The Way Things Should Have Been

Hello, everyone!

I've been in a real self reflective mood recently.  Thinking about where I came from, where I've been and where I'm supposed to go and then panic strikes as I am afraid I may never get there!  It sometimes wakes me up at night and my heart is racing and I'm just feeling really anxious.  Nothing went the way it was planned.  Nothing.

It all started when I got fibromyalgia.  I believe it was way back in the first year of nursing school.  I remember walking long walks with my dad and then wham! One day came my second year of school and I couldn't walk a block without my calves being bone hard and hurting like all get-out.  I was thin in nursing school.  Here's what I looked like:

This was taken my first year of nursing school in 1991.  I was modeling off my new clinical uniform that grandma and grandpa bought for me. I remember them getting me a lot of my nursing school stuff: uniforms, stethoscope and books.  My mom tried real hard and worked real hard, but those were extra expenses she couldn't swing.  The state of Michigan paid for my education....and I never even worked a day as a nurse there!  I had a pell grant that took me all through school.

Anyway, back on point. I looked and felt great and then the fibro comes and I couldn't walk with my dad anymore so the weight started to creep up on me.  School was very stressful and I had that speech impediment and I found great comfort in Sara Lee and Betty Crocker.  Fine ladies in my humble opinion!!  When I graduated from nursing school, I looked like this:

As you can see, my youthful figure got lost somewhere inside this person's body!!!  Once my weight started to creep up, it did it with a vengeance.  I couldn't stop eating for comfort.  It's no secret that I had a lot of stressors back then....my dad and his prescription drug habit, my mom and her failing health and working 12 hour shifts EVERYDAY for three months, and we couldn't keep a car running for more than a few days.  I had to get to my clinicals and it's kind of hard without wheels.  So my mom was real inventive and I went to school in ambulances far more than I'm willing to count. (She was a 911 operator for Medic One)  The paramedics loved it and would zoom me to school with lights and sirens blaring.  I'd slink out and walk as fast as I could inside the building.  Oh, well, desperate times call for desperate measures.  I graduated with honors May of 1993.

I came to good ole' Arizona in 1993 and landed a job at Yuma Regional Medical Center, where I worked for the next 10 years.  I worked on a med-surg floor and we got patients ranging from cancer to kidney dialysis. I learned a lot.  Then I moved on to Yuma Rehab Hospital for another 3 years and it was here that my fibro was really getting out of hand.  I had to call in sick a lot and they didn't like that.  I could barely walk, how could I work?  I used up all my sick time and we started having problems with finances.  (To back up - I got married in Nov. of 1996 and we moved in with my parents in Yuma to combine expenses as they weren't doing so hot with paying bills, either!)

I clashed big time with the manager at the rehab, quit that job and got another with a hole-in-the-wall nursing home in town.  That was my worst job to date.  I was in charge of everything- 100 residents and only two nurse's aides to help.  The emotional eating got really bad at that job and I ballooned up even more.  Since I'm being so honest, I'll show you a picture of how I look now, even though the pic was taken a few years ago in Imperial Beach, CA.

I really did NOT want this picture taken, but my mom was very stern about it. I couldn't take any more of her if she couldn't take any of me.  So I allowed a one time viewing of Shamu-the whale....(that would be me!)  Anyway, I worked at the nursing home for six months, then couldn't stand it anymore and quit that job.  I then tried travel nursing and that's how we got to San Antonio, where we had planned to move to as I had lined up a wonderful job at Northeast Methodist in Rolling Oaks, TX.  But, because of my weight and how I felt, I knew in my heart I couldn't keep that job long. I could barely stand, let alone work a 12 hour shift.  The weight on my bones and joints is excruciating.  I am soooo very angry at myself for gaining so much weight!!!  How could I be such a pig?  I just don't deserve to live!  God, I hope my insurance approves that lap-band procedure!!

I've spoken in previous posts about what happened in San Antonio and my mother's death.  I decided at that point that I was going to lose weight and I just didn't eat. I didn't FEEL like eating. My whole world was turned upside down, inside out.  I lost 100 pounds since her death July 2008.  But I still have about 150 MORE pounds to go and I'm just stuck.  At each doctor's appointment, my weight is either the same or higher.  And I don't cheat or eat half as much as I used to.  It's just not fair!  And now I can't even stand for five minutes without my legs feeling like they were thrown in a vat with steel knives and burning hot oil.  It's horrible!!

It shouldn't have worked out like this.  I should still be working, our bills paid, my mom still alive and with my dad, and Frankie and me living in our own apartment but still close to our family.  We should be planning for vacations and getting flat screen TV's and a computer in every room.  I love STUFF and we should be getting STUFF.  Unfortunately, it just isn't how it should be and for that, I'm very depressed.

Have you ever felt like that?  I can't even talk to my dad about it.  It's funny. When he left for Michigan in May of 2009, he promised he'd call me every day and email, too.  Now, I'm lucky if I get a one-liner email every two months.  Phone calls are practically non-existent.  Guess he's moving on quite nicely in his own apartment and going on chat lines.  Maybe it's for the best.  I can't deal with his drug problems right now in my life.  I feel storm battered and I need to heal and recover from the past.

At least I have my husband's parents to lean on, and my wonderful sister-in-law and brother-in-law.  My grandma lives in Texas with her son and I have her calling me very frequently, which I absolutely LOVE.  I love hearing her voice and distinctive laugh.  It instantly cheers me up.  I miss her so much it hurts.  When we can finally get our stuff back from San Antonio storage, we are definitely meeting up for lunch. She said she would come from College Station just to see me!  That warms my heart.  My husband and I have had a very rough road, but at least we haven't had to travel it alone.  So even though things didn't go quite as I had long ago planned, maybe my life was meant to go a different way and I'm learning as I go down life's bumpy road.

Whew! My fingers are getting very sore so I must stop for tonight. Thanks for listening to me drone on and on.  I love blogging and all my new online friends. You guys and gals are family to me, too, and I cherish each and every one of you!!

God bless!!
Be Well!!
Until next post,
Missy

The Saga Continues...Part 2

Hello again! I am sooooo glad to be inside an air conditioned house than outside in the blazing 107 degree heat!  I just got back with my husband from his dental appointment to have a crown placed on one of his teeth and then to his weekly allergy injection.  It was so warm out, my sweat had sweat!! It's going to be a looooonnnnnggggg summer, I can just tell!!

