...and I did it all before 9 AM

So, what's a lady to do when she wakes up in what is becoming a two-day long flareup of her chronic pain disease?

Does she "soldier on" and grit her teeth through the pain?
(Which is what she usually does)

Does she give in and take her dreaded "daytime pain meds" which she hates to do?
(She really hates to give in to this)

Does she crawl back to bed, slowly, dejected that today is going to be another crappy day?
(She really hates to do this)

Does she let the tears flow that are burning in her eyes?
(Oh, don't even... this is worse than daytime pain meds AND crawling back to bed)

Does she give up when her suspicions of high humidity are confirmed by the fog and obvious recent rainfall?
(This giving up sucks and results in retreating indoors to the central air-con)

No. This chick picks up her camera and stands outside for a half an hour taking different shots of raindrops on flowers, playing with the light of the ever-changing sun behind the trees and through the hazy clouds and fog.

Vicodin- two 325/5mgs.
Lenses- two; 40mm macro, 55-200 zoom.
Memory card- 8 GB
Photos taken- 37
Photos usable- 35
Photos used- 23 (there were some repetitive ones that I chose not to keep)

It still hurts. My skin is still on fire. My arms ache from holding up the camera. My hands are stiff and my right wrist is grinding every time I move that hand. My back aches from leaning and bending. The muscles between my joints burn as though they're being stretched too far. The flareup is causing my tendinitis to rear its ugly head. And if the Vicodin is going to do anything, it hasn't yet.

But, this is what I did. This is what I did as my body screamed at me to stop. As my brain kept telling me to stop. As the sun teased me from behind the trees and clouds. As the once-dead air kicked up some wind to make macro shooting problematic. What made me stop? The fact I was sweating into my eyes and it made it hard to see. (What? Its June! Heat, humidity. Bleh).





























In the 45 minutes or so that it took me to edit these (I shoot RAW now, so there's a conversion to JPEG that has to happen, then I resize them for uploading on Facebook), my muscles kept burning and now they've tightened up. When I go to stand up, it will hurt. A lot. Right now, the skin on my arms, hands, upper back is itchy, that "millions of hairy-legged spiders" kind of itchy. And the muscles/tendons in my hands and arms feel like they're trying to escape through my skin. In my hands, it feels like the tendons are trying to peel off from the bones.

And in true military brat form... I did all this before 9 AM.

Vocabulary...

We've established that the actual name of fibromyalgia is "fibrofuckingmyalgia". That's important. Because that's what I call it in real life. At least, that's what I call it when I'm not too tired or too whacked on my pain meds to just say "fibro".

And we all know about "flareup" or "flare-up" or "flare up"; depending on your particular spell-check. In mine, all three are right, because I don't put up with any of that squiggly red line crap my browser tries to put on me. I spell things right, dammit, and if I make up a word, I damn sure add it to my dictionary.

But I digress...

Yesterday, then again today, I was out doing stuff. Yesterday, grocery store; today, ruining some fabric with a needle and thread. And I suddenly became tired. Not just tired, but mind-stopping, bone-crumpling exhausted. I almost folded in half at the grocery store. Yeah, it was awkward. (no, in reality, I literally slowed my gait by half).

As I was driving home- which is so much easier than walking to the car park to get in my vehicle- I realized I was probably having a flareup. Which made me laugh, because I was definitely not "up".

So, I've now decided that when I have a "flareup" that has exhaustion as its main problem- it will be called...

A Flare Down.

Yeah, two days in a row, I started off my day just fine and then, had a flare-down. Flaredown. That's right- I just added "Flaredown" to my spell-check.

The Discovery...

As I type this, it is Sunday evening. I'm two hours past Vicodin time, almost an hour past muscle relaxers (which have all been taken, thank you very much). Starting on Thursday, I've not had one day where I wasn't doing something. For hours. Thursday was the big grocery shopping day. Friday was the usual payday errands and a bit of drama that isn't worth discussing, but it was emotionally stressful (the kind of stress I hate the most). Saturday, I was on my feet most of the afternoon, taking photos at a graduation party. And Sunday, we delivered the benches the Disabled Guy made to the renaissance faire. (faire doesn't start for another month)

I ended up having to lift and carry the heavy benches before we could leave. Anticipating the pain and exhaustion I would be in from the three previous days, and knowing I wasn't going to drive, I took Vicodin. Three tablets at 325/5mgs.

Five-ish hours later, I took two more.

And six to seven hours later, I took two. (that would have been my usual nightly dose of three, but I figured I'd had enough Vicodin attacking my liver and/or kidneys.

What I learned is that I need that much Vicodin to remain mostly pain-free. I wasn't pain-free, but I was a lot less pained than I normally am.

I'm not thrilled with this information. And I'm not happy that I had to discover it. Much like discovering penicillin instead of a PB&J sandwich- no, wait, that was actually a pretty good discovery...

Have you seen "The Crying Game"? Because there was some discovery there that wasn't all that pleasant. I mean, you know, depending on your perspective, it was unpleasant. But up to that point, things were just dandy. I was dandy today, but I took too much Vicodin. Things are sore now, muscles are aching and tightening up and I know tomorrow is going to suck dirty socks. But, it was still a good day.

Despite the "too much" with the Vike, lots of good things happened today. LOTS of good things. I am not at liberty to discuss them, so I'm going to leave you with this-

"Where is everyone? I'm at faire, this is the Globe Stage, the sun is out, I hear laughter, I see all the people... but there's no Maxx and Mauldron Show... When will I ever get to meet Mauldron?"