Tag: walk to wellness

Fibromyalgia and the Sequelae of Stress

Bones

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Two days ago I had a very stressful day.

It was an intensely busy day at work, with a very short turnaround on the preparation of some complex documentation to finalise an urgent process the next day.  This is what I’m best at.  I cut my eyeteeth in one of the busiest teams in my first firm in one of the busiest times they’ve ever seen before or since.  I excel at very quickly grasping the scope of the procedure, understanding the interconnectedness of the parties, and logically organising and processing multi-party documents.  The way I work also results in me being prompted to cross-check the information several times before the documentation goes to the person / people I’m working for and so improves accuracy while saving time.  My brain goes a mile a second, checking and cross checking, tracking progress on each party’s bundle, planning two steps ahead so the second I’ve finished one, it’s off for checking and onto the next, and constantly finding ways to optimise the process.

It’s exciting.

The next day?  Not so.  I woke up and my legs didn’t quite want to work right.  My hips and knees had poor stability – I had to walk slowly and carefully to ensure each step was solid and my hips wouldn’t suddenly go whoop out to one side and cause me to fall or slam into something.  I could have walked normally, but that would have involved a massive amount of effort, and I did not have that kind of energy.

Getting my food from my plate to my face was hard.  Every movement I made was shaky and jerky, like my muscles would do one tiny portion of the movement and then stop for a microsecond and then do the next tiny portion of the movement, and so on.

I went to work.

I struggled with putting paperclips on paper.  My arms, hands and fingers were jerky and shaking, my fine motor movements inaccurate.  My entire body trembled.  I had a tiny muscle going tick tick tick tick in my right buttcheek.  I had to walk slowly and carefully and ease myself into and out of my chair.  When I re-stocked paper, I couldn’t crouch like I normally do.  Any bending over required additional support to make sure I didn’t topple, and I relied a lot more on counter-balance rather than on my muscles to hold me stable.

And it was a busy day that day, too!  Only have of the procedure was complete, and I had to finalise the other half, as well as finalising another urgent matter, and receiving (optimistic) instructions to start and finish another the same day (we said nope, that’ll be Monday if we’re lucky), on top of the usual end of the month wrap up.  I took no breaks, half my usual lunch time, and left late.

All the while fighting an extreme muscle weakness, nausea, exhaustion and entire body instability.  By the time I got home last night I was done.

This morning I’m still pretty unstable through the hips and legs, and my movements are still a bit jerky, but nowhere near as bad as they were yesterday.  The weather is pretty crap this weekend so it’s going to be snuggle up on the couch and nap most of the weekend away.  Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough by Monday to do it all again!

PTSD – Re-experiencing The Trauma

Bones

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Yesterday, when I got back from my evening rounds, I saw a video still on my amazing human’s PC screen.  It was a paused youtube video, perfectly innocuous.  It was of two men.

One of them looked like It.

My stomach clenched and my mind went numb.  I avoided my gaze.  But it was like a trainwreck, my eyes were drawn back to It over and over again – the image was so horrifically like It that I went into full shut down (which looks like nothing more than I’m a bit more dazed than usual).  My mind blanked it.

I distracted myself and eventually fell asleep on the couch.  Later on, when my amazing human was ready to go to bed, he woke me and we went.  All was well.  We tucked in  and fell asleep.

Then the nightmares started.  It was there, in them, in my old home.  I was dealing with Its old cars.  The exacts of the dream are hazy now, I just remember keeping my amazing human hidden from It, It must never know, never meet my amazing human.  Play nice, play polite, simper, do all the things I used to do.  Scrape and bow, scrape and bow, do everything he asks, do everything he says, everything is okay, hide it all, hide my new life, don’t let him know…

It’s a mixture of reliving the abuse he visited on me and the fear of him … not ‘coming back’ but being near me, encroaching on my life that I have struggled and worked so fucking hard to build, and the positive and deep relationships I’ve built with my friends and family, and my amazing human being.

I’ve been feeling … not quite right all day.  The nightmare has been on my mind a lot.  I’ve been running it around my head, trying to make sense of it all, but all it seems to be doing is making me more out of sorts.  I’m hoping this is enough to get it out, and I can now rest, relax, and sleep a bit better tonight.  Ideally without It and the nightmares.

Adding Amitiptyline

Bones

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Yesterday my doctor undertook the ‘prod test’ for fibromyalgia.  I reacted to some of the control points (I’m not surprised, my muscles are always tight) and really reacted to enough of the fibro points that he’s sent me off for bloods to rule anything else out.

There’s one point, 2cm caudal to the femoral trochanter that he only had to brush against and I was howling.  The other side, he didn’t so much find it because he knew where it was but because I would start yelping when he got there.

The upside is he’s given me amitriptyline, which has been identified as better than placebo in some trials with regard to fibromyalgia pain.  I’m now on fluoxetine in the morning, and amitriptyline in the evening.  Because they interact, I have to be careful of serotonin syndrome, which is a very serious problem involving too much serotonin.  Fortunately I am almost always around someone who knows what I’m taking, which is so important while my body gets used to the new balance.

So far it’s made me very sleepy in the evening, which is great, because sleep was one of the big problems I have been having.  Fluoxetine is a stimulant and has really taken my easy sleeping days and turned them upside down.  Add the discomfort from fibromyalgia and you’ve got me waking up 5-6 times a night, and that does not make for a happy bunny in the morning.

In the mornings, however, moving is hard.  My muscles don’t quite want to work.  They’d much rather remain in a relaxed state.  My legs wish to retain their noodly ways.  My balance is a little off.  My brain is sluggish and prone to going completely blank.  My reaction times feel a bit slower.  It’s similar to how I felt when I first started fluoxetine, just quite a bit less severe, so I’m interested to see how this progresses.

