Thursday 30 March 2017

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

I've been absent due to tiredness. 

What kind of excuse is that? I hear you mutter, perhaps followed by more mutterings about how tired you've been but you've still gone to work, done the chores, looked after the kids, etc. If so then I sympathise, I've been a working mother myself so I understand your tiredness. However with all due respect unless you're a fibromite or have CFS/ ME or both then I really doubt you understand this tiredness of mine.

Listen, I'll come straight to the point here, imagine you've run up a treacle clad mountain, with a sack of coal on your back and carrying another sack of coal in each hand, while someone repeatedly hits your bones with a hammer and another keeps trying to prise your joints apart with a red hot tyre lever. Not to forget your brain being filled up with thick fog until you can hardly remember your name never mind anything else, plus your head pounded until it feels like it's going to burst, and the half kilo weights that have been sewn onto your eyelids, add to that the breathlessness, pain, and sheer exhaustion that makes even yawning difficult to do.

Until you've experienced that please don't try to tell me you know how I feel. Keep your advice to yourself; do you really think I've not tried everything to stop this? 

Giving up naps in the day, while it may help you with your normal tiredness, doesn't help me at all, in fact it makes things worse. Eating this and that energy giving food doesn't help much either. My gut isn't working properly, it too is exhausted and can't digest in the normal manner. Oh yes, in the beginning when I didn't understand fibro and CFS I did my damndest to overcome this horrible, life altering condition but as I became more knowledgeable, more experienced I soon realised that fighting it only made it stick around longer.

Be told and understand that I'm not idle, lazy, couch potato or bed loving. Nor is it all in my mind and imagined. I'm certainly not exaggerating.  

You tell me I should be thinking positively, come closer to say that and I'll show you a positive punch, well I would if I had the energy.

So here's what to do. Smile at me, wish me well, ask if there's anything you could help with like going to the loo, bring me a cup of tea even. Then just go away and let me get on with getting on through this latest episode.

Don't preach, don't try to jolly me along, don't even sit down and start a conversation because it'll be a one sided affair and you'll get a sore throat from talking too much. Just go away and leave me alone. I'll do what I can, maybe even manage the washing up if possible a task that needs no brain power and very little energy expenditure. Seriously, if I can manage a chore I will do so because there's nothing I like better than to be doing something, but that doesn't mean I'm ok. Doesn't mean I'm up to going shopping. It just means there's a little lull in the tsunami of exhaustion and I'm taking advantage of it.

So now you know what to do, say, how to act with me, can we please stop the remarks, and help and advice. Above all, stop thinking you know how I feel because I'm sure you don't. Unless you're a sufferer too.












Monday 6 March 2017

Bodies, sleeve waving, Countdown, and lilies.

How do you get to love your body? How do you get to even like your body?
As a child I couldn't stand my little belly that was stuck to my body like a melting blancmonge along with that I'd got two dreadful large knees. They were the size of a shire horse's knees and stuck out at strange angles, so I thought. Later on as a teen my face (big nose with a furrow at the top stuck a moon sized and shape head) joined the list of undesirable body parts, followed by my flat as a pancake bottom.

I did like my breasts though, they were a little above average size and fulfilled my dream of having breasts like my aunty who I used to watch having a wash in the sink and would ask her questions, "do thothe butht hurt when they thwing?" I was very short tongued as a kid. Oh yes I was proud of my teenage butht. I liked them right into my 50s and then they turned into two empty saggy water balloons that rest on my belly when I sit down. I hate my bust! Not that I want anything to happen to them, I'm grateful I've got them but if only they had stayed put up at the top of my chest instead turning me into the wolf who raised Romulus and Remus.

I'm not going to mention my dislike for the old hairy prune that passes for my face. Nor shall I say anything about my teeth - tombstones turned yellow by years of taking antibiotics as a kid. I brush as often as four or five times a day with all these miracle teeth whitening pastes but it makes no difference. In a few years time I shall look like a mobile graveyard when I smile.

Is there anything I like about my body? Nope, not a single hair.
So what's the plan, the method for learning to like/love your body? Or is far too late for me

I put seed, fat balls and suet out for the garden birds.
I love watching them feed but just lately the starlings are back. Now I know starlings are dwindling and yes they're a beautiful bird but they're also very greedy and give the smaller birds no chance at getting to the food. So when I see more than three starlings on the feeders, I'll flap something at them through the window. Usually it's the sleeve of my pink fluffy dressing gown pulled down as far as I can to hang limply from the arm that's supposed to be in it but is now pulled up to look like a turkey wing. Waving the empty sleeve while I stand in front of the window usually does the trick. The trouble is I catch the attention of people walking past and one man even started to come to our house. It was a rather embarrassed Crone that went out to explain.
Still, it makes the mornings different.

Countdown - Another thing that I do in the mornings.
I've always liked Countdown although I'm hard pressed to understand why the woman putting up the letters and numbers has to be so dressed sexily. Couldn't we have someone like Father Ted's Mrs Doyle or, even better, a Mrs Doubtfire? I think that would be a brilliant move!
Have you ever watched it? I'm sure you know how it plays out; two contestants try to find words from eight letters chosen randomly with the contestant who has made the largest word gets the points. Every so many letter rounds come the numbers. Six numbers again randomly chosen are used to try and create the randomly computer chosen number.
Listen, I'm no thick head but trying to find long words in half a minute is not as easy as it sounds and when it comes to the numbers round I just glaze over. I've admiration for those contestants I'll tell you!
It's a decent enough programme if you like that kind of thing but I still don't see why the sexily dressed young woman has to be there.

It's very hard to choose a favourite flower...
... But if pressed I'll say my favourite will have to be the genus Lilium. Ok ok that's more than one favourite as there are many different types, all beautiful in their own way. I find it hard to grow lilies in the garden, slugs and snails really do love noshing on the tender young absinthe shoots that push their way up in late spring. One day I'll be cooing over my lily babies, the next I'm swearing revenge for the massacre of them.
So, you will see me buying bunches of those big white lilies from the supermarket. A luxury that I afford myself once or thrice a year. I do so love their elegance and simplicity. Such a shame they eventually wither away.


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