Many parents know the exasperation experienced when your little one is sick. Your up all night tending to the coughs, the body aches, the trouble breathing. Your day is filled with medicine, checking temperatures, and comforting their achy little bodies. By the third day, you are exhausted but you keep on trucking. I mean, there's laundry to do, dishes to wash, sick kids to tend to.
Now, lets take a look at a mother with Fibromyalgia whose children are sick.
It’s Sunday at noon. Although the two kids and yourself have had sore throats for a couple of days, you thought it was allergies. Suddenly, your son’s wheezing and trouble taking in breaths makes you realize this is no normal allergy attack. He now has a fever and says there’s “an elephant sitting on my chest”. Your doctor’s office has a clinic open on Sunday’s but it’s an hour away. Since you aren’t able to drive in the cooler months, it means that you, your fiancée, both sick kids and the well 3 year old all has to pile in the cramped pickup truck and head an hour away. Your thinking that being cooped up in a truck with two sick kids and yourself who is sick will probably result in both your fiancée and your 3 year old catching whatever it is the rest of you already have. You can’t exactly spray Lysol Disinfectant Spray in the truck while your all in it!
You make it to the doctors’ office at 2:30. It’s freezing in the lobby and while there your hands and feet turn funky colors and pain starts to radiate thru them. You know it’s your Reynaud’s Phenomena reacting to the cold air conditioner. Your normally calm and collected 12-year-old son is curled up on a bench in the waiting room telling you that he’s so cold. You can tell from his flushed face though that his temperature is still raging. He needs you to comfort him but you've been sitting so long your highly limited on what you can do. You must conserve your muscle strength so that you can maek it back to see the doctor with him. You go and ask the receptionist for a blanket, but she’s not even sure if there are any. You’ve been sitting so long that the muscles in your neck and back have cramped and knotted. As you walk back to your seat, you feel the familiar pain radiating out from your hips. You realize that you should’ve brought your wheelchair. At the time you were leaving the house though, you were trying frantically to make sure you had everything for the doctor visit and to keep your 3 year old entertained during the wait. There are so many sick people in the office today.
You’ve been waiting in the waiting room for an hour and a half. Your hands and feet are past the point of no return and you know once they start to warm back up the pain will be excruciating. You slip outside for a minute to grab a pain pill from the truck Your youngest sees you and is excited that your “all done”. He had been promised a trip to the park today and is patiently waiting to go. He has Sensory Integration Dysfunction with Autistic Characteristics and you know that you’ll have to take him by the park if only for a few minutes when you leave the doctor. Otherwise, he'll have a meltdown that'll result in possibly hours spent keeping him from harming himself. It’s already close to dark and there’s no way you’ll have time to be dropped off at home so that he can then go to the park.
Finally they call your son back. By this time he has a migraine, a raging fever much higher then before, is lightheaded and can barely walk. You try to assist him but aren’t much help since your barely hobbling along. He vomits as he clears the door and you sit on the floor next to him since at this point there’s not much you can do to help. You long to be more of a help and comfort to him, and your heart breaks a little bit more when you have to ask the nurse to care for his immediate needs. He finally gets in a room, gets a blanket, turns off all the lights and goes to sleep. Several exams and a breathing treatment later, the doctor finally says you can go home. It’s only about half an hour till dark now. The doctor’s office has been closed for quite some time. Your total time in the office has equaled 3 hours. You give your son your usual seat in the front at the door so that he can rest comfortably and you cram into the middle seat. There’s no head support and you know this will wreck your neck and back muscles completely by the time you get home. You stop by the park for 10 minutes on the way home and then get to the pharmacy only to learn they close early on Sundays. By the time you get home, your Fibro Fog has kicked in and you can’t figure out what your supposed to be doing. You manage to struggle thru dinner and then you hit the sack. Your pain has far surpassed the highest 10 on the pain scale and you debate whether or not to take any medication. Usually at night you have to take a couple medications so that you can hopefully get a little bit of sleep due to the Fibromyalgia and Periodic Limb Movement Disorder affecting your sleep so horribly. But, you’re worried that if you do so tonight, you won’t wake if your son has a coughing fit. You chose to just take something for the pain and forfeit sleep tonight.
It’s 7am. Your daughter woke during the night with the same hacking cough and fever her older brother has. The kids are now ready for breakfast and your debating what to feed them that their sore throats can handle. Your thankful the 3 year old is still well and sleeping. You melt cheese on sliced bread and dole out some juice along with it. You know you should eat something but fixing breakfast has caused you to feel pain. Mornings and late evenings are always the worst for you, and the pain you feel makes you quite unable to eat. You sit on the stool with your head laid on the counter while your children eat. Hopefully by the time the youngest wakes, you’ll have recovered enough to get him something to eat. At least he’s not sick.
