I think a colon cleanse might have been more pleasant than some of the things that I’ve been going through over the weekend. There was a mix-up with the medication that I was supposed to take. A new medication that my PCP prescribed for me that I was taking. I didn’t find out that I was supposed to start out at a low dose, and thus had a very nasty reaction to the medication given it caused me to have a very bad fibromyalgia flare.

That’s why things have been so “quiet” here lately. I’ve been catching up on things, or at least trying to that I didn’t do because I was feeling terrible and had no energy because I was in a lot of pain from the flares.

I hope that everyone else has had a better time of it over the weekend. On the upside we now have carpet upstairs and the house is getting a lot straighter. We also have some new chairs, a bigger table, and another bookcase, so soon everything will be sorted out. We also have a new water system, but not through RainSoft. Through our friends at Ecowater :), they’re a very nice family run company. A much better experience than the virtual harassment from various people at the other company, who can’t understand us not wanting to be ripped off. I’ve since found out about three more people who didn’t go with them, or did but then canceled because they were useless at keeping up with their maintenance pledges.

…today is an “achy-stiff-twitchy-morning-of-not-good” but in some ways that is good because is the first doctor’s appointment in a while, and I’m actually having symptoms. You can generally guarantee that doctor’s appointments wind up happening on “good days” and therefore the doctor is going, “but things seem fine…I don’t understand. You mention severe pain, not being able to move properly…” and so on.

Fibromyalgia is such a misunderstood condition. It’s finally starting to be recognized within the medical community rather than being considered “whiny woman’s hypochondria,” but even so those of us with it have a lot of issues trying to be heard. I say “woman’s hypochondria” because the majority of patients who are afflicted with this are women. This doesn’t mean men cannot get it but for some reason we’re more pre-disposed to it. It affects sleep patterns and causes chronic pain in joints without inflammation, but does mimic a lot of other conditions symptoms in certain ways, such as arthritis, rheumatism. I know I was tested for those, and thyroid problems and a lot of other things too when I was first trying to find out what was wrong with me.

Then when we switched doctors I was tested again, because Dr. R was all upset that I was never x-rayed and all the rest of it to completely rule out arthritis. So, he had me go through x-rays which were hideously painful because I was having a “not-good” day and the x-ray tech got very ticked with me that I couldn’t seem to follow her instructions and bend in awkward shooting-pain inducing positions and hold them for ten minutes while she fixed the plates and the machine, and the machine and the plates.

The medical community is finally pulling together to find out exactly what causes FMS because up until a couple of years ago those who actually acknowledge the condition were having problems treating it because so little was known about what was going on, but thankfully many FMS sufferers have been willing to guinea pig themselves and undergo tests and things to help enlighten the world so that a way to treat or even cure the condition can be found.

Even so I see an acquaintance going through Hades and back because doctors don’t believe that “achiness” is anything more than that, and don’t listen to their explanations of “burning skin pain” and sleeplessness and prescribe “anti-inflammatory” medication, without pain killers and shoo them out of the door. I’ve been on various anti-inflammatory medication during my pre-diagnosis phase of treatment, it does frankly “jack and shit”. You may as well be eating M&Ms. Pain relievers can help on certain days. I try to limit my use of them because my “as needed prescription” is for 6-800 mg of pain killer, and that’s just scary to me. Ordinarily also with FMS you’re prescribed a sleep aid, because part of the issue with the illness is a Catch-22 situation where you can’t sleep which causes pain, but the pain means you can’t sleep. I’ve been muddling through without for several months while trying to find a doctor who wasn’t retiring and took our insurance, combined with the fact that the new doctor put me back on ambien but it caused me to have auditory and visual hallucinations…which is interesting to me.

I was on it before without incident BUT my husband (smart man that he is) reminded me that the last time I was on ambien it was the third in a series of different sleep aids that I’d been on. Initially I was on trazodone but when I was put on birth control it the combination started making me throw up. Then I was put on remeron which was like drinking half a bottle of vodka but without the fun buzz before hand straight to the nasty hangover.  When I refused to try and raise the dose of remeron I was put on the ambien and it was all good; but then I stopped taking all my medication while I was pregnant so that there was no chance of the munchkin suffering any side effects. So, there was over a year without any medication in my system except for a small amount of tylenol cold and tylenol PM. No tolerance at all any more.

Anyway, we shall see what Dr. M decrees this morning.

My cold is trying to come back for another attack because of the cold spell that’s going on right now. But Ami! I hear you cry. You live in Florida! It doesn’t get cold in Florida!

