I Was Looking For Health

August 2014

I got sick in 2005, when I was in the best shape of my life. The previous Thanksgiving I suffered from a near-fatal pancreas attack. My inner party-girl took a backseat as I started exercising and learning about nutrition. It was a short-lived effort. Over the course of the next six years medications, inactivity, pain, fatigue, panic and anguish took a terrible tole on my physical appearance. But it was nothing compared to what I felt like on the inside. Now I know the inner workings of health are written all over a person's exterior. But back then I was quickly descending into a prison I couldn't escape, the endless nightmare of constant and pervasive sickness. My doctors called it Viral Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. I called it sheer, unadulterated hell.

March 2011

In 2011 I was 34 years-old, and could hardly hobble down a flight of stairs. I was in so much pain gravity felt like it was crushing my organs. I struggled around with limbs so heavy, it felt like they were injected with lead. My muscles crackled with snaking whips of ripping pain. My mental state was as broken as my body. I simply didn't want to live. It was too hard, hurt too bad. And there was no helping me, the double stroke-survivor who cowered under the shield of her Fibromyalgia diagnosis. Modern medicine had no answers for me. I couldn't function in society, engage in activity or relate to the world in any way. The only thing I could do was be sick. 

From this broken and dejected low I rebuilt my health one painstaking step at a time. There isn't any one plan I followed, or guru I assigned blanket trust. Just one woman, determined not to keep getting so sick I almost died, set out to make sense of the health sham perpetuated by the modern American lifestyle. I unlearned everything I knew about exercise and nutrition. I relearned how to live in healthy harmony with my body. My relationship with food evolved from one of dependence and indulgence to something that helps manage my illness. Exercise used to not only cause me horrible pain, it would make me sick. Now it's my favorite immune booster and narcotic in one. It was a very hard road getting here. But today I feel so much better it's like crushed-by-gravity girl is floating on the fluffy cloud of a wonderful dream. People keep telling me I've lost a lot of weight. Undoubtedly, I have. But that was never the focus. I went on a quest looking for heath. On that path I reclaimed my life.

Thanks for joining,
Leah    

Inspired With Ego

Today I wrote a ridiculously long blog about all the health quirks I employ to feel a whole hell of a lot better than I used to. It got so long and preachy I had to take a step back. But the experience did serve to remind me why I started The Fibromyalgia Crusade in the first place. Hallelujah! I've been in mortal agony over here about my abandoned love-child, and am overjoyed to rediscover her purpose!

Before I had two strokes my Fibro was pretty well managed. After being horribly disabled for a few years, I was working part-time and taking a Spanish class. When I got an A I realized my brain wasn't some fogged out, defunct old organ. It was actually capable of learning new material! I began looking into graduate school, and  I felt like my life might have a future. After I had two strokes I was high on high-dose steroids, to treat the Vasculitis that caused the strokes. I felt fabulous. Although I had to quit my job, drop Spanish 2, regularly spun into roid-rages of epic proportions, and lost my social life entirely, I felt fabulous. I spread the word about this blog for the first time in September 2010. Eventually my mission became to let the world know Fibromyalgia didn't have to ruin a persons life. After all, I was able to fight back once, and win. The Fibromyalgia Crusade was the vehicle through which I planned on delivering this message.

Except...once I got off that drug, my reality got really, really bad. For a really long time. The kind of bad where if one were a cat, most of those nine lives would've been gobbled up. By the grace of God go I. Somehow I've managed to fight back twice, and win. So here I go again. Over the next week or so I'll publish some details on what I've done to get my life back. Remembering my original intention was to let Fibromyalgia patients know Fibromyalgia didn't have to level a person forever, makes me feel outrageously egocentric. It's amazing how hard it is to face ones pompousness, without the shelter of pharmaceuticals to delude the picture! But when I got this illness nobody told me about hope. Nobody stood on top of a mountain of their own success, and told me I had so much more power than I realized. They told me to learn to live with it, accept it, take pills that made me feel worse. A few went so far as to tell me to figure it out on my own. So I did. Today I know so much more than I ever have before, and I know there is no one answer to the complex puzzle of Fibromyalgia. But for anyone who's interested, stay tuned. I'll break down what I did.

Thanks for joining,

Leah