in the fibro fog

i have a wonderful little disease called fibromyalgia. it is a good disease to have if you want to develop a sense of humor. you want to tell yourself that god must be playing a joke on you to give you this wonderful cross to bear each day. so as a result, you have to learn to laugh and make lemonade out of the lemon.

fibro has a variety of symptoms that wax and wane, but never entirely go away. each individual has to deal with certain symptoms and/or combinations of symptoms almost on a daily basis. the two biggest ones are constant overall pain and the lack of deep sleep. for those who don't know what this pain is about, remember how you feel the day you come down with the flu. your whole body aches, and sometimes it feels as if even your hair hurts. well, that is how it feels for a fibro person like me. the pain is everywhere . it is further complicated by the fact that you don't get any deep sleep, so you can't get the pain to go away. drugs don't do it. actually, the only thing that does help is exercise, which is usually the last thing you don't want to do when everything hurts. imagine someone telling you to go out and walk for 30 minutes on the first day of the flu. we also suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, which in it self makes you exhausted. there are other symptoms as well: migraine headaches, muscle weakness(i drop things a lot and choke), visual problems(from the muscle weakness), and the ultimate culmination of all the symptoms over a long period of time: FIBRO FOG.

the fog has been the most frustrating thing to me, especially now. i need to be sharp to teach my kids, and i keep ending up in the english workroom wondering what it was i went in there for...! i ask the same thing over and over again because i can't remember the answer, and then i repeat myself in class, or forget where i was in the middle of a discussion. not the best thing to happen if you are an english teacher.

right now i feel like i have been beaten with a blunt instrument. but the good news is that i discovered today that they actually have iced tea in the cafeteria at lunch. today was also reuben day, a big one that everyone looks forward to. i used my dreaded lunch duty to power walk, so i have gotten in my 30 minutes of exercise today and actually broke a sweat. franklin, one of our school's special ed students who is retarded and deaf, tried to communicate with me today and gave me a crushing bear hug which i wasn't expecting. i also was really on today in my b2 class, and i think they really got what i was discussing. i made a point of telling some of my colleagues this, as we spend way too much time complaining about stuff and not celebrating the little miracles when they occur. no one has come to me complaining today that i made some sort of faxu pax last night at back to school night, which is good, since i seem to be the focal point for trouble because i think and act differently. i was able to eat my whole reuben lunch (over 2 hours) without getting sick, a new thing. and in general, i am feeling lucky in a lot of ways. i am here, i am able to do things, i have a house, and i got a paycheck with a real amount today. the latter is a big deal in my life, as i have been docked $700 a month since april/may.