We thought that too when we first moved here from England (my Mum and I), my step-father had warned us that it was cold so we should dress warmly, and coming from England that didn’t seem possible especially when we got off the plane wrapped up in warm wool sweaters to roast our way through the airport. A balmy 60 degrees was a warm front to us given the temperatures would get in the low 10s and less back in the “old country” but somewhere in the last eleven years I’ve apparently acclimatized because right now the 50s are in and I can barely feel my finger tips.

For my part it’s not entirely my fault. The health condition I have (fibromyalgia) makes me extremely temperature sensitive, and a drop of 5 degrees can have me stiffened up in a twitching heap.

Right now part of the issue is arguments my husband and I have about the thermostat. I put the heat on last night before I went to bed. I got up with the muchkin at 7 a.m. and hubbie went to bed and turned the thermostat back to cool! It’s freezing outside, we actually had a “bring the plants in” warning last night on the News (not that we have any plants yet…) but eeesh. I’m about to go turn the heat back on so that I can take a shower and get dressed without turning into an ice cube. Brrrrrrr!

My husband is still a New Yorker, but I guess I have to admit I’m a Floridian and like most Floridian’s now no longer know what to do if it gets cold. There’s a scare going on right now because some areas of the state have actually had snow and don’t have power in this frigid weather: Snow Falls in Central Fla!

It would be nice to be able to breathe through my nose, too…urgh, but that’s probably not going to happen any time soon. I just saw the weather forecast and it’s actually colder than I thought! 45 this morning with projected to be up to 48 by lunch time! That’s it the heat is coming on now!

So, are you sick of me talking about this yet?

Had some good and bad with things already, but I’m sticking with it. The biggest part of this with me is sticking to the exercise portion. Once I stop sitting around and being lazy and moping I figure it’s going to be the major thing to losing the weight because my diet really hasn’t changed all that much it’s just been the drop in activity that’s killer.

I did…well, actually I did about 22 minutes of workout yesterday but the stair climber was very inconsistent because I was having difficulty with rhythm and keeping going. So, the majority of my work out was a bike ride. I biked the equivalent of 2.3 miles. I also did some actual stair climbing going up and down to the third floor of our complex and down delivering letters while carrying a 32lb weight (the munchkin). This morning I did a brief stint of stretching and calisthenics for 10 minutes to help get myself energized and on the go. Right now I’m catching up on things briefly because the pool isn’t going to be open for another half an hour for the munchkin and I to go down there.

I’m breaking up my plan for exercise because I want to ease in on things. The FMS makes it trickier because if I trip myself into a flare pushing things too hard it’s going to set me back for several days because I’ll be so sore I’ll barely be able to make it off the couch and that will make it easier for me to back out on this. I did that before when I was supposed to be working out when I dieted around the wedding. Mum and I went for a brisk 40 minute walk the second day and I could barely move the next day, and was still sore when I got home from work and so flaked on walking again for two weeks.

So, since yesterday was the first day and I did the heavier work out; today I’m going to do aerobics and light exercise in the pool and take things slow.

I did eat some candy yesterday. The Halloween leftovers. We have a phone book now that arrived yesterday so I’m going to look up and see if there’s shelters or something I can take the rest to, a suggestion from one of the punkymoms will keep the temptation away from both myself and my husband.

I’ve been hearing that it’s better to eat say six small meals per day than it is to eat three regular ones, and also that we should make sure to keep our caloric intake fairly high because otherwise it will ruin metabolism. I know when I was breastfeeding my intake was supposed to be about 17-1800 so I’m figuring now around 1300 is probably a safe bet.

I also got rid of something else sweet in the house. Gaming days are really hard because often we’ll just get take out or delivery food and I’ll make brownies or cookies for everyone to snack on and then we get all the leftovers. So, yesterday I took the last box of brownie mix and made the brownies and then took them to my FIL who is suffering from the flu. So, no tempting brownies for tonight’s gaming session.

I’ve got the last of the minced beef thawing out right now and I’m going to make meatballs with whole wheat pasta once it thaws so that we have food to eat before we go gaming and don’t get drive-thru on the way. It’s the last minced beef we have. I’ve started just buying turkey mince instead because it’s healthier. We’ve been recommended because of my husband’s heart to use more turkey because it’s less salty.

I’m going to weigh once a week on Tuesday mornings given that’s when I did my first weight check (yesterday).

