I have good news and bad news. Since asking which one you’d like to read first is pointless, I’ll start with the bad news that way we can end on a high note!
Ok, the bad:
As predicted in my last post, I am in the middle of a fibro flare. I was really hoping that it was just a fluke or a rough patch, but since it’s gone well past the week mark and shows no sign of stopping, I’m officially calling it a flare up. My trigger points are seriously unhappy lately, to the point that some of them are actually visible to the untrained eye. They look (and feel) like marbles under my skin. Thankfully, they tend to come and go, so they’re not constantly exposed, but they are unpredictable.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with trigger points, here’s an overview.
Trigger points (some times called tender points) are one of the main ways doctors diagnose fibromyalgia; they stand you up and literally poke specific spots on your body to see if they cause an unusual amount of pain. There are 18 points doctors look for and if 11 or more them cause pain, congratulations, you have fibro. Here’s a picture to show the official 18 points they check:
The number of spots that actually hurt can vary widely from person to person and time to time. For me personally, I generally have 16 out the 18 active at any given time. Usually, these trigger points are only painful when you touch them, if you’re really lucky, only when you apply a bit of pressure.
During a flare up, all bets are off. Like I said earlier, my trigger points become inflamed and actually stick up out of my skin, when they’re particularly pissed off, even wearing a t-shirt can be extremely painful. It feels as though I’m being stabbed in the back with a white-hot poker, complete with that radiating pain you get from a nasty burn.
The only thing that I’ve found thus far that helps with trigger point pain like this is having trigger point injections. Basically, a doctor jabs a needle into the offending spot injecting a tiny amount of anesthetic. Even with the anesthetic, it’s a breathtakingly painful experience, so it’s only something I do as a last resort. Let’s just say that right now, I’m seriously considering it. 😦
Along with my trigger points being angry, my sleep is all kinds of messed up. The issue is that I’m having trouble falling asleep and when I do finally pass out, I tend to sleep so heavily that I don’t move and wake up feeling stiff and disoriented. It’s also taking a lot longer to shake the morning fog. Usually, I wake up, take my morning meds and I’m good to go in about 20-30 minutes; lately, however, it’s taking 45 minutes to an hour, even after taking my meds with a full glass of cool water. For the record, I’m not complaining. I’ve suffered through days at a time with no sleep whatsoever, so I’ll happily take the sleep I can get even if it’s not great.
On the plus side, I’m still breathing! 🙂 That is always a good thing, because it means there’s still hope for things to get better. (I know, sometimes I’m so optimistic I make my own teeth hurt.)
I did take a few days off from exercising, but since it made absolutely no difference in my pain levels, I started up again. Before the flare up, I had started doing Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred every other day. I’ve thus far done 10 days of level one, and I am amazed at the results. Not because I’ve lost any weight, but because of how quickly my endurance has been improving. Last week, I astounded myself by jogging 2/3 of a mile. Yesterday, I jogged a full mile, 1.1 miles, to be exact. Again, I didn’t jog all of it at once, I broke it up into segments of about 1/4 mile at a time. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, all the jogging brought my 5k time down by about 5 minutes! Back in June, I was thrilled because I walked 5k in 50 minutes, now, just over a month later, I can do it in 45:05. I’ve met my interim goal, now on to the next phase: 5k in 40 minutes.
Do I feel terrible? Yes. Does that mean I give up on my goals? No. Absolutely not.
Fighting Fibro with Fire 