The story continues....let's see....things weren't always bad while we were living with my parents. The time we all went to the Grand Canyon and Sedona were great. And we went to Pacific Beach in San Diego, CA and had a blast at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park. I've got many pictures from all the trips and I cherish each and every one of them....for two reasons. One, they represent the good times in our life and second, now that my mom is gone, the pictures of her are even more precious. I can't ever get those times back and I want to very much! So if anyone develops a time machine, can I be one of the first to ride in it??  LOL....

Over the 10 years we all lived together, we tried very hard to both hide and help my dad with his drug addiction.  Very hard things to do, indeed. I tried to hold his medications for him and give them out at spaced intervals. That lasted for about two hours. He kept following me around and coming up with things like, "oh, I wrenched my back while doing my work out. Can I have an extra pill?" It's very hard to play jailor after your own dad. How do you say no? And everywhere I hid his pills, he found. So we came up with a safe that requires BOTH a key and a combination.  I joke and say this safe is "BP"....stands for "Bobby proof."  He tried to take some kind of tool and pry it open when I was at work but it didn't work.  And it got paint flecks all over my carpet that he didn't bother to clean up!

He got really upset over not being able to get into the safe that he started just outright demanding I give him his pills back. I was afraid of what he might do, so I gave them back.  But I kept ours in the safe, though. He can have his and we can have ours!!  Oh, sigh, if only it worked out like that. When he threw a fit, he threw a massive fit. Hitting things, throwing things, I never knew what else he might do and didn't want to find out. So I divided up our pills and gave him a small amount to keep him quiet. But when I did that, our supply ran short and when I'm out of my pain medication, I'm miserable!!!!  Frankie and my mom were miserable!!!!  But I just didn't know what else to do. I felt trapped in every sense of the word.  And we would be out not for just a few days, but sometimes a week or two.

When mom and I were out on my traveling nurse jobs, that was nice. We would be gone for a week or so, as I had an assignment at Banner Desert Hospital in Mesa, AZ. The nurse company got us a really nice apartment in Scottsdale and mom and I would go and live the high life for awhile. It was sooo nice to keep our medications in the medicine cabinet instead of locked up in the safe.

I did the nurse job at Banner Desert the best I could, but working on the floor just got to be too much. Plus, my wieght was ballooning up and I could hardly breathe without having to huff and puff!!  My joints, especially my knees, were all screaming at me. I tried to put up a brave front for my mom, but damn, I hurt so bad I could hardly stand it. But I had to work....I was the main bread winner, so do speak!

The next assignment was the San Antonio one, where mom died. I knew the second we got to San Antonio, and felt the increase of humidity, that I wouldn't be able to work at the hospital that hired me.  It was a shame, as everyone there was so nice, caring and compassionate. When mom fell ill and was critical, I had a team of people around ME, and she had a team around her and we both were being cared for. That was the absolute worst day of my life on that day they told me my mom was going to die. I couldn't imagine my life without her. Who would take care of my dad? Was I responsible?  I was so afraid to call him up and tell him mom had died. What would he do? Would he take an overdose of his pills and end it all? But I couldn't NOT tell him. So I told him and he was just absolutely silent. My husband said he paced a lot that night and didn't sleep.  My grandma came and stayed with me to help me adjust to the drastic changes.  She lives in College Station with my aunt and uncle, so the trip wasn't too far from San Antonio.  Grandma was in shock mode, too, but she kept focused and we took care of all the arrangements to have mom cremated and sent back to Michigan, where we thought she'd be buried in the Churchill family plot.  After all was taken care of, grandma went back to College Station and I started back home to Tucson. I'm glad I took that trip alone. I remember driving and crying, remembering every moment of my life with mom and now driving the highways alone, no laughter or music in the car that mom loved while she drove.  I wished I could go back in time and figure out what happened. Why did her kidneys fail so fast? Was it a whopper of an infection? They all seemed to think so in Texas.  She was always getting infections. After all her joint replacement surgeries she'd get a skin infection that would need a treatment of antibiotics.  But she always got a fever with her infections and she didn't have one this time. Only her white count was very low, but that is one thing you can't tell when looking at  someone.

I tried to believe that I could still keep that job in San Antonio. Mom wanted me to keep working so badly and I tried to do that for her, in her memory. So I went back to Tucson, packed up the moving truck (with MUCH thanks to my in-laws and sister-in-law Barb and brother-in-law Jay as they helped with getting us moving men and money! And my mom and dad-in-law helped pack up the kitchen.  My father didn't lift ONE finger to help us. I don't know why. I kept telling him, "Dad, we are leaving tomorrow. Please help us!" and he would look at me and tell me we had plenty of time.  NO, we didn't!!!! So Frankie and I worked like maniacs and finally everything was loaded and we were ready to go.

Our life in San Antonio flopped even before it started. I tried to work, but had such a severe panic attack that they sent me home on my first night there. It was so much harder than I thought to work in the same hospital my mom had died in.  We were living in the Super 8 motel, I couldn't work a shift to save my life and we were broke. My grandma and frankie's folks financed our stay at the Super 8, but that was running out fast.  My uncle, who lives in Michigan, kept telling us to come and stay with him for awhile. I was so blinded by grief that I followed what Dad wanted. So Michigan we went to and stayed there for about two weeks and then Frankie's folks graciously took us into their home until we get on our feet again.  We were broke (as usual) and would have stayed in Michigan until Frankie's disability check came in at the end of the month, but Frankie's folks came to our rescue again and financed some of the trip home and my aunt and uncle gave us money, too.  They were probably glad to get get us out of their house....especially my dad!!

Well, I'm gonna bring this to a close for today as my eyes are blurry and my brain is foggy. I hope this isn't too boring.  It does me a lot of good to talk about this and remember what happened.  Having mom die is the WORST thing to have happened to me in my life so far.  Even after almost 2 years, I'm still in shock that she is gone.  I will forever love and miss her.

I hope you all are happy & well!
Until next post,
Missy

The Saga Continues!

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope this post finds you all happy and as pain-free as possible. I woke up with a lot of numbness in my right foot, alternating with "pins and needles."  The numbness was so bad it felt like I was touching someone else's foot.  VERY weird indeed!!  I also had that happen when I sat on the toilet for too long yesterday. I was so tired, I fell asleep right where I was. It was quiet, dark and I must have been reasonably comfortable to have fallen fast asleep. I woke up with that numbness problem and had to bang my feet on the floor to "wake" them up. I was calling for my dear husband, who was in the next room (our computer room) but he couldn't hear me over the computer.  Go figure! Now who's more important? The wife or the computer? Don't answer that!!!  LOL....

