The Seated View

Looking for more posts? You can now find me on the brand new The Seated View website .   I’m beginning to wonder if the so far two-month long Fibro flare is going to be the new normal, at least (hopefully) for the duration of the winter. I’m not enjoying it. Aside from the really high pain levels and decimated energy, there is also the intensely excessive brain fog. I’m surprised I can remember my own name at times. So much is falling through the cracks. Of course, this happens in the middle of trying to finish some things for HealthCentral that I should have done last year (see: my health is in the toilet), a ridiculous number of medical appointments, a couple of big projects on my own plate, plus a small upgrade of The Seated View. And then yesterday, my elbow crapped out to the point where it’s hard to use my arm. Did I mention this was my driving arm, my writing arm, and well… my everything arm? I am so done with this winter. I mean, Christmas is over...

Pain takes up a lot of room in your head . I will forever be grateful to the social worker from The Arthritis Society who told me that at a time when I thought I was losing my mind. I wasn’t. I was just having a lot of pain and it messed with my ability to focus and remember. I’ve had a little visit back in that place for a while. The last time I took my trusty biologic was just after Christmas and then croup happened . Then there was a month of working on healing my voice and by the end of January, my SI joints were starting to get unhappy. Earlier this month, I started back with a smaller dose, but left over side effects from four weeks of prednisone made my biologic side effects go insane — GERD and a hysterical hiatal hernia that made it feel as if I was having a heart attack. So we backed off a bit on Humira. And then came the Fibro flare. I couldn’t quite figure out if it was a genuine Fibro flare or it was a Fibro flare triggered by encroaching RA, but it d...

In my July post for Mango Health, I wrote about four ways to cope with fibromyalgia pain: "I lived with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for almost 40 years before I experienced fibromyalgia. Having had RA since I was a child, I’d created a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with pain. I was no stranger to pain, and even considered myself a bit of a chronic pain expert. When I started experiencing fibromyalgia, all of this went out the window. Although I’d known high pain levels for most of my life, it wasn’t until I got fibro that I began saying that pain was loud. This new pain was much like a fire alarm going off right next to my ear. Even the slightest pressure felt like pain. Once when the strap of my purse got caught between my leg and the armrest on my wheelchair, it felt as if I were being stabbed with a knife." You can read the rest of my posts on how to cope with Fibro pain on the Mango Health blog .  

I need a new bed. More specifically, I need a new mattress, and as my current bed frame is a double XL, and there isn’t a lot of choice in that category, I decided to go for a whole new bed. I had a couple of requirements: a double bed, no higher than 22 inches (reason below), fairly soft to make my Fibro-and RA-riddled body happy. You’d think that wouldn’t be too difficult.  You’d be wrong. Cue entry into a rabbit hole of confusion, frustration , and ridiculous expense. This particular adventure can be loosely categorized into the following categories: Height issues This is a combination of my height versus the height of the beds. I’m fairly short (5’2” on a good day), and beds have become quite high . High enough that people below the size of an NBA player would need to jump into these monstrosities, or require a footstool or ladder. Since I use a standing pivot transfer to move from my chair to another surface, my butt was significantly below that of th...