Sleepless

I woke up a few times last night.   Lots of aching all over.  Some shooting pain in my feet.  Cramping in calves. My hands were tingling, and my elbows were tender.  Rolling over hurt my hips, but I knew I had to if I was going shift the pain to the other side of my body.  I had to pee, but didn’t get up because I didn’t have the energy to hobble the 15-20 feet to the bathroom.  I just laid there waiting for sleep to take over, and finally it did.

I’m sleeping in longer these days.  Longer than what my morning-person disposition would like.  I think its because I wake up so many times in the night that 5 a.m. feels more like 2 a.m.  So I sleep to 6:15 and spend two hours working out the kinks before I’m ready to head to the office.   I miss the early hours of activity that used to ease me into the day and I mostly miss the exercise I had grown accustomed to and how that never failed to scare away any of the cobwebs that threatened to get in the way of a totally focused day.

 When I do get up, the anticipation of stiffness annoys me so I take my time before I put my sorry feet onto the ground and shuffle into a new day.   Duke, my tank of a black lab puppy, is thrilled I am getting up and I let his joy bring me perspective.   I know that if I get moving, eventually my mobility will improve and no one will be able to pick up on what I’m experiencing, not even Steve, my husband and the person I tell everything to.

Thankfully I have a reprieve from this routine periodically, and sometimes enough consecutive days to convince myself it won’t come back.   But it always does.   This has been creeping up on me for more than a year.  At first I attributed it to being injury prone.  Then I told myself it was a symptom of menopause.  I spent a lot of time in physical therapy, tried acupuncture, chiropractic, massage; went to doctors of osteopath, podiatrists, orthopedics, a rheumatologist, and spent a year on hormones.  I went to the dentist because of TMJ, where it was determined stress was the culprit. I was tested for Lyme disease (three times), multiple autoimmune diseases, checked the levels of just about everything that contributes to pain and the only deficiency that emerged was Vitamin D (yes, that is why I complain about the winter).  But there isn’t enough Vitamin D to fight the effects of what I was eventually diagnosed with - Fibromyalgia.   It’s an insidious disease, hard to explain to others, and sometimes thought to not exist. Most doctors are careful with the diagnosis, others avoid it, but the bottom line is it is most often diagnosed after a process of elimination, hence the multiple doctors, tests, and treatments I went through before getting to this place.

I don’t particularly like this place that I find myself in, but I know I have to figure it out.   I have to work through the shame of the weight gain; adjust to limitations my body is setting for me; explore medication, both natural and pharmaceutical; and I have to be kind to myself.   Honestly, it’s hard seeing myself through the lens of chronic pain.  I look at pictures from the last few years and see an extremely fit, happy, and energetic person.  It makes me sad to be so far away from that Cyndi, and I want to get her back.   I’m thinking that the only way to get her back is to honor the Cyndi I am today so I’m working on that.  Writing this is cathartic and is my way of taking a step to acknowledge this is real, and that the pain will not turn me into anything I don’t want to be.   I plan on being as fabulous as ever.