Defeat Fibromyalgia
Lay There and Lose or Get Up and Win
I’d like to get a few important things out of the way before we move onward to the heart of this post. I’m not a doctor. I don’t hold a PhD in anything. I’m a college graduate, software developer, web guru, mother of three, wife, artist, writer, chef, chief of operations for a business…I do a lot! I’m also a sufferer of Fibromyalgia Syndrome or FMS and have been for over a decade.
I would like to share with you my very long, emotional and tumultuous road with stress that led me to defeat Fibromyalgia. I want to share what I’ve learned that made it possible for me to start living again. I hope you will take some of this revealing knowledge away from my personal journey.
Childhood Dreams
As a child I knew I wanted to grow up and be an artist. But throughout my childhood and into adulthood, I had witnessed that most artists don’t get rich. So limiting my talents into a personal pastime, I pursued an education in Criminal Justice, got married at twenty-one and set out on my off the wall trip of working everywhere and doing everything. I realized I obviously had no direction; after all twenty-one was still considered “young”. Luckily I had a very patient young husband who gave me a wide berth to “find” myself. And trust me, I looked hard and long.
In the early nineties, I got my hands on a computer and loaded as much art, graphics and Microsoft® software I could lay my hands on. I began teaching myself HTML and learning how websites and the internet worked. I was hooked and by the late nineties, I’d landed a great job at a prominent Los Angeles law firm where my boss took a gamble on my skills and we both came out winners. I began my career as a professional web designer and I loved the challenge. The work was, at the time, the best I’d ever done.
But like many artists with limited creative freedom, I eventually got bored and started looking for something that would be more challenging for my growing hunger to do web design. I enjoyed the immediate fame it brought me and I became a fiend for it. I found what I was looking for in March 2000. This job was the most amazing job ever! I put down my briefcase, pulled up my chair and became part of a well-greased machine. I loved the work and my clients were phenomenal. I’d found “My Calling”. I could be an artist AND make a living at it.
Too Much Work Not Enough Rest
Now, as you probably know, your whole life can’t revolve around a job but mine did. While exceeding and excelling in my career, my 15 year relationship with my first husband was steadily declining and we would decide to go our separate ways. I didn’t think it was affecting me since he had worked my nerves to the bone and I was happy to see him go….I was wrong! Between the separation and my ‘perfect’ job, my body was reaping the pain my mind wasn’t ready to deal with.
Less than three months after starting my new exciting job and my split, I was riding high on the hog, bumping my Bob Marley CD’s and doing my art for the world to see. But, that same month, I began a long and arduous trek through mazes of doctors, specialists, painful procedures, excruciating ruptures, depression, anxiety, joint pain, muscle pain and a myriad of medications that would lead me down a very dark road.
It started out with a headache. I was at work when it began so I called my doctor. I needed something for my head and I needed it immediately. When I arrived at my doctors’ office and it was finally my turn, my doctor’s nurse asked me what was wrong. I told her I had a splitting headache. When my doctor came in, he asked a few more questions and diagnosed my headaches as tension and stress related. I told him I was also having trouble sleeping. He gave me two medications: one for the headaches and one for sleep.
Things at work had become tense and stressful as I had been promoted to Marketing Manager of Internet Services which meant more money and longer hours. My symptoms went into overdrive. Every day, my headaches were getting worse, my neck and back ached, my stomach felt like bricks and I was constipated without relief. I didn’t know what was happening and was spending hours in the doctor’s office and my “at home” pharmacy was growing at full speed. Then, my reproductive system went into turmoil and my ovaries began creating cysts that would constantly rupture.
Doctor and Prescription Drug Merry-Go-Round
As I ran around from doctor to doctor with no one having any answers, I watched my life begin to deteriorate. I was taking medications morning, noon and night, I wasn’t sleeping, my joints ached, my head hurt and still no one had answers. There was no test, other than a physical I could take to determine what was wrong with me. This went on for two years with some of the greatest physicians in southern California treating me! I walked around in a fog as I shuffled myself from doctor to doctor and had to undergo test after test. I had a total of 4 specialists on my case and was taking nine meds! During this time I had also become a Nichiren Daishonin Buddhist and began chanting (reciting “Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo” as mantra) for a better life, better health and better life condition.
In October of 2002, as I headed to work on 101 Freeway, I felt a “pop” in my stomach and severe cramps inched their way across my abdomen. I called my doctor on my cell phone and he directed me to go to the emergency room instead of the office. After x-rays, an ultrasound and a morphine drip, the emergency room doctor emerged to tell me that I had a cysts that ruptured on my right ovary and it appeared to be very large because of the amount of fluid in my stomach. I was immediately put on one weeks’ bed rest and pain pills.
And so, my journey skirted off an already bumpy road as my body shut down and I suffered several ruptured ovarian cysts, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Chronic Pain Syndrome, joint pain, depression, fatigue and anxiety. My doctors were actively running tests, scheduling procedures and loading me up on drugs. But they had yet to tell me what was wrong.
Diagnosis: Fibromyalgia
Finally, my primary care physician sent me to another specialist, this time a Rheumatologist who was able to answer my prayers and give me a label for my disorder: Fibromyalgia. When the rheumatologist told me that even though I was out of a “stressful” situation, the dominoes had already been set to flow in a downward spiral, I completely freaked out. When she told me that stress was the culprit, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
It didn’t take long for me to end friendships because they were “too stressful”. I stopped talking to my relatives because they were “too stressful”. I couldn’t listen to news radio and I couldn’t watch the news on television. I wasn’t able to handle the stress of the daily paper and I closed myself up in my home and watched my life slowly deteriorate.
Hope and Healing to Defeat Fibromyalgia
And then, something happened. I met someone who had suffered with and overcame FMS and he was a Buddhist too and had been for years. I felt like I had won the lottery. Finally, I had someone to commiserate with me about this condition and someone to pray with. I had someone to look to when I had a challenge I didn’t think I could overcome. This person told me something that would forever change the way I think, live and accept FMS.
“You have two choices.” He told me. “You can either lay there and lose or get up and win. There are no other options.”
When I complained that the pain was too great for me to fall on my faith, he reminded me I could lean on it. When I complained that I could only sit for 10 minutes, he reminded me that I could only sit 5 minutes the previous week. When I complained that I just couldn’t do it. He reminded me that I had the power to change my life.
The power to change my life, my health and my fate lied within me. It was a tough pill to swallow but I took the leap and gulped it down with a huge glass of faith!
If you suffer from FMS or any ailment, your road may not be the same as mine but you definitely have one to travel. The key is to remember to be good to yourself, stay in tune with your body and what it’s telling you and most of all HAVE FAITH that you will get better. Everyone has a light within them and sometimes it’s just a flicker but it’s still there. Find your light and pull yourself up out of the darkness that illness can bring.
Take one step at a time and do everything one day at a time without overextending yourself or using bursts of energy that tend to eventually deplete you. Time is on your side if you start accepting and living the life you want today.
Thanks so much Kris for sharing your amazing story with us today. It gives all of those suffering great hope!
Kris is a ‘Jane of all Trades’ and the author of ‘Pretty Girls Have Problems Too!’ When she’s not cooking, talking about locs, beauty or life as a chef, she spends her time soaking up The Bahamian Sun with her husband, a grown daughter, and a couple of toddlers thrown in to shake things up. Check her out at her inspiring site SoulSpace and A Mile in My Shoes.
Healthy Blessings,
Sandy
Defeat Fibromyalgia with Natural Solutions
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