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Posts Tagged ‘fibromyalgia’

A Certain Level of Brain Freedom

August 22nd, 2010

I am enjoying a long stretch of freedom from pain in the brain. Hooray! I have had only six Migraines since late June. Less than one a week! A better rate than I’ve achieved in the past three years, at least. I began taking the blood pressure medication Lisinopril in late June, and this seems like a winning combination for me. My current regimen includes:

That’s about 15 pills in the morning and 6 at bedtime. If that’s the price of freedom, I can live with it. As always, an unintentional experiment proved how well this regimen is working for me. A few weeks ago I had a Migraine on a Thursday evening and, as I sometimes do, forgot to take my bedtime pills as I was treating the Migraine and everything else went out of my head. The next day we were leaving just after work for our cousins’ beach house and I got up early in foggy post-drome and packed for the weekend before work. I forgot to pack my pills! So just as Danny was leaving the house to come meet me at my office, I called him and asked him to pack them for me. He did that, but when we met up and transferred the bags from the car he was driving to the other, the bag of pills got left behind. We discovered this at about 10 pm at the beach house. So I went without pills for a second night in a row, and missed my morning doses Saturday morning. Danny was a hero and drove over 6 hours round-trip to go get my pills so I could stay through Monday. Two nights and a morning without had a cumulative effect, though, and I had a pretty severe Migraine Sunday night.  It is now two weeks later, took my pills every day and no Migraines in that two weeks!

My Migraine specialist, Dr. Bill Young of Jefferson Headache Center, had said to me , “Six to seven Migraines a month isn’t good enough. We can do better!” (Love this guy! Compare with the last guy who thought I should be satisfied with reducing from 10 a month to 7.) So when I went to my last appointment in late June with the news that my blood pressure had been running high, for the first time in my life, he was excited! I had to tease him about that, how many physicians would say, “Oh good!” on learning that their patient had developed high blood pressure! But he explained that anti-hypertensives can be excellent Migraine preventives, but can’t be prescribed if the patient’s blood pressure is too low. He was confident that the two medications together, along with all my other supplements, would produce better Migraine prevention results for me. And so far, so good! I try not to really measure a trend until it’s been going on for several months, but early results look promising. I am loving the extra time and energy I have for hanging out with family and friends, and getting some chores and projects done around the house. Now if I could just manage the fibromyalgia…

For any of you who see doctors who only know a limited number of Migraine preventive options, or who aren’t comfortable with combining several medications, or who aren’t knowledgeable about supplements, find another doctor! If you aren’t doing daily relaxation, meditation, yoga or another practice to calm your nervous system, get on it! It can take time, but most of us achieve a significant level of brain freedom.

Hope you’re doing well. Leave me comment and let me know how you’re getting on, okay?

- Megan

Smoo cave waterfall photo courtesy of Subflux.

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Who You Calling Disabled?

June 5th, 2010

I hesitate to call myself disabled. I work 25 hours+ a week at a demanding job, I do get out and see people, sometimes, and I’m down to only 3 or 4 days a month in bed. Most days I can wash the dishes and straighten up a bit, more than half my days I get some exercise, many days I can manage the laundry.  I’m down to 5 to 7 Migraine days a month, from 12 to 20 a few years ago. Although I have some fibromyalgia pain many days, days like today when I feel wrung out and ache from head to toe don’t come more than 2 or 3 times a month. So who’s calling me disabled?

I push forward through my life with a great deal of determination and most of the time I confidently expect to get better and better. I have learned so much about how to take care of myself, how to manage my various conditions, and I’ve really improved so much. Days like today, where all I can manage is some reading, some hanging out on line, some tv, when I travel from the bed to the armchair to the bathroom to the kitchen, and that’s a major undertaking, days like today can fill me with despair. I may never get any better than this. I have to accept that possibility - not that I won’t keep on getting up and being positive (mostly) and working striving and pushing (and breaking down when I push too far). But maybe this is as good as it gets.