I had my blood taken today for testing, which is never a fun experience.  I’m very not okay about needles.  They always hurt, the sensation makes me want to jump out of my skin, and I’ll occasionally faint.  Today was no different, although hooray, there was no fainting.  I warned them I’m a sometimes fainter and sometimes puker, and they were very good about putting me on a bed and using the tiniest needle, and keeping me talking all throughout to distract me.  It still hurt quite badly, I still went very fuzzy (and would have fainted if I hadn’t been horizontal), and the site is still incredibly tender.  Because my body has realised it’s been ‘injured’, the rest of the elbow has also flared up and become somewhat painful.  The joys of being tender, I suppose.

Now I just sit tight and wait for a few weeks.  I’ll hopefully know whether or not I likely have fibro by about this time next month.  In the meantime, I get to adjust to amitriptyline!

 

When the Fog Lifts

Bones

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These last few days it has felt like the sun has finally risen in my head and a miasma of illness has cleared.  I must have been a lot sicker than I realised, because looking back, it seems as though my head hasn’t been clear in weeks.

Now, finally, I’m feeling alert, like I have some actual energy and ability to do things again.  It’s a lovely feeling after so long of not.

I’ve been taking full advantage of it while it’s here – I’m reorganising my lounge so I have my reading and crafting nook (where a large chair will eventually be placed).  The amazing human has organised his desk so he has more room and it’s tidier and how he wants it to be.  I’m keeping my eyes out for shelving I can put in various areas of the lounge so I can unpack some of the remaining four boxes of books I have.  I steam cleaned a test area of the carpet.  I’m prepping to clean all the sofa cushion covers…

Spring has sprung, both literally and within me.  I find this cycle every year – it’s not until days not only start getting longer, but we actually start to get more sun and nicer weather (especially on weekends, as I don’t get out much during the week days), that my energy levels return and I’m able to function as a normal human being.

It helps immensely that my physio made a minor adjustment to my pelvic rotation and spine.  It was a minor adjustment that has had a massive impact.  I’m able to walk a lot more easily, relax my whole back, and stand up straighter.  This in turn has helped with my shoulders and neck being overly tight (they’re a lot looser now), releasing tension at the base of my skull and resulting in a lot less neck pain and an almost immediate cessation of headaches.

I find it interesting how much a few tense muscles can affect your whole body.

Fixing The Diet

Bones

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I have just had a shitty last few days (in so many ways), and it’s still going!  The fever has broken, the delirium has lifted, the fever-induced aches have gone, leaving me exhausted and still sore, and with a very upset gastrointestinal tract.

I have always had a sensitive gastrointestinal tract.  Right from when I was a bub, the rule of thumb was if you picked me up the wrong way I would upchuck.  Well it hasn’t gotten much better over time!  When I am disrespecting my stomach with foods I know it can’t quite cope with, it reminds me by waking me up at 2am to bring it right back up again.

I went on a gluten free keto-style diet years ago, and while it worked really well for bloating, the amount of fats I was required to consume made me physically ill.  I eventually found a balance point, but that all fell to bits when I moved countries and had to get reacquainted with a new array of foodstuffs.  I’ve been more-or-less okay until now, other than occasional instances of gastro that clear after a day or two in reaction to something or other.  I’ve even been able to eat small amounts of lamb and pork without bringing it back up (at 2am)!

This weekend I ate takeaways.  I shouldn’t have, the impact of this particular takeaway on my body has been slowly but surely increasing in a negative way over the past couple of months, and I suspect it finally hit peak ‘nope’ when it coincided with the first day of my period (which is always a time of gastrointestinal upset anyway).  The result?  PAIN AND POO.  Yes, that nasty ‘p’ word.  Except what was (and still is) coming out could barely be classified as that.

Which brings me to the actual topic of this particular post.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer eat whatever I want and just expect my body to be fine with it.  I wish I could, I really want to just be able to have a pain au chocolat and not feel like my insides are turning over, or have that piece of cake and not feel awful for the rest of the day.  I’d love to be able to eat takeaways because they’re so much easier than cooking.  But that is not my lot in life, apparently, so I’m going to have to suck it up.

My biggest problem is I am energy poor and, yes, lazy.  I’m not sure which came first, but the end result is I just don’t want to spend more than 30 minutes on making dinner, and that’s not even to talk about lunches.  Breakfasts are easy enough – I can swap my toast out for a big shake, I’ve done that before and I’ve felt a lot better for it.  But the rest – lunches and dinners – it’s just so much work.

So I have to keep telling myself:  suck it up.

I’ll be able to enact my master plan of changing up my diet this week.  I’ll get everything I need for my shakes, typically:

  • frozen fruit of some kind (mixed berry or straight mango is amazing)
  • banana
  • inoffensive (and cheap) protein powder with the largest difference in sugar and protein
  • milk
  • oats
  • LSA (if I remember)
  • coconut oil
  • sometimes plain unsweetened yoghurt.

Chuck it all in the blender in whatever proportions you like (I tend to go heavy on the fruit and oats and end up with something that more has to be eaten with a spoon than with a straw) and blend it.

Lunches … for now I’ll go with oats and milk and bananas until I can sort something a little more appealing, and dinners I’m going to wing it for now.  I’ve found a lovely recipe for hoki that I am so keen to try, as well as my old favourite orange salmon (the recipe of which escapes me).

It is a real challenge to change your diet when you’re exhausted and under the weather, but it’s times like these when you need that good diet the most.  (I still don’t want to, but I’m going to do it.)