In which some people I know are probably going “about time!”
I used to weigh 146lbs. Granted I was fifteen and a weekly ballerina.
I also used to weigh 186lbs. This was when I got married. That I could deal with.
Right now I’m not sure what I weigh. I was 264lbs when I had my son and last time I weighed myself a month or so ago I was 236lbs, which really isn’t good. My health condition is exacerbated by my weight, and so I’ve been trying to lose weight, but not really working properly at it. Mostly going, “You know…I really need to diet, but hrm, these peppermint patties, they’re really good.” I start programs of exercise, going to the pool, doing DDR, but I let life get in the way and don’t stick with things.

I really haven’t been properly ready, but one of my resolutions for New Year (which was almost a week ago now) was that I would improve things, work on renewal for myself, and so this is my plan. I’ve set a goal and a reward for myself when I complete, something that I know I’m not going to do before I complete the goal but something that will have me driving towards it. I’m going to set myself a time table once I find out exactly how much I weigh, which I’m intending to do by the end of the week. I just need to find a scale or find a place with a scale so I can do so.

My idea is to get down to 185. Once I’m at 185 we’ll see how things go from there. I may try for lower, but 185 is a comfortable weight for me. Definitely a lot more comfortable than somewhere around 230-240 which is where I’m at right now.

I’m going to exercise at least 3 times a week for 15-20 minutes either going to the gym on complex or using DDR here if I can’t get. Getting to the gym isn’t really the issue it’s more what to do with small child. They have a game room set up and I’ve tried twice to go with him but he can get out of the game room and thinks it’s more fun to try and climb up onto the exercise machines to be with me than stay in there and play ball and play with his toys. Not safe. So, on days hubbie can watch the munchkin for 15-20 minutes I’ll go to the gym, on days he can’t (like today when he’s got to work and has meetings and court and things I’ll do DDR while the munchkin is in bed.

At least once a week if not twice I’m going to take the munchkin swimming and to the play park. Get us both out of the apartment and get us both exercise.

Weaning of the diet soda and onto water. When out no more “Oh, just get Dew,” get water.
Eating more salad type things ESPECIALLY when out to eat, and not the taco salad sort of salad thing either, real honest to goodness salads with light dressing or oil and vinegar, things like that. I’ve picked up broth to eat at home on days that I don’t feel like cooking anything for myself, rather than going down to get take-out or delivery.

The true test of this is going to be Wednesday and Thursday which is gamer nights, which are notoriously bad for food things because we’ll just get drive-thru somewhere or snack on cookies and cakes that one of our friend’s makes, or I’ll make cookies and cakes for the guys when they come over and eat far too many.

But this is what I’m going to do. This is my plan.

I think I might reinstall Dragon Naturally Speaking on the computer too, and start dictating NaNo while working out a bit.

After I’ve gotten things down with the work out I’m going to gradually increase the amount of time. So after I’ve stuck to this for a couple of weeks up it to 25-30 minutes and so on.

I’ve been a bit strained with updating things the past few days because of a flare that I’m still on the climb from. I’d been doing really well health-wise even with the move, but the past few days I’ve been feeling really decrepit it’s a toss up between whether Monday when I wound up laying on the couch for almost an hour or today when I was able to get around but needed my cane were the worst.

It’s times like these I find myself somewhat bitterly sniping at the doctor who told me that my health condition wasn’t debilitating. I start snorting and going, “Not debilitating right! I can’t get off the couch! I can’t feel my hands enough to operate the can opener! How is this not debilitating?” Then I have to pull myself up and point out that yes, okay, right now I can’t feel my fingers properly but by tomorrow, if not in a few hours, I will more-than-likely have feeling back in my hands and be walking normally and there are a lot of people with different chronic conditions for whom something like that would be the sign of steady decline, that for them things would just be getting worse from that point, and for me that’s not the case.

That being said, I must also express how grateful I am to some people who prove to me that not everyone in the human race has lost their compassion and their manners. There’s a very nice lady who works at our new local Publix who brought me a cart when she saw me wrestling with the munchkin in the parking lot. He was trying to escape and I was having a hard time keeping hold of him considering the purse and the cane. She not only brought me the cart, she asked if it would be okay if she took him from me and put him in the cart so that he couldn’t take advantage of me shifting position to lift him to run away and get hit by a car.

Then after I got home one of our neighbors who I’ve actually never met before today was coming out of his apartment when I was bringing the bags in and helped me.

In case you’re wondering what possessed me to go shopping in this condition it was an emergency run, which couldn’t wait until my husband was up. I actually picked up most of the groceries a couple of days ago, but today I found out we had no garbage bags and almost no diapers. I thought we had more of both when I went to the store, but I mis-remembered. With a small child both of those are essentials!

