Top 3 Tips for Fibro Chicks

Yesterday my fiancé and I went to my future brother-in-law's graduation. We didn't get home until midnight! Now, you all must know what that does to the following day: burning pain, pin-prick pain, fogginess, and irritability. Today's been a mess!

I found out that one of my former college classmates is pregnant. While I am happy for her and her husband, it was shocking to me because my first reaction was not, "Good for them, I'm so excited for her!" like it's always been in the past. Today was the first time I have been freaked out that I'm 24 and have no prospects of having a baby on the immediate horizon. Logically I know it's silly, but that biological clock started screaming this morning! My fiancé was incredible at listening to me freaking out about being scared that my body might not be able to have kids because of the fibro. He reminded me that I'm getting married in less than 4 weeks, I have a great apartment, a couple of cats, and wonderful friends!
Fibro Tip #1: Acknowledge the great things you already have going on in your life and be happy with where you are.

I've been beading lace for my wedding dress. By "I've been beading," I mean that I'm now in my 39th hour of hand beading every single bead onto the lace. Today I left it on the couch for about 90 seconds while I went to the bathroom and when I got back there were beads pulled out and a hole in it. So if anyone wants a free cat... No, I jest, but I was so mad at my very adorable, very curious cat for a while after that happened. After I stopped freaking out quite so much, I called my sister and we talked about the last week. I felt a lot better after we talked. I should be able to fix the lace without it being noticeable.
Fibro Tip #2: Know who's in your support system--and don't be afraid to use them!

My fiancé just got done with his first year of teaching, so he's home for the summer. He took the laundry to the laundromat, switched it to the dryers, and brought it home. Today while my fiancé was comforting me, he mentioned that he knows he has to do a little bit more housework than we originally would have expected him to do because we never know when I'm going to have a bad day like today and I won't be able to do everything that needs to get done. His willingness to accept that for the next 70 years is so fantastic!
Fibro Tip #3: Marry someone amazing.

Hope your days have been calm and gentle!

What should you do when you DO feel great?

I woke up yesterday morning feeling great! I wrote an article, walked two miles, did yoga, and showered--all before 9am! Then I got ready for the day and went to the post office, Walmart, Joann's, and Michaels. When I got home I made lunch, played with my hair (hot rollers!), did dishes, and cleaned up the house.

And then I started hurting. A lot. Way more than normal. This morning I hurt a lot more than I usually do. So what should you do when you wake up feeling amazing? Here are my top 5 tips:

DO exercise. If you're used to exercising, do your regular routine and let yourself feel fantastic and powerful while you do it. If you don't usually exercise, do some gentle stretching and easy walking to get your blood moving. Do not decide you're going to go running (I didn't do this today). Do not add another 1/2 mile to your walk just because you feel so good (I did this today). You will end up hurting like crazy.

DO leave your house. If you have a few (short) errands to run, go do them. If you have nothing that you need to do (lucky you!), go to the park or something. Seeing the sun is very important and most of the time, leaving your house is the first thing to go when you're feeling crappy. But you're feeling great! So leave your house!!!

DO eat healthy food. Sometimes getting out of the house is dangerous. Starbucks calls during the morning, frozen yogurt screams in the afternoon. Don't give in! If you're anything like me, any huge change (excess salt or sugar) to your diet will make you hurt like crazy. I think the worst thing in the world is doing something preventable and then paying for it. When you feel great, one of the best ways to keep feeling great (no matter if you have fibro or not) is to eat healthy food! Wraps, salads, and light sandwiches are perfect for lunch!

DO rest. When you feel amazing, it's the easiest thing in the world to feel invincible and push through the day without stopping (see my anecdote above--ha!). Rest! If you're used to taking a nap, take a nap! If you watch the noon news, sit down, relax, and watch the news. Keep to your schedule, and take a break!

DO acknowledge reality. You feel awesome today! Yay! But tomorrow you might feel like crap. Revel in your moment today because these days come few and far between. Don't make plans for tomorrow that are similar to your plans for today, because you don't know how you'll feel tomorrow. But you know the other reality??? You feel great today!!! Enjoy!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Top 5 Apps for FibroChicks

I have my phone with me all the time. I charge it every night and sometimes I use it so much that it dies by the evening and I have to plug it back in. So, silly comments about addiction aside, I thought I would share my top 5 that pertain to having chronic pain!

1. My Pain Diary. The thing we all share is that we have pain. This is one of only two paid apps I've ever gotten and it is absolutely worth the $4.99 is costs. You can track your pain locations, intensity, type of pain, remedy (if any), and weather. It has calendars and graphs and a place for notes. It's a really fantastic app!

