Give Me The Juice!

Last night I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. It is about a CEO from Australia who starts juicing as a way to regain health and get off the steroids an auto-immune condition forced him to live on. He filmed the documentary as he traveled around the USA, sharing his journey and inspiring people who suffer from poor health to join the juicing revolution. His results were nothing short of incredible and it really got my mind going.

I hit a pill wall a few weeks back. After seeking treatment at a specialty Fibro clinic in 2006 I began heavy duty supplementation. It is one of the key contributors to getting the virus that made me so sick under wraps. After boosting my immune system with a complicated supplementation regiment that required an Excel spreadsheet to keep straight I started to feel much better. Over the years what I take has changed. Some stuff really makes a difference, other stuff does not. But one day not too long ago I looked at my weekly allotment dolled out into an AM/PM case and wanted to throw it against the wall. The thought of taking one more pill sent me into a spas attack. So I intently researched nutritional information and switched to a powder whole-food multi that allows me to cut out a number of supplements.

To say I hate it is a gross exaggeration. However, it didn't take long for me to realize, capsule or no capsule, it is the whole concept of taking vitamins I have an aversion to. I was still taking pill supplements, just not as many, and started thinking about other things I should be taking, too. After all, this is certainly not the most "managed" my Fibro has been. Then I watched the documentary last night and realized I could probably get off most of the supplements if I got my nutrients from, I don't know, the food they exist in? 

So I am thinking about it. Not sure if the investment in the juicer and commitment of time and labor is where I want to spend my efforts right now. But I am gagging on these pills that are a huge deflector shield standing between me and God-awful horrible unmanaged Fibromyalgia pain and Shingles-like viral flares. Plenty of cleanses and diet reinventions have helped me reduce the amount of chemicals and toxins in my body. Over the years they have even helped me reduce medications. Is it time for another one? All I know is something has to change because what I am doing now isn't doing the trick. So thanks Joe Cross, for sharing your success and showing so many changing your life can be done. Maybe, just maybe, I will be joining you in the juicing revolution. 

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Back In The Saddle

Well I got back on the horse. What else am I going to do? Take a long walk off a short pier or go play in traffic? So here I sit ready to try again. Raw, insecure and uncertain, but here I am. As I sort through the disillusionment in my mind I realize many of the sanity-saving tools I employed along the way got dropped in the dust a while back. I fell into my old behavior patterns. I allowed negativity and demands to infiltrate my sense of responsibility to myself. It's a big job, to regain my lost ground. I can do it, though. Not all at once, perfectly or on the first try, but it can be done. Of course this requires a significant amount of isolation and reflection. Accepting some will grumble over the selfish action of me taking care of me. Realizing that is not my problem. In fact, expecting myself to get a handle on my issues and then resume a level of interdependent living is exactly why I wound up back here in the first place. 

I have finally accepted I cannot go back. Life is not ever going to be how it was before I got sick. If "resuming" is my ultimate goal I will only wind up here again and again and again. And each time I crumple into a quivering heap of defeat I have that much less to move forward with. The clarity such acute pain and distress gifted me with showed me something big. It is time to let go. I don't have the luxury of hanging on to the dysfunctional of life. This is a clear cut case of it or me, and I choose me.

The biggest gift I can give myself is to simply stop engaging. Realizing I spend a significant part of every day in a mental battle with anyone who made the last insensitive remark or snide put down was a blinding experience. The anger and negativity would stew inside of me until all I could do was react to it. Day in and day out my existence slowly became one big fat reaction to every little thing that rubbed me the wrong way. Now I know I have to let these experiences go. More importantly, I have to stop indulging my anger and negativity. And last but never least, I must turn my sights to the positive, the blessings, the goodness that lies in abundance all around me. Fill myself up with the belief that I have survived all I have in order to do something purposeful with my life. And then simplify my brain enough to go do it.

Thanks for joining,

Leah       

I'm Doing A Bad Job

The utter lunacy of this life has completely enveloped me. I sit here hurting so bad breathing is difficult. Does another pancreas attack lie in my path? Perhaps another stroke to shape my future? Maybe it's something new all together? Or is it, once again, "just" Fibromyalgia? I don't know. Which totally stresses me out, because I am on full tactical alert for the first symptom indicating something larger is at play. Which still could be "just" Fibromyalgia. However, sitting here in fight or flight only makes me hurt worse. In turn I become more freaked out. Should I take a pain pill? I don't have that many. Is this pain worth it? Will I miss an important symptom if I do? Something that could cost me my life? What if the pain goes away in an hour? Then I will be loopy the rest of the day for nothing. But I can barely sit here I hurt so damn bad...

And while all this is whirling around my head and paralyzing my body I am just supposed to get up on out the door and go live my life like a normal, healthy person. After all that's what I look like, isn't it? And that is the utter lunacy sucking me in. Instead of feeling like I have survived something insurmountable I feel like a burden. Labeled a loon by modern medicine and judged very harshly because some, but not all, of my health problems fall under the guise of something science just can't explain. Yet.

How many lives have been sucked up in this vacuum of utter chaos? My reality sits in direct odds with my reality and I don't know how much more I can take. I don't have that much fight left in me. I've been beaten to smithereens so many times by Fibromyalgia, my other health problems, doctors, employers, friends, family and strangers alike. Somehow at the end of the day it always comes back to what I am not doing for them. I have no answers, only sorrow. Will this pass? Probably. Hopefully. Ultimately my life is my responsibility and I have to figure this out. It's becoming glaringly obvious over the past eight years of constant toil and struggle I have not done enough. The burden of this compassion-less world is overtaking me. I don't know how to live in it anymore. I simply cannot give enough to satisfy my obligations. I don't know if I am dying from one day to the next. And no matter how many times I get back on the horse I just keep falling off...