I am researching Migraines and Social Security Disability for an article I’m planning to write. I encountered the blog of a disability law firm who have helped a number of Migraineurs to get their disability recognized, and compensated. Here’s what struck me. In writing up a Migraine Disability case study, Lawyer Jonathan Ginsberg recounted that the vocational witness called in his client’s case testified that although she felt the claimant could do light duty, low stress work, that no jobs existed that would allow her to be absent 4 to 7 days a month. It’s hard to do this kind of research and really stay detached, and reading that I thought, wow, I could easily need to be absent 4 days a month! The fact that I work less than full time, and for a flexible and understanding boss, makes it possible for me to switch hours around and avoid some of those sick days. But I would be disabled under the same criteria that got the woman in that case granted disability benefits!

Then there’s the MIDAS scale. MIDAS is the American Headache Society’s Migraine Disability Assessment Test. A year ago my MIDAS score was 57 - Which is “Grade IV Severe Disability.” I have been retaking the assessment every few months, and I am down to a 30. Great progress! Guess what a 30 is?  “Grade IV Severe Disability.”

I am not knocking my progress, really I’m not. I recently had a reader write in and ask me how to take back her life from Migraine. That’s certainly a phrase I’ve used a lot. Having 5 to 7 Migraine days a month is incredibly much better than having 12 to 20. Being proactive, recognizing our sensitive nervous systems and caring for them, looking at the areas we can impact and working on them, all of these things do make a difference. I am doing better all the time, building up my stamina (though slowly), and managing these days to earn somewhat of a living, which is nothing to sneeze at. But I felt I needed to tell this woman, you can take your life back in the sense of being in charge of your life, but that doesn’t mean you can make the disease go away.

There come those days, like today, when I slam into the brick wall of my own limitations. I worked a long, hard, stressful week this week and today I woke up feeling like I had been pushed through a strainer. Do any of you recognize that one? I’ve felt it on and off for many years, at least ten, and now I recognize it as a sign of a fibromyalgia flare. I feel strained, like my nerves and muscle fibers have been stretched, shoved, pushed, shredded, sieved, including the nerves in my temples that start the Migraines. Days like today feel blank, wasted, and I cried this morning at the prospect of a life ahead filled with days like this.

My disability is invisible, at times even to me, but it’s there. I will keep on striving. And I also need to be with what’s so, that this is who I am. I am this person with a hyper-sensitive nervous system, I do need days of recovery from just the normal everyday days of life.

I know I’m incorrigible, but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

- Megan

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Surviving the Perfect Storm

May 15th, 2010

My Migraine triggers generally include: lack of sleep; sleep at irregular hours; missing meals or going too long without eating (low blood sugar); working hard when tired (over-exertion, let-down after stress); hormonal fluctuations; electrical storms and barometric pressure changes; loud noises; crowds; smoke; crying; change of altitude.  Last night I sat through a perfect storm of triggers without actually getting a Migraine. Every trigger but the last three were present.

It went like this: I went to my Friday morning BNI meeting, which involves getting up at 6. That wouldn’t be too bad if I managed to get to sleep by 10 or so, but I never do. I go to sleep between 11 and 11:30 most nights and I have a very hard time cutting my evening shorter. Ideally I would go to bed and get up at the same time every day; it would be best for Migraine prevention and make those Fridays easy to bear. But I live in a household of night-owls and I’ve never been able to reconcile myself to having a completely different schedule from the rest of my family. Besides, most of my favorite tv shows are on from 10 - 11! So I got up and got going on less than 7 hours of sleep.

I worked hard all day, working with an intensive focus towards a deadline. It was a warm muggy day with thunderstorms in the forecast, and the building storm was palpable in the air. Then at the end of the working day I attended a charitable event that I was invited to by a friend. It was really a lovely event, a tour of a designer show-house and a dinner in a tent in the back with a couple of presentations, then arias by a couple of opera singers, and finally they held an auction.

