Fight for Life

 Greetings, 

It has been a while since I posted here, I have been somewhat busy writing and fencing, as usual. I have come to a bit of a block, and now I am figuring my way around it, just as I have done for all the other obstacles placed in my path. Fibro has sucked over Winter, but that was expected. Enough of the guff, time for the post...

Cheers,

Henry.

A Fight for Life

I spend much of my days either writing or fencing. This is the nature of my life, it is the life I have to me. The reason for this is that I have determined that I will fight for life. Not just to exist, but to live.

I have had some sort of illness or another, physical or mental, from the day I was born. The thing is that my parents did not coddle me, they did not try and prevent me from doing things, quite the opposite, they encouraged me to do things. They encouraged me to get out with my friends and have fun; they encouraged me to take up sports; and did what they could to support this process.

They encouraged me to try things and find out what I was good at, they encouraged me to succeed where I was drawn, not to be shoe-horned into some path I was not interested in. I decided I wanted to become an historian, not an accountant or some other occupation which would pay a significant amount, my parents supported my decision. This was evident even from when I was in secondary school, and further into high school. I took history subjects wherever I could find them, to increase my knowledge, to increase my critical thinking.

All of this imbued me with a drive for what I wanted, regardless of what that was; if there was a way I would find it, if there wasn’t a way, I would simply find a way. The concepts of “can’t”, “shouldn’t”, “mustn’t” and other such words simply waved a red flag in my face. I will admit some of this tendency did drive me toward trouble and things I really should not have, but each was a learning experience. Every time I failed, I learnt something from the situation. This drive has led me to the place where I am today.

I have sacrificed opportunities and different paths to lead where I am now. Some of those paths were simply closed to me due to my circumstances. I did not berate the situation, curse it, I simply found another way around, some other way to achieve what I wanted to achieve. I am not saying that I have not had my set-backs, times when I could have chosen better, times when I could have done better; no, this would paint the wrong picture of me, I am no saint, no genius, I am just a person who decided what sort of life I wanted and have striven toward it.

Is my life perfect? Certainly not. I still have struggles, and not only with my health. Am I yet where I want to be? Certainly not, I have found a path with no end in sight, a path that will only end with my last breath. This appeals to me that I will never find the end. The Wisdom of Silenus states that we should prefer to die early than know we will never find the end of the path, never learn everything, never do everything we want; I take this not as a reason to be depressed, but to accept the challenge that I will do what I can, I will do as much as I can before my life ends, I will strive to the dizzying heights, even if I never make it.

I fight for life. I want to live, not just exist, and if this requires me to stand outside the normal bounds, then so be it. I will strive for life; I will fight for every little bit of life I can get.

Keeping Updated

Greetings,

I have a wad of articles which my mother gave me about fibromyalgia. I have read most of them, gone through others and disregarded what they said also because they were off-track. This formed the prime knowledge which I have been basing much of my conclusions about for quite a few years, especially considering most of these articles date back to the late 1990s. Things have changed.

I took these in with me when I saw my physiotherapist and he was impressed about the amount of reading that I had done, but suggested that I should update my knowledge. I had a think, and it is true, those articles are some 20 years out of date! Things can change quite quickly in the medical world and while somethings do stay the same others do change. Needless to say, I have been on the look out to see what has changed and quite a bit has.

Fibromyalgia has actually been recognised as a real condition by many doctors for starters. This is a big help because it was for many years just palmed off as just psychosomatic. Of course there are still doctors out there who are arguing against the existence of this disease because of its multiple presentations.

There is a lot more information out there than there was a while ago. More information for people who have the condition and also more information for medical practitioners as well. I encourage people who have the condition or who care for someone who has the condition, in any way to go and have a look what's out there. Not just one article, not just one point of view, but several different points of view. It is only through a collection of these points of view that you will get a real idea about what's going on.

There is some really exciting stuff out there. I may even get around to sharing some of the stuff which I have been reading. Keeping updated means that you will understand more about your condition and this can only be an asset. Take it as information that you can use to tailor your life around, or through circumstances so that you can live well, and more importantly LIVE.

Cheers,

Henry.

Back Again... Transport Fun

Greetings,

Sorry it has been so long. I decided that I would wait until I could come up with something related to FM rather than just going through detailing my own existence along with great piles of stuff not related to FM. Well, I have sort of come up with something. I will tell you right now that this will not be one of my best posts because I am going to just have a bit of a chat.

