Hoping for Help

I am exhausted. Not your normal exhausted from heart-beating exercise or strenuous work. It's not exhaustion from staying up waaaay too late, or from burning the candle at both ends. I am exhausted every day, all day. When I am forced to open my eyes each morning, I want to cry. Most days I do....in time. I am tired beyond your wildest imagination no matter how much sleep I get. When I wake, I feel as if I've been dragged across the country & back by a team of wild horses. It's a debilitating fatigue that makes me feel like I haven't slept in decades even though I get a very reasonable amount of sleep. It's what's called "nonrestorative" sleep. It's fatigue that causes my thinking abilities to fail, causes me to stumble for words, causes me to be short-tempered & takes from me the productivity & energy that's required to live a normal life. Even the smallest of tasks can seem insurmountable.

A few times a year (yes, I said year), I experience a fleeting 5-30 minute reprieve, but that is all. In that glorious escape, I imagine life as I had pictured it, life as I see my friends with 3, 4, & even 5 kids sailing through, some even working full-time. I wonder all the time how people do it, but then I am reminded how others might cope when I am given those few flashes of a lifted fog. Life seems reasonable then.

There is nothing reasonable about fibromyalgia & chronic fatigue. Nothing at all. A new tv commercial is just starting to air here promoting this web site. http://fibrocenter.com Some of the folks on this ad shed tears. They look desperate to me, & I know they are. They are absolutely desperate to find help for a syndrome for which there is no cure. There are only speculations about what might cause it, & even many doctors don't accept its realism. Never mind the insurance companies, coupled with the health care providers who either make fibro/CFS sufferers jump through hoops or flat out deny assistance to seek help. (My, my, my ~ what a splendid example of how inefficient our health care system is.)

I have been robbed. Robbed of my life in many ways.....of the Mother I want to be, of the physical activities I want to participate in, & of the things I want to do both personally & professionally. I live in a mental fog. Literally. Fibromyalgia is often coupled with chronic fatigue. Well, I got them both....badly. My body hurts, literally, from head to toe on a regular basis. It's a gnawing pain that would make even the strongest opponents go out of their mind at times. My life-robbing, physically painful existence is one that I can only hope I don't have to endure forever. Like other sufferers, I hope for a cure.

The research I have done on current options has been thorough & exhaustive (no pun intended). I have been fortunate to undercover the work of Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum. He, himself, has fibromyalgia, & has fought his way back to health using a variety of treatments. I am hopeful that the work he is doing will, in time, lead the fibro/chronic fatigue community to receive the complete answers we deserve. Dr. Teitelbaum will be featured on The Dr. Oz Show, this Friday October 23. I am anxious to see this segment.

I will be posting miscellaneous information about fibro/CFS as I go along. So, even while this nasty syndrome has its hooks in me, I will still prevail. I come from hard-working, determined, strong stock & I will not give up. I want to do too many things in life; I want too much for my children.