Attack of the Super Bug

Last week I about came undone when my fibromyalgia symptoms decided, out of the blue, to take over my body again. In addition to feeling awful, I was panicked. The last thing anyone who's wrangled some sort of a life back from chronic illness wants is to give it up again. Of course, my melodramatic mind usually goes to worse-case scenario, so that's exactly where I went. With every muscle on fire, my body aching so bad it hurt to sit, and feeling like someone's snapping me indiscriminately with rubber bands in thirty-second intervals, Chicken Little over here got myself so worked up I decided the sky was indeed falling. I was so flipped out I didn't even realize what was actually wrong with me until I was walking through the air-conditioned living room both sweating profusely and shivering violently at the same time. That's when it hit me, I have the flu!

First reaction-- thank God! The flu doesn't last forever, so I can deal with the flu, right? Second reaction-- are you kidding me? The illness I do have that lasts forever feels exactly like this, which is pretty much as awful as a person can feel. No wonder fibromyalgia made me go so crazy! Because the last thing in the world I was capable of doing was getting up and living life, even after my fever broke. Yet that's exactly what I was expected to do when I was caught in the clutches of chronic illness-- figure out how to get up and go live life like nothing's wrong. Except everything is. What an absurd predicament.

Almost as absurd as what happened when that fever actually broke, because that's when I got the stomach flu! A week later and I'm just gearing up to go back to work, praying I can make it through the day even though I'm much improved, but not entirely better. Trying to clear up my, ah-um, bowl problems has me doing all sorts of odd things, like drinking clay and not eating before I have to leave the house, which clearly won't work once I resume my regularly scheduled employment. Unless I want to pass out on the sales floor, that is.

But there is some good that has come from this week. It certainly renewed my commitment to get my immune system working as best it can, which I had kinda slacked off on. It also reminded me that I only got to where I am by seeking health as a lifestyle concept, not just a way to get better from illness. So deeper into holistic, clean living I go! But perhaps my biggest revelation by far is how truly awful being so sick really is. There is no life around it, there is just being sick. I didn't care about my relationships with people, how I looked, social pleasantries, my fiscal survival, or anything else the Western world values. All I was trying to do was endure feeling like my body had served me with the ultimate betrayal-- imprisonment in never-ending misery. And that, to me, is living with fibromyalgia in a nutshell.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

#flu #illness #sick #fibromyalgia