I didn’t make it that long though. The thunderstorms broke while we were touring the house, and it was still raining when we went out to the tent. One of the sponsors of the event was a local appliance store, and one of the presentations was on outdoor kitchens. So they got a great local chef to cook a meal (for at least 100 people) on a huge outdoor grill that was being auctioned off. All a very nice concept, but apparently no one had really thought through how long it would take to grill several courses for 100 or more people. They began serving wine before the presentations started; an hour or more later they passed around some little cubes of grilled bread. The next course, grilled vegetables, came out more than half an hour later. then some grilled seafood at least a half hour after that. Each course was served on large platters to be passed around and shared. Each course gave each of us enough to tantalize but not enough to keep us from being hungry.

All the while there were presentations going on, and a lot of hungry people were drinking more and more wine, talking and laughing louder and louder, halfway drowning out the presentations. Then the opera portion started, and while the singing was excellent, I was right up front and the acoustics of loud operatic singing under a tent with thick humid air all around were overwhelming. Not to mention that people had had quite a bit to drink by that time and were not sitting quietly listening to the music. The competing sounds battered at my ear-drums. The smells from the grill wafted over for hours without any food following for a very long time. After the seafood course we sat even longer without food. I felt increasingly jittery from low blood sugar, worn from lack of sleep and a long hard day, battered by the noise, closed in by the crowd, pressed on by the humidity, shaken by the storms, confused by the multiple inputs and noise, distressed by wanting to be a good guest and not feeling up to it. I had many warning twinges in my temples and felt sure a Migraine was on the way.

My dear and very perceptive friend Izzy could tell something was going on and asked me. I shared with him what was going on in my internal world. He went to the kitchen and told them I needed food right away for a medical condition. He came back with some very rare meat which I ate most of and shared some of with a few of my neighbors. I felt bad because I knew everyone was hungry. I stayed until some more meat came out, which was quite a while later. I had a little and then left to go home. I was able to drive myself home, got in and ate yogurt and cereal with milk, some quick protein and calories. Then I collapsed.

The fact that I didn’t get a Migraine is pretty amazing. My nortriptyline, and my supplements, and my regular eating, and all the sleep I generally get (except on Thursday nights), and my regular walking, and my relaxation exercises, and all the other things I am doing to regulate my system… these are obviously paying off! A year ago I am sure that just the lack of sleep and a few hours of intensive work would have given me a Migraine - I wouldn’t even have made it to the evening event.

On the other hand, I had an exhausted night of very poor sleep, and today I am having a major fibromyalgia flare-up. My everything hurts today. My head is only a little tender, though, no pounding, no intense pain there. That’s still a victory!

- Megan Oltman

Approaching Storm image courtesy of Stephan Mantler.

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Spring & Hope

March 7th, 2010

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

Hope springs. Spring and hope. Spring is sprung. Today was the second of two sunny, 50 degree plus days. The snow is finally melting away and snowdrops are blooming in the yard. Danny and I took a long walk, my second in two days, and talked about what we want to do in the garden this year. And with the improvement in my Migraines and my steady new work schedule, it’s more likely that I will be able to get out and do some of the work.

There’s plenty of yard clean-up to do, but our snow’s not all gone yet and the ground is mushy. We spent a while working on getting a large broken limb out of the tree overhanging our driveway - a limb that threatens to fall on our cars with every strong wind. A ladder, a pruning saw, Danny’s ingenuity and an apple-picker swung on a rope later, he pulled the monster down. It hit the ground with a resounding thud that made me very glad no car windshields were below it. Or human noggins either. What’s amazing is how alive I felt, and how enjoyable it can be to tackle a physical problem like this, out in the fresh air.

