The Parliament Award

I have written many times before about the strength of the bonds made by people on WordPress.  I was a sad, lonely, misunderstood woman living in chronic pain and without anyone to understand what I was going through.  The closest I had was my Ob/Gyn, but you can hardly consider a doctor your friend (not a close friend) because you can’t call them to talk when you’re lonely or write to them to tell someone what’s really going on in your life.

I have made some of the best friends since joining WordPress.  Friends that I can talk with on the phone when I need to forget about my pain for a little while, or chat with on Facebook just because.  Friends that know how I feel either because they are in pain themselves, or because they are going through some of the same issues that I am at home.  One of these friends, Bishop Eddie Tatro has done me the honor of receiving his Parliament Award. Fr. Eddie has a great blog where he writes on issues spanning from religious articles to articles on chronic pain issues.  Here’s the background on The Parliament Award:

Everyone knows that I love owls and wolves.  We know that a group of wolves is called a pack, but did you know that a group of owls is called a Parliament?  Owls have for centuries been symbols of wisdom and love, and wolves are a symbol of strength, loyalty and family.

I’ve created this award for those people who are in my Parliament & Pack.  You mean so very much to me, and you all show what I stand for: Love.  Hate is not part of your vocabulary.

 

Here are the Rules:

1.  Firstly, display the Award on your site (see Award page or sidebar!) You earned it and you deserve it!

2.  List a few things that make you a loyal member.

3.  Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.

4.  Nominate at least five (5) well deserving bloggers whose loyalty and love you value and consider part of your Parliament and Pack; for the Award and let them know the wonderful news by sending them a message on their site.

 

Ok, here goes nothing.  I am a loyal member because:

1)  I am always there for a friend when needed.

2)  I am loyal and supportive.

3)  I am sensitive to other’s needs and know how to listen.

 

Five bloggers who I consider part of my Parliament:

1) Tammy: Walk With Me on My Journey of Illness…
2) Brian: Mountains or Mohills
3) Julie: The Nocturnal Laundress
4) Jenn: My Fibrotastic Life
5) Leslie: Just Another F-Bomb

Versatility

The awards keep coming. I never thought when I started this little blog that I would have awards backed up to be received. But since I do, I will accept another one today.

I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by Priceless Joy. She has been a wonderful friend to me since we found each other here on WordPress. I am thankful for her help through some really rough spots and I truly believe that her prayers and well-wishes have made me a stronger person.

Here are the VBA rules that can be found at versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com.

If you are nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger award.

Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.
Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)
Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site.
Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

So, here goes another 7 things about myself:

1) I love pizza.

2) I was almost done with my third year of college when I had to quit for medical reasons.

3) I speak fluent Spanish.

4) I have only been out of the country one time…I went to Mexico for a month.

5) I would love to visit Europe some day.

6) I no longer have a belly button (weird, right?)

7) I have an ISFJ personality type according to http://16personalities.com.

And here are my nominees (I’m choosing to nominate 10 people instead of 15…this award stuff is tiring!)

1) FighterZine
2) Walking Through Pain
3) Painfully Aware
4) the REmissionary
5) Just A Little Background Noise 2.0
6) Green Grows Dark
7) Chronic Rants
8) Anonymous Real Thoughts
9) Speaking of Marriage
10) Oh What A Pain in the …

It’s Time to Battle the Dragon

I have been doubly nominated for the Dragon’s Loyalty Award. The nominations came from two wonderful ladies: Julie, The Nocturnal Laundress
and Jenn @ My Fibrotastic Life.  Both are excellent blogs about Fibromyalgia and how it affects their lives. I highly recommend these blogs, even if you don’t suffer from Fibromyalgia.

The rules to accept this award is as follows:

“The philosophy of the award is: The Dragon’s Loyalty Award is an award for the loyal fan/commenter, whether the recipient is a fellow blogger or just someone who follows and comments regularly”.

There are some rules that one must follow in order to fully accept the award and they are as follows:

1. Firstly, display the Award on your site. You earned it and you deserve it!

2. Link back to the person who gave you the award in your acceptance post;

3. Nominate 15 well deserving bloggers for the Award and let them know the wonderful news by sending them a message on their site;

4. List 7 interesting facts about yourself”

Ok, so here goes, 7 interesting facts about me:

1) I love to sing. I was in choir in Junior and Senior High School. At that time I could sing really well, but that was before the tracheotomy. I still love to sing and when I feel like singing I sing…if you don’t like it, don’t listen!

2) My first job was as a nail technician. I interned until I completed the necessary hours to get my license, then I worked doing nails. I got as far as Master Manicurist in my almost 8 years at this job.

