Bring Me The Meds

For the past two days I have taken Xanax all day long to simply not freak myself out into a hysterical hot mess. I am either sobbing, screaming and throwing things or drugged up in some half-existence, one where nothing much bothers me, nor inspires me. I am kind of just here. I simply cannot take all the crying and pure anger and aggression flowing out of me that changing medications induces. This happened to me a couple of years ago, before I discovered sedatives, and that was one seriously messed up and suicidal time in my life. I LITERALLY thought I was coming unglued and did not give proper weight to the affect coming off Cymbalta and Lyrica would have on me. I saw a therapist, which  was helpful, but low and behold a few months after all those meds got out of my system and the new ones stabilized I was my normal happy-go-lucky smart-ass self again! Who ever woulda thunk it!  

Us Fibromyalgia patients struggle, oh how we struggle, to find a way to manage this beast of an illness that modern medicine knows very little about. It does not help that we all respond so differently to the myriad of medications used to treat this illness. For one person something may work great, for the next it is a catastrophic explosion of side-effects from hell. And the pure joy of it all is that you don't know until you try it! Meanwhile the pain is crippling, the insomnia maddening and the misery life has become completely overwhelming! I was put on 60mg of Prednisone after my strokes in July and just stepped down to 2mg today. Two weeks on that and I am off this drug for good! Oh glory hallelujah! It has been a maddening and crazy 6 month run and I am counting the seconds until I am done with steroids for good! They may have taken my pain away but I was such a manic nut, eating everything in sight, growing hair all over my body, a bushy and full mustache included, that I decided Fibromyalgia beats Prednidone any day. At these lower and final levels, each step down is a maddening fluctuation of emotions and excruciating, unbearable emergency room pain. Two more rides on that train and I am done. I am holding my breath and hanging on tight...

We are blessed to live in a time and place where many illnesses can be treated, cured or managed. Fibromyalgia is one that can be managed, but simply taking a pill your doctor prescribed is not going to do it. Us Fibrates have been called to a higher form of living. We must examine our lives scrupulously and learn how to quiet our inner tyrant, screaming and hollering endlessly about the person you were and the obligations you should be fulfilling. We must look at the choices we make; how we spend our time, how much sleep we get, what kind of diet we eat and exercise we get, what kind of people we hang out with and are obligated to, how much stress we exist in, how much anger we hold on to, and make a very conscious decision to put ourselves first. When I was living in San Francisco I was having lunch with a friend one afternoon. Her husband is an alcoholic in recovery and she was needing him to do something or another that conflicted with his AA meeting. He refused. He simply stated that AA was something he had to do for himself or there would be no husband or father around to do anything for them. Yes it annoyed her, but she accepted this was part of the man she loved and chose to spend her life with, and figured a way around it. Now if we could just get all our friends and family on that page, we would really be making progress!

Thanks for joining,

Leah

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