I don’t know how much we’ll get done of our ambitious plans - I still have a few days of Migraine black-out each month, and I am battling constant soreness from my fibromyalgia. Yesterday I was more active than I’ve been for a while - kitchen clean-up, multiple loads of laundry and a 40 minute walk around town. I ached all over and slept badly. But I set out to match yesterday’s activity level today - knowing that if I give in to the aches and stay inactive they’ll just get worse.

Danny said when we came in from the yard - “It’s a different kind of tiredness - it feels good.” I remember that feeling, but I don’t really experience it any more. All tiredness makes me ache all over, be it physical, mental, emotional, indoors or out. But my world does open up with the warmer weather. I feel like the whole world has expanded. I want to be out and doing, before New Jersey’s hot humid summer comes and shuts me down again.

To all of you with chronic illness - wishing you hope this spring, and that you may enjoy the fresh air and growing things. What do we live for, what pulls us forward, but sublime and ridiculous hope with each new day?

- Megan

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Fibromyalgia - a New Context

January 7th, 2010

The context in which we look at an issue can make a huge difference in our way of perceiving and interacting with the issue. When I began exploring the on-line world of support for Migraineurs and chronically ill folks, I came very early upon Teri Robert’s site, Help for Headaches, and there on the site, she had this badge:

I wondered at the time, was this really empowering, to emphasize having a disease? It is a disease, but we can have an impact on our own health by developing an awareness of our own systems, and learning to relax and calm their reactivity. I had spent some years learning that myself and that’s what I wanted to share with others.

The more I looked at it, though, the more I got Teri’s point. I realized that for the many of us who have had our condition minimized and scoffed at, the recognition that we have a disease is empowering. Our problems are real, and biologically based; our pain is real. We live with the consequences of having a hyper-reactive nervous system. For those of us who have wondered what was wrong with us, if we were crazy, if we were somehow bringing the pain upon ourselves, it is empowering to recognize that we have a disease, not just a headache! Starting from the context of a disease, we can learn about it, learn what impacts our disease for better or worse, learn to manage the disease, and to manage our life with the disease. Acceptance is the first step, and gives us a foundation to build on. It makes it possible to move forward. We can say, “Okay, I have this disease. Now what? What am I going to do about it?”

For over 15 years, since I was pregnant with my son in the fall of 1994, I have been living with fatigue, lassitude, body aches, on and off difficulty concentrating, frequent sinus infections, difficulty fighting off disease, and, in the last 10 years, ever increasing Migraines. I have gone down many paths to address these issues. With regard to the Migraines, I learned a great deal about the disease, worked with doctors to find medication and supplement combinations that helped me, and learned to practice relaxation to calm my system. My Migraine frequency is down considerably. Not so the fatigue and general pain issues, however. I have tried many different nutritional regimens, and learned a lot about what foods are most helpful to my body. I have gone great lengths to balance my hormones, and have definitely seen an improvement in my overall health and stamina through doing that. No matter what I did, however, the fatigue and pain issues did not change much.

Many people with Migraine also have Fibromyalgia, and as I got to know more people with Migraine I heard a lot about the other disease as well. My reaction for quite a while was, “Oh, I probably have that one too, but I don’t want to know about it.” It felt overwhelming to me to have to deal with another diagnosis. I practiced active avoidance. Then I saw Dr. Young at Jefferson Headache Center and he listened to me talking about my fatigue, and he pressed the Fibromyalgia tender points, and I gained a new context. Thanks, Dr. Young!

I’m not kidding with the thanks. It was just like Teri’s badge above, the pieces of a puzzle came together. I already knew that my central nervous system had some serious processing issues, well this was just another manifestation of that. In addition to having my neurons fire off and produce Migraines in reaction to certain stimuli, I have an increased reaction to pain and exertion. If I bang my elbow, the pain moves out in ripples from the point, increasing for a time like an echo in an echo chamber. If I expend more muscular energy than usual, my muscles ache for days as if I had the flu. If I am active and push myself either physically or mentally, I have a kind of fatigue that is beyond tired; it is the bone-weary exhaustion of someone who has been pushed beyond the limits of their endurance.

