Fibromyalgia and Coronavirus…We Were Already Warriors!

I’m not saying it’s exactly the same…living with fibromyalgia and living with the coronavirus pandemic…of course not, but I can’t help but keep seeing some similarities. And although we wouldn’t wish this on anyone, maybe the world is getting a glimpse into the everyday life of the chronic illness world, or in my case, the fibromyalgia world.

And maybe our fibromyalgia doesn’t make us weaker as we face this, as we initially fear when something like this comes along…maybe it makes us stronger.

Yes. Stronger.

So let me explain.

Stronger because we know how to fight. And fight. And FIGHT some more.

We’ve been doing it for what feels like forever already.

Yes, the coronavirus pandemic is ushering in a new wave of existence for the world right now, and I’ve had my world rocked as much as anyone, but in the midst of all this, the thought keeps coming back to me…some elements of this pandemic life, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with…thanks or no thanks, to my fibromyalgia.

So YOU tell me…can you tell which one I’m talking about? Coronavirus pandemic? Or fibromyalgia?

Our world gets smaller…isolated…social ties drop off. Our home becomes more and more our world. (I’ve actually been social distancing for years now and by a lot more than six feet!)

Fearful of what our symptoms mean…and what they are leading to…what serious condition we may or may not have…trying not to imagine the worst.

On top of battling the physical (we get flu-like symptoms regularly and so much more!)…we’re battling the mental side of it as well….and oh, are we ever!

Because we’re battling the invisible.

We’re battling the uncertainty of what is coming, from one day to the next, and the unknown of how much of our day to day life will be taken over…and taken from us. We fight helplessness and hopelessness. Depression is beckoning us.

Yes, we have to be mentally strong, more than ever, to keep pushing through this and do what we must do in life…carrying out our responsibilities while we fight for our health…possibly our very existence.

And anytime, if we slip up, we could be battling an incapacitating flare up of symptoms which could range from mild and annoying to severe and incapacitating, taking weeks or months to recover from…we worry we won’t recover at all.

All this while the ever-present anxiety of if we will be able to continue working (in some form) hangs over us; like everyone, we still need money to survive.

Yes, we’re in for a long battle, maybe the battle of our life, with no clear end in site. Yet we need to keep up our fighting routines …we need resilience…and vigilance.

We need unrelentless…fighting!!

So yeah…I know you know the answer. Coronavirus pandemic…fibromyalgia… not the same, but not so different either…some unmistakable similarities for those living through them…for those fighting them.

And I really wouldn’t call it a positive necessarily, but I’m kind of used to this kind of fighting. No, I’d call it a STRENGTH. I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. Right now, during this pandemic, I’m fighting like I always fight, like I’ve been fighting for going on eighteen years (of fibromyalgia) already…fighting to prevent the worst from coming.

And I’m doing it the same as always…I’m working on what I CAN control.

I’m working on being as healthy as I can to build my body up as much as I possibly can to be able to fight illness, aka my “combat mode”. Only now, there’s a dual purpose to my efforts. Besides continuing to build up my health to fight fibromyalgia, at the same time, and with the same tools, I’m also building my health up and getting my body ready to battle the coronavirus if I need to.

I guess I’m strengthening my immune system as much as I possibly can. And when I do a quick online search of “boosting immunity”…go figure, I find lists that include the things I’ve already been diligently working on for almost eighteen years now to fight fibromyalgia(!)…things like getting adequate sleep, eating healthy, exercising regularly and minimizing stress.

And I’m happy to see those things on the lists, because those are the things I’ve already been doubling down on to get my (fibromyalgia) self as ready as possible to battle coronavirus (not really too different from how I double down on them when I’m battling a fibromyalgia flare). I’m hoping to be in the best place I can be with my fibromyalgia, in case I end up fighting coronavirus as well.

So, first and foremost, I’m working hard to get my optimal sleep EVERY night…I’m doing ALL of my routines, that I’ve learned over the years, will usually help me to get decent sleep…and allowing myself absolutely none of my usual occasional slacking off. There are just so many, many, MANY well known benefits, both physical and mental, to getting good sleep and I need ALL of those benefits right now!

And speaking of mental benefits, I need to draw on everything in me to keep my mental health afloat right now. I mean, we’re in a pandemic! We’re ALL, everyone in the entire world, working on keeping our mental health afloat right now! And I know all too well, when my mental health declines, my stress level rises…and then my symptoms flare up…like clockwork, I know from experience, that’s just how it goes. Then if the flare symptoms resemble coronavirus symptoms (as they often do), well, then I’ve got another whole problem on my hands, trying to figure out what I’m actually dealing with before I can even begin to know what to do to treat it (I know YOU know the drill!).

And I won’t pretend I don’t wake many mornings with my stomach quickly tying in knots as the stark realization of the coronavirus pandemic reality we find ourselves flailing around in, floods back into my memory to form my first thoughts of the day.

So I’m digging deep for all the willpower I can dredge up and I’m MAKING myself maintain my regular routines, especially my workouts. They’ve invariably been my biggest mental health aid/stressbuster since long before I had fibromyalgia. That is the first and foremost reason I’ve always done them, to boost my serotonin level to keep depression at bay. Without exception I know that, when they’re the last thing I FEEL like doing, they’re the first thing I SHOULD be doing…and that has never been truer than right now!

But wow! This coronavirus pandemic tests all my abilities to handle stress and anxiety, to their max. So again, I’m applying the same thing that I’ve applied to living with fibromyalgia all these years. I’m working on what I CAN control…I’m latching onto whatever I can find or do, to help me feel a little more in control…a little less hopeless…and hence, a little more positive.

