Telling on Junior

I live in a great household with two roommates and on this particular day we had a full house. Kate’s boyfriend, my boyfriend, Will and his girlfriend were all here plus the dogs, ducks and Kate’s pet rats. A little house packed full of people and animals — doesn’t get any better then this!

Anyway there was some commotion in the kitchen and all I heard was a bit of yelling.

Junior spends his time tiptoeing around the house. I’m not joking walking across the floor he will lightly quietly make no sound, you don’t even know he’s there. He carefully picks each foot up and slowly lowers it. You don't hear a thing. Well he had tiptoed his way into our kitchen and ever so silently got on his hind legs, raising up, and was happily licking the butter on the butter dish when Will caught him.

The house was in an uproar, Will waved Junior off, and my boyfriend was sent to find me to figure out what to do about our butter eating thief.

I laughed so hard, got a knife out and cut off the licked end of the butter and put the butter lid back on it. This was done to the dismay of the whole house. Yuck, they all cried, “How could you do that?”

“What?!!”, I said, “you told me he only licked this end!” “It’s no big deal at least he did’t end up stealing a turkey off the table at thanksgiving -- getting it stuck on his head like a friend’s dog I know”.

All I got were incredible stares of disbelief.

My World is a Pink Chair

My world is a pink chair with a green and brown striped sheet draped over it. From here I attend to my day; phone in reach, date book and reading books to the left, a little magazine holder and in table to my right.

All is within arms reach from my pink chair. I type from my laptop perched in my lap on a notebook filled with scriblings. My days begin with a bowl of cereal in my hand, trying to eat and read my emails. I get very excited when I get an email. This is a big time of day for me!

Sometimes the day just passes me by in my pink chair. The dogs come greet me. The sun shines in through the window above my bed. I start to read a book. I read until I can’t focus anymore. An hour perhaps two — if it’s a great book maybe I can get through a whole morning living in another world of printed pages.

By lunch time I find myself eating (oh, yes, in my pink chair) and watching the TV. Two feet from my pink chair is my bed and a nap is waiting, then it’s back to my command post. The pink chair is very square with wide flat arms that can hold my little laptop when I’m not working on it. Sometimes the arms hold books or the phone. It’s a great chair and I’m really fond of it.

I shuffle back and forth placing the laptop on my left arm rest and picking up a book on my right arm rest. I sip a glass of water. A gallon jug of spring water sits in arms reach on the floor right there for me if I need a refill. On my in-table/magazine rack sits a few crackers and some peanuts as well as some gas-X. Life is grand, all of it revolving around my pink chair.

I was bored so I wrote this in my pink chair. Now it’s time to try to do a little more reading. Maybe you’d like to come see me. I’ll be right here in my pink chair. :)

I was out at Balsam Lake at Doreen’s place working my dogs and it was a blast. Shorty and I were concentrating on putting the ducks in a figure 8 around two cones set out for us. Shorty was exuberant at a job well done, and with all my praise joyfully found himself a nice fresh pile of cow poo. As the summer heat continued to bake this batch of steaming pie rising up in the air, Shorty threw himself down, sliding right through. From his head to his butt he had managed to become slathered in green goop. It covered his left eye as he look out at me, wiggling and jubilant with joy.

Oh, lordy no but he was not getting near me. No way, no how!

Needles Suck

Here I was all pleased with myself having successfully given myself a shot with a needle in my leg muscle not once but twice. Although I had 18 more times I needed to do this I had great confidence I’d mastered the art. No problem.

Nonchalantly I filled my syringe, swabbed with alcohol and stabbed away. I lost momentum and the damn needle was 3/4th in but I couldn’t push it in further, was I hitting bone? I was horrified. I started over. Stabbed again but with less enthusiasm it just pricked my leg. Rats but that hurt and I was losing my nerve.

Just one more time oh please God give me strength! It went in. My hand was shaking as I finished and massage my sore human pin cushion for a leg. Bad day, very bad day.

Alien Body, Alien Mind

Coping mechanisms differ from person to person as the body compensates in varied areas to deal with the illness of CFS. For me I went through a severe period of starvation due to poor digestion. I also had a lack of respect for my body, and the attitude I shouldn’t be such a baby and should tough it out. So even though I hurt like hell and was exhausted, I just kept on going. I worked long hours and my life style created tons of stress that broke me down over time.

This had a snowball effect where my health problems were concerned. As my problems mounted, rolling down the hill of life, they grew and grew. From the outside it looked like one big problem – chronic fatigue – but it was actually layers upon layers that contributed to my ill health. These were some of my layers:

Poor digestion
Vision impaired
Adrenal exhaustion
Shortness of breath
Insomnia
Hormonal imbalances
Lacking essential amino acids
Immune system T3 and T4’s problems
Magnesium deficiency
Muscle atrophy

For some reason my body was not healing itself anymore, it was not recovering and I was not ever feeling rested after a night’s sleep. It was as if my body was no longer running normally and reacting to things in such an alien way that even my doctors could do nothing about it.

Oh my gosh, did I go through a barrage of tests. First it was tests on my head for headaches, then on my stomach for indigestion, and then test for my blood and nutritional issues. My cardiovascular system was tested. I walked a treadmill. My heart was working fine I just couldn’t walk the treadmill very long with out collapsing with exhaustion. (This coming from a gal that had been very athletic all her life –what in the world was going on!)

Nothing was jumping out as a main cause that they could treat to alleviate my problems. So they turned to testing my mind, perhaps it was depression or some other psychological problem. Thank god in the end they decided all my marbles were still in place and it wasn’t depression either.

They sent me home, telling me, “You have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. There is nothing we can do for you.” So there I was trapped in this damnable body and because of that I was to start thinking outside the box. If I was to live with this alien body, it was time I started to think with an alien mind to match!

I knew I was going to get well and I was going to try any form of medicine I could, whether it was through medical practitioners or different types of Asian medicine or even naturopathic/holistic treatments. It was just a matter of time.

Hi all!

Life’s a wild ride isn’t it? For the last 10 years I’ve been trying to fight the ravages of a disability that some refer to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). I have had some mighty adventures along the way, including a trip to the ER and learning to give myself muscular injections. But nothing compares to the battles of pride that I have suffered upon myself. Hopefully as I share my thoughts there will be some of you who will benefit from my mistakes and successes along the way.

I am about half way there in my recovery. It will be hard to share some of the past with you, but in order to see how I got here today I suppose it’s necessary. Sometimes thinking about the past can be a real waste of energy, but in some cases, things can be learned from that history and the pasts struggles that are left behind.

Those of you who have pets will perhaps enjoy some of my stories about my dogs, Shorty and Junior. Caring for and loving these animals has also been part of my success in recovering and finding incentive to try my best everyday. There are incredible powers in the unconditional love I receive from my dogs.

Have a great day!
Jean