You know you have fibro if…you’re so exhausted from lying
down that you have to go and lie down.
You know you have fibro if…you dream for someone to tell you
what to wear, because having to create an outfit yourself makes you weep.
You know you have fibro if…you start to tear up at the
thought of the energy necessary to lift your arms above you head and wash your
hair.
You know you have fibro if…you lack clean dishes and you
start thinking that the 5-second rule is probably more like
the 1.5 hour rule.
You know you have fibro if…the fact that you must wake up
and experience the air touching your skin causes an existential crisis.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you wish you couldn’t
remember your old life, so you wouldn’t know what you’ve lost.
You know you have fibro if…the only part of you that hasn’t
been poked, examined, tested, or diagnosed is the lint in your belly button.
You know you have fibro if…your desire for non-swollen
ankles outweighs your horror of donning support hose.
You know you have fibro if…you wonder if you qualify for an
emergency government food airlift that lands directly next to your couch.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been out of touch for so
long you think using “fibro” instead of “fibromyalgia” makes you hip and cool.
You know you have fibro if…Sunday night means cozying up
with 10,000 pill bottles and a giant box.
You know you have fibro if…you know better than to get too
excited at a no-pain day, and you have your pain meds ready at Defcon 1.
You know you have fibro if…you have five doctor’s
appointments in five days.
And the 5 doctors are all located in different,
neither-close-to-you-nor-close-to-each-other parts of your city.
And then you know you have fibro if…despite
your best magical thinking attempts, you find that you don’t actually have
the stamina for 5 doctor’s appointments in 5 days.
You know you have fibro if…it takes you an hour to get
dressed, but no one gets what a big deal it is that you accomplished it anyway.
You know you have fibro if…when deciding on frozen dinners,
having to choose between bone-in and boneless chicken brings you to tears.
You know you have fibro if…Ultram is your boyfriend.
You know you have fibro if…Ultram is your boyfriend AND you
are also totallycheating on it with Darvocet.
You know you have fibro if…you love your massage therapist
so much that you want to marry her and have her babies.
You know you have fibro if…exhaustion, pain and being beaten
down by life is pretty much your middle name. And sometimes your last name too.
You know you have fibro if…despite the picking, scraping
buzzing, etc., you are so exhausted that you fall asleep in the dentist’s
chair.
You know you have fibro if…you spend so much time alone at
home with only the cats that your relationship has devolved to the point where
you spend all your time tattling to your husband about the the fact that “they
keep looking at me funny!!” and, “they won’t stop touching me!”
You know you have fibro if…you are constantly having to
choose between the lesser of two bad side effects.
You know you have fibro if…you have a Ph.D in appreciating
the little things in life. And you’re pretty much over it.
You know you have fibro if…there’s only so much
“inspiration” you can take before you just have to start stabbing people.
You know you have fibro if…you have an out-of-joint jaw, an
8 fibro pain, and 0 anxiety medication, and your response is, “Hm-must be a day
that ends in -day.”
You know you have fibro if…your good intentions cannot only
pave the road to all seven circles of hell, but all the roads to at least 75%
of the planets as well.
You know you have fibro if…you do everything you’re
“supposed” to do, and some days you just have really bad pain anyway.
You know you have fibro if…on those days, you just need to
be reminded that this is what having a chronic illness looks
like.
You know you have fibro if…no matter what you’re wearing or
how you look when it strikes, you have learned to get up and go the moment you
feel you can exercise, shop, clean, etc.
You know you have fibro if…suddenly feeling better after a
streak of painful days is just as disorienting as suddenly feeling pain after a
streak of good days.
You know you have fibro if…wait…what was I
saying? And why am I in the kitchen again?
You know you have fibro if…”playing chicken” now means
facing off with your illness to see who blinks first: your fibro, in the giving
of pain; or you, in the succumbing to the pain and the need to take some very
strong painkillers.
You know you have fibro if…you need to lie down from the
pain, but the pressure of the bed against your skin makes the pain 100x worse.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been to at least three new
doctors to explore different pain relief methods and the first question they
ask you when you tell them you have fibro is, “And how do you know that?”
You know you have fibro if…you’ve undergone so many medical
procedures, that when someone needs to share about “the most disgusting thing
I’ve ever had to do in my entire life”, you are the person
they call.
You know you have fibro if…a part of you sees emergency
gallbladder surgery as a kind of vacation from having to deal with your chronic
illness.
You know you have fibro if…the hope of magical thinking
springs eternal in you.