Anyway, true to my word, I'll continue my story where I left off last night. I hope it helps others out there that face the same challenges that I have to face.  It's not easy to have a chronic illness for which you take medications for and then your dad takes that medication from you.  I love him, but I'm just so frustrated with him right now for doing that to me all the time and making me feel guilty or a "bad daughter" if I don't do what he asks. He's very good at pressing my "buttons."  And I fall into it every single time!!

Things DID go good for awhile after Frankie and I moved in and shared expenses with my parents. Sure, there was an adjustment period as it's difficult to blend two families into one and I think my mom and dad were jealous of Frankie at first because of the time he spent with me was time away from them. But we made it work because we had to. My mom couldn't live on just her check and we couldn't afford to pay for two households, let alone our own!  We all cracked down and got used to each other's habits. No use wasting energy on fighting about who left the towel on the floor in the bathroom, or the toilet seat up when we were dealing with much more heavier issues.  My dad.

My dad came from a dysfunctional family. If you look up in the dictionary the term dysfunctional, you'll see a family portrait of the Karchunas klan. IF you could get them all in one room together and have them NOT try to kill each other!  They have lots of mental issues that go way back that I can't even begin to describe it.  My dad has four brothers & one sister and each one has some sort of problem. My dad's dad was a blazing alcoholic. When he died of a pulmonary embolus at age 47, they searched his automotive garage and found beer tucked up all over the place. I can't say I blame him in some way....my grandma Karchunas was some kind of woman.  She never worked a day in her life, never learned how to drive and she actually told me once that her main purpose for having children was so they could grow up to wait on her. Nice.  She was a very paranoid person, kept looking at you out of the corner of her eye. When my mom first met her, she started doing that and mom just looked right back at her.  She was a user, to say the least. When mom would come down from college to see dad, grandma K. would get to her first and ask if she could make a quick run to the bank for some money. Then after the bank, the store. The list went on until mom told her flat out she came here to see her son, NOT her. Mom was called a hussy and kicked out of the house. Dad had followed mom out, carrying a container of chocolate milk and grandma K didn't like that and she followed them out to the porch with a broom and was bonking dad on the head with it.  What a family.

The eldest son did the smart thing and when he graduated from college, he got the hell out of Dodge, so to speak! He lives in Florida to this day. My dad is the second oldest, and he got hooked on pills when he hurt the muscle group in his back on a die cast machine at work. Of course he always would say it was mom's fault for having those types of medication at home after her surgery (hysterectomy.)  Well, excuse her for wanting pain relief after a major abdominal surgery!!!  One of my two uncle's is a raging alcoholic...in fact, I'm surprised he's still alive after all these years of boozing and taking pills. My other uncle is very spastic and neurotic. He walks around taking his pulse every two seconds and always talks about how everything is "hassles" and more "hassles." And then my poor aunt....she could have been saved, I think, if she would have been taken out of that unhealthy environment and sent off to boarding school!!  My aunt has two children, both with the same father, aged 13 and 22. It's anyone's guess if they will inherit the Karchunas genes and either be mentally ill or chemically challenged!!

That's my dad's family in a nutshell. A very small nutshell. Like I said, he has a very complex family and no one paragraph could sum them up. Heck, a whole room full of paragraphs couldn't sum them up!!!  So you can see why when we were broke we could never rely on them for help. It would have been nice, since we'd put up with their crap over the years, but I guess we still have to follow the protocol of praising grandma K and making sure her needs came above everyone else's.

Well, my hubby's turn for the computer has come upon me, so I must close and continue again tomorrow. The good, juicy parts are coming up next! It's almost like a mystery novel, isn't it? :0)  Hope you all have a great night and I will continue on tomorrow with the "saga."

Big hugs to everyone one,
Missy

Sunday, Sunday

Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you all have had a good weekend. Ready to start the new week, with all it's challenges and unforeseen experiences?  That is what scares me-is the unforeseen experiences- as you can't prepare for them. I'm the type of person that loves to pack ahead of time, so to speak, and prepare for what is going to happen next.  I HATE surprises..most of them, anyway. I mean, birthday or anniversary surprises are one thing....I love those. The surprise of having my mom suddenly die while in San Antonio....that was ONE surprise I could have definitely lived without!!!   Living with fibro is one big question mark over your head. You just don't know when the flare-up is going to come. You can't ever make good plans, for fear you will have to cancel because of a flare-up. I've had to do that so many times over the past 14 years that I'm so hesitant now to even make plans to do anything. Then you sit around the house being bored and you hate having fibro for one MORE reason....you can't ever plan anything!!

I've been in such a nostalgic mood lately. I've been looking at a lot of pictures of my mom and dad and when Frankie and I lived with them. I've also looked at pictures of my childhood and remembering times when they weren't so bad. My dad had a job and wasn't hooked on prescription drugs at that time. We had two cars and presents under the Christmas tree. We had a nice place to live in, one I wasn't so embarrassed of that I'd lie to my friends about where I lived.  Actually, make that FRIEND. I only had one good friend in high school and her situation was kind of like mine.  Her father was an alcoholic and her parents divorced and she lived with her mom not too far from where I lived.  I may have had both of my parents, but there were lots of times I wondered if Mom would have been happier with her life if she and my dad divorced.  Don't get me wrong-I love my dad, despite his addiction, but they just fought ALL THE TIME and that is not good for a relationship. The tension was so much in our house that you could cut it with a knife.  My dad, for some reason, just quit looking for a job, so mom had to work extra hard and long at the job she had just to make ends meet. I volunteered many times to go out and flip burgers at the Burger King down the street, but she wouldn't hear of it.  Especially when I was in nursing school. She kept saying, "I want you to study and work hard in school. Graduate and get a good job and get us out of here!"  So that is what I did. I studied and graduated with honors and my dad would go around surrounding towns with his sister and look for "candy man" doctors who would write prescriptions for tranquilizers and pain killers.  My mom would be working so much we never saw her too much.

I graduated from nursing school May of 1993. At that time, my mom's dad was suffering from late stage Alzheimer's and the plan would be I would go to Arizona and help out grandma as she was having a difficult time with him.  I had to wait for three months, though, for my license (and to see if I even passed the boards!)  My license came the last week of October and I flew out to Arizona. My grandpa died of complications following a stroke he had in July. I decided to still go along with the plan of going to Arizona because the job market was not good for RN's in Michigan at that time. They wanted LPN's, who they could pay less. That's what I was told, anyway.  My grandma met me at the airport and my new life, as I knew it, was just starting. I was very excited, but scared, too. I never had been away from my parents like this. Being an only child, I was close to my parents and rather shy of new people.

