I have finally grabbed the bull by the horns.
For almost a full year now I've been toying with the idea of starting up a Blog.
So, that's a whole year's worth of thoughts which are hopefully still stored somewhere in my head, and I expect that parts of them will surface here from time to time.
Right now, I'd like to tell you a bit about the past year.
It has been a year like no other before in my life.
A year, which started on the 19th of May 2015.
Of course, the reason why this day was the start of a whole new chapter in my life, goes back a lot further than this, but let's start there.
It was a Tuesday, which followed on to a fairly ordinary Monday, on which I had gone into work, dutifully as ever. I need to point out that Monday had not been a good day, in fact I had started to forget what a good day felt like by this time.
On that Tuesday morning my alarm was set as it was any other day, it went off as planned, I woke up, feeling like I had just run a marathon, followed by 10 rounds in the ring wit Mike Tyson and even though I wanted to get up, I simply could not get out of bed.
My body did not want to cooperate and my mind was just not strong enough anymore on that particular morning to overrule my body's unwillingness. With hindsight that is exactly how I'd been sort of able to keep on functioning in the months leading up to this date, by sheer willpower over bodily ability.
In a way, I can't say this came as a surprise, since I'd been having health problems for a long time though.
As a child I always had a weak immune system, basically catching every bug that went round. Apart from that there were never any big issues, so it got brushed away as something I would grow out of, which I actually never fully did.
As a young mum I would still catch every bug, only this time those were the ones that went round in my little boy's nursery school. Whilst he was a very healthy little boy with a strong resistance to most of the infections, I would hop from one cold, to another ear infection, via a bout of tonsilitis.
But, I was OK, it was definitely not so bad that it had any considerable impact on my personal or professional life.
That happened later. I'd say that things noticeably started to get out of hand when I was 32. I was often feeling tired in a way which my energy expenditure couldn't logically explain. I had trouble sleeping, despite the overwhelming tiredness. But even worse than this, at the early stage, was the pain, inexplicable pain all over my body, which felt like giant needles penetrating my flesh and scraping my bones, a deep, aching and burning pain.
Around about the same time I also started to have severe problems with my digestive system, mostly concentrated in my bowels.
IBS was diagnosed.
At that point blood tests were undertaken to try to find the cause of the pain and the tiredness, and a range of other physical tests were carried out, none of them giving any kind of answer. so things got brushed off as "stress".
I was put on antidepressants, which only made me more miserable, came back off them, scrambled on...
Eventually, and the by eventually I mean a few years and a number of useless prescription drugs later, because they continued to find absolutely nothing wrong with me, they put me on a fairly heavy dose of painkillers, Tramadol, 400mg a day, and so I struggled on, with ups and downs for the following years.
There were periods when I felt fairly close to "normal", even though I think that my own perception of what normal is, has been skewed for a very long time now.
There were also periods of time when I struggled immensely, but because I was self-employed for a long time, I could more or less fit my work around my state of health.
Throughout the years, up until that 19th of May last year, I was always working full-time, or even more during my self-employment.
By the 19th of May last year, I was working in full time employment, rather than running my own business. Even though I worked less hours a week, this regime of having to perform at set times every day, 5 days a week was more difficult to keep up than working at my own pace. When I ran my own business, I would spread my work load out over the 7 days of the week and could choose to work any time of the day, according to my body's whims.
During the 12 years that I did run my own business, I was told very often that I was burning the candle on both ends and in the middle at once. More than once people tried to warn me and told me that you can't do this forever and remain unpunished, but there were needs and those had to be fulfilled, so I kept running on my treadmill of self-destruction.
so, probably partially due to the fact that I kept going when I shouldn't have, since last year, since the 19th of May I have been too ill to be able to work.
It's something which is very hard to come to terms with.
It's something that just doesn't fit in with my personality.
It's something that was supposed to happen others, annonymous, faraway others, not to me.
It's something that screws up my hopes, my plans, my ambitions.
It's simply shitty.
But...
It's my life now.
It's something I will need to try and come to terms with if I don't want to lose my mind completely.
It's something which I will need to try and unite with my personality.
It's something I did not choose, but that is just life, it's not a punishment or any kind of higher power playing with my life, it's just part of a numbers game and I guess my number was drawn for this one.
It's something which forces me to re-assess my plans, move some of my ambitions and most of all it's something which I cannot allow to stand in the way of hope.
It's Fibromyalgia.
It could have been a lot worse though, so I am rapidly learning to count my blessings instead of feeling sorry for myself and complaining about my limitations.
It is not life-threatening, so I will live the life that I have, as it presents itself, to the fullest possible extent.
And that is why I am starting this blog. I would like to take you along on my bumpy road, share with you all the things that I can still do, tell you about the little things that make me happy or sad.
Maybe you are a fellow fibro patient, or maybe someone close to you is. Maybe you've never even heard of the term Fibromyalgia. It doesn't matter.
If I can inspire anyone through sharing some of the creative things that I like to do, if I can help anyone out there who might be chronically ill like myself, to feel a little less lonely, or if a glimpse into my world can give someone a better understanding and insight in the feelings of a loved one who is chronically ill, then this is worth writing about.
Even if no-one ever reads a word I write, it's still worth it for me. On an off-day I will be able to look back upon some things myself, and realise that I have a good life. Its shape might well be quite firmly determined by my illness, I AM NOT my illness, I am Cindy, a happy mom of a grown up son and a teenage daughter, partner of a lovely man, human mummy of 2 ginger cats and an English Cocker Spaniel puppy.
Expect to be shown how I crochet, knit, sew, paint or draw things...
Expect to be told about the silly things my puppy, Ziggy gets up to...
Expect happy times!
Cindy :-)
