Transform Your Chronic Life

FIBROMYALGIA (Photo credit: *SHESHELL*)

Like your most annoying relative, the five “Ds” of fibromyalgia tend to show up over and over. No matter how positive you try to be, there are days when it really gets to you and you go tumbling back into that black hole that seems to eat all the good in your life.

Diagnosis – Depending on how long you’ve been sick, being diagnosed with fibro can either be a huge relief or throw you into a deep depression. If you’ve been hearing, “there’s nothing wrong with you;” for years, finding out that you actually AREN’T crazy is a major relief. On the other hand, once you realize that having a diagnosis doesn’t necessarily mean the doctors are going to be able to actually DO anything but try to manage your symptoms, you’re likely to fall into the rest of the “Ds.” Even worse, a fibromyalgia diagnosis frequently leads to even more diagnoses, since there are multiple co-occurring illnesses that go along with it.

Desperation – Desperation is a big issue for people with fibromyalgia, whether it’s a desperate search for treatments that work or a desperate struggle to pay the bills. No two fibro patients have exactly the same set of symptoms, and the treatments that work for one may not work for someone else. The worse your symptoms, the more likely it is that you either won’t be able to work at all, or that you’ll only be able to work part time, and both cause major financial issues.

Depression – Depression tends to be a frequent visitor in the lives of those with any chronic illness. You don’t only have to live with pain and other disabling symptoms, you get to hear your doctors telling you there’s nothing they can do for you, your friends and family telling you there’s nothing wrong with you, and society telling you you’re nothing but a lazy leech who would rather lay around and watch tv while everyone else works to support you. And people wonder why you get depressed?

Even if you have a job, the stress of trying to make ends meet on what little you can make can also lead to depression. If you can only work part-time, or can only FIND a part-time job, the situation is even worse. Do you buy medicine so you’re ABLE to work, or buy food? Do you pay the utilities this week, or hope they won’t turn them off before your next check so you can actually EAT this week?

Despair – The previous “Ds” have a bad tendency to lead to despair.  You feel trapped, and can’t find any way out. It can be a horrible cycle, and it’s not easy to find a way to break it, especially when financial issues play a part. When rent and utilities take every penny you can scrape together, and you spend days or weeks hungry, despair can eat your world.

Defeat – Finally, there’s defeat; the last, and maybe worst, of the “Ds.” Defeat is a stopper, because once you feel defeated, you’re likely to give up. “What’s the point of fighting any more?” you think. It feels like no matter what you try, it goes wrong; no matter what you do, or don’t do, things just keep getting worse. It gets to the point that you feel like everything you do makes the situation worse, so why bother to do anything anymore?

I know how this feels. I know because I’ve been there, and I am there again. In the last 48 hours, I’ve eaten 6 pieces of bread, 3 with the last of the peanut butter, one with a little chicken salad made out of the last piece of meat in the house and homemade mayo made with the last of the cooking oil and the last egg, and two with a dab of butter. I’ve mostly been surviving on coffee with sugar, because once we eat the last 2 cups of pasta with alfredo and the cup of beans, there won’t be anything left but cornmeal mush with no fat or protein until we get paid on Thursday. I might be able to borrow a few dollars to get us through, but I don’t dare, because I don’t have ANY idea when (or even if) I’d ever be able to pay it back.

Why are things so bad, you ask? Because neither one of us can find another job, and the part-time jobs we have keep cutting our hours. My last check was $194, and I had to pay the last $200 of the rent with that and the $10 I managed to save from the last check. Last week I was scheduled a whole 12 hours, and hubby got about 15, so the next check MIGHT cover the $265 worth of utilities that have to be paid before they start turning things off.

We can’t even get second part-time jobs, because they won’t give us regular schedules, and without knowing in advance when you’ll be working, it’s impossible to co-ordinate two jobs.

I’m still fighting, still trying to find ways to survive, but it’s not easy to fight when you’re so hungry you’re weak and your brain doesn’t want to work properly. It’s even harder to want to survive when you see no way out of the trap you’re in . . . The worst thing about it is that I know that not only am I not the only one in this situation, there are thousands of people who are even worse off; with no place to live except the street.

I honestly don’t know what to do any more . . . We both keep applying for better jobs, but don’t even get an email back from most of the applications, and it’s really hard to get a phone call when you can’t keep the phone turned on half the time. I’ve got a few articles out trying to get them sold, but it could be months before anything comes of that; and I’m working on some that are already paid for, but that money is long gone. Hubby would have a FIT if he had any idea at all that I’m even talking about all this, but the payment for this website is gonna be due in a few days, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it, so I wanted the people who follow this blog to at least have an idea of what happened if it goes away.

If you can, and want to keep the blog going, you can donate at the top of the page by using the PayPal donate button. At this point, I’m no longer too proud to beg, even if it DOES piss off my husband and decrease my chances of getting a better job. The idea of hitting the publish button on this post is TERRIFYING, but at this point, it’s the only chance I see.

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