My grandma lived in Yuma, AZ, which is a dusty border town to Mexico and California. You could almost be safe in saying that the primary language of Yuma is Spanish, and English second. When I was hired at the community hospital, I took care of lots of patients who only spoke Spanish. I'd have to have someone come and interpret for me or talk with little children who were learning English in school. I remember getting a consent for a colonoscopy through a five year old to his grandmother who was having the test!  After awhile, I picked up words and phrases in Spanish and got better, but I certainly wouldn't call me fluent in Spanish!

My parents came out to Yuma in April of 1994. It was only then that I learned my dad was a nightmare while I was gone the whole time in AZ. He would be taking taxis all over town to urgent care facilities and ER's, in search of his medications of choice. He even took the car out (I saved enough of my checks so they could buy a car to come to AZ with) and he was really "high" and hit two parked cars and scraped the guard rail on the road he was on. He was on the police band radio as a "hit and run."  When he showed up at mom's work, she didn't know what to do. He was obviously three sheets to the wind and in NO condition to drive.  He suffers from seizures, so she called the police and told them that he must have had a seizure while driving. They dropped the charges. She did what she felt she had to do, but I don't think she did him any favors by covering up like that. Maybe if we both would have covered LESS for him, he might have realized how bad his drug problem really was. We'll never know.

I met my dear hubby online in 1995 and we traveled back and forth from Phoenix (where he lived) to Yuma (where I lived.)  We did this for a year then decided to get married Nov. 16th, 1996.  I chose to live in Phoenix after our wedding, to see how life in a big city was. I never lived in a big city, so this was very exciting. I had secured a job at Boswell hospital in Sun City that I really enjoyed. We'd go see my folks in Yuma on the weekends once or twice a month. We kept that up for about 8 months then my dad started calling me on the phone with really weird statements like, "your mom is trying to drown me in the bathtub."  He had many other statements, but that was the weirdest one. Mom got on the phone, crying, saying she was NOT trying to kill him, although it wasn't a bad idea at the moment!  I threw some clothes into a bag and Frankie and I made an emergency trip to Yuma.

Truth be told, we weren't doing so hot in Phoenix, either. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in Dec. of 1996 and felt horrible with joint and body aches, irritable bowel syndrome and my calves would get so hard I could barely stand on them. My body was reacting to the stress of worrying about Mom and we were sending them money on a monthly basis, so that was cutting in on OUR monthly bills. We were broke, too!  So we decided to pool our checks together and live together.  Frankie and I moved to Yuma a few weeks later and I got my job back at Yuma's community hospital.  Frankie landed a job at a grocery store as a courtesy clerk, which he hated. He worked there for awhile, then landed a really good job with the City of Yuma as a mail courier.  Life should have been better, right? One would think......

I'll continue my saga tomorrow, my friends. My hands are starting to get stiff and my back and legs are killing me. My feet are so numb, it's hard to move them. God, I love fibro and neuropathy! They make a person feel so good, don't they?  Forgive me for cutting this short.  I hope each and everyone of you are happy and well.  Have a good week and I'll post again tomorrow.

Big hugs,
Missy

Merry-Go-Round

Good afternoon, everyone! Hope you all had a terrific Memorial Day yesterday. I honored my grandfather for his service in the US Army during WWII as a MP (Military Police.) He was very proud to serve his country and was in the Army for 4 years, 2 of those years overseas in France and Belgium. He didn't talk a lot about his Army days, just that Belgium was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.  I miss my grandpa, he died in June of 1993 of end stage Alzheimer's and stroke.  I am glad he is no longer suffering or scared to be locked inside a brain that doesn't know who the people around you are, or even yourself! Damn Alzheimer's disease! I could go on and on about how horrible Alzheimer's is, but we all know by now what devastating effects it has on the WHOLE family. I know I do - and I never want to go through that again!!!!

I woke up today feeling really crappy. Extremely exhausted (as if I'd been partying all night - I WISH!) and achy from head to toe. I took my morning pills, but they didn't work this time...just add to the exhaustion that I started out with.  There's so much work to be done around the house, and I can't do any of it. My back is so bad, bending down is a nightmare. My legs feel like something is biting them, I feel little "pinches" down on the tops of my swollen feet. When I go to look, of course, nothing is there. And then they start to itch.  When I scratch them, I get that all too familiar "pins and needles" sensation that lasts any where from 5-30 minutes. Then the pain starts back up.  Around and around we go.....I'm on the symptom merry-go-round and where she stops....nobody knows!!!

For me, the most difficult thing about having fibromyalgia is the unknown. You really don't know what will be affected next-your arms, your legs, your whole body. You can't really plan anything, because on the day of whatever it is you want to do, you could wake up with a really bad flare-up and not be able to do anything!  Then when you call to cancel, your friends or family think it's something personal.  No matter how much you explain it's not them and you are NOT antisocial, they just don't seem to get it. There really is no set of words you can use to make them understand. What I figure is, if the person thinks you are important enough to TRY and understand your position and accepts you for who you are, great.  If not, they really aren't good friend material anyway.  And if it turns out to be family, then that's really sad that they can't take the time to investigate about fibro and what you are going through.  In the years since I've been diagnosed, I've run into many types of scenarios.  Especially with friends and my boss at the hospital. I've lost a few friends and many jobs due to the fibro and while it wasn't really my fault, it still hurts like hell that how people in the MEDICAL field could shun me for having to go home sick or not being able to come in for a shift. What the killer was when I did go into work and one of my co-workers would be ill, they would get entirely different reaction to their situation.  "Oh, you should go home! You are sick!" I would get so irritated....why is THEIR illness more important than mine?  Ughhhhhh.....how I remember those days when I was working. Now that I can't work at all and I can't seem to convince Social Security of that fact, I have all the time in the world to remember those old feelings I would get over preferential treatment handed out at my work place. I was never the preferred one!!

