What Life Resembles After an 8 Hour Shift with Fibromyalgia

   It's about time I talked about my life when I am fighting fibromyalgia flare-ups. I have done everything I think that is possible to ease the nightly pain. I have shoes that are made for comfort and work with added foot cushioning in each shoe. I take Advil during a flare-up as preventative maintenance to aches. I try not to stand still at the counter but move, clean, and stretch between customers. The only conclusion that I have come to learn is that I was in remission during my first three years at Roanoke College and it wasn't until I went back to work in retail last year that the fibro came back.
   This is not to say that I did not have bad days three years before. Sure, I had pain some days but it did not consistently last for more than two weeks per flare-up. For fibro patients, that is a major win. You have no idea how big of a win it is.
   So what's on the menu tonight? Foot pain, back of knees, lower back, and between the shoulder blades. Here are the nine pairs of tender points commonly associated with fibromyalgia patients.



  But fibro is not just about muscle tenderness. There is the debilitating fatigue, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome... maybe this list will be better for viewing.

   I have fourteen of the symptoms listed on a regular basis. 


   Honestly, I don't want to use this blog that I resurrected as some place to complain about my symptoms. I want to use it as a wellness journal to share with you and all the things that I do to get back to feeling good. Each key component takes a bit of time to chronicle and release to you in bite-size chunks so that you can be as successful as I am in coping with the symptoms and what to do when you feel like you might be relapsing. Everything that I will be talking about does require a major lifestyle change and will take time to develop better habits, especially eating. I will also be referring to a book called Reversing Fibromyalgia by Dr. Joe Elrod and other sources as I feel they apply best to good practices. 


   I have been working on my fibro problem since I was twenty year old when my doctor thought I had hypothyroidism. Guess what? My tests came back with super mixed results. A blood test revealed low TSH and T4 but the Radioactive Iodine Uptake Test revealed that I was hyperthyroid ( I also lost eight pounds in two weeks). By the time I was able to see an endocrinologist, my thyroid had returned to normal. It's not that the doctors weren't helpful, it was the first time that I realized that I needed to be vigilant about self care and not knowing how to do it. It wasn't until I was almost 30 when I found Dr. Elrod's book. At that point, things began to click for me. I hope future blog posts will do the same for you.

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