I have gained a lot from the context of having another disease - Fibromyalgia. I have gained a community of fellow sufferers, who care, who understand, whose wisdom and experience are available to me. I have gained the relief of knowing that I am not lazy, or losing my mind, or fundamentally bad, I am a person with a(nother) disease. And this context helps me to find solutions. I know now that stretching helps, and I can push myself to stretch when my muscles hurt and I really don’t want to. I know that my fatigue is not something to fight or to cover over with caffeine, but that it is a signal to rest. I know that getting some gentle exercise each day, and gradually increasing my exertion, will help me. I know that there will be better and worse days, but that each day can be handled, one at a time.

I haven’t posted for a while, and I’m glad to say that my new Migraine preventive is helping a great deal. My Migraine frequency is down by about 60% over the past few months. The medication also helps to damp down my anxiety and makes me very sleepy. It seems to increase my REM sleep, which is a sleep stage that Fibromyalgia often steals away. Sleeping better definitely impacts the Migraines; it also makes me less fatigued and less anxious. So at the same time that I have taken on this new diagnosis, Fibromyalgia, I have seen some of its symptoms decrease.

I’m learning this one. It’s a listening to my body, to my inner sense of myself, in a new way. Similar to the way I already listened, a familiar tune but in a different key, perhaps. The biggest gain from the new context is another level of self-acceptance. I am not a bad person trying to be good; I’m just a sick person learning to be as well as possible.

- Megan Oltman

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How much Pain?

December 2nd, 2009

My daughter had her wisdom teeth out yesterday. Once the anesthesia wore off she started feeling pretty serious pain. She took her first Lorcet and called me on the intercom about half an hour later, sounding panicked - she needed more pain meds, right now! We got her some ibuprofen, but tried to explain that the meds take a while to take effect, and to give it a chance. Today she is in bed with a swollen face, pain and nausea, quite miserable. We’re bringing the ice packs, the medications, the mushy food, and trying to comfort her the best we can.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of pain. At nineteen, my daughter has never had surgery before, never had a broken bone or other serious injury, and the only serious illness she has had was the chicken pox at age four. Her pain today is real and I can’t be the judge of how much pain she has. Her pain may be worse because unfamiliar. When I was her age, I had had: Migraines for at least six years, a broken arm, stitches on my face, major abdominal surgery, the mumps, the chicken pox, scarlet fever, the measles… Pain and I were old acquaintances (I won’t say friends). I have written before about how you never get used to pain. Pain is, in some ways, continuously and horribly new every time, every moment. But at the same time, pain can become familiar, and for that reason, perhaps less frightening.

The most severe pain I can remember was when I broke and dislocated an elbow. I went into shock, I believe from the pain. Both my labors were quite painful, as I had an unproductive pattern of contractions, which came two or three in a row without pause, and each set didn’t do as much work as one normal contraction. Childbirth pains are different, I think, because any pain you experience is for something, something big and very important, and you know there is an end in sight. At twenty-nine I fell and herniated a disk and lived for years with nagging, stinging pain in my low back and right leg. I have also had Migraines where the pain was so intense I felt moment by moment as if I could not stand one moment more, where all I could do was rock myself and sob, to quote a Migraine buddy of mine. I also had my wisdom teeth out at twenty-two and I don’t remember how that pain compared, but I do remember two miserable and very drugged up days.

I have learned, though, that something changes when pain is familiar, when it is not mysterious. Yes, frequent severe pain is debilitating, exhausting, dis-enheartening beyond belief. But at the same time, with familiarity it can lose some of its power over us.