3) one of my favorite channels is the Food Network Channel. I love cooking when I’m able to do so.

4) I rarely wear blue jeans anymore. I’m usually in Yoga, pajama, or sweat pants.

5) When I do dress up, my favorite pair of shoes is a pair of leopard-print heels. My second favorite pair are lime green heels.

6) My middle name is Elizabeth. I was named Elizabeth after my grandmother.

7) I married my first husband at 19. Yes…young and stupid…enough said. One positive thing I got out of my first marriage: Gastric Bypass surgery.

As far as nominees go, I don’t believe I can come up with 15, especially not counting these two beautiful ladies. I could only come up with 9.

1) Tammy : http://tlohuis.wordpress.com
2) Emily: http://painfulhilarity.wordpress.com
3) Richard: http://iamawakenowtvm.com
4) Tami: http://tjgypsyhippie.wordpress.com
5) Inga: http://ingaflaherty.wordpress.com
6) Dawn: http://dawnyhosking.wordpress.com
7) Leslie: http://justanotherfbomb.wordpress.com
8) Joy?: http://pricelessjoy.co
9) Eddie: http://bishoptatro.wordpress.com

 

Unhappy Thanksgiving (To Me)

It seems that as the holidays approach (very quickly) that I find myself completely unprepared for them. Between recent issues at home to extraordinarily high pain levels, I just don’t seem to be in the holiday spirit. I would love nothing more than to be able to cook a proper meal (I love to cook) even if I don’t exactly have a happy family to share it with.

So how does one get in the spirit of the holidays, with emotional roller coasters, high pain levels, and the impending 10th year anniversary of my mother’s death knocking at the door? I simply don’t know. I think Thanksgiving is probably out of the question being that I am a big ball of nerves and can’t find the strength to be up long enough to cook. Perhaps by Christmas I can at least see the doctor to figure out where the majority of this pain is coming from. It’s a familiar kind of pain, so if I had to guess, either a cyst has burst or I have a urinary tract infection. I can see my GP for the second of the two, but would have to see the Ob/Gyn for the other, an appointment that usually takes at least a month to schedule. Maybe I can get an appointment for just the ultrasound and let the doctor call me if there’s anything there. Either way, I’ve had enough of them that I’m getting quite good at reading the ultrasound myself.

So, back to the holidays…how the hell am I supposed to enjoy the holidays with a person I can’t trust any more? Of course, he is in his super sweet phase now, which to be honest (and I sort of feel bad saying this) kinda makes me sick to my stomach. I am barely able to eat anyway…maybe I’ll just make a turkey sandwich for Thanksgiving. Quick, easy, and if I can’t eat it all, will be there waiting for the next meal. I really am trying to change my attitude (I know it’s kinda shitty right now) but I don’t quite know how. If there was a Scrooge for Thanksgiving, I would be him (her). Any suggestions?

 

 

 

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A Safer Space

–“…you have every right to leave and create a safer space for yourself.”

Official

Today has been a better day than yesterday. Other than the 3 hours I spent at the doctor’s office, all in all it has been a pretty good day. I got to talk to my best friend for a little while, which always makes me feel better, and M- was even nice to me today after he got home. I haven’t hurt quite as bad as I have been, so I am hoping that if I take all day tomorrow to rest, maybe I’ll be over this flare (or bad days) by Saturday so that I can go to church.

Speaking of church, I got a letter today from the priest welcoming me to the church and encouraging me to take part in as many of the “[church] community activities” as I was able to. I am still excited about this. I think that I may have found my place this time and a church family that I can be a part of. I mean, I had already been invited by the office manager (the first friend I made there) to attend the Tuesday dinners and adult Catholicism classes and even the knitting/crochet group that meets every other Monday. But for some reason, having a letter from the priest “officially” welcoming me to the family makes it a little more special. I hate to cut this short, but I want to make sure that this gets published on time so that I don’t miss a day. November is almost over and I am so proud that even on my roughest days I was able to write a little something to share with you all. Even though NaBloPoMo will be over soon, I may just set a new goal to write every day until the end of the year. It feels good to set goals and actually achieve them. I’ve always been told to just take baby steps in my goals, but I guess I shoot a little higher than what should be a baby step. Let’s just add that to the list of things I need to work on 🙂 . Goodnight everyone.

One More Day

Well, I made it through one more day. The two appointments weren’t too bad because 1) they were in the same office, and 2) they were exactly an hour each. After that was a trip to the pharmacy then back home. Right now, I would love nothing more than to sleep. First, however, I had to make sure that I wrote today’s blog. I’m sorry that they have been short lately and I will try to “step it up” here pretty soon. Just as soon as I feel a little better I will get right on that. In the meantime, I suppose you will just get these mini-rants. I will go back to full page rants soon enough. Right now, I’m just grateful that I made it through one more day.

