Car Crashes Can Cause Stress For Chronic Pain and Fibromylagia Patients

Car Crash Stress Fibro

A Day In The Life Of Fibromyalgia

Anyone who has had fibromyalgia for any great length of time has to come to terms that stress of any kind can be a major trigger in a fibro flare up. Life may be good with a whole week of fibro pain levels at a constant four and then a major stressor happens and the fibro pain scale jumps through the roof.

It’s taken me about a week to write about it because it’s only been the last few days I have come back off that flare up.

It was about 8:00 a.m. and I got a call from my middle daughter who called me on the phone. She said, “Dad, I need you to come and pick me up because I’ve been in a car wreck.”

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“Are you alright?”

“I’m not hurt but I think my car is totaled. There are other cars in the wreck.”

“Are you sure your alright?” By now I am making sure I have my keys and wallet. My wife is asking about the conversation. I say Brit has been in a car wreck, she says she’s ok.”

“What happened, I ask”?

“I got rear-ended.”

“Where are you at?”

“I’m on the off ramp on Center St.”

“I am on my way.”

“I’ll call you when I am on the road.”

The whole time she is emotional on the phone.

I told my wife, “Britt has been in a car wreck, she was rear-ended going off I-15 onto Center St., I am on my way. Have your mother take you to work.”

My wife replies with “OK, text me when you know hat’s going on.”

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I am worried and scared for my daughter, but I feel kind of normal. Experience has taught me that the feeling or being normal won’t last. But I know this is not a time to be concerned with that.

I am on my way. I call her to check on her and she’s filling out a police report. She’s emotional, but trying hard to keep it together. It seems like forever, but I am there in fifteen minutes. Put my hazard lights on and get out of the car. I see highway Patrol vehicles on the far left lane and on the off ramp on the far right side of the interstate where I am at. I see my girl in a car with a witness to the crash. I come up to her and the good Samaritan rolls down the window and I ask her how she’s doing?

She says she is starting to feel pain in her neck. She has had a bad back for five years since she last got rear-ended.

A tow truck shows up so I get all of her personal belongings out and put them in my vehicle. I talk to the trooper and asked him how the girl who rear-ended my daughter is on the far side of the Interstate. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know, that’s what we are investigating.”

“Will that girl be sited,” I ask.

“We’re still investigating, but yes, she is responsible for the accidents.”

“My daughter is starting to hurt. If you can be done with her in five minutes fine, but otherwise I need to take her to the ER.”

“That’s fine, ” he said, “I can drop off the information to you there if I need to.”

I go back to my daughter and ask her if there is anything special that needs to be removed from her car. She rattled off a list of things. I had got most of it, but went back and found a few more things. This time I take a big look at what happened on the inside of her car. The force of the impact broke the driver’s side seat. Jammed all the doors, but the front passenger side. I am amazed at the extent of internal body damage to the car.

The trooper comes up to me and said, “we are going to meet at the Chevron station off of Center street to clear up the emergency vehicles and then I’‘ll print out a report for your insurance. Unless you need to go to the hospital.”

“We can wait,” I said.

I shake the hand of the good Samaritan and thanked him with gratitude.

We had our accident report and left for the ER. She had a CT-Scan and a large series of X-rays and all the was wrong was a bad case of whiplash.

She wanted to go see her car that had gotten her through a large portion of college and to say goodbye. We checked for a few more things and we got pictures of the car.

We got her prescriptions filled. Got her an appointment that day with the chiropractor and a week later she is still under doctor’s care but she is healing and doing well.

I rose to the occasion, thanks to adrenaline. That afternoon when I knew my daughter was comfortable and was resting I relaxed and the adrenaline wore off quickly. It took about five days to come off of that flare up that followed. I was in such shock and in so big of a hurry I forgot to take my fibro emergency go bag. I did have the presence of mind to grab the book I was currently reading. Didn’t ever use it. I was amazed how fast we got in and out of the ER.

fibro_car_crash_stressUnexpected things happen to those of us with Chronic pain and fibromyalgia. Life goes on even if we are sick or in pain. We don’t have much choice but to deal with it, taking it day by day. I was able to rise to the occasion, but I paid for it for five days of worse than normal pain and malaise. It was worth it. Just another day with fibromyalgia and the consequences of the terrible disease.

10 Things Everyone Should Know About People With Chronic Pain

10 Things Everyone Should Know About People With Chronic Pain

This is an open letter to anyone who knows someone with a chronic pain illness. From the perspective of someone with a Chronic Pain illness, these are ten things we want you to know about those of us, who suffer from anyone of a number of chronic pain diseases.