So I’m pulling out all stops, doing all the tricks I’ve learned over the years to help minimize stress and fight off depression. Besides keeping up my workouts to boost my serotonin level…I’m reading my little powerhouse stressbuster book every night to give myself a much needed escape and help me to go to sleep on a positive note…plus I’m using the breathing techniques I just learned in the “OVERCOMING Traumatic Stress” book whenever I feel overwhelmed by the news of the day.

Sometimes I simply have what I consider a “mental health day” as I talked about in a previous post, whereby I just do some sort of change-up from the norm of everything I HAVE to do, something I enjoy, for a much needed break, a lift in my spirits…stress relief really.

I’m doing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I can think of to keep my stress level in check, THE main trigger (along with poor sleep) for all my fibromyalgia symptoms. I don’t want to go through this pandemic wrecked from stress and anxiety, so as not to trigger my fibromyalgia into an extensive flare and end up feeling weakened by that going into battling the coronavirus should I get it…plus, well, being stressed and anxiety ridden just sucks! Period.

And speaking of being overwhelmed by the news of the day, one key thing I’m being mindful of to help guard my mental health, is that I’m being careful of what exactly I watch of the news coverage that’s out there . The ever changing, rapid, tragic news cycle of the coronavirus pandemic is everywhere…it’s being put in front of us 24/7 on all mediums…it’s hard not to miss it…but that’s exactly what I do. I make a concentrated effort to miss it, to turn it off, turn away, sometimes not turn it on in the first place, to prevent myself becoming engulfed by the uncontrollable hopelessness and despair that any of us could so easily sink into.

Oh, I watch enough to keep informed and yes, I can’t help but see the tragedies unfolding around the world, but I won’t and don’t, let that be everything. I look for the positive…I NEED the positive to stay afloat…and I know from experience, EVEN TRAGEDY HAS POSITIVES EMERGING FROM IT.

The positive stories…the stories of goodness and empathy and helping one another and reaching out, as we support one another in this time of crisis…the stories of triumph. I latch onto all of those whenever I can and I fill my mind with them, instead of the despair.

And then, there’s my own personal positive (and I’m guessing you’ll know what I’m talking about), although I would never have chosen for it to have happened this way. No one is bothering me to go anywhere, to do anything. THE WORLD HAS SLOWED DOWN TO MY (FIBROMYALGIA) PACE. And it’s a welcome relief, in a way, to finally get a lot closer to that “time-out from life” my fibromyalgia body has craved for almost eighteen years now.

For awhile, I plan to…just breathe.

And then there are the positives I am most intrigued about, for myself on a personal level and for the world as a whole. In the past, I’ve noticed that when a crisis situation happens, I have been forced to do things that I wouldn’t have otherwise done, and sometimes…I end up LIKING the new routines or the changes they lead to and I discover a way of living altogether different than I had been doing…and it’s BETTER, so I keep up the routine AFTER the crisis. And I absolutely love when this happens. I’ve had some of the most life changing opportunities and improvements to my life emerge out of crises.

Which leads me to my next thoughts. With this is mind, I’ve even started thinking of how I can USE this crisis to MAKE some positive changes for myself.

I mean, if we HAVE to go through this…I look for silver linings…I look to MAKE my own silver linings…for myself…in my own little world here…that can benefit my life in some positive way. Really, why CAN’T I use this time when routines are changed, as an opportunity to motivate myself to jumpstart some routine changes for myself and change mine for the better!? Why CAN’T I change how I think about it ( and help lessen the  stress!) by reframing how I think about it as an opportunity to get some things done, make some changes? (I can…and I will!)

Like everyone, I have my bad habits that I’d like to change. For one, I’ve come a long way already but I always look for ways to improve on my sleep (don’t we all!)…I’ve wondered for a long time what benefits I would notice if I was able to master being more consistent on my waking and going to bed times. Accomplishing this has been that one recommendation by sleep experts that has still managed to elude me. But I’m intrigued by it because experience has taught me that one change often leads to multiple benefits, some of which are totally unexpected bonus improvements…and experience has also shown me that this always seems to apply times-ten for sleep improvements! (Why, as I wrote about in a previous post, one major sleep change accomplishment that I worked diligently on years ago, to my great astonishment, eventually led to my chronic fatigue being largely gone!)

Interesting, now that I think about it, that the main personal thing I’d like to tackle during this coronavirus pandemic will hugely benefit my fibromyalgia fight. Sure, I’m hoping I can tackle a few of those home improvement projects (who doesn’t?) that I would love to complete but I never seem to be able to get to and also fit in some motivational reading (that always lifts my spirits)…anything that makes me feel accomplished and positive during this time we are going through.

But the main improvement I’d like to do will help me fight fibromyalgia…because that’s what we do, those of us with fibromyalgia…we fight it…and we fight it…and then we FIGHT it some more.

We fight for our health, and we fight for our life. We fight to keep the life we have, and we fight to have a chance at the future we want.

I don’t know, maybe the fighting has just been ingrained in me since my first stint with chronic illness all those years ago, endometriosis. I’ve long since realized that my experience with fighting endometriosis set me up to start out my battle with fibromyalgia on a good footing right from the start (although I didn’t realize it for a long time, I felt as messed up and at a loss as anyone at the start). And I’ve often wondered if maybe fibromyalgia has been setting me up, preparing me, for the next, even greater fight (although I’d be fine with just staying put where I’m at, thank you!).

What I know is real is I will always be fighting, one way or another. I won’t be going down without a fight. That was decided the minute I set out on this fighting chronic illness journey many years ago, for I became a chronic illness warrior then!

No, I wouldn’t pick any of these battles, but if they pick me, I will fight them.

So, fibromyalgia…coronavirus pandemic…we know how to do this…we got this!

We WILL overcome.

For we were already warriors.