Day 245 - Fibro is Not the Most Important Thing

We were a pretty sorry sight here this evening. My hubby is recovering from an upper respiratory thing and was nodding off, I drove three and a half hours to bring my daughter home and was totally spent and my daughter was just worn out, too and we were leaning against each other, both barely able to sit up. She went to bed by eight, my hubby napped in the chair and I just stared straight ahead at the TV, willing myself to stay awake until she finally got settled and I could get my writing finished. I am in one of those tired moods where I don't want to talk. I don't want to do anything - I just want to crawl into bed and sleep the night away. My hubby and my  daughter feel the same way and it is good to be just regular tired and not have every uncomfortable feeling or symptom relate back to fibro. It makes me feel very ordinary - and in this context, ordinary is a very good thing.

A friend's husband has a new diagnosis of something that is fairly common, isn't life threatening, but it is life-style threatening. His doctor's advice, in addition to some cutting edge treatment, is to just go about life without focusing on symptoms as much as possible, and put the ailment and its symptoms in the background. I like when doctors give that kind of advice, because I think its important to keep things in perspective. In regard to my own symptoms, I think I can do a pretty good of pushing things into the background, but there are other times when they are front and center and I can't imagine having the will to push them aside. I am better at it when I am out in public or engaged in an activity that completely captures my attention. When I am alone its a different story and I think the silence that surrounds me allows my fibro to have a bigger voice. Tonight I am tired because it was a tiring day. I feel exhausted and it's not about fibro.

It is tiring to be a parent, to have a job, run a household, to tend to extended family and to deal with the everyday details of life. It makes sense to be tired after a five hour trip that included driving, an annual meeting, packing a suitcase and stopping for a quick hello to my other daughter and her little ones. It's a very ordinary thing to feel sore after yard work, discouraged after a disappointing decision at work or in a slump when the sun doesn't shine. Everybody, every single day, deals with and manages an untold number of issues, problems, and circumstances. It is simply part of the human condition. We can feel tired after a party, a wedding or a great vacation. We can be sore from dancing or doing a much anticipated project. Those are all markers of an ordinary life lived in an extraordinary way. Sometimes we're sick and sometimes we're well. Some days we hurt in our bones and other days its our hearts that ache. But we go on because we have a jest for life. And, if fibro is part of it, that's just how it is . But it doesn't have to be the most important part.