2. Sleep Cycle. This is the other paid app I've bought. It was $1.99 and, again, totally worth it. It's really easy: you set your alarm for the time you want to get up by choosing a 30 minute window during which the alarm will go off. Since it's tracking your sleep cycles, it wakes you up (with an alarm of your choosing) at the point in your sleep cycle that's best for you, within those 30 minutes. You can "snooze" and it'll keep going off every five minutes. It keeps a few different graphs: time in bed, quality of sleep, activities during the day correlating to your sleep quality, etc. I highly recommend this app, if for nothing else, the gentle wake-up every morning.

3. MyFitnessPal. Amazing free app to track your food and exercise! You can use a barcode scanner to scan your food so you don't have to enter all the nutritional info. It keeps a graph of your carbs-protein-fat ratio, tells you how many calories you have "left" in your day based on your fitness goals, tracks your exercise, and saves your "favorite" foods if you use them often. I've been using this one off and on for over a year and it's incredibly helpful!

4. Allrecipes. If you're going to track your food with MyFitnessPal, you might as well have a great app that has wonderful recipes. Save your favorites, add your own, and adjust recipes for any amount. While, yes, you can find this on your computer and either print it or just read it from your laptop, I like using my phone better. I hate having my laptop in the kitchen, don't have a recipe holder, and my phones already with me in the kitchen, so why not? The only thing I would caution against is touching your phone while you're baking. My last phone was definitely covered in powdered sugar at one point...

5. Viggle. Now this one is just for fun, but hey, you're mostly at home, so you might as well get something out of it, right? All you do is "check in" to a TV show when it starts and you get points. These points (when you've accumulated enough of them) then translate into real-world rewards: gift cards, discounts, and products. I'm at home most days, but don't watch a lot of TV. With this app, you just have to turn on your TV, let the app listen to the show you're checking into, check in, and then you're set for the duration of the show, and you can turn the TV back off! It's awesome!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Fibro = No More Running

Love my dirty old running shoes. Pumas are the best!

You know those times you feel like your old self again? And you forget for just a couple of minutes? And you go running because that's what you used to do?

Well, that happened. I woke up this morning feeling good. I've been walking outside lately. Today when I was out there I felt so good I started running! I made it 1/2 a mile and walked the rest of the mile on the loop. I stretched out when I got home and was starting to come down from the "runner's high" but still felt pretty good.

And now, 30 minutes later, I am paying for it. Everything hurts multiplied by a thousand. It's so hard to accept that that life is never going to happen for me again! :-( I miss running so much!

Moral of the story: Even though it's hard to accept our new lives with our conditions, it's pretty important that we do accept it and adapt. And every now and again, it's important to remind ourselves that our lives have changed and we can no longer do the things we used to do. Although, you will pay for it later... ;-)

Stay strong, everyone!

DIY for the Fibro Bride: Save-the-Dates

Congratulations! You're engaged! Once you've figured out when and where you're getting married, the first thing you need to do is get save-the-dates. I assume that the reason you're reading this is because you want to make them! A lot of fibromyalgia patients have part-time jobs or are unemployed, so this is an easy way that you can get great looking save-the-date postcards without spending a lot of money or having too much stress put on you.

The front of my Save-the-Date postcard.

Materials

• Card stock
• Printer
• Computer
• Powerpoint (or something like it)
• Scissors or paper-cutter
• Postcard stamps
• Pen
• Time

Instructions

• Go to WeddingChicks.com and find their "DIY Printable Wedding Template" section (the previous link is direct to this section).
• Choose a template you like. This can take a long time! I liked most of them and messed around with a lot of them.
• Input your information and your colors to the template.
• Play around with them! Don't print anything without being 100% sure it's exactly what you want. You can be as picky as you want--it's your wedding!
• "Create" your print.
• Download it.
• Save it. Save your work. lol
• Open Powerpoint.
• Review the USPS rules for postcards here to make sure you have the right size. If you don't have the legal size, they won't mail it and you won't be able to reuse it.
• Review the main points of your Save-the-Date. I used mine as an announcement, too, so I told people that we're getting married, I told them the date, what city it would be in, my email address, and that an invitation would follow. There isn't anything else that needs to be on there. There's also not much room for anything else on a postcard.

The back of my Save-the-Date postcard.

