I hate it when it’s flare up time. It means I have an increase in my fibro symptoms which means increased fatigue and muscle pain. The best way to describe it is imagine having the flu – not a cold but the real flu, every single day of your life. When you have the flu, you can barely crawl out of bed and you call in sick to work for a week or more because your muscles ache and you just can’t function. People even bring you meals because you are so sick.

Now imagine those symptoms never go away.

Imagine that the muscle ache and fatigue continues every single day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. And you can’t just stay in bed every day because you’ve got kids and dogs and responsibilities and you’ve got to work to support everyone so you’ve got to drag yourself into the shower and try to just make it through the day. Just put one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. Just keep trying.

And maybe the day will be busy and it will distract you and then you won’t be so focused on it. The day might fly by and soon it will be bedtime and then I can take the nighttime dose of medications and sleep, which is about the only time I don’t realize that I hurt so much. (I take half a sleeping pill to help with that – more than that and I’m too groggy the next day).

The next day, it starts all over again.