My Fibro Blog Has Relocated

Following a review of what was where and why I have (once again, but finally) relocated this blog to:

My Fibro Life

The new site will aim to link FibroMen as a platform for supporting those with Fibromyalgia and will include elements of this blog - some direct lifts where the information is still pertinent.

I hope you will join me over at the new place sometime. I look forward to renewing our friendship there.

Thanks for all the support in the past. Long may it continue at My Fibro Life

Gary

Moving Home, Downsizing & Getting Back On Top of Things!

For far too long I have struggled to maintain a semblance of balance between my home, work and online lives. I know now that juggling several websites and blogs is not only time consuming but also, with my conditions, ruining my 'me' time and having an impact on my health and family life. This is possibly one of the causes of my grand mal depression last year - and why, ever since, I have avoided my blogs and sites (to a certain extent) only posting when I felt I absolutely must.

What I think I'm saying is that I've become over-stretched by trying to maintain too many things in too many places, blogs on weebly, blogs on blogger, sites on Fibro and trying to build a social site for fibro / chronic pain sufferers. I've confused myself as well as my readers.

However, I have always liked blogging so I don't want to abandon it altogether, though I definitely need to trim off some of the branches that are no longer a pleasure. So, with immediate effect I am transferring this blog to a new site, where I will endeavour to combine every element of my online activities - A blog, (singular) with links to each of the two main fibromyalgia sites (fibromen.org and FibroMates.com) The blog and site will be hosted through Wordpress (sorry Blogger) The site will also encompass elements of my other activities and hobbies - namely web site development and domains, hosting, email sales with my micro business (GEEMAC and GEEMAC Web)

I will endeavour to reconnect with those friends I have made through this blog over time - so this isn't goodbye, merely adieu until we meet again at the new site:

My Fibro Life

I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks to those who have followed this blog and my many struggles over the past five years.

Gary

It's Been A While.....

There's something quite upsetting, yet enlightening, about leaving a blog for so long.

When you finally pluck up the courage to go back and have a look at how you were (in my case way back in February 2017) you sometimes see the reason for the lack of blogging.

Today, as I was at a loose end for the first time in months, I thought "I know! I'll catch up with the Fibro Blog!" When I logged in to the account and re-read the last post from February, I saw some hope. Hope that I might be able to persuade my readers that I had finally turned a corner, that my pain levels were now manageable, I wasn't depressed, my life was back on track...

But it isn't.

And this has, somehow, led me to the conclusion that it never will be. My life now is my life tomorrow, and the day after, and the week after that. My life is going to stay the same from now until I die.

What strikes me is this: My life will stay the same, but my attitude to it will fluctuate.

I'll have good days and bad days. I'll have days with lots of pain and days with limited pain.

I'll never have a day when I don't have pain, in one form or another - be it emotional or physical.

What I will have is days where I can handle the emotional and physical pain and days where I can't.

I just have to recognise the good days and the bad days and live my life accordingly - without getting depressed about how things are because I know that, although today might be a bad day, tomorrow could be fantastic!

Getting By.

I'm slowly rebuilding my strength. I've spent almost a whole year doing as little as possible - except for one thing - focusing on myself.


About this time last year I had so much going on in my life - blogs, reviews, websites - building and maintaining my own as well as developing new sites for friends and family, research, product reviews, contractual obligations, reading, maintaining the FibroMen site, trying to build the FibroMates site and their associated Facebook, Google+ and Twitter accounts - and all the while feeling worse and worse, suffering from agonising pain that not even morphine could counter and sinking further and further into depression and at the same time holding down a physically demanding job and trying to cope with a disabled wife and a disabled daughter, it all just became too much and one day I sought refuge in the form of a little too much medication - cocodamol, morphine, fluoxetine (Prozac) and alcohol. Not an overdose, merely a combination that was too much for my fragile state of mind to handle. I imploded.


The meltdown was so swift and my mood so dark that I shut out everything and everyone - including my wife and, to a lesser degree, my daughter - quite literally overnight. I became obnoxious. My marriage crumbled.


