A very personal journey

So, the fruition of several years of umming and ahhhing occurred today and I now finally have a beautifully tattooed arm. The pain was very minimal, with only a couple of meep moments, but otherwise I actually quite enjoyed it! I’ve had an afternoon fuelled by endorphins and adrenaline, but now I’ve calmed down a bit, I’m a little more reflective….

You see lots of people have asked me if my tattoo means anything special, and for the most part I’ve said no, but it’s not strictly true. Firstly, anyone who was involved in mine and Jon’s wedding will know how important leaves and the forest in general are to me, so it’s been in my mind for years that I wanted something to represent this, so that’s where the twisty vine and leaves come in. If I couldn’t legally get married under a tree in the woods then I was damn well going to do something to represent my leafy love!

And then there’s the tattoo placement itself. This is a bit more personal and something I thought long and hard about. It’s been nearly 10 years since I consciously made the decision to stop self harming and there have been several moments during that time that resisting has been pretty hard. Thankfully in the last few years the need has almost disappeared, but I’m conscious that no matter what, it will always inevitably be at the back of my mind when things get tough. However now I have a beautiful tattoo on my arm, I will only ever have to look at that to remind myself how far I’ve come 🙂

From scars to beauty in ten years, and you know what? I’m a pretty strong, brave and pleased lizard right now.

Procrastination Alert!

It’s just like being back at uni: I have an application form to fill in for a promotion at work, which I really don’t like the look of (despite really wanting the job!) so clearly it’s the perfect time for a blog update!

Yesterday was my hospital appointment and for the first time ever, I saw my actual consultant! She was very lovely, agreed with the Sjögrens diagnosis but instead of putting me through a biopsy, she’s just put me straight on the drugs. Woo! They wont have any ill effects if by any chance they’re wrong about the diagnosis and obviously if they do work, then yay! So as the Sjögrens is a secondary diagnosis, ie I’ve got Fibro as well, it means I’m now on two lots of medication. I’m hoping that between the two of them, plus the ribose sugar I’m taking, that I should start to see at least an improvement soon. That’s assuming I remember to actually take any of them of course…. *scatterbrain*

In other exciting news, I’ve finally booked my tattoo! Woo! Due to my inability to draw, it’s taken me about 4 years to actually get to a point where I can go in to the studio and say “I want this, draw it, tattoo me”. But it’s all booked for a week on Monday-so very excited! I’ll admit though that I’m a bit concerned about the pain. Not the actual tattoo pain as such cos I know what it feels like and I’m not really a wuss with these things, but more about how my body will react. Given that fibro means that even a small amount of pain (ie tapping me or hugging me too hard) can result in hours of pain, I hope it doesn’t cause too many problems. In my head needle pain and muscle pain are completely separate, so fingers crossed it’ll all be fine. It’ll be worth it anyway 🙂

Overall it’s been a pretty good birthday week. Work’s been stressy as hell, but my colleagues are all utterly wonderful and I felt very spoilt with cards, flowers and decorations. A very unexpectedly lovely day 🙂 Celebrations continued with a beautiful dinner (The Old Plow in Speen-anyone local, I wholeheartedly recommended it) and more lovely presents. So really, for a birthday I kept forgetting about, it was pretty good!

Sadly I think I’ve probably sat in Starbucks long enough that they could reasonably throw me out, so time to give in, head home, and attack the application. Why ‘I’m awesome, please give me the job’ wouldn’t work I don’t know……

Get the Pimms and light the BBQ!

Ok, so we didn’t go that mad, but after weeks and weeks of rain, the sun really did feel amazing today. Even Jon said I just emit happiness and calm on days like this and aside from a bit of a migraine of doom, that’s exactly how I felt.

So we went out for breakfast (Mmm pancakes and bacon), nipped into town for a magazine (bought a sofa and a dresser, oops) and then started tidying the house in preparation for the arrival of said sofa and dresser. Nobody can say Sundays are boring at our house!

Now I’m curled up on the bean bag, dinner’s on its way, Dancing on Ice is on the tv, and my hair is newly dyed (pink). And you know what, for the first time in a while I feel pretty good. Blue skies can do wonderful things 🙂

Beautiful Boots (blister, blister, ow)

Beautiful Docs were purchased on Sunday and they had their first outing today 😀 The usual back of the ankle blisters are there in full force, but that’s to be expected, and anyway plasters totally fix that.

