I used to be a sort of even keel, calm person by nature. I used to feel pretty much the same everyday. Not including big life changes (but even then, sometimes), I managed stress well. My moods didn’t fluctuate from one day to the next and I didn’t feel like I was riding a roller coaster in the dark. Which is exactly how I feel now that I have Fibromyalgia.
So far this week I haven’t experienced much calm. Period. The closest I came to it was yesterday when I was working from home and I had some Wilson Phillips music playing softly. But instead of calm, I felt extremely energized and rushed around doing all kinds of household duties while I had that energy.
Usually I’m in bed resting when my husband gets home from work and he has to rant a bit about “what’s for supper” and “where’s Mom” before I drag myself up. Yesterday I started supper: putting on the rice, cutting vegetables for stir fry and defrosting the chicken so it was almost ready by the time he got home. I could tell he was surprised. 
Today, my brain is racing but my body feels lethargic. I truly would love to crawl back in bed and sleep until I wake up naturally, as in, without an alarm. My back was sore when I got up today, and it was a real struggle to wake up when the alarm went off.
Yesterday my Dr. Frank’s Joint and Muscle relief spray came in the mail. I squirted four times under my tongue last night and again this morning. Also got a new pill container to separate my pills for each day of the week. That’s only to make it easier on myself—instead of opening and closing three different bottles of pills every night I can pop open one lid and dump them all out. My twelve year old daughter was watching me sort out pills for my new container last night and she said, “Wow, it’s like you’re really sick or something.” Yeah.
I’m hopeful the small adjustments I’ve made in my medications will be effective, and that the nutritional changes I’m about to make will help, too.
But what I’m frustrated with is this roller coaster from one day to the next. Not only does it make it impossible to set plans, it makes me feel like I’m walking on egg shells. Normally you’d feel that way toward someone else whose moods you can’t predict, walking lightly around them not to set off that invisible switch…but when that person is yourself it’s very unnerving!
I never in my wildest dreams would have thought this was possible. That I couldn’t control my moods from one day to the next; that I couldn’t count on myself to be patient and pleasant with my coworkers or my precious children when they’re not doing anything out of the ordinary to cause me to explode inside; that I would have the desire to organize that basket full of junk (bills, letters, magazines…the catch-all basket that holds everything no one wants to deal with), but that I would sit and look at it without having the least bit of energy and drive to get up and actually organize it.
I’ve connected with several other FMS sufferers on Twitter and read some of their blogs since starting my own a couple weeks ago. I know there are things we can learn from each other. The way this illness manifests itself so uniquely in each person drives me batty though! No wonder doctors find it difficult to get people on exactly the right meds to treat their symptoms. And the day I see my doctor I might be experiencing more depression than fatigue, or more pain than depression (it’s like a tossed salad!), and so he treats me for how I’m feeling on that particular day which might not really be so helpful in the days to come.
I’m thinking about trying to start meditation. Does anyone have any tips on how to go about starting? My goal is to sit still for five minutes every morning and again for five minutes in the evening when I’m alone. Just sit and try to clear my mind of all worries and anxiety, and try to forget about pain. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.