Fibro is really something else, I tell ya. Just when you think you have a handle on it, the handle breaks.  I don't remember when I was in remission last from the fibro. The RA we have a good handle on with the Arava that I take for it, and Celebrex. I started on Savella last November and it took 8-9 weeks to totally kick in. It's a medication newly released for the treatment of fibromyalgia. I was so excited! NO medication had been "officially" listed for fibro, so this is a milestone.  It regulates two neurotransmitters in the brain: seritonin and norephinephrine. I began taking it and like most everyone else, you think you should get an immediate response. I continued to take it and felt nothing different. Just right when I was going to stop, my rheumatologist convinced me to continue it for two more weeks. He was so emphatic about it, I wondered if he held stock in it or something! I did what he said and continued it for two more weeks. My insurance wouldn't cover it, so he'd been giving me dozens of free samples.

Finally, at about the 9th week, I felt better. A little more energy. I slept better, deeper. In fact, my husband said I turned into quite the sleep "talker." I'd have whole conversations in my sleep! When I told the rheumy that, he said it was normal. And normal to have the vivid dreams I'd been having. It also raised my blood pressure quite significantly, so my blood pressure meds needed adjusting, but after that, it returned to its baseline.
Because the insurance wouldn't pay for it, the doc wrote a letter to them and within the week, I kid you not, I had the medication all paid for by my insurance! I don't know what he said, but I like it!  So I've been taking both Savella and Paxil for the fibro and some residual depression I have over my mom's death almost two years ago. I haven't had a problem with taking them both and am closely monitored.

I think I started to feel bad again because of many stressors in my life. My dad was acting up in Michigan and had a nervous breakdown and had to be taken to the VA hospital psych ward, but then was released (I think he just walked out as he was there under voluntary status after the initial 72 hour hold).  He told me he was reviewed by a panel of 20 doctors who thought that after 40 years of abusing his medications, he's all better after one week of treatment!  Oh, come on!  And the moon is made of swiss cheese!  I lectured him, told him this was his last option, as his sister can't allow him in her home anymore. Plus, he had punched holes in her wall and grabbed her arm when she wanted to leave.  She was rightfully afraid of him. So was I.  I still am, knowing what he is capable of when he can't get his drugs.  Frankie and I just can't deal with that anymore. We finally have a relationship and I'm no longer pestered by my dad wanting more and more of my pain pills.  I miss him and love him, sure. But that is where the line is drawn.

My dad never did stay in the VA rehab program. He went to a few sessions and now is staying with old family friends. I hear he is looking for an apartment for seniors and actually found one with a rent he can afford. He filed an application and I believe he moves in soon. Of course, he has no furniture, but he can worry about that. I have enough of my plate.

My other worries are of course, my swollen feet. But I'll find out if anything is up with my heart on June 11th. I figure it's nothing too bad or they would see me sooner, right?  I haven't heard a thing about the sleep studies yet.  And then my sweet, dear hubby. Having to go through this cancer crap again. I feel so badly for him. But we will get through this together.  The surgeon has his test planned for this coming Friday to look down into his stomach and see what the "shadow" is that showed on the cat scan he had last week.  He'll get the PET scan tomorrow.  And probably surgery next week or the following.  I'm glad they are moving fast...get rid of it as soon as possible!!!!

Well, my dear friends, my eyes are blurry and weary and the "fibro fog" is setting in fast. I can't remember what I wrote here, so please forgive me if I've repeated myself or gone off into the twilight zone. Just beam me back! I hope and pray for a better day tomorrow.
I hope you all are well.

Until next post,
Missy

Reflections

Hello! I'll just jump right in by saying that my husband finally got a bit of good news yesterday when we visited the new surgeon in Scottsdale.  I really liked him-he's young, aggressive and knew all about Frankie's case because his oncologist had been calling him all week to fill him in on the specifics. Because these tumors have a tendency to be very quick in growing when they recur, I'm so glad that they are not wasting any time with getting him treated. The game plan is he will have a test next week-on Thursday or Friday-to check his stomach and see what is in there. We are hoping it is just a blob of undigested contrast (ewe!) as opposed to a tumor. If it IS a tumor, then when he is in surgery for his intestine, they will remove the tumor and part of his stomach at that time.  You are probably asking yourself at this point, "where's the good news?" The good news is that Frankie's oncologist doesn't believe the tumor in his intestine has spread to ANYTHING else. Which makes it very easy to take care of with surgical removal and continue the Gleevec.  If it had spread, then he more than likely would have been switched from Gleevec to the other drug, Sutent, which has a list of side effects that would stretch the Great Wall of China!  The surgeon told us that Frankie's surgery would be probably in two weeks.  I will be so glad-and so will Frankie!-to get this over with.

I was looking through some pictures of my family today and I got into a real reflective mood. I'm going to be turning 40 next month and what have I done with my life? Sure, I studied hard in school and graduated with honors from nursing school in 1993 and worked hard at whatever job I had for a solid 14 years. I managed to overcome my speech impediment (I went to a training course for stutterers in Norfolk, VA in 1999 and I have a fluency rate of about 90% now! So if you know of anyone in need of such a course, email me and I will give you the details) AND I worked with the fibromyalgia going in and out of flare-ups. Then the RA diagnosis came in 2004, but we caught that so early, no damage has been done so far. I take Arava for it and I am in remission for the RA.

Despite all that I have overcome, here I sit, unemployed, I can't work because the slipped discs in my back hurt so bad and are sending shooting pains down to my toes of both feet and my feet are so swollen, you can see the line imprint on my skin from my socks!  I take enough morphine to choke a horse and besides that, I take 22 other medications to get me through the day. We are living with my husband's folks (which I am so grateful for all they have done for us-I love them to pieces!) it's just that Frankie and I want to get our stuff from San Antonio and move into our own apartment and get on with life. Every time we think we are on top of things, something happens.  We can't save very much money, because Social Security won't give me what I deserve and we just have my husband's disability check to go on. Take away our monthly expenses and there isn't too much left!  


I don't mean to go on and on. Forgive me. I AM grateful for all that God has given us and I can't say enough how much I appreciate Frankie's family for taking me (and my dad, for awhile until he screwed up and was booted back to Michigan!) on as one of their own. I've never had siblings, so it's so much fun to think of my sister-in-law Barbara as my real sister. She IS my real sister! I feel I can talk to her about anything, as with my mother-in-law. My husband's brother Doug lives in Wisconsin, so we aren't too close with him due to the distance.  I also miss my old life, too.  I miss my mom and my dad and all the fun times we had. I'm so glad I took a lot of pictures of all our adventures and when we would goof around at home. I'm glad I have every single one of them to cherish forever-because they are all I have.  My mom is gone forever and my dad.....he's a whole story in himself. I will talk about that in later blogs.  He has a lot of problems and I wish him well in Michigan, I truly do.  It's just that we can't live together anymore because he is a user and I can't deal with that anymore. I grew up knowing my dad had a problem with prescription drugs and now that I have a life WITHOUT having to worry about if he is going to throw a fit because the pharmacy won't fill his prescription because it's too soon, I don't want to go back to that old life.  Yet I miss certain aspects of it.  I'm confused!  And just very depressed because I gained a lot of weight, so I can't have my back surgery until I lose that weight, so I can't work until I lose weight to have the surgery so I can work again!  I'm just in one big vicious cycle that has my head spinning so fast, I'm dizzy.  