Aside from the excitement of Docs, I’ve had an ok day. I managed to almost make it into work on time (possibly down to some 70mph speeding but shush), and more importantly I’ve managed to stay awake. At the same time though I’ve been flighty and restless, which does not make for a productive workday, and did actually get so sidetracked by something shiny at lunch time that I nearly crashed my car. Oops.

So yeh, I’m pretty fed up with this up and down malarkey, but then at the same time I was pretty fed up of being flat and meh on the amitriptyline, so I suppose I just can’t win! It’s just frustrating not knowing how I’m going to wake up, whether it’s going to be a day where I can’t do anything or a day where I’m high as a kite. Given that the high as a kite doesn’t actually come with that much more physical energy than the sleepy, it’s not like it even has that much of an advantage! But hey, I suppose being slightly unproductive is frowned upon less than falling asleep at your desk.

Still, home now, it’s the weekend, and I have beautiful Docs. Did I mention those? 😀

Po-ta-to-nanana

So today I ate a banana and didn’t die. Not only did I not die, but I also didn’t scowl. I might almost go as far as to say I quite liked it. This might not seem like a particularly big thing, but as a lifelong hater of bananas, I’m quite pleased.

The idea of this whole banana thing is that a) it’s fruit, it’s good for me, b) they’re quite filling so I might stop snacking on biscuits quite so much, and c) they’re renowned for being good energy givers, so I’m hoping for great things!

For now though I will just accept that I didn’t die and go back to my snooze.

Aaaand snooze!

Today has been tough! Getting out of bed was near impossible this morning and then I spent the rest of the day being pretty much unable to keep my eyes open. Less than fun.

I’m assuming this is the side effects of my tablets because what I’m feeling isn’t just fibro exhaustion, it’s more a traditional sleepy feeling. Admittedly it does have it’s positive side because at least it means I’m sleepy tired when I get into bed at night, so I am actually falling asleep ok. However it’s not so great at 11am when you’re trying to manage a workload worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Needless to say, today has been somewhat lacking in the productive.

Still this is supposed to be all about the bright spots, and the one thing that’s got me through today is the prospect of coming home and curling up with Jon. So todays little photo is relaxed, post dinner, post snooze us. Because life is all about the curling and the blankets 🙂

Pancake Happiness!

Just a quick update today cos I’m shattered. Tuesdays are always rubbish, far worse than Mondays, but today has been brightened by a couple of things. One of which is pancakes!

Sadly our frying pan failed utterly, so we ended up using the paella pan. Totally fine!

So happy Tuesday everyone! Hope you’re all enjoying your pancakes 🙂

Two Birds, One Stone

I’ve been lacking in both energy and motivation to update this recently, so it’s time for a fresh start.

So, along comes #100happydays. I’ve kept seeing it pop up all over social media and I just assumed it was another random fad, but having looked into it a bit more, it actually seems like the perfect idea. I suspect most people already know what it is by now, but in case you don’t here’s a little link.

I’m hoping that my little happy moments will both remind me how, even when life seems full of fibro, there are still lots of high points, and also to inspire me to write a little bit about what it is and why it’s important.

So here goes, today’s #100happydays :

It was a tough choice between these and my new (and beautiful Docs), but as I got to use these for the first time today, they won out.

It may seem a little materialistic to start off with new shopping purchases (I’m sure the idea behind these happy moments was supposed to be seeing beauty on a rainy day or something), but sometimes it’s the shop-bought things that bring happiness! These in particular for me because they’re little changes I’ve had to make due to my fibro. It seems that having fibromyalgia and a rather heavy one strap handbag PLUS an even heavier laptop bag do not go well together. My somewhat agonising back pain is testament to this. So, with a bit of nagging from Mum, I went looking for a backpack and a friendlier laptop bag. I found many dull and boring ones, but thankfully Paperchase didn’t let me down,  and so some amount of money later, here are my beautiful new purchases. I cannot tell you how much easier these made getting to work. Just because I drive doesn’t mean I haven’t crippled myself just getting to the car before, or on some very bad days, just picking my bags up in the house.

So while today has been all kinds of brain fuzz and some amount of leg pain, it has been brightened by the feeling of being able to carry my bags around without wincing. In testament to how much of an impact this has had, I was in such a good mood that *shock horror* I came home and cleaned out my car! Two bin bags and one full hoover later, I am now looking forward to putting my nice new things on my nice clean seat tomorrow morning. It is, as they say, the little things 🙂