FLARE!

With the first blog up and running its time to turn to the real stuff and start filling you all in on what my life living with fibro is really like.

I guess I didn’t really know what a flare was when I first read the term and definitely couldn’t put it into any kind of perspective. I hurt all the time, di that mean that I am in a flare constantly?

I recently found out what I believe a flare means to me and it didn’t really start with stress or feeling down or doing too much, it started with knee pain.

I have a historic problem with my right knee, which is not to say that my left knee is not also problematic. Over 20 years ago whilst pregnant, I sat down at the top of the stairs, but when I stood my knee locked in place. I couldn’t straighten it, bend it or put weight on it and it stayed that way for over 3 weeks. As time has gone on, it has become progressively worse, with an MRI showing degeneration and other things that I don’t overly understand. The basic outcome was, there was nothing I could really do about it, well of course apart from lose weight. So, over the years I have adapted, every now and then it ‘kicks off’, and gives me some pain. I take the pressure off with walking aids, take some over the counter pain killers for a couple of days and it normally tends to settle down.

Except on this occasion, it didn’t, so after a week of not being able to put weight on it, having to work from home and with horrendous sleep, I gave in and called my GP surgery.

Now when I say I wasn’t stressed, I will add that whenever I call the GP surgery I am stressed as it is such a undertaking. I have history with them, but I am not going into that today, let’s just say they rile me up with the first sentence. After I told the receptionist that I was having knee pain she quickly signposted me to another service. I explained that this was an historic issue and that I wish to see a GP, but yet again she tried to signpost me to someone different. I gave up. I didn’t want to argue with her, my anxiety was growing, so I said thank you and finished the call.

This was Monday and by Friday I hadn’t slept. My body started to retaliate against this and my head was, how can I describe it without swearing, “goop”. The pain levels around my body had increased tenfold and I knew that I needed to get this knee sorted, so back to the GP I went. Long story short, I got in to see a locum. He took one look at me, realised how much pain I was in (and not just with my knee) and put me on sick leave for two weeks from work.

The relief I felt however, was short lived. The next day I could barely get out of bed.

I have tried to devise a pain chart over the year since diagnosis, I normally sit around 4/5 out of 10. This was different, this was a level of pain that I have never experienced before with my Fibro. It took me 20 minutes to sit up and make my way to the bathroom; I really thought that I was going to pee myself as I couldn’t go any faster.

Over the next few weeks, the pain remained high. Standing wasn’t achievable without the help from my husband or son. Walking needed crutches, stairs became Mount Everest and even eating and drinking became a painful chore. I remember trying to raise a glass of water and my arm felt like I had 1000 kg weight attached to my wrist!

During this time my mental health also rapidly declined and at one point I was sitting on my bed howling and expressing how I didn’t want to live a life of pain and that it just wasn’t worth it.

However, eventually it subsided. I remember waking up one morning and thinking “OK that’s a little better” and it went from there.

This was the worst I have ever been with my fibromyalgia and when I say everything hurt, I mean everything. Life was miserable, my family hated that they could do nothing for me and I fought as hard as I could, but truth is some days were just dark. But, as the cliché says, (you will learn that I LOVE a cliché), there was light at the end of the tunnel and three weeks after that visit to the GP I was able to do a trip we had planned, albeit at a slower pace.

I could quite easily have given up, and I am sure it is a path that many have taken, because unlike me, they haven’t a present supportive family to help them fight the darkness and show them the good things to come. So, please, if you are feeling this way, seek help from someone. Your GP, Samaritans, a friend, family or a stranger who happens to be nice to you on social media, just talk to them and let them help you like I did with mine.

Five weeks on, my pain levels are back down to 4/5/6. I’m back at work after a period of phased return and we have booked another trip. My son is happy; my husband is happy and so am I.

The moral of this little tale is that fibromyalgia has no rules, I did not see this coming. I truly believe that the prolonged pain in my knee is what triggered this particular flair, which I believe is what caught me out; so just another reason to add to my ever-growing list of triggers.

So, on I go, with my knowledge and my acceptance growing, in this journey Of Fibro in my 50s.

As a side note, I know that I could use some sort of AI, like copilot, to “spruce” this up a bit. But, I want to keep it authentic to me, so please bear with me when it comes to my writing, punctuation and general bad English, after all, that’s who I am. (LOL)!