Right now that my son’s gone to bed for the night I’m going to try and work on another gallery I’ve been commissioned to install. I got the framework and all the pages of the install uploaded, finished the upload this morning and have it activated. I just need to make the header and color up the background and theme.

I’m hoping my brain-fog clears up enough to get things straight. Not doing so well tonight given I decided I was going to reheat some leftovers and almost set the place on fire. Sparks in the microwave, actual flames on the food container, because I didn’t register when I broke the lid of the Styrofoam container that, you know, that paper…it’s got “silver” foil on it too…not going to mix well with the microwave…ah, well, at least I was right there watching it, and hadn’t walked away like I sometimes do.

I’m blown away by the progress that my entry on Blog for a Year has made in the past couple of days. I had 22 votes yesterday and 12 today. So, I’ve cruised on up. Here are my current standings:

Here is where you stand right now:

Current Rank: 91 of 182 (you want to be #1)
Total votes: 60
Total donations: $10

Your profile has been viewed 141 times and 14 people have visited your blog from our site.

You can visit your profile any time at:
http://www.blogforayear.com/profiles/ami-chan?tip=4

So, much, much thanks to everyone who has been voting for me, and please continue to do so, as you can vote every day ^^

I think I’ve possibly had some new feed subscribers from this competition, so thank you to you as well. I would love to get to know you better, and if you have a blog check yours out as well, so please say “Hi” if you can.

As I’ve mentioned a few times on here before, but primarily on my livejournal; I have fibromyalgia, the illness primarily affects my knees but sometimes also my wrists and ankles. I look around quite a bit and have friends and family members also who will put me on to various new ideas for things which might help when I have flares. I even had one whose ‘pet’ massage therapist mixed a special blend of essential oils in the hopes that I could get a massage and have that help, but especially with really bad flares just someone brushing my skin sends me into twitch fits, so there’s no way I would tolerate a deep tissue massage

I’ve been prescribed various things including something which is basically a triple strength version of an OTC pain reliever, and I’ve tried heat patches and warming creams before to little avail, which was odd because to me the fact that cold is what often causes flares should mean that warm would help…but one of the things about fibromyalgia is that the way it affects your body is more than a little nonsensical at times, and that often sufferers will have varying symptoms and triggers.

I was sent some free samples of Freeze It to try and figured I may as well. I used them the last few days on my knees and was pleasantly surprised by the results after I got over the “OMG this stuff is GREEN!” moment. But despite it being such a bright green coming out of the packet it absorbed into my skin very quickly, and I’ve had no problems with color or overpowering scent lingering around. The only problem I really had was the munchkin thinking that I must have some kind of new and wonderful food I wasn’t sharing and trying to glomp on to me and eat my legs.

My pain didn’t go away completely, but it definitely eased up a lot within a very short time of applying the gel. This was evidenced by the fact that I could get around the house without limping or looking like I was crippled. I’ve started doing some working out this past week and in times past this meant that I would be hobbling around for days and unable to work out more than once a week. Considering I have a toddler to race around after as well that’s just not acceptable. The sample packs have run out but I was gratified to see that my favorite local store, Target, carries the over the counter sizes of the gel so now I have a big pack to use.

I’m feeling drained the past few days. In one of those ’stop the world I want to get off’ modes this morning, for the most part. Right now, things aren’t so bad, but I’m a bit put out my husband is on days the next two shifts, which is going to be really weird. It’s not a permanent switchover which makes it all the more nasty as the next two days he has to switch from going to bed between 6-7 a.m. to getting up at 3 a.m. and going to bed at 8 p.m. when normally he’s just waking up any time between noon and 2 p.m. This sort of thing throws the whole household into chaos and I can imagine the munchkin being an unholy terror for the next two days. The only good thing about it is that the munchkin will not be awake while my husband is trying to sleep; but he will be asleep already when I go to bed, and that’s just not natural to me, which is probably weird to some people, but I’m just really not used to going to bed when there’s someone already in there any more. I actually sleep better without him there when I go to bed; and I hadn’t realized how unadjusted I was to that until he switched back to nights before Yuletide and I wasn’t having as many problems sleeping as I had.

I have a routine…and I know there are tons of people, because I see it on the Mom’s forum I’m on, who really don’t deal well sleeping by themselves; but I do. It’s probably the chronic insomnia talking…but I like my bed to myself. I love having my husband there, to snuggle and cuddle and all the other romantic things, but I like to sleep too! I know I’m probably not a picnic to sleep with either, my health condition means that I have a really hard time getting comfortable. I fidget. I sniffle. My legs and arms twitch violently at times; there are times I’m so sore I about have seizures. I’m told that I snore (not that that one bothers me any!) and add to the mix that I talk in my sleep too, and well, it’s a miracle anyone gets any sleep in our house ever, really.