What do I mean by that? This is difficult to talk about. Pain is real, but at the same time our experience of it is subjective. It’s not “all in our heads” in the sense of being imagined. It is not produced by neurosis or by being weak or hysterical. But at the same time, we can change and effect our experience of pain. When my Migraines became very frequent, I learned a practice of deliberate relaxation, based in yoga, biofeedback and guided imagery. A part of the practice is to look at pain head on - to be very aware of the experience of pain. Not to fight it or try to pull away from it, but to meet it, recognize it, describe it and observe it. In that process we get some detachment from it. Sometimes we can reduce it significantly, or make it disappear. Even if that doesn’t happen, we can make it much easier to bear.

I teach these relaxation techniques to Migraineurs and others with chronic illnesses because I believe we can truly make a difference for ourselves when we learn to focus inward. I believe we should fight for better treatment, strive and work to understand and manage our own systems, but when faced with pain we must practice a kind of acceptance. I’m not talking about being a doormat or giving up. I am talking about looking the pain in the eye - saying yes, there it is, it feels like this, it is this much better or worse than any other pain, it is located here, it behaves like this. Observing it, allowing it to be and allowing it to fade.

I’m not saying this is easy. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you should “just” learn to live with it. There is no “just” about it - it’s hard and takes continual work. I use relaxation zealously in the tough times and then I slack off, and have to pick it back up and get back in practice when the next challenge comes along. Overall I have developed an awareness of my system and its ups and downs. I have less pain in my life, and the pain has less effect on me, than before I began these techniques.

There may be some kind of threshold level beyond which the rules change, or become distorted. I haven’t experienced really frequent or chronic severe pain. Six years ago my Migraine pattern suddenly increased, from a monthly menstrual Migraine plus one or two big ones a year, to three or four major Migraines a week. That was the closest I have come to experiencing truly chronic pain. And three or four times a week I felt something like the panic I heard in my daughter’s voice yesterday. Nowadays pain doesn’t panic me. I may get cranky and resentful, but sooner rather than later i say to myself, Okay here it is again. Be with what’s so, and do what I can to help it ease or pass.

I am learning a new kind of pain as I adjust to fibromyalgia. My body has become a pain amplifier, and a small pain can grow outward with ripples over a day or more until I hurt everywhere. I am having a flare-up today. I ache from head to toe. I am grateful that despite the allover aches, I don’t feel the constant severe pain I hear of from some with fibro. I am practicing what Migraines have taught me, to pace myself, to push only gently, to be with the pain, not to fight it, to know that this too shall pass.

I’m hoping for a better tomorrow, for me, for you, for my daughter. In the meantime, I will be with what’s so. My arms ache and I’m going to rest now.

- Megan

Wisdom tooth image courtesy of Steve Montgomery; broken elbow image courtesy of H Dragon.

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Fatigue, Fibromyalgia & Denial

September 21st, 2009

Hello friends. I’ve been quiet lately. Had a marathon summer with a lot of work and a daughter to get off to college. She is off, settled in, working hard, and having the time of her life. I flew back from three days away, moving her into her dorm, and then I attended the International Headache Congress in Philadelphia for two days, then I spent a lovely day in Manhattan with cousins from the west coast, then I spent a day working, then I went back to Philly for a first appointment at the Jefferson Headache Center, then I collapsed.

I will post about the IHC, and about my appointment at Jefferson, (both of which were great) later. What I want to talk about today is “then I collapsed” part. Well I do have to touch on the appointment at Jefferson… mostly what was discussed was my Migraines and my anxiety level. I was very happy with the care I got, the thoroughness of the history taken, the look at Migraines in the context of a whole life. I have new treatment options and new hope.

It felt like almost a side note to the exam, when the doctor pressed certain points on my body which hurt tremendously.  Once he had pressed a half dozen, I realized what he was doing - pressing the fibromyalgia tender points.  One of the diagnostic criteria for fibro is pain in at least 11 of the 18 points - well, I had a great deal of pain in 14! He asked me if I feel pain in my body on a daily basis and I said there were days when I’m achy all over, but I’m not aware of much pain in my body much of the time.