Looking at those pictures of happier times with my mom and dad has made me very nostalgic. I wish I felt like I did back then, only back then I took it all for granted.  Whoever said that "youth is wasted on the young" was very wise. Oh, how true that is!!  I've learned one big lesson from all my reflecting and it's this: don't ever take for granted the things and people in your life. Because one day, when the fun is over and it's time for everyone to go home, if you took it for granted then that time of your life is gone forever.  Live for today and take time to stop and smell the roses. But don't smell too much because if you are allergic or have hay fever, then boy will you regret that! LOL!  I know, stupid joke. I have a lot of them!!!


Hope you all are happy and well and Happy Memorial day on Monday. Thank you to all who have served our country and lost their lives for our freedom. I don't ever want to take THAT for granted either.


Until next post,
Missy

Starting Over Again

Thank you so very much to all of you that read my first post and gave me such good feedback. I really appreciate it! I've added an email subscription link to the side box on the blog for those of you that wish to receive email updates of when I post. You can also "follow" my blog with Google Friends-that link is in the side box, also. 

I'm so happy that you didn't think my first entry was boring. :0) I was so afraid that I'd gone on and on with my story and that can get stale after awhile. I promise not to bore you! But let me know if I do!  I LOVE writing, I always have. I have a stuttering problem since I was a young child. It tortured me in high school. I didn't have many friends and the friends I did have weren't very close to me. I mostly stayed to myself and wrote poems at lunch out in the school hallway.  You know how brutal kids can be, I got my fair share of teasing. I wrote over 200 poems during my high school years. My mother gave me a gift for my birthday of my poems, typed by her, placed in a beautiful binder. Her hands were not good, the arthritis really took a toll on her poor body. She had to quit her job as a 911 dispatcher because she couldn't keep up with the typing that was required of her. So her gift to me is even more precious, because I know the pain she must have gone through to do it for me.  I hope I have it still, it probably is in the stuff we had to leave behind in storage in San Antonio. I was in such shock mode after my mom died, I didn't have a clue what I was doing or packing away. I don't even remember packing, to tell you the truth.  When we got to my in-laws in Phoenix, I had all my mom's clothes and only one or two shirts of mine. So I'm wearing her clothes, which in a lot of ways is comforting to me. Almost like having her near me again. I hope that doesn't sound too corny.  To this day, our stuff is still there as we haven't had the money to get a moving truck and have it shipped back here to Phoenix. We pay over $120 dollars a month to keep it in storage. Every time we try to save, disaster strikes. Our van got repossessed shortly after arriving in Phoenix and we had to file for bankruptcy because the phone kept ringing off the hook of all the bill collectors calling and wanting their money right now. We owed so much, the ONLY option we had at that point was to file for bankruptcy. It sure did stop the phone calls, for that I am grateful. I'd had to live to be 150 years old in order to pay off all we owed. My mom and I were also emotional shoppers, too, in addition to emotional eating.

When we finally do get our stuff back from San Antonio, it's going to be so hard going through mom's things. All her mystery books, cookbooks, Precious Moments collectibles, her M&M canister set I got her for Mother's Day, her purses. God, she loved her purses. And her red reclining rocking chair.  I will cherish each and every item.

I don't have to say how much I love my mom. I'm sure it shines through me for all to see at first glance. When she died, it was like my world had been replaced with some alien form that I couldn't and didn't want to accept! She couldn't be gone forever! No! I couldn't get used to the fact that I would never talk with her, laugh with her, hug her again. She was my best friend. People often thought we were sisters....I don't know if that is a good or bad thing! Either she looked young or I looked old! We'll go with the first one.  All though these days, as I loom closer to my 40th birthday in June, I look & feel like I'm 100 years old.  Life has done a number on me & my husband!!

My fibromyalgia was absolutely HORRIBLE that first year(2008-09) after my mom died. We were adapting well to living with my in-laws. Sure, we had our differences, but we worked them out. The real root of the problem was my dad. I love my dad, I truly do. He's a good man when he wants to be. It's just that he hides that and uses his prescription meds to ease his pain. I keep telling him NO amount of anything will ease the pain of losing Mom.  I tried to get him to go to a grief support group and we did go a few times, but he kept falling asleep and snoring that I was too embarrassed to go back!  I wish he would have listened to the group leader, as he was an alcoholic after his son was killed in a motorcycle accident. The leader said it was a difficult road for him to get back on the wagon, so to speak, but he did with the Lord's help. He tried to talk to Dad, but he wasn't receptive at that time.

My father continued to abuse his medications and didn't get along very well with my in-laws. I got so frustrated with him! We would be homeless if it weren't for Frankie's parents! He should be grateful our butts weren't out on some street corner!  He got in the middle of my marriage by always being in the middle of Frankie and I. Dad would be in my bedroom, watching TV all day and sometimes all night. Frankie and I were never alone, it seemed. We couldn't even go out to eat, we'd have to take him or he'd throw a fit. I'm a peace maker, so hate making waves that I did what I could to prevent a problem. I tried so hard I almost put myself into a coma. My dad was expecting me to take Mom's place and I can't. I felt so miserable, I couldn't eat OR sleep. I lost 100 pounds right off the bat (I was REALLY big; I'm so embarrassed to admit!) and my fibro was playing a number on me. I couldn't get out of bed for that whole year for longer than an hour, it seemed. I felt like hell...headaches, body aches, mouth sores, stiffness in my joints...all my diseases ganged up on me and made one big mess.  My mother-in-law was at her wit's end with my dad, the final straw being him going through her purse looking for the car keys so he could go get his drugs. I just knew we'd all get kicked out for sure!  I tried to keep everything together, to have it all fall apart around my ankles. I felt like a failure. One big, whopping failure!