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Three Hours Later

Last weekend we took a brief sojourn home to visit family for my birthday. Just making it out the door was a miracle in and of itself. I was in a hormonal bitchy state that made Linda Blair look proper. Somehow my husband endured the six hour drive without leaving me by the side of the road in utter desperation. Yes, I was that bad. Once we got there the distraction of family and festivities transformed my state of mind tremendously. Thankfully we went on to have a pretty good weekend. But something happened on Saturday that shook me to the core.

Of course I didn't find out about it until Sunday. With a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and the grip of cold fear squeezing my heart I poured over the newspaper headlines. The exact spot we traversed on the Venice Beach boardwalk at 3pm was the site of a random act of terror at 6pm. A person purposely drove down the pedestrian-only Ocean Front Walk crowded with throngs of tourists at a speed upward of 35mph. Sixteen people were injured and one killed as the car plowed through street vendors and human bodies alike. 

These crimes against the innocent masses seem to be gaining immense popularity. This is the closest I've personally come to experiencing one. I see them on the news every few days. There are no words to express the heartbreak that devastates so many in the wake of these stupid and senseless tragedies. But viewing a television screen from the safety of my living room and knowing three hours is all that stood between me and...the end of me. Well, it changed me. 

I spent a significant amount of time digesting this experience. After the fear came gratitude, then irritation at myself. I've been wasting the precious gift of my life on the hurt of the past! The dear woman who died was on her honeymoon. She will never get the chance to walk in the sunshine again, cry or complain when things don't go right, make mistakes or brighten someone's day with a smile or kind word. A life she was just embarking on with her husband was snatched away needlessly from both of them. So in the spirit of honoring such a pointless loss I put my anger and bitterness on the shelf for a while. I am sure they will find me again one day. But just for right now I will rejoice that life is still mine to live. For I really don't know how much more time I have to squander such a precious gift.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

The Usual, Please!

At this point in my Fibromyalgia journey my flares are pretty predictable. Two to four times a month I will suffer from a bevy of viral symptoms. In the past it has felt like Shingles. Luckily it's been a few years since my symptoms were that extreme. These days my flares usually start with a severely hellacious mood. Right as I am about to commit myself to a rubber room buckled tight into a straight jacket the inside of my mouth will shred to pieces. This reminds me there is a physical reason for my emotional turmoil. Then the boil comes. For some unbeknownst reason my face seems to be the choice spot for the last year or so. Next enters the aching face, throbbing skull, congestion and generous smattering of pain and malaise across my body. There's more but that's how the ball gets rolling...

Last week I started feeling bad but it was nothing like the aforementioned. I was pretty much incapacitated with pain and fatigue. So while half of me freaked out, convinced I was dying, the other half ran around telling the first half to shut up. There is nothing new wrong with you. It's just Fibro. Repeated like a broken record over and over. Then I realized we were nearing the end of July and that's precisely what I told myself three years ago when I spent four days ignoring the first stroke. It took having another one to go to the E.R. The fact that I lived through the whole long ordeal is nothing short of a miracle. Had I just done the same thing again? Ahhh, anniversaries can be hard. 

How on earth do I know if there is something new wrong with me or that miserable beast Fibro presenting in a new way? If I had a buck for every time I asked myself that question I could throw a very fun party. It is very hard to know, and that is a huge part of what makes this illness so hard. The symptoms I suffer from are so horrible, sweeping and varied I can't even trust my own judgment to assess if I am in danger or not. With joy I report that flare ended, I felt good for a couple of days, and a normal viral one has begun. You bet your sweet bippie I've never been so glad to experience a hellacious mood, shredded mouth, facial boil, and an aching and throbbing body. 

Thanks for joining,

Leah 

Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness

Last week we celebrated the 237th anniversary of American independence. For some odd reason a key phrase in the preamble of our constitution kept reverberating around my mind. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Actually it was more 'the pursuit of happiness' part I kept dwelling on. Like it was a foreign concept I just learned existed. With a shock of awareness I realized that's exactly what happened. Because I forgot about it. See the pursuit of happiness is a frivolous concept when your basic needs aren't met. It is only after sleep, shelter, safety and food are secured that a being can advance onto the next stages of societal engagement. Unfortunately getting horribly sick when every doctor told me I should be completely healthy violated my safety in a major way. My inability to work or care for myself threatened my procurement of shelter and food. And the illness itself robbed me of my sleep. No wonder I wasn't working towards happy, I was just trying to survive!

Yet it wasn't always like this. In fact after Fibro devastated my life I fought back hard to get the beast managed so I could begin to rebuild my existence. Sure it looked a lot different than before, but it was still good. I accepted, adapted and allowed myself to grow into my new set of circumstances. Funny thing about life, I've found, is one never knows what the next step will bring. My next step was two drastically life threatening strokes and six months of high-dose steroids to treat them. And that is where my happiness went. 

Prednisone gave me the energy and lack of pain I had pre-fibro. It was glorious! For the first week. Then "roid rages" took over and I ballooned into the Pillsbury Dough-girl. Since then I have been miserably fighting my way back to the ecstasy of that first week on legalized crack with the tunnel vision of a warrior. Or just to be who I was before I got sick. To have the same capabilities, choices and possibilities. The little taste of healthy I got undid years of therapy, acceptance and meditation. But I refuse to allow my life to be defined as a reactionary victim. I'm actually glad a day of drunken barbecues and exploding fireworks reminded me there is some much needed happiness missing from my life. Everything doesn't have to be perfect to find it again. All that really matters is I start looking.

Thanks for joining,

Leah