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.

How Fibromyalgia Affects My Daily Life – Stress

How Fibromyalgia Affects My Daily Life – Stress

It’s no secret to anyone who has had a chronic illness for a long time that stress aggravates your condition, especially when that chronic illness is pain centered like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or other chronic pain disorders.

Yesterday, I had a very vivid experience that illustrates this point.

Without boring you with the details, I’ll summarize the event. My daughter is finishing up her cosmetology education. She had one last project. When my daughter handed in that last project, Darlene failed it with spurious claims on not following directions. She followed the instructions to the letter and so I called up the head instructor Darlene, and she told me what she told my daughter. What the instructor told me and what my daughter told me about the guidelines of the project was almost word for word the same instructions, yet she had the nerve to fail her.

I tried to explain how wrong it was, using her own words against her, in failing my daughter. She was stubborn and wouldn’t budge. A while later the Vice President of academics called us and asked that we bring in the project as part of her investigation. We did. During the conversation, it became readily apparent that she was taking the side of the teacher. The facts were not disputed, but she took the side of her friend. Although, to her credit, she provided two compromises to resolve the issue.

how_fibromyalgia_affects_my_daily_life_stress1My daughter choose an option and then I let myself dive into to her for the sake of justice. Since there would be no consequences for Darlene I decided I needed to make my case and educate this Vice President on the concept of consequences and justice. Granted, I did this from the standpoint of anger, but my points were valid. Finally, after I said what I wanted to say twice or more I stopped, thanked her for her time and found my daughter and left. Looking back on it, while I had valid points, I acted out of anger. I will write more on that in a later post as a way to manage stress.

This is where the story really begins.

This is where the story begins in dramatic fashion. Within four, maybe five minutes, we were still driving in the complex, I felt my lower back muscles move and twist and spasm. The pain wasn’t too bad because I had recently taken a pain pill and muscle relaxer. But when I started to feel those muscles move and squeeze I was amazed at how soon after that ordeal stress kicked into my body and physically manifested itself.

This story is just one more of a million ways about how fibromyalgia affects my daily life when stress is involved. This epiphany opens up room for me to consider in the future how to control my anger, that will be a topic for the future.

Troy Wagstaff ©

Ten Tips In Dealing With Someone Who Has Fibromyalgia

Ten Tips In Dealing With Someone Who Has Fibromyalgia

1. Believe us

ten_ways_to_deal_with_fibromites2. Validate us

3. Do not put any unnecessary pressure on us

4. Encourage us to find things we do to feel good about ourselves

5. Understand, we did not ask for this disease

6. Understand that Fibromites would rather do what you want, than suffer from the inability to do what you want them to do.

7. Realize that we should not over do it on our good days.

8. Stress can be a trigger to flare ups.

9. Do not make us feel guilty for having fibromyalgia

10. Know that we can make contributions to our family and to society

14 Ingredients For Fibro Stew – The Recipe for Fibromyalgia Stew

Fibro Stew

The Recipe for Fibromyalgia Stew

fibro_stewIt has long since become a common practice to share recipes online via Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites. I would like to share with all of you the recipe for fibromyalgia stew. The problem with the recipe for fibro stew is, no one knows what causes fibromyalgia. Researchers do know what the ingredients to fibro stew are. But they don’t know how to mix them, cook them or how high the temperature should be.

But knowing the ingredients of fibromyalgia stew will at least give you a good idea what it tastes like.

1. Chronic Pain

The primary ingredient to fibro stew is wide spread chronic muscle and tissue pain. The element of chronic pain can be as simple as carpel tunnel pain in your wrist to sciatica nerve pain in your lower back and legs. This chronic pain ingredient can pierce deep into the core of your spine and it can cause all kinds of muscle spasms. Chronic pain is the chief additive to fibro stew.

2. Chronic Fatigue

A liberal dose of chronic fatigue added to the stew is very important. This type of chronic fatigue is not the Swiss, French or Mexican type of fatigue, it’s the type of chronic fatigue you feel when you wake up after a good nights rest feeling unrefreshed and worn out. It’s the type of fatigue you feel when you are recuperating from major surgery and your body craves sleep and rest to heal. You can nap and sleep all day long and still feel tired and void of energy.

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3. Fibro Fog

This common part of the recipe, fibro fog, is when you know what words to use, you even know the meaning of the word, but can’t think of the actual word. It’s going into another room to look for your reading glasses only to find them on your head or looking for the car keys while they are in your hand. The ingredient of fibro fog is where you know the answers, it just takes a longer time than usual to get them. With fibro fog you forget what you were concentrating on.