Then my dear dad came up with a plan. He wanted to go live with his sister, Shelly, in Michigan for awhile. Michigan is where I originally came from. Most of my dad's relatives are still there.I knew he would be in good hands there, even though Dad's side of the family are wacko's with a capital W!! I could tell you story after story of their antics, but I really don't think there's enough words to adequately describe them. You'd have to see them to believe it, and even then, you wouldn't believe it!

The day my dad took off for Michigan (May 13, 2009) was almost like a rebirth for me. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. I was NO longer responsible for my father's actions. He'd have to grow up and take care of himself!  If I had to, then he had to! Mom spoiled us rotten by doing everything for us (cooking, cleaning, shopping when she could, driving me to work and back, the list goes on and on), but she's gone and now we have to do things ourselves. We are responsible for ONLY our OWN actions. It's taken me until now to finally really believe that. I felt so guilty and bad for abandoning my father, but he was slowly killing me by putting too much pressure on me.  I loved the fact that I can now store my medications in the medicine cabinet instead of a safe that required both a combination and a key.  I love the fact that I don't have him following me around and harassing me for my pain pills. No more temper tantrums or throwing things around my in-laws beautiful house. No more tension in the air so thick, a knife could cut it!  I feel free!

Unfortunately, my fibro didn't bounce back so quickly. I got a huge blood clot the entire length of my leg July 2009. I was in the hospital for five days for that. Then, my lower back gave way and to this day, I am in extreme pain from 3 bulging discs I have in the lower back. They are compressing against my nerve root exiting both legs. I had a MRI in October of 2009 that showed that and also severe sciatica. I have burning pain that radiates and shoots down both legs. I can't stand for more than 5 minutes and I can sit for short periods of time. I can only lay on my back to sleep, if I roll to either side I get severe pain. I'm on 23 medications a day now, counting my 90mg of MS Contin and 30mg MSIR for breakthrough pain, which I have frequently. I'm supposed to have surgery to correct the bulging discs, but can't have it due to I'm a poor surgical risk because of my weight. Here's the funny thing: the neurosurgeon said I should have the stomach by-pass surgery. Wouldn't I be a poor risk for that, too? I asked him that and he didn't have an answer for it.

So, I went to a pain clinic which advised me to have cortisone shots into my back to see if that would help. I was game at this point. Gone was my apprehension over needles (I know, I know...I'm a nurse and afraid of needles. But understand-I don't have a fear giving a shot to ANYONE ELSE but me!! LOL!), the pain was too bad to not try everything I could. So I went in for the shots in February of 2010 and ever since then, my ankles & legs have been swollen. I don't have a clue why, neither does my doctor know why this is happening.  I'm on 40mg of Lasix a day and I still have "elephant legs"!!!!  Soooo, now I'm seeing a cardiologist who has recommended heart tests to see if its a circulation problem. So this Thursday I'm going to have a stress test (the chemical one, thank you very much!), cardiac ultrasound and ultrasound of my legs. He also recommended a sleep study, which I have yet to hear when I'm having that.  And then, as if we didn't have enough on our plate, my husband has a new growth in his small intestine that his oncologist fears is cancer regrowth. He might be out of remission after 7 years! If it is cancer grown again, we are hoping that the surgeon will just take it out and be done with it. If he has multiple areas of new growths, however, he will have to be started on the second line treatment for his GIST (gastro-intestinal stromal tumor) which involves a medication called Sutent. He sees the surgeon on Friday, right after my stress test! I tell you, Frankie and I have sure had our share of rough waters! But we have stood by each other through thick and thin and I'm so happy I have the honor of knowing and loving him. He's been there for me in my darkest hours after the death of my dear mom and now with all my medical issues. And I will be there for him through his medical issues. That is what marriage is all about-being there for each other and knowing what they need even before they ask for it.

I'll save my story about my on-going fight with Social Security for disability for my next post. My hands are growing weary, as is my eyesight. And I'm exhausted. I'm in another fibro flare with my leg muscles cramping every five minutes. I've got real bad fibro "fog"....I hate that as I can't remember anything when I'm in that state! But I'm sure my fibro buddies know what that is all about!!!

I hope you all are happy and well.
Until next post, bon voyage!!! I'm cruisin' right for my bed......LOL.....

FibromyWHAT?

Hello! I'm very new to this blogging thing, so I'm just going to write in it as if it were a journal or diary. I think the concept of blogging is brilliant. It's an excellent way to share your thoughts and feelings with the world, all in one place! I've wanted to blog for a long time, but I didn't know how to...until I found the blogger on my Google homepage. Extremely easy to set up...so I recommend it to all who want to start blogging themselves but don't know how to go about it.

OK...now that I've done my sales pitch for blogging (LOL!), let me start out my first entry by saying this:

I HATE FIBROMYALGIA!!!

There, I feel so much better now getting that off my chest.  I've had the blasted illness for 14 years now. I was diagnosed in December of 1996, just one month after my husband and I were married.  I kept coming down with what I thought at the time was the flu. You know the symptoms...generalized body aches, extreme fatigue, but then I started having other symptoms NOT associated with the flu, such as sensitivity to hot/cold, intermittent diarrhea/constipation and the aches were no longer generalized, but more local to certain areas such as my shins, lower back, chest, shoulder areas and I kept getting headaches, forgetting things and feeling like I was in a "fog", too.  I had such extreme exhaustion that I couldn't work very well as a floor nurse for 12 hours, no less!  I had to keep calling in sick.  That's when my husband made an appointment with his doctor (I had just moved to the Phoenix area and had no doctor there yet) to have a check-up. After canceling the appointment twice, (I had a thing about going to doctors back then...such as I HATED to go to them!) I finally did go and have the examination.  The doctor listened to my story, and then started pressing me in the areas that killed me the most. Then he said, "You have fibromyalgia."  FibromyWHAT? Here I was a nurse and even I didn't know what that is. I had never heard of it.  Oh, how I wish I could have kept it that way!  I did some research, which yielded not too much about this mystery illness. The doctor put me on Elavil and sent me on my merry way.

What I found out in my research was that fibromyalgia is a condition that affects the muscles and sometimes joints. It causes widespread pain (but NO damage is caused to the areas) that alternates its sites around the body. One minute it's in your right leg, then the next it has jumped to the left elbow. Researchers believe it has something to do with an imbalance of chemicals in the brain called norepinephrine and seratonin. They both balance your body by regulating your sleep, for one thing. With fibro, you don't sleep too well (because of the widespread pain!), so your muscles can't regenerate like they should after a long, hard day of use. So you wake up feeling like total crap. And then comes the exhaustion. I'm not talking about being "a little tired." I'm talking about you feel like you've been run over by a truck 3 times and you are so very tired you can't get up. That's the best way I know how to describe it.  Sounds fun, huh?

