Hmm, difficult on so many levels and the fact that it isn’t actually a ‘real’ choice, after all who would choose either? But, for me I would take the pain over the exhaustion since I have luxury of having both. The exhaustion is completely debilitating for me. It is “bone-crushingly, walking through treacle, dragging water up a hill, can’t remember my own name” awful. Don’t get me wrong the pain ain’t great either. It hurts when I move, it hurts when I’m still, the touch of my T shirt on my skin hurts, everything hurts, inside and out and I occasionally lose my vision because of it. “Well, get some painkillers” I hear you cry but really none of them work for me and all I’m left with now is morphine but I am already dopey enough with the tiredness thank you, and I have to be able to drive to get to work. Those pesky bills simply won’t pay them selves!

I am in the middle of what I believe is known as a ‘fibro flare’, an exacerbation of my symptoms that happens for no apparent reason what so ever but then again no one has any idea why people develop fibromyalgia in the first place.

So, if I accept that things hurt and that is just life, how do I deal with the tiredness? It really does not matter how long I sleep for, I will still be tired, there is no ‘catching up’. I already take an array of vitamin and mineral supplements, including turmeric for the joint inflammation, magnesium for my insomnia and now I have added ginseng for energy. I eat well but the fly in the ointment is when I am tired, the time you should really eat all the best things, it is the time that I can barely wash my own hair let alone contemplate making anything to eat. My appetite wavers a bit and I then crave bad sugar and carbs blah blah blah.

I’ve made reference to the Spoon analogy before and at the moment it is so true. I have a limited amount of energy, spoons, each day. So I have to make choices, during my flares particularly, most days. If I walk up the stairs at work will I be able to have a shower when I get home? as walking up stairs uses one spoon as does having a shower. So I mitigate my circumstances as much as possible and no, exercising and pushing on through does not help, it makes it worse. I know that I felt particularly bad on Monday as on Friday I had a half day at work and I went shopping for two hours to buy my mum a birthday gift and have a nice wander by myself. I slept until 5pm the next day. Now, one can ‘borrow’ spoons to use from the following day but then the next day you have to manage with less spoons. More crappy choices. I think what I really need is a PA and a house keeper to look after me.You know, stroke my hair, tell me I’m pretty,  and that I shouldn’t worry as everything will work out just fine.

Over the last few months I have grown to be genuinely grateful for my mum and having her around me now rarely makes me grumpy (I am clearly much sicker than first imagined!!!), but wow the guilt I feel around my 6 year old daughter is over whelming. ‘Mummy, why don’t you ever want to play with my barbie dream house?’ err because mummy is using all her energy to stay upright at the moment! – only joking, I’d never tell her the truth but she is verging on thinking that I really don’t want to play with her so I have now taken to saying ‘you know how mummy sometimes gets a bit tired? well, I’m a bit tired now so we can do either do activity a) or activity b) but not both, which would you like? but if even giving options is exhausting, alternatively we can watch a film on the good old ipad instead which she loves and I can nap. But it is very obvious to me that I am not the same person I used to be. Having less energy also means one has less enthusiasm for things which is hard because I am usually one of those annoying smiley happy excited people, ‘Spring is coming hurrah’, I adore Christmas and start decorating in October. I am tenacious and passionate and interested in so many things, the world is an amazing place, but I feel a bit like a tortoise, crawling slowly through the day, no time for distraction, just concentrating on finding the energy to put one foot in front of the other.

When I was in hospital recently I met a lady in her 70s, we were both waiting to collect our meds. She was an academic that had lectured in economics, still bright as a button and absolutely fascinating. She told me that she lived alone and relied on her friends to help her as she had had an accident a while back and had been house bound while she was on the long road to recovery. The thing she discovered was that in order to allow your body to heal physically you had to somehow turn off your brain, stop using all your energy thinking so much, no pondering life great questions in bed alone at two in the morning. She said of course it rendered her unable to have very interesting conversations with people but that it was a necessary part of recovery that simply had to be accepted. Just allow yourself to rest and to heal. She is right, she sparked something in me, it was almost a permission to allow myself to concentrate on healing my body without feeling like failure. I saw with great clarity that while my body was poorly I had been busy trying to prove that my brain still worked and I could have interesting  informed conversations and still had lots of jolly clever ideas to share. “See, see, I am more than my failing body”…..I see how desperate I may have seemed. Maybe instead of worrying that other people would judge my abilities now that I was poorly, I should stop judging myself. I’m still me, just a hazier version of me and one that needs to lie down more often than I used to but, as my Irish mammy would say “sure, it could be worse.”