The importance of self-care

November 21, 2011

There’s the stuff we do almost every day.  It’s almost habitual after a while.  There’s certain exercises and certain diets and monitoring movements and adjusting for pain.  And then there’s the out-of-the-ordinary stuff that messes up any semblance of a schedule we might have had.

Yesterday I wrote about feeling almost sick.  I did the right things to take care of myself: I got a little fresh air and exercise and spent the rest of the day resting.  I took something to help me sleep and managed to sleep almost 10 hours with only a few interruptions.  These days, that’s fantastic.  Still, I woke up today feeling horrible.  I’m not sick sick.  I don’t have a fever, my stomach is fine, I’m not coughing or sneezing.  My only real symptom is that I feel lousy.  I spent the morning watching tv.  Then I took a nap for 3 hours.  Then I watched more tv.  I was going to read, but I fell asleep before I even found where I’d left off on the page.  Doing dishes and typing on the computer are the most activity I’ve had today.

Now, this all sucks, no doubt.  I wish I felt better.  There are things I was going to do today.  Then again, I’m so glad I was able to do this.  I’m not working right now, so I didn’t have to worry about upsetting a boss or missing project deadlines.  I know that when I really need a day like this to rest I shouldn’t worry about those things.  I know that.  But I still worry about it, and sometimes I push myself to go to work when I shouldn’t.  Of course, that only makes the symptoms much worse.  So yeah, today really wasn’t all that bad.  I lost a day that I could have spent doing other things, but it’s worth it.  Hopefully I’ll feel better in time for Thanksgiving.  And if not, well, there’s only so much that any of us can do about our health, right?

There are some lessons I have learned very well from the illnesses.  Accepting my situation when it means a major disruption to my life is not one I have learned well, and it’s one I have to keep relearning over and over.  Today has been a good reminder; my health is what matters.  Jobs and friends and errands and everything else can and will wait.  It is more important that I take care of myself.  Now, I just have to be sure to remember that next time, too.

If any of this sounds familiar, if you can relate, please share it on Facebook and/or Twitter.  This blog is new, and it would be great to share it.

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Posted by chronicrants

The “almost” feeling

November 20, 2011

Do you ever get warning symptoms before you get sick?  What about before you get a flare?

For good or bad, having a chronic illness forces us to be much more aware of our bodies than a lot of us would otherwise be.  I’m pretty sure I would have ignored the way I felt first thing this morning, but after years of dealing with these illnesses, I’ve learned that a sore throat isn’t always just a sore throat.  For me, it’s a warning signal.  This is my body’s way of saying that something bad will happen soon.  If I don’t get some sleep in the next day, I’m going to get sick or get a flare or both.  Fun.

Now, on the bright side, getting sick would get me out of some unfortunate holiday obligations this week.  But it would also cause me to miss some fun holiday stuff too.  I guess I better pay the bribe and get some sleep.  If only it was that easy.  I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, but for some reason I’ve been waking up about 7 hours later, for no good reason.  Still, I can’t risk it, so tonight I’m taking a Benedryl, turning off my cell phone, and getting some sleep.  I hope.  12 or 14 hours should do the trick, based on past experience.

Yep, I’ve got the sore throat and the weakness and some fatigue and I know what it means.  I know what this means now.  The thing is, 10 years ago, I didn’t know what it meant.  And I’m pretty sure that even now I’m missing signs from my body.  Maybe there’s something I could have done yesterday, or maybe there’s more I could do now.  I think that a key part of treatment should be learning how to read our bodies.  Does anyone even teach this?  Maybe a doctor once told me to start paying attention, but I don’t remember it.  Autoimmune diseases can be frustratingly unpredictable.  Even a 12 hour warning is helpful.  I just wish I knew better how to recognize it.  I wish we all did.

 

If any of this sounds familiar, if you can relate, please share it on Facebook and/or Twitter.  This blog is new, and it would be great to share it.

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Posted by chronicrants

Where’s the predictability?

November 14, 2011

Life is unpredictable.  I know that.  And to be honest, I tend to handle change fairly well.  Still, too much change at once is difficult.

Autoimmune diseases are tough to handle, but being able to predict certain things about the day can make a huge difference.  Knowing how active I’ll need to be, when and what I’ll eat, and when I’ll be able to rest all make it a whole lot easier.

While I’m not working, I’m making an effort to set plans in advance so that I have reasons to get out of the house and see people.  This is good for me.  I need and want to spend more time with family and friends.  But for some reason, three different people needed to reschedule our times this week, two others needed to set something up last-minute, and I heard from all of them today!  To them, this isn’t a big deal.  Move a lunch, change a date, switch things around…. easy, right?  But this is making me nervous.  It’s a lot to juggle.  I need to make sure I don’t do too many things on the same day, so I need to find a way to do everything and see everyone in a way that makes me happy and not too worn out.

I don’t know yet how I’ll work all of this out, but at least I know one thing for sure: my health comes first.  I’ll do my best to work out everything else, but I will make sure that I feel good at the end of the week.

 

If any of this sounds familiar, if you can relate, please share it on Facebook and/or Twitter.  This blog is new, and it would be great to share it.

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Too many disease treatment options

November 10, 2011

Too much information!

I read about a study done recently.  I don’t remember the details, but basically when people have more options available, they have more difficulty choosing an option.  They also feel more stress.  Basically, having a choice of 2 salad dressings is better than having a choice of 15 salad dressings.

This makes perfect sense.  I see it in so many places.  The last time I got a car, I picked a few good brands and looked only at their models.  I didn’t look at the others because it would have been too many options and that’s stressful and difficult.  Today in the grocery store there were too many types of bread.  I’m not kidding; I found myself spending way too long in the bakery section trying to choose the right loaf.  I need to get a gift for someone next week and I have a few ideas, but I just can not seem to decide which they will like best.  I’d rather just have 1 idea.

See the conundrum?  Despite what most of us think, having too many choices is actually a bad thing!

And that brings me to today’s too-many-choices problem: treatment options.  I want to take a new approach to treating my health problems but I don’t know how to go about it.  Which approach should I take?  The answer, of course, is to do research.  The problem is that so many of the alternative treatments are based on anecdotal evidence.  There are a bunch of diets, for example.  One works for some people, another works for other people.  In the meantime, I’ll be spending a lot of time and effort trying to add some things to my diet while removing others, and trying not to aggravate my IBS in the process.  And how should I balance everything?  There are diets for IBS and others for PCOS and others for Hashimoto’s and others for connective tissue diseases and and and….. How do I put these together?  I know my doctors won’t be advising me on this.  I tried going to a nutritionist once and she helped with an IBS diet but didn’t know about the others.  There may be nutritionists who specialize in these autoimmune disease diets but I don’t know who they are or how to find them.

I know I need to pursue this, but it’s so overwhelming.  Having all of these different options makes me want to just bury my head in the sand and wait for it to pass.  The problem is, it won’t pass.  These symptoms aren’t going away.  I need to do something proactive.  I just wish I knew what it was.

 

If any of this sounds familiar, if you can relate, please share it on Facebook and/or Twitter so others know it’s not just them, that they’re not alone.

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Posted by chronicrants

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