1. Why We Cancel Social Engagements:

People with Fibromyalgia and other chronic pain illnesses, often suffer anguish from having to cancel plans so frequently. We don’t want to, but we do, that is if we are brave enough to make plans in the first place. Think for a minute, what it might be like to have a chronic pain illness. To a large degree you become a shut in. When you move around with chronic pain, it sucks the energy out of you. Also, the more you move the more it hurts. When you’re a shut in you are willing to do whatever it takes to get out and be social. But sometimes you just can’t. We’re sorry, more than you know. All we ask is for patience and understanding.

2. Chronic Pain Is More Than Just An illness:

Saying that fibromyalgia or any other chronic pain condition is an illness implies that there is a cure or that we should feel better after a couple of weeks of medicine and therapy. The important thing to remember is the key word chronic. The word “Chronic” means “persisting for a long time or constantly recurring.” Chronic pain is not like having the dreaded achy flu with a fever for a week that suddenly disappears one morning when you wake up and you feel just fine. We wish it worked that way. We pray to wake up some morning to find our chronic pain gone and have a lot of energy. But the word chronic means that it will persist for a very long time, likely forever, especially it your chronic pain has a more detailed diagnosis like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue or neuropathy.

3. How Are We Doing?

If you are kind enough to ask “how are you doing?” or “how are you feeling?” and we act kind of funny about answering you, it’s because it’s complicated, or because we wonder, do you really want to know? Or because we get tired of saying we feel lousy. Don’t be easily deceived. We may say “we are fine.” We may be lying or we may be truthful. It’s hard to say because is depends on the time of day when you ask that question. Our condition can vary from one hour to the next.

4. How Can You Help Us?

If you’re interested in helping us, it can literally be as simple as sincerely validating us. Be genuinely sincere when you say you understand. We can spot phonies a mile a way. We would like to have your honest acceptance of who we are with a chronic pain condition and be patient with us.

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5. Important Things to Understand About Us

Things can change hour by hour with for those of us who suffer from chronic pain. So please bare with us.

We are victims, we didn’t ask for a chronic pain disease, who in their right mind would?

We are as independent as we can possibly be. It may not look like it considering how much help we sometimes need. If you should happen to see a smile on our face, please consider how much energy and effort it is taking. We would give anything to not be sick with chronic pain. Anyone who enjoys pain is insane. It may not look like it, but we try to live the best, the most normal life we can. It may not look like it but we are. We need a lot of sleep because not only does pain hurt, it wears us out and makes us tired.

6. Chronic Pain Illnesses’ Are Real

Most chronic illnesses now have an identifiable name like Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Neuropathy, Trigeminal Neuralgia, IBD, IBS, TMJ, and Gout to name a few. Just because we don’t look sick doesn’t mean we’re not sick. We can feel crippling pain and hopelessness and look fine on the outside.

7. Don’t Judge Us

You may see us clean out our car or do a load of laundry and think we are faking a chronic pain illness. The truth of it is that the majority of our time and for some, all of their time is spent in pain. But most of us have a few good days and because we are not lazy we try and do as much as can of our few good days. We have to pace ourselves on good days so that we don’t have to pay extra on bad days. Some times we choose to over due it on good days because we just want a quick taste of being normal. We know we will pay a price for it the next day but sometimes we think it is worth it. Another point to make is just because you haven’t heard of all the pain related illnesses doesn’t mean they don’t exists.

8. Sometimes It’s Hard to Explain How We Feel

There are so many painful sensations and accompanying emotions and brain fog it’s often hard to put how we feel exactly into words. But trust us when we say, we feel terrible physically and emotionally.

9. Medication

There is a plethora of medication and pain relievers out there as options to manage our pain. But even with all the proper medication we still feel pain. Pain meds don’t take away all the pain. Sometimes the best we can hope for is a degree of relief, but seldom, if ever, does medication take away all the pain.

10. We Are Not Hypochondriacs

We are not making this chronic pain stuff up. There are some people that really are hypochondriacs but if you think we are, take a look in our medicine cabinet or observe us for a few days and see just how fake are illness isn’t.

Conclusion

We don’t want pity, and we don’t want to be looked down upon. We want respect, validation and trust. We really are sick even though we don’t look sick. Ask yourself, who in their right mind would want to be sick with chronic pain for their whole life. We don’t.