I’m just really not looking forward to going to bed tonight. It’s like if we actually go away on holiday…I usually wind up lying awake staring at the ceiling until 4 a.m. and finally dropping off to sleep just as the world wakes up and disturbs me once more. I get so paranoid being in ‘foreign’ places, whether they’re right down the street or on the other side of the world. I have issues. I get that; but there’s just not much can be done about it. I’m always on high alert at night and that’s just so much worse now that I have a munchkin.

I’ll survive some how, because I have to. I’m in a much better place than others and I have to remember that. It’s the whiny, creature comforts talking. Ordinarily this shift hubbie’s switchin gfor is covered by only one officer because the department is short-handed, usually it’s two per shift, but when the only officer on this rotation has to go do training someone has to cover it, and hubbie is the only night shift officer on this grouping that doesn’t have other classes he’s doing during the day as he finished his a couple of weeks ago, so he gets to do it.

I just have to do my bit of pouting about my routine being thrown off…and keep my fingers crossed that given the new meds I’m on are so potent I will actually fall asleep despite the mental protests.

Apparently I don’t have arthritis. My doctor is stumped; but his office is also closing…which is frustrating. I’m afraid I’m going to wind up having to go through all these tests all over again at another doctor’s office. Small favors is that our insurance deductible has been met and that I have another refill of each of my medications which should last me until next month.

I was joking with my Mum that the x-rays showed my knees were ‘unremarkable’. She said, “Well, I’ve always thought your knees were very remarkable, and I’m sure you’re husband does too!”

The doctor said if we lived up north that he would check me for lime disease; but he’s back to wondering if I do have fibromyalgia after all and just have gotten used to the pressure/trigger points or something like that.

My other issues boil down to weight; which is unsuprising. I’m…if I’m being honest I’m 230 lbs. I was 246 at the height of my pregnancy and my son is 15 months old! I should have lost…well, actually I had lost more than that. I was down to 218 at my 6 week post-partum check-up and have gained back that much weight. This is why my sleep issues are aggravated, this is part of the reason I have such a problem with my legs. I might not look like I’m as heavy as I am, generally people figure I’m under 200 which is a nice compliment; but I’m NOT that light and that much weight takes it’s toll on your body.

Thankfully the anti-depressants I’m on are actually reducing my appetite, and I’m exercising low impact: swimming.

I think I’ve only touched on my health condition with a glancing blow here, so I thought I’d elaborate it a little bit more. Part of the reason why I’m a stay-at-home-mum is my health. I have a chronic health condition called fibromyalgia syndrome. FMS is aggravated by stress, lack of sleep, the weather, stress and many other things varying from person to person. The big ones for me I listed.

My job was pretty stressful. There was a lof sniping, bickering and general unhealthy environment created by some of my co-workers who refused to be pro-active about making things better, preferring instead to just sit and whinge. The further along I got in my pregnancy the worse my symptoms were aggravated. My husband and I had discussed me staying home after the munchkin was born, because of the insane cost of daycare in our area and in the end, with the urging of my OB-GYN I left work two months before he was born, and stayed home.
So, I’ve been a stay-at-home person a little over a year now, as my last day at work was February 3rd.

Fibromyalgia is a condition which affects your muscles. The easiest way I know how to describe it is that during the day because of normal wear and tear of moving around, fetching, carrying, walking and so on your body gets little tiny tears in the muscles, this is a natural occurence and normally when you sleep your body repairs those tears so you can wake up the next day none the wiser, but in someone with FMS this doesn’t happen. Why? Because we don’t sleep properly, doctors aren’t sure why at the moment, but they’re working on it. They don’t know if it’s something wrong with our sleep so we don’t heal and that causes the pain, or there’s something wrong elsewhere which causes the pain and disrupts the sleep. Either way we’re stuck in a Catch-22, you need to sleep to repair the muscle damage, but you can’t sleep because the muscles are damaged and it hurts.

There’s a laundry-list of symptoms that those of us with FMS get, partially caused by the pain and partially because of the disrupted sleep. Sleep is very important to replenish chemicals, digest food properly, lose weight and just generally function like a normal human being rather than a zombie. Like other chronic health conditions you have days where you flare and it’s much harder to do things than other days. When I was working I used to go through these at least once a week, since I’ve been home the first day I had a really, really bad flare was yesterday, so I think I’ve made a good choice not just for the munchkin’s well-being but also my own.