Every now and then – after months of snow or weeks of rain (god, this rain needs to stop) – I wonder why I live in a place where the weather makes me ache, and I think about picking up and moving to Spain. Recently, however, I read an article that said that while changing locations would often improve fibromyalgia symptoms, the improvements were short-lived. Three months later, the body adjusts and settles back into its own self-ruinous state.
So that’s out.
***
It’s never felt… I don’t know – fair … that I have this thing where my body makes everything worse than it needs to be. Sometimes my very skin aches. If I don’t pay attention and keep my thigh from touching the office chair arm, however lightly, it starts to burn. I wake up with throbbing hands and a minor limp because my feet aren’t right until I work out the kinks. Yesterday, the bare minimum of physical labour – doing laundry – ended with me whimpering on the couch because my legs were numbly pained from hip to toe. This is likely due to the drastic drop in air pressure we’ve experienced recently. I’m solar-powered in more ways than one, and when the weather is grey and wet I get dampened both emotionally and physically.
***
On the other hand. I know I have it better than a lot of folks with this condition. I can get up and go to work (even if it hurts, I can handle it). I have WAY more spoons than lots of fibro sufferers and I can (usually) go to work, get groceries, eat, clean up, and relax all in the same day. I am grateful that a very small dosage of a wee little SSRI has reduced my pain and increased my sleep as much as it has.
The slight apprehension I feel at being this messed up at only 40 (how will it be at 50? 70? oh dear heaven my dad’s family lives deep into their 90s and even 100s) is assuaged slightly by looking at it from the other side – some folks are way worse, way earlier, and I am actually lucky to be doing as well as I am.
***
And yet. I would really like for it to stop raining.
| eating | cheese bagel w/bacon |
| reading | a woman gumshoe series |
| feeling | waterlogged |