I spent my entire life with a dog in the house until 7 years ago. Due to various personal reasons, I ended up living in a rental property where I was not allowed a pet of any kind. As I discussed in my post Walking With Fibromyalgia, I started volunteering as a dog walker to help me get out and about again and improve my fitness, but what I also discovered was how much I missed having a dog in my life and how happy being with Sadie made me.
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I am constantly frustrated by my foggy brain; the inability to string a sentence together, when I forget the word I need to say, when I get confused and forgetful. It’s hard sometimes to accept how I have gone from an organised and effective person all of the time to an often confused and forgetful mumbling mess. It really has knocked my confidence. Once upon a time I could remember when someone’s birthday was, I could multitask at work and at home, I was organised, methodical and totally in control. Now I struggle to remember most things; what day my daughter has PE, where I put my keys, friends and family’s birthdays. I even forgot parents evening once! As I have previously discussed in my post Taking Time Out When You're Super Busy, to get through a busy day I need to take regular rest breaks. One of the activities I like to do while resting is colouring. There is a boom at the moment for adult colouring books and everyone who is anyone is reaching for the colouring pencils and a stress busting colouring book. Colouring in a beautiful picture really is a therapeutic exercise. It helps me to concentrate on a simple activity, rather than worrying about what I feel I should be doing instead of resting. It gives me an escape from the pain and allows me to focus my thoughts and feelings. Colouring has been proven to reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety [Source: Medical Daily] and I can verify this really is a benefit to me. Every day there is pain, I can’t remember the last time I had a completely pain free day. I have good days, bad days and terrible days, but every day involves some level of pain. Most of my pain is in my leg, knees, lower back, shoulders, neck and hands. Sometimes it is a headache, other times stomach cramps and every now and then somewhere totally new and unexpected. I learnt very early on that I didn’t have time to wallow and moan about my pain. Fact was, I was going to be in pain all of the time and so I had to make the decision to be in pain and miss out on life or be in pain and get on with it. I chose the latter. I deal with pain in a number of ways but these are the 3 strategies I use when I am having a really terrible day and I need some relief. After my diagnosis, I was looking for help, support, advice and encouragement. I felt alone, un-educated about Fibromyalgia and desperately trying to find a way to live a happy and fulfilling life. All I could find were places that seemed to constantly reinforce how terrible things were and repeat over and over what the symptoms of Fibromyalgia are ... like I needed reminding. In a bid to bring more positivity to things, I launched Sheffield Fibromites; a Facebook page designed to bring together the Sheffield Fibromyalgia community in a more positive and healthy way. Sadly, I haven't maintained and updated it as much as I would have liked and it has had very limited reach. It remains active and I have now started updating it with my blog posts. After toying with the idea of setting up a Fibro blog for years, 9 days ago I finally did it! To kick the blog off with some serious momentum, I decided to take part in a 30 day blogging challenge; posting 1 article each day for 30 days. So how am I getting on? Well I have successfully posted 8 articles so far, I have connected with other bloggers, was approached about turning one post into an article for a charity newsletter and am really becoming comfortable with not only writing for the blog, but also sharing my experiences. It’s been a great week. The main ethos of the blog is positive, uplifting and supportive posts about my life with Fibromyalgia while living in Sheffield. Only just joining me? Here’s what you missed from the first week of A Sheffield Fibromite. Amelia Freer is a nutritional therapist and healthy eating expert and her book Eat. Nourish. Glow. is a brilliant look at 10 easy steps for losing weight, looking younger and feeling healthier. While the book mainly talks through her steps to healthy eating, there are some great recipes also included. One of my favourites is another breakfast option and is especially good if you are looking for something little more savoury than the cottage cheese pancakes. Parsnip fritters are basically a healthy version of a hash brown. They are incredibly filling and satisfying and go perfectly with soft boiled eggs. The added bonus is that they contain no gluten and are very low in fat which makes them perfect for my Fibromyalgia diet. I bought a Fitbit Charge HR last year and it was one of the best purchases I have ever made. I had been using apps on my phone to track activity and record sleep in a bid to feel better about the amount of exercise I was doing and find out how much sleep I was achieving each night. It wasn’t until I got the Fitbit that I started to recognise the patterns between flares and exercise, the quantity of movement I was doing in relation to how tired I felt, and the number of hours sleep I was actually getting. I have found the Fitbit incredibly useful for learning more about my body, my capabilities and how exercise and sleep quality affects me and my Fibromyalgia. So much so that I actually am quite obsessed with monitoring what I am doing and hate to leave the house without my Fitbit on my wrist. Here are the four things I love most about my Fitbit: Today I took delivery of The Emergency Poet, An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology edited by Deborah Alma. I had been looking for another activity I could do during rest breaks and reading uplifting poetry seemed to be a good fit. Deborah Alma is the Emergency Poet, who travels in her 1970s ambulance to schools, libraries and festivals to offer poetic remedies to comfort those in need of a pick-me-up. She is the one responsible for editing this collection. Reading poetry is a great way to relax and revive yourself both mentally and physically, so this book should fit into my daily resting plans easily. I am really looking forward to diving into it. Right now though I want to share a couple of the poems that jumped out of the pages when I had a peek through the book this evening. These are two poems that really resonated with me immediately: Every day is a new day to cease and opening the door to the unknown, the frightening or maybe literally to the outside, being brave and taking that step because what's the worst that could happen? Yesterday I talked about the things I do during my ‘rest breaks’. One of those things is often frowned upon when you have Fibromyalgia - drinking caffeinated tea!! I have been told that although caffeine gives you a boost in the short-term, it actually burns out your adrenal glands. This means you can’t regulate your blood sugar or your inflammatory system; vital things when you are suffering chronic pain and fatigue. I am a tea lover and tea is one thing I can’t imagine giving up. I don’t want to give it up quite frankly. There are many things in life I am having to compromise on and tea just isn’t going to be one of them. That said, I must admit, I drink more than 1 or 2 cups a day. It’s more like 8-10 buckets! Something definitely needs to change. |
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