Eventually

Unfortunately, I am still having a rough day today. I was invited at Mass on Saturday night to go ahead and start attending the adult catholic lessons and dinner was going to be served since so many go after work. I truly wanted to go and start learning about the church and its beliefs, but most of all I was looking forward to the fellowship and spending time with other people. Instead, I am a prisoner to my pain and am stuck in bed.

I get really anxious when this happens. I know that it’s the worst thing I can do, but I go over and over in my head “will I be ok tomorrow? Will I be able to make it fairly well through the appointments I have scheduled for tomorrow? Will having two appointments tomorrow just make it worse?” Only time will tell and at lest my appointments are with my therapist and the new psychiatrist. I still don’t like seeing a shrink, but hey, I guess the first step is admitting you have a problem. Hello, my name is Joy and I am a chronic pain patient who stays anxious, plus, there is some depression creeping in, but I can’t take regular antidepressants because they just make it worse. Oh well, at least I’m trying.

Oh, I wanted to show everyone how far along I’ve gotten on making my first scarf. This is the first anything I have crocheted, so it is taking me a long time, but I will eventually finish, just as I will eventually feel better!

Bad Days

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all of us who suffer from some form of invisible illness have good days and bad days.  I have had a bad couple of days.  I don’t really want to talk about yesterday for one because it would probably be too much information anyway, and for two, well, I just don’t want to talk about it.  Suffice it to say that it was a BAD day.

Today started out a little better, and I had PT this morning.  Usually, I bounce back pretty quickly from the torture that is physical therapy, but today my body just isn’t agreeing to do so.  I had a lot of trigger points on my stomach…partly around my incision scar, and the other two were right where they always are on my hip flexor muscle.  I guess I should probably look it up to see what I can learn about it, but I don’t even feel like doing that right now.  I am hurting so bad all I want to do is try to sleep…which is close to impossible and when I do sleep, I get a whole 2 or 3 hours at a time. At least for those two or three hours I don’t feel the pain. I believe that this is where a lot of depression comes from. Not only from the pain, but being unable to escape from it. Escapes are short-lived and if you spend all your time in bed, people think you’re depressed anyway.

I don’t know, but for some reason, I am having muscles spsms all over my body. This morning, my back was actually feeling better (because of the foam roller) and now, just after her trying to work out trigger points on my stomach, I have back muscles from my bottom all the way up to my shoulders trying to cramp. Not to mention the sensation that my stomach from right under my ribs all the way to my lower pelvis (hip flexor) is black and blue from PT this morning (which it is not…I’ve looked!)

I really should be (and sort of am) grateful that it has been a while since I have had bad days like this. However, for as much gratitude as I can muster, I have twice as much anger and frustration because I just want to feel better again. For a while I felt that things were getting better…and just like they always do, I am slapped in the face with another set of bad days. I truly hope that this doesn’t last long. With as much other stuff as I’ve been dealing with lately at home, I know that I don’t have the patience today to deal with anything. I am almost dreading him getting home from work, because he is going to expect me to be ok like I have been lately, and he doesn’t know how to deal with the bad days. He will either say the wrong thing, or even just insinuate something (like I’m just being lazy) and it’ll start a fight. Of course, as you know the circle of never-ending shit is that the pain causes the anxiety, the anxiety just causes more pain, and the two together make me a not so great person to be around. No wonder he says he gets tired of my shit. I would be tired of me too. I am tired of me…tired of this continuous roller-coaster of good and bad days. How am I supposed to learn to get used to this? To accept that this is my new “norm”? Well, I don’t want to accept it, I want to get better.

Note: as I am writing this I am crying, and the bigger of my three dogs (the one from the picture yesterday who was all covered up on the couch) kept trying to get to me. I put aside the tablet, and he started licking the tears off my face. How sweet is that? He has a habit of doing it, so I sort of knew what he wanted. I kept trying to tell him I was ok, but he had to make sure for himself before he would leave me alone. See why I love my “babies” so much?

Now, back to what I was saying…those of you who have been sick for a long time (i.e. Julie) how do you accept that this is your new life? At what point does it finally stick in that hard head of yours (mine, not yours) that life as you knew it is over and you are cursed to suffer for the rest of your life those bad days when even the good ones aren’t great? I have tried and tried and have not managed yet to accept this life I have been given. Any words of wisdom from any of you who accompany me in this suffering?