I took the Elavil religiously for the next four years, even though the side effects were one right after the other. Drowsiness, daytime "hang-over", dry mouth, constipation, weight gain (which I definitely didn't need!), to name a very few.  I wasn't used to taking medications, except the occasional aspirin, and now I had a pill I took at night and the doctor also prescribed Flexeril for the muscle spasms in my lower back. The pain was always worse there for some reason.  Anyway, I was going my merry way (my husband and I at that time moved to Yuma so we could combine expenses with my parents and live together) and then it quit working. I went back to the doctor (my doctor I had when lived in Yuma BEFORE I was married) and he referred me to a rheumatologist, who then stopped the Elavil and put me on Zoloft.  I liked the Zoloft a whole lot more than the Elavil, I had so fewer side effects than when I was taking Elavil. For one thing, the daytime "hangover" resolved itself and I could work a lot better on the Zoloft.  So I thought I was doing pretty good. I could work again, I was sleeping better and the pains were a lot less.  My husband was adapting well to life in Yuma, as he lived in Phoenix with his parents since he was 11 years old.  It was a lot easier for us financially, too, sharing expenses and pooling our checks together with my mom's. My dad wasn't working, hadn't worked since I was 13 years old. I'm not exactly sure why. My mom had been trying to get him to work, but he'd look for a job, they would turn him down and he lost his self esteem, I guess.  My husband found a great job as a mail clerk for the City of Yuma. Yep, life was good back then!!

My mom and I shared rheumatologists since she was going to one at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, CA. My mom had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for years and I really liked her doctor, Dr. Schulman. She was compassionate and didn't berate us about our weight like other doctors did. My mom and I were "hefty" gals, if you get the picture, and the rheumy in Phoenix told me my sed rate was elevated because of my weight. Yeah, right! I get so tired of doctors telling me the obvious: I'm fat and need to lose weight. I KNOW that, but with the pain and fatigue, who can exercise?  I had lost over 100 pounds taking Phentermine a few years back, but then had to stop the drug because of the Phen-Phen scare and I regained all my weight, plus some.  I'm a very emotional eater and so was my mom. When we were together, which was a lot, donuts beware! We could eat a whole dozen in one sitting!!!  I know you are thinking my profile pic I chose for this blog shows me not looking too bad, but I am too embarrassed to put up one how I look NOW.  We had to add prednisone to my medication list due to in 2004, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was so incredibly stiff, I could barely move. The prednisone, though it was my "miracle" drug and I could move so much easier, didn't come without its own bag of evils.  I developed the "moon face", gained weight, increased appetite, leg swelling...to name just a few. My mom had been on prednisone for over 10 years at that time and had all the effects named previously. She always remarked that her head looked like a bowling ball...only thing missing were the finger holes! I know what she means!!  My mom had such a great, sarcastic sense of humor.  She had such a positive attitude about her illness, this coming from reading in a library book about Lupus saying the life span of those with it is just FIVE years, it boggled my mind to think she could still stay positive.  Well, she beat those five years and lived until one day past her 60th birthday. She died July 8, 2008 from what the doctors believe was Lupus induced kidney failure.  It came on so suddenly. My mom and I were in San Antonio, Texas for me to start working at Northeast Methodist Hospital and then the guys would come when we found an apartment.  Well, we never could get that apartment because my mom fell in the parking lot of a Walmart and dislocated her artificial hip (she had bilateral hip and one knee replacement due to osteoarthritis) and had to have it re-set. She did fine for one more week, then on July 7th, her birthday, she started acting strange. I couldn't keep her awake for more than 5 minutes, she hurt all over and she was having conversations with her father, who had died 15 years ago.  I called an ambulance and they took her, to all places, the same hospital I was going to work at.  They treated her very well and did everything they could, but her potassium was so high it kept stopping her heart and she was on a respirator.  I know she wouldn't have wanted that, so I did the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life and that was to tell them to stop CPR as she only had 1 percent survival rate. I know my mom well enough that she would come back and haunt me if I let her be a "vegetable" as she called it.  So that was that. My grandma (mom's mom) came from College Station, Texas, to be with me and help me wrap up loose ends.

I rode back to Tucson alone, (we had moved there almost one year earlier for another one of my jobs at Tucson Medical Center) and I used that time to reflect over my mom's life, learn from her life lessons and try to figure the HELL out of what happened and how we were going to survive without her. She was the glue that held our families together.  Without that glue, we all went our own ways. My dad refused to take suggestions from my husband and me, he wouldn't help us pack up the U-Haul for the move to San Antonio (I thought Mom would have wanted us to continue with our plans) and he kept getting high on his prescription medications. My dad has a LONG standing prescription drug problem and now with my mom gone and not able to whip his butt into shape, he went willy nilly on his prescriptions and even took some of mine and my husband's!  My husband is taking Vicodin for his bone/joint pain due to the medication he is taking for his rare GIST tumor in his abdomen. It's inoperable due to its location over vital blood vessels, so this medication (called Gleevec) is saving his life. He is now in remission and has been for the past 7 years.

We "moved" to San Antonio, if you can call it that. We lived at the Super 8 Motel right by the hospital my mom died at.  I continued the orientation there, but when I went up to the unit I'd be working on, I had such a panic attack they sent me home (or back to the motel!).  Fibromyalgia feeds off of stress, so needless to say, I went into the WORST flare-up of my life. My life was falling apart. My mom died, I can't work due to the flare-up and my dad kept taking my pain pills. He didn't respect my husband as a part of our "team." My dad was KING and that was that. I honestly didn't know how we could continue on like this.

We didn't continue on in San Antonio. We were flat broke, I lost my job at Northeast and my husband and I were up to debt to the very tops of our heads. No credit cards, no gas cards, no nothing. Luckily, my husband's parents were very gracious and not only opened their home to us, but also paid for a lot of our gas and motel rooms while we were traveling to Phoenix!  They literally saved our lives, for without them, we would be homeless.  So their home became our home until we get back on our feet.

I'll end my first blog entry on that note. I hope you enjoyed reading this and it wasn't too boring. I just wanted to fill you in a little about who I am and what fibromyalgia is.  Look for my next blog entry soon.  :0)