You know you’ve been in pain for too many days…when you
start referring to things like putting on pants as “having to climb Mt.
Everest.”
You know you have fibro if…your criteria for deciding
whether or not to break open the heavy duty painkillers are things like, “Hm,
are my eyelids burning yet?”
You know you have fibro if…instead of numbers, your
time-telling devices all have designations like, “Everything Makes Me Weep
O’clock”.
You know you’ve been housebound for way to long when, after
a brief foray into the sun, you pick up your keys to go back inside and then
burn yourself because you’ve forgotten that SUN MAKES METAL *REALLY* HOT.
You know you have fibro if…when showering, you wonder how
you could possibly fit a bed in there, or at least a small chair, because
you’re too tired to stand up through the entire thing.
You know you have fibro if…you try your hardest to convince
your body that 150mg of Lyrica is the same as 300mg so you can please
God!, get some relief from the swelling. But no matter how hard you try, it
just won’t work.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you just NEED the
French fries, or, (as I like to call it), “Carbohydrate Therapy”.
You know you have fibro if…your prayers frequently read as
follows: Dear God-I’m still not OK with the whole fibromyalgia thing, but I do appreciate
the fact that getting a really good haircut does help ease things a bit.
And any math you’re required to do looks like this: French
Fries + Coke + Percocet + Mindlessly Surfing The Internet=Truly, Does Life Get
Any Better Than This?
You know you have fibro if…you strongly believe that your
right to wear jammies all day should be protected by The Constitution.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you just have to go
after what you really want, even though you know you’ll pay for it afterward.
You know you have fibro if…you have a billion frequent flier
miles from all the times you have had to visit the State of “Numb With
Exhaustion”.
You know you have fibro if…you count your day as a success
because you you did NOT vacuum the house while suffering a raging migraine.
You know you have fibro if…you need a pharmacy’s worth of
medications just so that your body can do a mere fraction of
what healthy people can w/out even having to think about it.
You know you have fibro if…legally speaking, your name should
be “Magical Thinking”.
You know you have fibro if…you can no longer wear clothes
with zippers, belts, buttons, buckles, snaps, or any other kind of fastening.
You know you have fibro if…no matter how quickly you walk,
you inevitably lag at least 2 feet behind the rest of your group.
You know you have fibro if…your husband has begun to refer
to all of your attempts at movement as “glacial”.
You know you’ve been in pain for too many days in a row
when, even though your rational mind knows that you’ve only pulled a muscle in
your chest, the REST of your mind keeps screaming that you actually have
walking pneumonia/breast cancer/and/or some fatal, unidentified chest-pain
disease.
You know you have fibro if…Dammit! Why do so many of the
things I need to do require you to wear pants?
You know you have fibro if… your husband’s frequent reaction
to seeing your hair isactual alarm.
You know you have fibro if…you day is made or broken,
depending on whether or not NCIS is a rerun.
You know you have fibro if…you watch a commercial for
“Pajama Jeans” and thought, “What a great idea!.” And then you start to
think that maybe you haven’t really given the “Snuggie” a fair chance.
You know you have fibro if…you really need summer television
to BE HERE ALREADY! so you can start telling the days apart again.
You know you have fibro (fog) if…you pull out of the
drive-through window at the bank and then realize you’ve stolen the deposit
tube.
You know you have fibro if…the most passion you’ve been able
to feel for months is directed at your Kindle and its “1-click purchase”
button.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve just finished a
1-hr. search of the house for something you couldn’t find, and then realized
you’d been looking for an item that you’ve never actually owned.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve ever yelled out, “Hey,
God-if I have to navigate the world in a body that moves and feels like lead,
then putting on pants should burn AT LEAST A BILLION CALORIES! I’m just
sayin’.”
You know you have fibro if…you haven’t just fallen off
the information highway, you’ve crashed into a 15-car pileup, slammed through
the guardrails, flipped end-over-end into the gulley, and then fallen down a
well.
You know you have fibro if…your pants are never, ever, EVER
coming off again, SO HELP YOU GOD, because it has just taken you the last 5
hours to get them on.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been in so much pain for
so long that you’ve lost your mind, and therefore think it is *totally*
appropriate to do a workout video that contains the word “Bootcamp” in the
title.
From:http://www.jennyryan.com/?page_id=3673
lol absolutely fabulous and so true.. loved them all. thanks for the laugh..
ReplyDeletelove, tina
Nice! (not) I actually asked my FNP the other day if I might have Fibro on top of the Lupus. Her only comment was "Highly likely".
ReplyDelete