parts are just fine,  btw, they just want to make sure they have mastered their act in case they are ever called upon to play it.

Today I worked in the garden after PT because dry needling deep into your shoulders makes you hurt for days if you don’t move around afterwards and I couldn’t think of anything better for shoulder work than pulling weeds. Especially weeds that reached several feet in height. So I pulled and tugged and yanked. I dug and uprooted three lawn bags worth of weeds and afterwards my shoulders felt pretty damn good!

Then my right arm, halfway between the elbow and the wrist, started to twinge violently every couple of minutes. I would be fine, then I would feel as though I had bones pushing through my skin. I would gasp and freeze and before I could look at my arm the sensation would go away. My arm, not too surprisingly, did not have any bones sticking out of it.

After weeding we walked to get the kids and then to dinner. All in all we walked over 5 miles together.  At first I was doing really well. I felt good! Sure my hips would feel poorly every now and then and my back was yelling at me but during the walk to the restaurant I felt OK.

We sat down at the restaurant and ordered dinner and then I realized my mistake.

I had stopped moving.

All of my muscles stiffened up immediately. Monkey asked me if she could use my phone and I wasn’t sure I could reach down to get it out of my purse.

We still had to walk back.

During the walk everything ached and moaned. My left foot started sending out broken signals every few steps. My hands started to throb intermittently. My hips felt like they were breaking and my legs burned as though I were running a marathon instead of walking at an easy pace.

Now I am home and lying down. I am writing this even though my fingertips hurt when I type.

Dan and I, on one of those late night giggle-fests we sometimes get, came up with a drink called a “Bloody Nothing”. I am sure the path we took creating this drink is something you had to be there for but it’s a Bloody Mary, no vodka, no mix, no ice, served in a broken glass. It’s a Bloody Nothing because you are drinking broken glass.

Fibromyalgia is a Bloody Nothing. It’s all the pain and torment of a million problems, but there is nothing anyone can find that is wrong with you. Just the feelings you have, your nerve endings firing off for their own amusement.