Apparently my whole persona changed. At work I maintained my old jovial, friendly and helpful state, but at home I was rude, indifferent and bullying. I was simply awful. I didn't want to be around my family and I tried my best, it would seem, to make them dislike me so that I could have a valid reason for leaving - there was a deeper issue going on which I can't/won't explain here, but those of you who know me personally are aware of what this issue was. All I will say is that many years, many decades, of pent up emotions and past grievances came bubbling to the surface. I hated myself, my life and everything/everyone in it. I painted on my smile and went to work for sixteen hours a week.


Now I'm getting by. My pain levels are at an all time high because I dare not take morphine again, but I'm getting by without it. I started going to a gym in late summer last year and, whilst this may be adding to my pain, or at least perpetuating it, I have fixed in my mind that the pain is a good sign instead of coming from the unknown like fibromyalgia, and I'm finding it beneficial to improving my strength so I can still work sixteen hours a week in a busy retail role. I look better too, so to hell with the pain!!


As for my marriage - well, I'm still at home. We still row, and my wife is keen to remind me how awful I was, but we're getting by.....

My Mid-Life Rebirth

I've been absent from most social media and websites for a period of some seven months.

I apologise if my disappearance caused anyone any concerns.

The truth of the matter is that I suffered some kind of meltdown. Years of pain coupled with months of depression finally caught up with me and I decided, for my own sake and the sake of my family, to shut down everything!

I avoided my computer. I left contractual obligations unmet and projects unfinished, I stopped responding to emails and, eventually, gave up even opening my email client on my phone or tablet.

I sought help from my doctor, who prescribed Prozac. The prozac kicked in after three weeks and for a few weeks I felt bouyant enough to concentrate on getting myself fully better. I had some hope of beating the negativity I'd been feeling for months. But within a few weeks the Prozac had stopped working - or had worked too well - because I suddenly found that my whole personality had been transformed, and not in a good way. My wife and daughter bore the brunt of this new "personality." I became unemotional, withdrawn, spiteful, argumentative and downright bad-tempered.

My life, in just a few weeks, had irrevocably changed. My marriage suffered (beyond repair) and we are now still living in the same house, but only because we cant afford to divorce or sell the home we had made for our daughter's future. If this situation continues to work for us both then at least Emily will always have a home once the mortgage is paid off - but it's far from ideal for either of us.

I became a different person - in so many ways I'm not going to describe here - I changed, and not in a good way.

At the time of writing this- it is now January 14th 2017 - I have reached a point where I feel I can function. To me I'm back to my old self - but it seems, that to my family, and in particular my wife, I am still the person I became in early summer last year.

Being in constant pain meant I was prescribed many different drugs - all of which played a part in my downfall. Most notably I was prescribed Prozac - which, when combined with morphine, amitriptyline, cocodamol and copious quantities of alcohol, completely altered my personality in the way already stated.

I am still in constant pain - despite the drugs. Despite the drinking. Despite everything.

Pain is now my life - emotionally as well as physically. Pain rules. I no longer take Prozac. I no longer drink to excess, I limit my morphine intake to days when I'm not working. Yet still - pain rules.

PAIN RULES as it has done for the past fourteen years.

It reached a peak in early summer 2016. I took prescribed medication to help. It didn't help.

I took advantage of the breakdown of my marriage to indulge in a different way of life - in the hopes that being true to myself would somehow heal my pains- it didn't.

I undertook a course of psychological counselling to try to beat my depression. It didn't work, but it did force me to take a good look at myself, and the overriding facts became clear (so in that way I suppose the counselling did work.) Pain was ruling and ruining my life because I was letting it take over. From waking to going to sleep pain was in my every thought and action. Pain, pain, pain. More pain and a little pain added for good measure. I was encased in pain. Not merely physical pain, but mental pain too.

I forced myself to join a gym. I turned the mental pain into more physical pain - but there was a reason for this pain. A cause to my suffering that I could identify - I was exercising my aching muscles and now they ached because I was working out - not because of the fibro - I was causing the pain and, in this way, it became more acceptable psychologically.

Being able to identify the cause of at least some of my pain made it a whole lot easier to accept - plus this pain has added benefits in that I look much better, physically, than I've ever looked. I have muscles - the guys at work now compare themselves to me rather than the other way of me comparing myself to them (and feeling inadequate like I always did) I'm fifty one, but I feel so much better than I did when I was twenty one.

Some might call it a mid-life crisis. I call it my mid-life rebirth.