The 5 Most Popular Posts Of The Last Two Weeks At Fibro Champions Blog

The 5 Most Popular Posts Of The Last Two Weeks At Fibro Champions Blog

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38 Tips To Make Traveling With Fibromyalgia Easier

Coping With Fibromyalgia And Chronic Fatigue – The 10 C’s

10 Things We Would Like Our Pain-free Friends to Know About Us

Not All Fibromyalgia Symptoms Are Fibromyalgia Symptoms

7 Fibromyalgia Awareness Free Graphics Or Memes

20 Top Tips For Managing Fibromyalgia

20 Top Tips For Managing Fibromyalgia

1. Let go of any guilt.

2. Recognize the contradictions of fibromyalgia.

3. Manage your expectations of yourself.

4. Manage the expectations of others.

5. Allow for rest.

6. Pace yourself.

7. Understand the illness.

8. Forgive the illness, don’t carry the baggage around.

9. Exercise and move around.

20 tips managing fibro10. Don’t give up!

11. Get the best sleep you can, even if it’s in nap form.

12. Stay Positive

13. Be consistent with your meds.

14. Keep all your doctor appointments

15. Be polite but assertive with your doctors, ultimately you are in control.

16. Manage your stress levels, Keep them as small as possible

17. Keep your mind and memory active and engaged.

18. Use all forms of therapy that work for you like a TENS or a heating pad etc.

19. Don’t be afraid to say no.

20. Remember, even if people around you say it’s a “trash can” diagnosis, God knows how you really feel.

8 Inspirational Fibromyalgia Quotes and Memes

8 Inspirational Fibromyalgia Quotes and Memes


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fibro_fellowship


fierce fighters


don't focus

10 Inspirational And Funny Quotes For Those With Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue And Other Chronic Invisible Illnesses

10 Inspirational And Funny Quotes For Those With Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue And Other Chronic Invisible Illnesses

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fibro_showers


trust_in_the_Lord


spiritual quotes for fibro


faking


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biscuts


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7 Deadly Sins Of Fibromyalgia And Invisible Illnesses

Seven Deadly Sins Of Fibromyalgia

As most Christians know there are seven deadly sins that are the mother of all other sins. They are pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. While they have their place in our personal spiritual and physical salvation, they also have their place in our life of chronic sickness. Understanding the seven deadly sins of incurable invisible illnesses help us to know how they apply to our chronic illnesses can help us live a better quality of life.

1. Pride: Is the excessive belief that one can deal with fibromyalgia alone, with help from no one else. All this will do leads to even more misery than fibromyalgia has already caused. Pride is the idea that we are better than anyone else and can do all things by ourselves. That sounds ludicrous to the ear, there are those in all walks of life that suffer from pride, the original sin. Pride prevents us from receiving Heavenly help in our painful path of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and all other types of invisible illnesses. We need to let the medical professionals into our journey as well as quality advice and support from those who are going through what you are going through.

2. Envy: Envy is the desire to have for ourselves that which belongs to other people. As we communicate with the community of invisible illnesses we come across people who have been through what we are going through and they are having more success than we are in managing their illness. They have a better, kinder doctor than we do. We need to find joy in our hearts for them and not envy them for their good fortune.

7 deadly sins

3. Gluttony: Is an inordinate desire to consume more than which is healthy for our chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain or other invisible illness. If one pain pill takes the edge off the pain, then why not take one more to fully take away the pain. If exercise relieves stiffness and helps a little with pain management and helps with keeping our sedentary heart a little more healthy then if a little is good, a lot more is much better, right? Wrong. Overdoing medicine, exercise or any other type of therapy can do more harm than good.

4. Lust: In the case of chronic invisible illnesses like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and POTS lust is an inordinate craving for wanting what we can or shouldn’t have or an inordinate craving for what we shouldn’t do. Part of the way to get rid of that lust is to focus on what we can do without exacerbating our current condition. This is tough because what we want to do is to be normal. Is there anything wrong with that? Not for people with invisible Illnesses, but for us with fibromyalgia it will just make our symptoms worse.

5. Anger: I am not speaking for everyone, then again maybe I am. I find anger one of the worsts of these seven deadly sins. I want to be able to run like I did more than thirty years ago. I want to ski the best snow on earth in the mountains of Utah. I want to wake up at five in the morning and go fishing. I want to get on the floor and play with my dog. I want to, I want to, I want to . . . and the list goes on and on and on. Not being able to do these things makes me angry. But what I need to do is be grateful for what I can do and love what I can love, most especially I can love my wife and children all the more for the support they give me. I need to fight anger with humility, gratitude and love.

7 deadly sins_invisible_illnesses6. Greed: To be greedy is to want more than Heavenly Father is ready to bless us with. He is teaching us lessons with his blessings. We need to be patient. We need to accept that assertion and we need to always keep God in our lives and be grateful to Him for all that we do have. We fight greed by being grateful for what we do have. Maybe we have POTS or Fibro but we don’t have all the symptoms. Perhaps we can do things that we shouldn’t be able to do because of the blessings from God.

