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

Water, Quiet, and Sleep

Last night as I was falling asleep, I felt a migraine coming on. Normally, if I feel one coming during the day I take Midol. Weird, I know, but it's the only thing that (sometimes) works. Since it was 11:30pm and I was trying to sleep, however, I didn't take it because it has caffeine in it. I woke up around 4:30am with a throbbing migraine. Joy of all joys.

I dragged myself out to the couch (because otherwise I would have just stayed in bed all day), took my meds, ate breakfast, drank coffee, kissed my fiancé goodbye, turned off all the lights, and turned down the TV volume to less than half of what it normally is. And it still feels like everyone on it is screaming.

It's been snowing all day and it's beautiful and I can't even bear to look at it! I peeked outside long enough to get a couple of photos, but it's too bright. I didn't even write this morning because the computer screen with the brightness turned down was too bright.

At one point earlier today, my cats knocked something over and there was a moderately loud (well, to me it was loud) crash. I was so nauseated that the sudden sound made me throw up! That's only happened a few times and it still surprises me.

I was trying to write this as a "Yay, you can get through a migraine!" type post, but it's not really sounding that way, is it...? Let's see...tips for getting through a migraine:

Staying hydrated!

1. Stay hydrated. If you are feeling really horrible, it's easy to not be hungry or thirsty. But if you let yourself get dehydrated, you won't know when your migraine is gone because you'll have one of those huge there-is-no-water-in-my-body headaches.
2. Do not allow anyone to enter your space if they are not going to be quiet. Just don't. If you have a lot of people in your house, then put yourself in the bedroom or den or somewhere other than the living room. Your biggest priority needs to be to feel better and having a ton of noise will not make that happen.
3. If you can, sleep. I only got five hours of sleep last night, and even if I didn't have a migraine, I'd be feeling it! I haven't been able to sleep because my head hurts too much, but if you can, do. It does help.

Gentle hugs and quiet goodbyes 'til next time!

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

More Than My Condition

I wrote this piece on Thursday, but I couldn't post it because there wasn't Internet. Well played, Hyatt.

Yesterday I came back to Louisville with my fiancé for the Kentucky Music Educators Association (KMEA) Conference. This is a conference I know very well; I attended workshop sessions for five years in a row during my undergrad and presented research posters at the university research sessions during my last two years of school.

This year, I am not a music education student anymore, so I can’t attend the conference as a student; nor am I an educator, so I cannot attend as a professional. A lot of my peers are attending this year as professionals and there are a few of my undergrad friends who are still in school, so they’re attending as students. I am here, but I can’t attend. Weirdest feeling ever.

Last night I was looking at the KMEA schedule of events and there are so many workshops that look fascinating or are led by an educator I know. It’s kind of heartbreaking to see what I am missing in my potential career of choice; the one that I’d been planning on going into for five years before fibromyalgia reared its ugly head.

I went to the University of Louisville alumni breakfast this morning. I got to see a bunch of my former professors and friends! It was so good to see them again, but the hardest thing was that all of them were asking, “What are you doing?” When I told them that I was applying for jobs, starting an Etsy shop, blogging, and writing a book, their faces just showed confusion: “So you’re not going to be teaching?” I hate that! I hate that fibro has taken away that identity that I so carefully, painstakingly worked on for five years!

After my fiancé left to go to his first workshop, I came back to our hotel room. The conference center has two hotels adjoining it, so we can just use skywalks to go back and forth. I pouted for a while. I texted a few of my friends in school who aren’t music education majors, but they can’t hang out today, it being a Thursday. My family is working today, and the rest of my friends are here at this conference in the workshops. So, I was pretty bummed out.

But then I thought: They’re right, what I’m doing isn’t teaching, something I had so much potential to be great at doing. But I have the freedom to do something so different than running a band rehearsal or singing with kids. I have this opportunity as a young woman who has had her career at her fingertips, only to have it slip away one semester before graduation, to write a book about how to find value in other things and still make your dreams come true.

If I look at the main reason I want to be a teacher (other than the fact that I had a full scholarship!) it’s that I want to help people. I want to help people see what they can do even when they don’t believe they can. I want to help young, bright, uptight women like me get what they want out of life even if it’s not in the way they ever could have expected it to be. I want to help people understand that success comes in such a large variety of packages that they don’t have to feel bad about themselves or their circumstance when their college mentors look confused and say, “But why aren’t you doing what I know you’re good at and what I value?”

I am more than my condition. And I want to show other women who are struggling with this same thing that they are more than their conditions, too. We are more than our conditions.

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