4. IBS

By glancing over this list of ingredients of fibro stew you can clearly see there are a lot of elements to the stew, Irritable bowl syndrome is just one of many elements to the stew. IBS is also served as entree for some people that don’t have fibro stew.

5. Tension Headaches

Don’t confuse chronic fibro pain with tension headaches. While they share a common element, which is pain, they are still different ingredients. When your muscle spasms get so tight they cause your head to ache, then you know you have the right ingredient in fibro stew.

6. Migraines

Migraine headaches are another big part of fibro stew. It has similarities with chronic pain and tension headaches, which is, terrible pain, but it is a separate ingredient to the stew and a unique part of the stew.

7. Depression

Depression is a key element to the mix. Several of these ingredients can be served as an entree or be part of the fibro stew. Depression is just one of the many of elements of fibro stew. It is often served as its own entree.

8. Tremors

Tremors in the extremities are a common additive to the Fibro stew. Sometimes your hands, legs or feet can have such violent tremors that you might loose the food from your fork or spoon. This item can be optional as it is not something that every fibro stew has.

9. Insomnia

It can seem strange that elements of the stew can be as diverse and yet related as chronic fatigue and insomnia, but this list of ingredients can appear to be contradictory at times and that is the nature of this recipe. Don’t question the chronic contradictions in these ingredients, but rather embrace them.

10. Sensitivities

Sensitivities like a sensitivity to sunlight or UV rays are a common element in the recipe of fibro stew along with other categories of sensitivities like noise and chemical sensitivities. Like herbs and various seasonings, the sensitivities can vary according to taste and circumstances.

11. High Sensitivity To Stress

Any chef or health care provider knows that stress, through no fault of your own, is a major component to many medical conditions like high blood pressure, migraines, and fibromyalgia. Use the sensitivity, ingredients according to how your stew works.

12.  Night Sweats

Night sweats are also an optional ingredient, however, it is more common than you might think for a good recipe of fibro stew.

13. Coordination Issues

Some people thing that the coordination issue ingredients are related to other parts of the stew, but it is a surprisingly popular element to the stew.

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14. Anxiety

Anxiety is another often overlooked, but a big part of fibro stew. It’s not for everyone, but it is a part of a fibro stew of many people. Use accordingly.

There are even more parts to a typical fibro stew. We have only scratched the surface of what goes into the fibromyalgia recipe. There are many factors and other parts to consider when listing all that goes into chronic fibro stew.

As we said at the beginning, we don’t know how long to cook this recipe or at what temperature or in what proportions, but knowing what goes into fibro stew can give you an approximate idea of the fibro stew flavor.

Just as fibro stew is real so are the ingredients. This fibro stew mentions fourteen ingredients. There are more than seventy symptoms. Add to the main ingredients the other ingredients (symptoms) according to what you suffer from and viola, you have a tasty painful fibro stew.

Do you have any other ingredients that are a part of to your fibro stew that you would like to share with us? I’ love to hear them.

Troy Wagstaff ©

This is for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not medical advise. Consult your health care provider for medical advise.

Christian Theme Memes

Christian Theme Memes

These are Christian themed memes or word pictures. Feel free to use these Christian memes for free. CallahanWriter retains the copyright, the memes on this blog are free to use without modification. The various text used in these Christian memes or pictures comes from the Bible, some from Christian writers (credit is given when such is the case) and some of the text is written by CallahanWriter.  These  are public domain use for non commercial purposes.

 

 


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Living Sermon by Edgar A. Guest

Living Sermon by Edgar A. Guest


 

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Behold, I have engraven thee upon the palms of my hands


 

 

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Bless The Lord who bears us up.

 


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Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the places you can. All the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as you can. John Wesley


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Do what you can and pray for what you cannot do.

 


 

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God gave us mouths that close and ears that don’t. That must tell us something…


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Stress makes you believe everything has to happen right now…Faith reassures you that everything will happen in Gods Timing.

 


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Footprints In the Sand


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The first to forgive is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forgive is the happiest.

 


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Forgiveness: For if ye forgive men their trespasses, you Heavenly Father will forgive you. CallahanWriter.

 


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Please forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses against us.

 


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Forgiveness allows you to stop carrying the burden and pain associated with whatever hurt you.

 


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Forgiveness is more important to the victim than it is for the victimizer.

 


 

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When God speaks and a man that men will always will be right. Thomas s. Monson.


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Everything happens for a reason. Oh really? Everything happens for one of two reasons…Consequences or because God wills it so.

 

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Trusting God’s plan for your everyday life is equally  as important as trusting God’s plan for your eternal life.

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A Christian is someone who believes Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the light, and the only way to gain salvation.


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