7. Sloth: Is avoiding physical or spiritual work to manage our various chronic invisible illnesses. What I am going to say may not sit well with many victims of invisible illnesses like POTS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic pain and other invisible illnesses. In spite the extreme chronic pain, fatigue or other debilitating symptoms we need to work on coping and dealing with the symptoms. Many of these symptoms are manageable. Some symptoms can be managed to the point of going into remission. But we need to do the work, even if that work is simply praying and going to doctors appointments and taking our medications as prescribed.

These seven deadly sins of incurable invisible illnesses are very important to consider if we want to have some control over the quality of our life with these protracted illnesses. There are countless medical things we can do and there are unlimited things we can do outside of medicine to fight the good fight for some degree of peace and wellness in the midst of our journey with chronic illnesses. We need to be aware of the seven deadly sins that get in our way of peace, hope and joy.

Troy Wagstaff ©

19 Ways The Smart Phone Can Help With Fibro, CFS And Other Invisible Illnesses

19 Ways The Smart Phone Can Help With Fibro, CFS And Other Invisible Illnesses

Twenty-five ways the smart phone can help manage Fibro fog, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, Chronic pain and all other invisible illness.

The 24 ways your smart phone can help with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and all the other invisible illnesses. A while back, I wrote a post for the Fibro Champions Blog that was entitled 22 Items For Your Fibro Emergency Go Bag. The article applies to CFS and all other chronic illnesses of invisible illnesses.

These twenty-four ways a smart phone can help with your chronic illnesses may depend on what type of smart phone you have. I have an Apple iPhone. But I assume the competitive nature of the smart phones would provide many of the same default apps and many of the same downloaded apps.

We will review the fifteen default apps that can help with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and invisible illnesses. We will save the seven downloadable apps for a separate article after the Fibro Journey Book is published in about a month or so. I am very busy putting the final touches on the book so I can’t write as much or as often while finishing the book.

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The apps that come with a smart phone eliminate nine items on the list, almost half. 22 Items For Your Fibro Emergency Go-bag.

1. Extra Cell Phone Battery. 2. Cell Phone Charger. 3. Two days’ worth of all your MEDs. 4. Earphones for your cell phone. 5. Book(s) to read. 6. A notepad. 7. Pen or pencil. 8. MEDs. List. 9. Medical History. 10. Scriptures. 11. Food, at least enough to take your MEDs. Protein bars or energy bars. 12. Bottled water. 13. Cards, or some other small game. 14. Emergency money other than what you have in your wallet. 15. Small comfy pillow. 16. A small blanket. 17. Pair of comfy socks. 18. Tens Unit. 19. Heating Pad. 20. Reading Glasses. 21. Personal female items. 22. A few DVDs

Let me tell you how I got the idea. I was telling one of my daughters who says yes to our request to work around the house but forgets to do her chores. I said when you say yes to do a chore set an alarm for when you will be ready to do the chore and you’ll remember to do it.

As I told her that, the idea came to me that I do well in writing down “to do list” but forget to look at the lists due to my short term memory issues from fibro fog. So I thought I would do the same, put my to do list on my smart phone alarm. Then I started to think of all the other ways a smart phone could help me manage my disease.

Using a smart phone makes items number one, two and four all the more important in your go bag with the heavy reliance on your smart phone. After all, if you don’t keep your phone charged it won’t be very helpful.

On my smart phone I have the following default apps on my iPhone:

1. Calendar: Using the smart phone calendar is particularly good because it will provide reminders of the appointments the day before with a beep or custom tone.

2. Camera: Can be used for note taking. For instance, if you need to take notes from a medical document, take a picture and save your hands from getting tired. Also, you can take pictures of your pill bottles so you will always know what pills you are taking. This is important because most doctors’ office want to know what your current MEDs are. There are also other obvious reasons for a camera.

3. Clock: Keeping track of time is easy with a smart phone, especially for those who don’t like to wear watches.

4. Maps: The Google maps app and other map apps will give you driving instructions to get where you need to go. When you’re going to many new doctors this can be helpful.

5. Notes: The notes app eliminates three items from Go Bag mentioned in a previous post. It gets rid or a pen, pencil and note pad.

6. Safari: Helps you access the Internet

7. Telephone: Don’t forget that will all the bells and whistles of a smart phone, a smart phone is primarily a telephone allowing you easy communication where ever you are.

8. Voice Memos: If typing in the Notes app is too tedious for your painful fingers, then using the Voice Memo app. It’s a good way to take notes when you’re in a doctor’s office, ER or some other place where note taking may be beneficial..

