I was one of these people who could work all night, sleep a few hours or less and take care of my family, clean house, do the yard, shopping and never skip a beat on an appointment and I didn't have to keep a calendar (or in my case now...4 of them).
Now, I ask the same questions over and over again to the frustration of my family, forget what I was saying, what I was going to do, where I laid something and it just drags me down. I am told it is called Fibro Fog and I hate it!
I wish I knew I was going to feel this way when we moved from Arizona to Washington, because I believe living in the dampness plus having a 2 story house adds to my pain and not being able to move into a single story home just adds to my frustrations.
I need help getting laundry downstairs, making the repeated trips to the pantry, pots and pan closet, etc.. I hate having to wait for help or take the long run around the house....out the back door, down the stairs, down the driveway to the carport which is level with the basement back door and then reverse to get something done. That is on really bad days.
So, this week I decided the living room needed to be clean and my desk needed to be cleaned off. Three days later and it was finished. It isn't that it was that messy, it is just that my desk had everyone elses junk on it, was disorganized due to my sending off resumes and needing school records, plus all the records and receipts that needed put away in the basement file boxes.
Dusting desperately needed to be done, baseboards swept and pictures and windowsills dusted. Pretty simple really, however when one has a cat, I have discovered cleaning is not that simple. It just grosses me out that their is cat hair everywhere....the couch/chairs/under the furniture/on top of the furniture/on my plants/on the curtains...no surface is untouched.
Yesterday I filled up no less than 15 brushfuls of cat hair until she got aggravated and ran off. Then last night another 5 full and today, it is never ending. If you own a cat and know how I can cut down on this, I would love to know.
I cleaned out the bottom of my china hutch and tossed lost of old recipes out I will never use and wiped the cat hair out of that...but just sitting on the hardwood floor and the cold from it, hurt my bones, my hips ached, my knees and back and I even tried sitting on cushions.
Charity quilting this year has pretty much come to a halt. What I could bang out in a few days now takes me months to complete and it really bothers me that I feel so useless.
So, I know many of you have Fibromyalgia, how do you handle your decrease in productivity? Does it bother you as much as it does me? Any suggestions? I am open to learning how to deal with this.
In the meantime, I guess if it takes 3 days to accomplish what should be done in a few hours, I am going to have to adapt and accept to this new lifestyle.
I just wish others understood, it isn't that I am NOT trying....I simply can't do what I used to and that makes me feel like I have been robbed!
1 comment:
While I don't have fibromyalgia, I have polymyalgia rheumatica. It is similar in its symptoms, but mine is an inflammatory condition. I know EXACTLY how you feel. I'm 52 and about as useless as an 82 year old. It is very frustrating! My hubby and I wanted to travel at this time in our lives, with our youngest just off to college, but it's really out of the question. We have 3 stories in our house and I pretty much live on 1 floor with rare trips up or down. I also have bad knees and hips so the stairs are not my friend. I don't know what to tell you because I'm struggling with the same feelings. I do try to concentrate on things I CAN do, and try to chip away a little at a time to get chores done. Feel free to email me, we can talk more. bless you!
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