So, out with my wife today travelling by public transport. This can be a simple matter and a reasonable joy or it can be a real chore I can tell you. Now, the public transport in Brisbane is not all that bad, even if it is one of the most expensive in the world. Things run reasonably on time and where they are supposed to go and so forth, so there are no complaints about Brisbane Transport in this blog. Some of those who use these services, that is another matter.

There are those who use the transport because they have to (like me), and there are those who choose to because it is better for their health, or it is easier than trying to find parking or whatever. Each to their own...

My first occurrence today was a pair of "gentlemen" and I use that title extremely loosely. They did not use a card nor did they bother to purchase themselves a ticket. More to the point the pair of them looked like they were looking for trouble. They were talking at the height of their voices, bitching about the price of transport for starters, the irony did not hit them at all. Little do they realise that their non-compliance with paying for a ticket is one of the reasons why Brisbane Transport justifies putting the prices up.

My second, I got on a bus sat down in one of the seats near the front with my wife. Comfortably sitting in the spot having a chat. Then some older lady gets on the bus, looks at the pair of us glares and then finds somewhere else to sit. Like she was expecting us to get up and move. This is not the first occurrence of this at all, once again it comes down to the "invisible illness" issue.

I am extremely tempted to buy a walking stick just so I can have it with me so there is something visible that says that there is a problem and maybe people should not judge so quickly. In this I just get irritated by the expectation that because I am younger I will instantly move because the older person wants to sit there. Sure, if it is the last seat on the bus, I may have moved, but it was not. The "lady" had to go a whole one seat back on the bus to get to another one. The shock. The horror of it all. Please do excuse the sarcasm.

Anyway, I am thinking that there may be more entries to come. However, I would not hold your collective breaths on this one. I feel that this blog has come to a stage where I am just going to write when I get the inspiration to do so. I had considered taking the whole thing down but was counselled against it as I have some regular readers who get worth out of my ramblings. You can thank them for the continued presence of my blog.

Cheers,

Henry.

FM: Without Pictures

Greetings,

So, today (12 May 2013) is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, who knew right? I am sure that there are some of my readers out there who knew. There is part of the problem. So, rather than my recently frequent ramblings about motivational subjects and various other bits and pieces, I decided it is time to get back "on point" and talk about fibromyalgia. More to the point some important factors which make it such an invisible illness. Pictures.

Who has seen pictures of cancers? Who has seen pictures of broken bones? Who has seen pictures of burst blood vessels resulting in strokes? I am sure that we all have in the media in some form or another. How about this, who has seen a picture of the effect of FM? On an X-ray? On an ultra-sound? I will bet that most have not. This is one of the things that makes FM one of the "invisible illnesses".

We do not have pictures that we can show people to show them the evidence of what is going on with us. In a very visual world this is a problem. We have not shocking pictures to show. People do not see what is going on inside us, so people do not see what is happening, as a result we are invisible. We do have pain, unfortunately the cause is untraceable. We cannot show a broken bone, an inflamed tendon or anything else for that matter so it is hard to say what is going on. More to the point it is hard to have people know what is going on.

What makes it worse is that because we have no pictures, we often find it hard to tell people what is going on. People have a hard time believing in what they cannot see. Because we are not in pain all of the time it does not get seen. When we are in pain due to the previous we get accused of calling attention to ourselves or faking it. Why? Because the cause cannot be seen. Sure people who know us know what is going on, but they have to know us really well to really understand. We fear that there is always the behind closed doors, "I think so-and-so is faking it." is said. Even when there is pain all of the time it is still difficult to see what is going on, so we have the same results.

This is the way it is, so what can we do about it? How many of the people you know have heard of fibromyalgia? How many people you know, know what fibromyalgia is? If you are reading this and have FM, how many of the people that know you understand what you go through? The only way that this is going to change is by making it more visible. We need to tell people who know us what is going on and make them understand what is going on. We need to tell more people about this problem and that it does exist. The least thing that can happen is that one person that you know will better understand you, and that is a start.

So what am I doing? Recently I have decided to make this blog go public. Before it was a more personal thing and was shared here and there. These days I publicise it through Google+ whenever I make a post. I also publicise this blog through Facebook. I encourage you to help me with this and do the same thing, even if you only find one thing helpful or useful or interesting or which hits home to you. Share it. More to the point, if you find others doing the same thing, do the same for them. If you find groups supporting those with FM, publicise them. If you have friends or relations with FM tell them about these sites and groups, it can only help.

Oh, and one more thing, have a great day reader, and thank you for taking your precious time to read this. Your encouragement helps me, and that encouragement helps me write, and I hope that this helps those who read it.

Cheers,

Henry.