The good news is, it can be cured. The bad news is . . . well, there isn’t any bad news. Perhaps this isn’t necessarily good news to you, but it’s certainly good news to me. For awhile there I thought I was doomed to a life that consisted mostly of sleeping, and it’s not as if I have anything against sleeping. Sleeping is fun. Done properly, it can be entertaining as well. But one cannot sustain a life with nothing more than sleep.
And therein arose my problem. Not only was I sleeping a lot, I was tired. Oh sure, you think they go hand in hand, but they don’t necessarily. Overall, things were heading downhill. I had several good hours a day, but not nearly enough. By good hours, I mean productive hours. I have to have production. Not that I’m some sort of factory, but my business is a numbers factory.
First I had to find a new doctor. The last doctor was okay, but he was also two hours away, and every trip was a major expedition. Just being tired and in pain didn’t merit a day of travel. I assumed it was the fibromyalgia making a stunning comeback and bringing chronic fatigue with it. I told myself that I could get past it, like I have before.
Then we got new insurance, and with it new local doctors. The first doctor that my insurance said I could go to left the area two years ago. I’m discovering my new insurance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But what is? Seriously, what is all that it’s cracked up to be?
But I found one, and even knowing that I would be told to “lose weight, exercise more, eat better,” I went on the off chance it might be something that wasn’t all about me and my bad life choices. I eat pretty damn well actually, by which I don’t mean I eat a lot, but that we eat little processed food, if by processed food you mean canned tomatoes. Anyway, not to get into my food choices here, because no matter what one says, there will be a thousand people deriding my decisions as bad choices, but I eat a lot of the right things at the right times in the right proportions.
My new doctor didn’t say any of that though. What she did do was blood tests. What a novel idea! I’ve never recovered from the childhood teaching that if I was sick or damaged, it was probably a lie that I made up to get sympathy/out of something, or because I was just lazy. I still believe that, sometimes, because I was impressionable then.
But look at that. My thyroid is low, and no wonder I’m dragging around like I have giant weights attached to all my limbs. And this, ladies and gentlemen, we can fix easily.
Today was the first day of my medication. I stumbled out of bed at an ungodly hour (8 am), took my pill, and stumbled back into bed for a few hours. It’s not as if I’m expecting immediate results. I’m revising my food policy and eating foods I should be eating for this, and avoiding bad foods. (Bad foods don’t always wear black hats and come swaggering into town for a showdown, but they’re just as dangerous.) And I’m giving myself a break.
I’m not experienced in this giving myself a break thing, but I’m working on it. So day 1 of my return to good health is proceeding. After an extremely healthy lunch that someone else made (I had enough to do making myself presentable), some work in the office, then a nap.
I’m taking this recovery thing slow. Not so slow you can’t notice, but slow enough that I’ll keep up with my naps for the time being.
Besides, I have really good dreams.
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