You were supposed to be in court this morning and after calling the clerk of court find out you have to fax the reason you were unable to appear to the judge. Apparently, even this doesn't guarantee that the judge will continue the case. He still has the option to swear out a warrant for failure to appear. When you hear this from the clerk, you suddenly feel panic. Just as quick you remind yourself that if you let your self stress, your Fibro will flare! Home with two sick kids, unable to drive, and barely able to think due to sleep deprivation, you have to figure out how in the world to get a fax to a judge. Finally you get hold of your mother who is able to fax. After typing the letter, emailing it all to her, and calling to make sure she got it, you can finally go back to tend to the sick children.
Your daughter has to go to the doctor at 2pm but you know that if you take her to the doctor you won’t be able to do anything at all when you get back. You call your Mom since she was the one going to drive you anyway, and ask that she take your daughter.
You spend the majority of your day moving back and forth between the children. Your pain level is steadily increasing to the stage that you want to beat your head in the wall until unconsciousness hits but you have sick kids to tend to and somehow, someway must find a way. When your daughter leaves for the doctor, you put your two boys in your king sized bed and plan to drift off to La-La land. Only, the 3 year old is in a constant state of motion and doesn’t doze off for another one and half hours! By then, it’s time to start dinner. It takes you three times as long to cook these days as the colder weather has grossly limited your abilities. You thank God that you bought frozen lasagna and have salad fixings as well. Frozen lasagna isn't something you'd have normally purchased but while in the store you felt compelled to buy it. You have to have your sick son help you pop the lasagna in the oven cause it’s to heavy for you to lift.
By the time your fiancée comes home from work, the house is a disaster. No one has been able to clean up after the three year old. He's had a hard time today since so much happening isn't on schedule and what he's used to. He has to have everything as scheduled as possible and today is short circuiting his brain. Dinner is cooking but since it was started late it’ll be another hour before it’s ready. Your fiancée is tired from a long day at work, worried because the plant might be laying them off the rest of the week, hungry and ready for dinner, and it’s his birthday! You feel bad that he has to take over on his birthday but at the same time have nothing else left in you to give. Your completely tapped out. You slip off to the bedroom to sit down and rest. You try to relax and stretch your knotted and painful muscles but it's hopeless. You've pushed to hard for to long and now you'll reap the consequences of those actions. You pray that the stress of the day doesn’t trigger a really bad Fibro Flare. You manage once again to make it thru dinner and your fiancée gets the kids in bed. Yet, at 9:30pm your back in the kitchen giving the two sick children breathing treatments and praying they’ll sleep thru the night. You again choose not to take your much-needed medications in fear you’ll sleep thru something they need.
Enter today. Your sinking into a Fibro flare. It's coming on with a vengeance. You worried this would happen. Not getting enough sleep, overworking your body, stress....all these cause flares. You have no choice but to take medications that make you groggy and fuzzy headed. You cannot make it thru the pain any other way. Your children are still sick but you explain to them your situation. They understand, they’ve known you for 7 years this way. You manage, with their help, to get breakfast going and throw something in the crock-pot for dinner. Your not sure exactly what’ll happen at lunch? Your 3 year old now has a sickening green colored runny nose and he’s coughing a little bit. You know your not gonna make it thru the day and aren’t quite sure how that’s gonna work. The house looks like it’s been ransacked and there’s nothing you or the children can do about it. Your aiming to make it thru lunch and then you and all children will climb into your huge bed and all drift off to sleep. You know that the only way you’ve made it this far is due to your friends’ constant prayers and God listening and having such a compassionate spirit. At this moment the love you feel for God is so intense that it consumes you. If not for His hand in this, there’s no telling what would have happened yesterday and this morning. Once again you see the power of prayer and the effect it has on others. You attempt to shrug off the guilt you feel for not being able to better care for your sick children, your home, or the many other responsibilities that keep piling up. Your just glad you are all alive and together and decide that’s what you’ll focus on today.
I think back to my time before Fibro. Man, what a trooper I was. I’d have not only taken care of two sick children, I’d have made them homemade chicken noodle soup. I would have cool clothes on their foreheads and be changing their sheets each time their fever caused them to sweat. I’d have kept the humidifiers going constantly, never running out of water. I’d have made sure the entire house, top to bottom, was disinfected to make sure the germs didn’t spread or remain. I’d have probably even found time to cook up an extra meal for the next day and gotten in a few loads of laundry. I was SuperMom and no one and nothing could stop me. Or so I thought. Once again I see how Fibro has changed me. It's time for me to lie down and pray. Time for me to ask God that He show me once again the beauty in my life. Time to ask Him to please give me the strength to make it thru this unbearable pain. He'll do it. He always does. It's why I'm still here and why I can share my story with you.
For my fellow Fibromites who are having a bad day or in the middle of a flare......here's to you! Your all in my thoughts today. Gentle hugs to you my Fibro family.
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