9. Weather: The weather app tells you the weather for the day and the upcoming week. Having Weather knowledge is important to plan our upcoming days.

10. Speaker Phone: The speaker phone allows more than one person to be in on the conversation.

11. Texting: Many smart phone plans allow unlimited texting which is a good way to communicate. Testing is a good way to communicate should you find yourself in a place the requires quiet. With texting, you can always communicate.

12. Recents: On the iPhone is a list of all your recent incoming and outgoing phone calls. If someone calls you while you’re driving or otherwise unable to answer the phone you can call them back if you recognize the phone number.

13. Favorite and commonly used phone numbers: For any doctor, health care provider, hospital in your area, program in the phone number so you’ll recognize who is calling you. And on the favorite list of phone numbers, reserve this for the most frequently called numbers.

14. Alarm: The Alarm feature may be one of the best features for those with fibro fog. Besides the calendar that will remind you a day before of your appointments, the Alarm can be set for appointments that come up that day or that will be coming up in the future. It will sound an alarm and remind you of pending appointments. This is my new best friend. I am very good at making to do lists, but I forget to look at them. This feature will do away with that problem.

15. Timer: The timer is awesome for me when I put something in the oven and then go to my den. I can’t hear the oven alarm so I set my timer to coincide with the oven timer. When it goes off, then I go down to the oven.

16. Games: Games are a good way to get your mind off of things. Every phone that I know of comes with several default games. However, there are countless games that can be downloaded for free to add to your list on your phone.

17. Voice Activated – Siri: For the Apple IPhone Siri is the name of voice activation and hands off using many features of your phone. This is a good safety feature.

18. Hands free, Blue tooth: A blue tooth feature is usually an add-on purchase but it gives you more hands free ability to talk on your phone while safely driving.

19. Calculator: The Calculator is a great app for figuring out many simple math questions.

There are thousands of free download apps to add to your iPhone giving you more features to deal with in managing your chronic invisible illnesses. Smart phone users have access to download thousands of additional apps for free thousands more for a small charge. In the next installment of this article we will talk about at least thirteen downloadable apps that we will go into after I am finished with my fibro book in about a month or less.

Helpful Downloadable Apps

Facebook

Flash Light

Games

Google Search

Health App

Music

Reader Apps

Scriptures

YouTube

Google Pay or other payment apps.

Translator

Compass

Read bar codes

10 Symptoms of Fibro Fog And 1 Known Solution

10 Symptoms of Fibro Fog And 1 Known Solution

  1. Forget to take your meds.
  2. Forget peoples names that you should ordinarily know.
  3. Want to use a word but can’t. You know what the meaning of the word is, you can even describe what the word is, but you can’t think of the word.
  4. Short term memory loss.
  5. Forget to read your notes you write so that you wont forget things.
  6. Staring into space before brain “kicks in.
  7. Inability to recognize familiar surroundings.
  8. Lose things easily.
  9. Mind wanders easily.
  10. Lack of concentration.

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There is not a lot that can be done about the symptoms of fibromyalgia fog. But understanding what the symptoms are to fibro fog is a weight lifted off your mind, providing you can even remember that you have fibro fog 🙂 ha ha.

In another post I wrote about how language arts can help your mind get back some of what fibro fog has taken from you. How to Reinvent Yourself With Fibro . . . Living an Eventful Purpose Filled Life

71 Fibromyalgia Emotions

71 Fibromyalgia Emotions

This is a list of 71 common emotions for those who suffer with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome and all the other invisible illnesses. We suffer all the emotions that everyone else does but these emotions are prevalent in our lives due to the illness we have.

Agitation

Amazement

Anger

Anguish

Annoyance

Anticipation

Anxiety

Commotion

Concern

Confidence

Conflicted

Confusion

Contempt

Defeat

Defensiveness

Denial

Depression

Despair

Determination

fibro_invisible_illness_emotions

Disappointment

Disbelief

Disgust

Doubt

Dread

Eagerness

Embarrassment

Endearing

Envy

Excite

Fear

Frustration

Gratitude

Grief

Guilt

Hatred

Hopeful

Humiliation

Hurt

Impatient

Indifference

Insecurity

Irritation

Jealousy

Loneliness

Love

Nervousness

Nostalgia

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Overwhelmed

Paranoia

Pride

Rage

Regret

Reluctance

Resentment

Resignation

Sadness

Satisfaction

Scorn

Shame

Shock

Skepticism

Somberness

Sorrow

Surprise

Suspicion

Sympathy

Terror

Uncertainty

Unease

Wariness

Worry