But over the next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My 10 day marathon of travel, launching a daughter, conference, appointments, left me bone weary and aching. You know when you first notice something you haven’t seen before, and all of a sudden you see it all around? I had this sense of a puzzle piece clicking into place. Why do I fatigue so easily? For the last few years when I exert myself in any way, whether it’s physical exercise, mental or emotional stress, or just being on the go for a number of days in a row, afterwards my entire body aches. For days. I have become terribly sensitive to touch, where someone bumping into me actually hurts, instead of just being jarring.  My husband and I were lying on the bed talking the other day and he had his hand on my calf. His thumb was resting on my shin, and after a few minutes just the weight of that thumb began to actually hurt.

I know people with fibromyalgia, and there are plenty of Migraineurs who also have fibro. I’ve read about it, and I have wondered for some time if I might have fibro too. You’ll see in my profile that I say I have chronic fatigue, but I’ve always had some question about that diagnosis, which was more of a suspicion by my family doctor than a real confirmed diagnosis. Up to this point, though, I have avoided looking into it for myself. I don’t want to face having another chronic illness. I want to live in the illusion that my limitations will go away someday. Ha! Oh well, a girl can dream.

I will investigate this further; I will talk about it at my next headache appointment. I know there are treatment options and support available. It’s kind of silly, really, to prefer denial. Having all the symptoms I have and no name for it really isn’t better than having the symptoms with a name. Knowledge really is power. I hear that the drugs used to treat fibro are really good for treating Migraine too, and many people’s Migraines improve when their fibro is treated. We’ll see. I still kind of want to stick my head back in the sand. Except I know my neck would hurt for days afterwards.

- Megan Oltman

Logan Square fountain image courtesy of Conspiracy of Happiness; shoulder image courtesy of Barbarellaa.

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Coping with Fatigue

March 1st, 2009

It’s my second day in a row where I feel achy and tired all over and just can’t get going.  I’ve had my 8 1/2 to 9 hours of sleep; I have been taking it slow and easy.  This kind of fatigue is a common reaction for me when I have travelled or otherwise exerted myself over several days.  I guess a 3 1/2 hour drive to Washington, an evening of training, a late night, a day of lobbying with a Migraine at the end of it, a morning meeting then another 3 1/2 hour drive, then 2 busy working days, count as exerting myself.  It feels as if the tiredness stores itself up in my muscles and doesn’t drain out for days on end.

It used to be that I felt like this every day, five or six years ago.  That was before I began taking thyroid supplements and bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.  It was also before I began practicing good sleep hygeine to manage my Migraines - getting enough sleep and the same amount, at approximately the same time, every night.

I have learned not to push myself when I feel this way.  I will recover faster if I rest and take it slow than if I try to power through and get a lot done.  It’s hard, though, to cope with the mess around me and not be able to do much about it.  It’s hard to cope with the reality that I have a lot of days like this, and I can’t get done what I once could.

My primary doctor diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome about six years ago; his treatment approach to it is mainly to seek to balance my hormones and that has helped a lot.  Coach Debra Russell of Artist’s Edge helped me too; she and I traded coaching and it was Debra that taught me that when I am fatigued, I need to rest. Period.

Now I find myself wondering what else is available.  As I work with migraine sufferers and other chronically ill folks, I have read some more of the chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia literature.  I have to admit to a certain level of denial rearing its ugly head for me once again - I don’t want to face the possibility that I might have fibromyalgia as well.  Of course we all know how silly this is (and denial always is silly, powerful and destructive though it may be) - because if I have it, I have it, whether I know it or not, and it’s knowledge that is power, not ignorance.

Well, friends, I make my promise to you - I will go read up on cfs and fibromyalgia and find out what else I should be doing to take care of myself.  Today it looks like I’ll be getting the taxes ready from my semi-recumbent position. Nice and restful, eh?

- Megan

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Remember: nothing we do here is medical advice or treatment or is a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Get competent medical advice to learn more about your migraines, possible treatments and risks.

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