Another Day in My Chronic World

It's Wednesday. We made it through the week. Who am I kidding? We made it through half of the week. Last night was a rough night. Tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable spot. You know those nights, you are so tired and think you're sleeping, but only to get up in the morning and find yourself exhausted realizing you really didn't sleep from the pain all night.

Having no choice on how I am feeling, I push myself to get up

I have put in my mind that I have to keep going no matter how I feel. Hopefully this will motivate me and maybe feel better as the day goes by. The whole day awaits me. The good thing about working from home and not having to pick up any phone calls is that on days like this, I can stay with my pajamas and take my time--as long as I log in, and show some productivity. Behind the screen, at home, no one will see the way I really look.

From a hard morning waking up and getting ready for work, guess who wants to come take over? Pain. Pain loves to come slowly and increase through the day, while fatigue loves to hang around and be hard to get rid of. Fatigue has been here now for a couple days. Today it's just been debilitating. It's been making it hard to focus. It's been making my brain feel like an empty cloud always looking for words, always trying to remember what I am doing, or overlooking my work.

My anxiety has been striking at me back and forth

My depression has been just there with lows, making it hard to find some happy thoughts. Just writing about my day today makes me think what we all go through with this illness. Something we all know is hard for others to see the invisibility of this all.

Through the day, I take breaks while working from my desk. I try to get up stretch and move my body, around the house. Sitting all day makes me so stiff. Hot showers on my lunch break and more rest help me get a little boost. Another thing I love to use is the tiger collection for pain. I make sure to always have in stock the heating gel patches and ointment balm.

My shift is all done

All I can think about is how will I continue? All I want to do is lay in bed. I am just feeling so drained from the exhaustion. I take another rest for myself. Then get up and head downstairs, as the kids wait for supper. A lot of the times, I just want snap my finger and wish everything was already done. The cooking, cleaning and lunches.

It's already 7pm, I take another hot shower. While in the shower, all I want to do is cry and cry from everything I am feeling. Let out everything I am feeling silently. I finally get to lay down in bed. Take a deep breath and try to remind myself we made it. We made it through another day. This was a hard one. But we kept pushing through and we made it hear back to bed.

I put on my air pods. I put on some music and start to journal my day. As I write everything down, I start to finally calm down some of the anxiety. I try to take another breath and remind myself how far I have really come. No matter how hard it is, I remind myself you got this. I write down everything I have achieved throughout the day. Looking at that list, I started to feel proud for my achievements. I know that wasn't possible a couple months ago.