Three Good Days Is All You Get

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Troy Wagstaff

Three Good Days Is All You Get

 

This week, three decent days of pain management is all I got. My average pain is around a six to seven. The last three days have been around a four or five. Mostly a four. Of course nothing ever goes completely right. I have had huge bouts of chronic fatigue but the pain has been manageable.

I am frustrated. On the rare chance I get to a point where the pain is tolerable, I get greedy and I want several more days pain-free.

fibrochampionsblog_frustration_no_morethan3good_daysI am also frustrated because when I am having one of those rare episodes of good pain management I get nervous for fear that the pain will blow up, out of no where and it makes me leery as to what I try to do. I’ll take the pain-free days even though they wont last and even though I don’t always takes advantage of a pain free day.

They never include frustration as a symptom of fibromyalgia. But the frustration is as real as the pain itself.

Having said all that, I am grateful for three decently managed semi pain-0free days this past week.

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A Day In The Life Of Fibro: Frustration

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Troy Wagstaff

A Day In The Life Of Fibromyalgia: Frustration

It’s tough, oh so tough and miserable going all those years with chronic pain and assorted symptoms without a diagnosis. Then after all those years and the money you finally get diagnosed. At last, a light at the end of the tunnel, or so you were hoping.

After the diagnosis, then you think or rightfully hope for the correct medicine to manage your symptoms. That’s better than nothing, right? That’s not always the case. Maybe after a year or two or three you finally get a collection of medications and therapies that help manage your fibromyalgia. Less pain and less symptoms, but you know in the back of your mind, a flare up is always around the corner. Frustration!

Then after ten or fifteen years of watching a great deal of your old life, pre fibromyalgia, pass you by, you think you’re finally at peace with your new life of medication and flare ups and restrictions. That is until you watch a movie, TV show or a football game and the memories of jumping up from the ground and walking away from a tackle shaking off the temporary pain come back to haunt you. Frustration!

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The memories of getting off the message table feeling energized and spry comes flooding back to you reminding you that even a great therapeutic message has lost its magic. Frustration!

The memories stirred by a movie or a favorite song from the past stir your emotions and bring up memories and going out to dinner with your newly wed bride and then dancing all night long, come home fall into bed for two hours sleep only to have your old AM/FM radio alarm wake you up for another day or work and school. You wonder how that was ever possible and how impossible that is now with twenty or thirty years of fibromyalgia, eating away at your energy and physical abilities. Frustration!

So what does the ‘F’ in fibromyalgia stand for? Frustration!

Troy Wagstaff ©

 

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Five Fibromyalgia Emotions – Part One

Posted on July 25, 2015 by Troy Wagstaff

Five Fibromyalgia Emotions – Part One

There are countless emotions that those with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and chronic pain go through. I will write a small series of posts on some of the emotions that we who are afflicted with one of these chronic invisible illnesses go through. Here are the first five emotions.

Anguish

Anguish is an emotion that is derived from the distress of suffering or from acute suffering. Whether we are in dire life sucking pain or find ourselves drowning in fatigue we are suffering. From that suffering we go through the emotion of dire anguish because there is no end in sight from our suffering.

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Conflicted

Feeling conflicted comes from many different angles when suffering from chronic fatigue or pain. We feel conflicted from the myriad of symptoms that seem to contradict themselves and unless you’ve gone through it, you can scarcely understand that conflicted emotion. We also feel conflicted by the way others treat us. Some are supportive, others unbelieving, and others judgmental.

Frustration

It is so easy to feel frustrated when you are chronically ill, especially with fibromyalgia. You can be having a good day when the pain scale shows your pain at a three or four then out of nowhere are pain jumps up to a nine or ten. The symptoms come and go so much that it is impossible to make firm plans for this evening or next Friday because you don’t know how you will be feeling.

Loneliness

Of all the emotions we go through, loneliness is one of the roughest to experience. Being healthy and lonely is tough, but being chronically sick and in pain all the time adds to your feeling loneliness. Even if you are around supportive family and friends and they are talking about their day or their vacation you feel lonely because you can be a part of that conversation. Who wants to hear about your pain and stiffness or your fatigue or chronic headaches and the fact that you lay around all day?

Overwhelmed

The feeling of being overwhelmed is something most people can relate too, except for the feeling of being overwhelmed by chronic pain and fatigue. Day in and day out, night after night always feeling some type of pain and feeling worn-out constantly and nothing you can do will give you the energy you so desire. This is the emotion of being overwhelmed that we go through all the time.

Troy Wagstaff ©

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