14 Tools To Manage Fibro Fog

Reduce The Stress Of Fibromyalgia

There are more than fourteen tools available that not only help manage fibro fog, but can also help in reducing some of the stress of having fibromyalgia.

For those of us with Fibromyalgia, we are always in constant pain and for most of us with fibro, we also suffer from fibro fog. Whether you suffer from fibro fog or not, these tips will help you with fibromyalgia and will help even more if you have fibro fog.
With a smart phone, we can lighten up our load in a major way as we limp along in a life filled with lost memories, foggy brains and chronic pain.
My smart phone is an iPhone. All smart phones have these features built into the phone or have equivalent apps.

From experience, I am going to share with you the tools I use on my smart phone to help with fibro fog and fibromyalgia.

1. Camera: Having a camera in your pocket or purse is a great tool for memory. If you see something that you’re afraid you’ll forget, then take a picture of it. You can use the camera to take pictures of your pill bottles, instructions from the doctor or anything else that you’re afraid you might forget. When looking at the pictures they can be enlarged so it is easy to see the details.

You can reverse the camera for selfie’s. That also makes for a good mirror. If you want one less thing to carry around in your purse, then instead of taking a selfie use the camera to see how you look before going into an appointment or whenever you need a mirror.

I discovered one time, while scrolling through my pictures that it was like a photo album. Looking at the pictures I had taken for fun and for fibro reasons, I had memories I otherwise would have forgotten. It was fun to recall events that I had forgotten. Take pictures liberally and back them up from time to time on a hard drive or thumb drive.

2. Along with the camera to help you not forget things is the Notes App. You can open the app and type messages to yourself. You can use the Notes for a shopping list. If typing with those tiny keys is hard, or in my case frustrating, then use the dictation button. Just to the left of the Space button is a button with a microphone. Click it and it will record your voice and type your words in the Notes page.

3. Along with, or in place of the Notes App, you could use the Voice Memos app to speak instead of writing with those little buttons. It’s a built in digital recorder. Personally, I prefer to use the voice recorder in Notes. But that’s just me.

4. The Calendar App may become your new best friend. When I started to use it, the first five or six times it seemed clumsy, but after I got the hang of it, it became much easier to use. We are always going to visit doctors and we make many appointments. After you place your doctor’s appointment in the calendar, if you try to schedule another overlapping appointment, you will see the mistake and adjust your appointment time. With your smart phone you can see when your other appointments are, without getting up and going to the calendar on the wall. With the calender app you don’t need to worry about losing all those appointment reminder cards.

5. The Reminders App that comes standard on my iPhone will remind me of upcoming events. It ties into the Calendar App as well. If you press the little blue “i” after typing in your text reminder then you will go into the Details section of the Reminder. You can choose a day for the reminder and set an alarm and a time for that alarm. If it is something every day like taking your pills at a certain time, then you can repeat it every day, every week, etc. You can further edit it to a monthly or yearly reminder. There are other features like Priority and Notes if you have complicated instructions for taking your MEDs.

6. Voice Activation. Several of the things we have mentioned already and some yet to be mentioned can be voice activated by clicking on the Microphone button or by holding the button down at the bottom of your phone. I use it a lot to set alarms. It can be used to set Appointments, create Notes, create Reminders, play music, check the Weather, and you can ask for directions to wherever you want to go if you have a GPS map app on your phone.

7. Music. Being able to play music can be calming, entertaining and fun.

8. Game Apps can help you kill time during a long wait at the doctor’s office. If you use strategy games, it can count as physical therapy for your brain and fibro fog.

9. The Weather App is essential during winter of periods of bad weather. We all know how bad weather can affect our stiffness and pain flare ups.

10. The Calculator is a nice convenience. It can be voice activated. This is helpful for finding the best value when shopping or helping you with your MEDs.

11. Some smart phones allow you to adjust the text, making it larger or smaller.

12. Flashlight App I had to download the Flashlight app. It has been helpful in so many ways. If you’re having trouble at night finding the right key, use your flashing light. Need to jump start your batter at night? Use your flashlight.

13. Google Maps or other GPS mapping apps can be used to get you around town, or can guide you on your vacation. I prefer one such as Google Maps that is voice activated.

14. Compass App is self explanatory to some extent. But it also has the numbers at the bottom of the compass that tell when you are at any given moment in the form of longitude and latitude which can be used in emergencies to tell emergency personnel where you are at.

If you have an iPhone you can ask Siri, what she can do and you can get a Tips app to learn how to better use the phone. The more you use your smart phone the more helpful it begins to be. I downloaded the Kindle App so I can read books while I am in the waiting room in the doctor’s office. There are hundreds, if not thousands of free e-books on Amazon you can download or read from the cloud.

Other useful Apps are games, email app for your email program, Pinterest, Facebook, Browsers, Bank apps and whatever else makes sense for you. I almost forgot to mention medical apps that can record all medicines you’re taking and a list of medical problems you have, allergies and a host of other medical information. I am surprised by how many of these apps are free to download.

When I first became mobile after a couple of years of trial and error, I carried around a bag to put many things in that bag that I can now have in my smart phone which can be carried in my pocket. I also bought a protective covering that protects against scratches and damage incurred from dropping the phone.

Sometimes when I go on about how cool a smart phone can be for someone like me with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, I almost forget that it is a phone as well. I can talk or text with anyone around the world. The smart phone is great non medical technology for those with chronic illness like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, or Lyme disease to mention a few.

Filed under: Fibromyalgia - Fbro Awareness | Tagged: 14 Tools To Manage Fibro Fog, chronic pain, fibro, Fibromyalgia, iphone, lyme disease, Reduce The Stress Of Fibromyalgia, smart phones |