• Start with a rectangle that is the size of your postcard. You'll hide this later, but it's important to contain your objects.
• I made the back of the postcard monochromatic (the red lines are from the screenshot, letting me know that our names are misspelled!) because I didn't want to completely deplete my ink supply. Obviously, you'll need to choose your colors according to what you want.
• Try to match the font that you use on the back of your postcard with the one the template uses on the front. 
• You can play with what is in the foreground and background to make any "watermark"-type situations you want. You can also do this by messing around with the transparency of an object.
• Make sure you have your return address on your postcard. Mine is under the grey rectangle--don't need everybody knowing where I live! :-)
• Once the back is exactly how you like it, group it together.
• Save it.
• Copy it and paste the copy next to the original so that you have two postcard backs next do each other.
• Save.
• Get yourself a new slide in the same "presentation."
• Insert your previously downloaded front of the Save-the-Date on the new slide.
• Copy and paste it so you have two postcard fronts next to each other (see below).

Screen shot of the two slides.

• Make sure that they have the same margins, so when you print them they'll end up matching. This part can be tedious and very irritating. Be patient.
• Save. :-)
• Load your printer with card stock.
• Print only one of the slides first. Eg. 30 copies of the front of the postcard.
• Figure out how your printer works: do you need to flip the pages over or around or backwards to get the other side of the postcard to print where it needs to?
• Print the other side.
• Cut them out!
• Get your postcard stamps out and start stamping! Make sure you use postcard stamps and not regular ones; you'll save about 50% of your stamp money!
• Address them.
• Mail them! :-)

You're done! I received a fantastic response to mine--people loved them! They look so professional and, while they do take a few hours to make yourself, it's completely worth it.

When you DIY, Destiny Is Yours! 

Wedding Plans

Yesterday I went to Louisville to work on wedding stuff. I met with a caterer, had lunch with my mom and future mother-in-law, and went shopping. It's a two hour trip there and back. I left at 6:45am and didn't get home until 8:15pm. This is what I feel like today:

That is my kitten, Jett. He is also very tired.

So, how do you have a DIY wedding with fibro? Starting Thursday, I will be running a new mini-blog series about wedding prep for ladies with fibro and other chronic illnesses. It will be updated on Mondays and Thursdays with quick tips and photos of what I'm working on. Please stay tuned!

Tip Number One: Don't do 14 hour days and expect the next day to be productive...!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Oscars Party vs. Fibro

A couple of weeks ago I won tickets to the sanctioned Cincinnati Oscars event through our local ABC news station: WCPO! I was so excited to go! I spent a week making my dress (40 hours...14 hours on the beading alone!) and figuring out what I was going to do with my hair. I was tweeting like crazy and working up to the last day to get my dress ready.

Sunday afternoon came, and I was tired. So tired and achy. I had to keep telling myself that it was going to be fun and I literally talked myself through getting dressed and putting on those 4 inch heels! I was excited to go, but I was hurting so much.

We went to the Hilton in Cincinnati and had an absolute blast! The first part of the evening was a silent auction in a huge, beautiful ballroom with appetizers and an Elvis impersonator. "Elvis" was really good! The food was pretty tasty, too.

The room from the back.

I started getting tired of standing after we'd been there for about half an hour. But we still had 45 minutes until we could go upstairs and sit! We went back to the lobby area and found seats...with the other 75 year old ladies! :-)

Our table.

When we went upstairs for dinner, we realized that our seats were at the WCPO table! We got to sit with the chief meteorologist (and his wife), the director of sales (and her husband), a reporter (and her husband), and another reporter (and his son). They were all so nice! I sat next to Karen (the sales director) and we talked all evening. She was fantastic!

The food was so good, too! We had an amazing salad, short ribs, and banana cream pie. I loved it!

Dinner!

Josh had a competition the very next morning in Louisville, so we had to leave the party around 10pm. I was kind of bummed out that we had to leave, but I was hurting like crazy by that point and the ride home is just a blur.

Looking back on that evening, I think there are things to learn for girls with fibro who need to dress up and go out:

• Wear a comfortable dress. I made sure my dress wasn't too tight and the fabric that touched my skin was soft enough that it didn't hurt. 
• Find shoes that look amazing but don't kill your feet to the point that you can barely move the next day. I did not do this well. Four inch high stilettos are gorgeous but so incredibly impractical! Ouch.
• Nap ahead of time. I didn't do this because I was working on my dress and my hair. I was ready to go home by around 8pm because I was so tired and already hurt so much. Make sure you have enough stamina to get through the evening.
• Do NOT have anything panned for the next day. Anything. This is, again, something I failed at. With the competition in Louisville the next day, I had to be up by 5am and on the road by 6am. It was horrible and stretched me way too thin. I'm pretty immobile today, which is less than ideal.
• Have fun! Parties like this don't come around too often, and if you've decided to go to something like this, make sure you have fun.

In the evening of Party vs. Fibro, the party won! :-) I had such a fantastic time at the party and met so many wonderful people that even though I've hurt for 36 hours straight, it was worth it.

Josh and me!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi