Saturday not only didn’t have enough spoons it never heard of them…
Saturday was the worst flare up of Fibromyalgia pain I’ve had in over a year. After I woke myself up whimpering, the day seems to slide down a very steep hill.
At first it was my lower back and I took aspirin. Several hours later I’d upgraded to a big pain killer — no difference in pain level. I’m talking 8 to 9 on the 1-10 pain scale. A second big pain pill and a muscle relaxer and I managed to get it down to about a 5. Other than infrequent weeping from the pain — I thought I handled it pretty well.
I didn’t snap at anyone. I didn’t go and sit in the dark closet and hope the world would go away. I even managed to talk to company as if my brain actually functioned. Of course since the company was a friend who was well aware of my Fibro short-coming, I was given a bit of leeway when my attention span seemed a bit shorter than a 2-year-old after four bowls of sugar-laden cereal in a room full of shiny things.
Today, I’m happy to say, I’m back to my usual 3 and finding myself unusually grateful for it. I hope that I don’t have another flare up of this magnitude ever. Yet, I know that I probably will and there’s very little I can do to prepare or avoid it. Thinking over the past several weeks, I can’t see anything that I’ve done that would have triggered it. I’ve been very careful to avoid strenuous activities except in very small doses and with proper warm ups — that includes carrying wash up and down stairs, housework, washing floors, changing beds, cooking, etc.. I keep things to short 15-30 minute intervals with a rest period in between where I relax and rest (read, knit, work on the computer…).
I survived a very bad Saturday that stretched into a bad night. Today, Sunday, the world looks a lot better to me. Maybe I appreciate it more in contrast because today is grey and gloomy but none the less, today was and is a beautiful day.
If Fibro has taught me anything it’s that no matter how bad it gets, if you just hold on long enough, you’ll come out on the other side. You won’t be cured. You won’t be pain free. But, you’ll be alive and the world will look a lot brighter because it won’t be as bad it was. I now have a new benchmark for “bad” and I don’t think I’ll forget about it any time soon. So, every day that’s better than Saturday will be a good day.