I hate fog....

not the kind formed by condensation but the mental kind that is common with fibromyalgia and other chronic pain states. The kind that makes people who don’t know you wonder about your intelligence. The kind that makes communicating even the most simple of thoughts hard. The kind that makes you unable to easily comprehend even the most basic of instructions at times.

For me, the fog normally precipitates a major fibro flare. This for me could mean a lot of things ranging from just the fog and mental stuff to full on don’t wanna get out of bed pain. I’ve been trying (for some stupid reason) to ignore the flare. I get them every fall and winter. I guess I’ve been trying to ignore the signs lately because quite simply, I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being unable to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I’m sick of playing pick and choose when it comes to activities. I’m sick of paying the price of even the smallest activities that wear me out. Between the fibro flare and the fact that I’m stiff and achy from RA pain, I’m sick of hurting, sick of a lack of energy. I’m not particularly depressed over it as I know it’s just life with chronic pain. I’ve lived with RA long enough to know that.

Everyone says rate your pain so you can describe it to a doctor. Great advice if I had a normal reference point that others could understand…but how does someone who doesn’t have a normal reference point rate their pain on the normal pain scale? I cannot remember a day in my life without pain. So, to me pain is normal. There are varying degrees of it but it’s not helpful to a doc for me to say my pain is such and such because my perception of pain simply doesn’t coincide with a pain scale. The scale they use with faces even isn’t applicable for me to rate my pain simply because I’ve learned to hide it for so long that unless someone knows me well, they never once suspect I’m in pain. Even people who do know me pretty well don’t always know I’m hurting because nothing much to do about it so why dwell on it.