I affectionately (can it be affectionate?) like to refer to my nerve pain as 'lightning bolts.' When a doctor once asked me to describe what it felt like, I said it felt like little jolts of electricity in my joints or muscles. Kind of like lightning bolts. So when I refer to lightning, I am referring to nerve pain that can often be jarring and downright disruptive. At its best, it's just annoying. And I might shake my hands and think "Ugh. Dumb nerve pain." At it's worst, I will grimace, perhaps stop mid-sentence, and take a moment to work through the pain. I might even yelp because it is so sudden and stabbing. I seem to be dealing with a lot of lighting the past few days.
Right now I am gearing up to train. I haven't really started entirely yet. I learned the hard way a few weeks ago that my body wasn't ready and so I've been doing what I can when I can and really listening to signs that I need to stop or I need to not be working out at all. I'm probably doing about 3-4 workouts a week at the moment--and not hard ones. I'm just trying to ease my body into the soon-to-be abuse and fool it into thinking it is just working a little harder than normal.
There have been some issues though this week. This dumb nerve pain is really acting up. I don't know if I'm having a flare or what, but I've really been getting lightning bolts in my wrists. Specifically my right wrist, but yes, both of them. And not just my wrists, I seem to be getting zapped all over, today my fingers were especially electric. And the pain in my chest really went off the charts yesterday at work. I was on the phone with a client and all of a sudden it felt like I was being stabbed by tiny little knives right near my heart. I started getting dizzy and struggled to keep a conversation going with the person on the other line, but my sentences were taking longer to get out as I tried to breathe through the pain. I was lucky and it subsided after two or so minutes. If this sounds horrible, well, it's really pretty unpleasant and it was very scary back before I knew what was happening...but now knowing it's just another one of the awesome symptoms of Fibro, I just breathe through pain like this and hope it doesn't last for hours. Usually it's just a few minutes.
Today I had lots of lightning bolts. I tried to shake them off. But when I got home from work, that was when the fog set in. My brain just felt so thick like there was something wrong. I tried to tell my roommate how I was feeling but all I could really say was that I felt 'strange.' All of a sudden I was struck with fatigue and fog. I've tried to explain what fibro-fog feels like to some and it's always hard to describe, but at its worst it feels like trying to think through a cloud of mist. It makes you feel like something is just awfully 'not right.' At its best it's just making you invert words and numbers and say things backwards. And in the middleground, you might just be looking at someone and know they're talking and you are trying to listen but nothing they are saying is going through. You forget things easily. I once forgot the pin number to my bank card for 2 or 3 days. Just, gone. GONE. Can this be frightening? Yes. Can I be at work and looking at the screen and completely lose comprehension of what I was just doing, or where to click? Yes.
Well I got home from work and felt so odd. So strange. I decided I should go to Bikram yoga and sweat it out. My other option was just laying down on the couch and humoring the fog and the fatigue and the nerve pain, but I've realized over the years that when I start feeling like this, (as long as its not an all consuming, I-really-truly-can't-do-ANYTHING kind of fatigue) I should push through it and move. And when I get all foggy and electric, I should really go to Bikram. It is very cleansing. I sweat all the bad toxins out and get fresh blood and oxygen moving through my body.
So I'm back from an hour and a half of sweating and stretching my ass off through 105 degrees and even though it was really challenging especially with the nerve pain and the fog, I ultimately feel a lot better and hopefully will start feeling a little better the rest of this week.
Note to self: PROMISE to do Bikram once a week, even when training kicks in. It is SO good for my body.
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