Chronic fatigue and challengeschronic pain impactFatigued Fabulous And FashionableFibromyalgiaLiving with arthritisLiving with chronic illnessShoppingsocial aspects of chronic illness
Tuesday Ramblings 7/12/10
On the weekend I went to my church's young adults group end of year breakup. It was held in a function room at The Imperial in South Yarra. This is what I wore
Yep, I make pain look good!
Maxi Dress: Harris Scarfe
Shoes: I ended up wearing black shoes for the evening which were from Target but the silver shoes featured in the picture are also from Target. I'm loving shopping at Target at the moment, they have sales and reductions on just about everything!
I've been having a fair amount of trouble with the arthritis in my knees as of late. Every time I bend them I am greeted with a sharp pain. So I've had to wear the oh so fashionable knee supports to stop my knees from bending, making walking less painful and heels a welcomed option. Thank God for maxi dresses! They hide my ugly knee supports and my pasty white legs. And for that I am very grateful.
These are the black shoes. Just plain. Nothing fancy. I love that they have a smaller and slightly wider heel which makes for a much better option for fibro and arthritis sufferers.
Originally I wasn't going to wear heels because they are not the smartest option for chronic pain, and those of you who have fibro and arthritis will know exactly what I am talking about. It's a painful sacrifice at the expense of looking good and refusing to be denied the right to feel great in a brand new hot pair of heels. And seeing as I had no formal flat shoes to match the dress, I went shopping! Unfortunately for me there were no appropriate flat shoes to be found.
Shopaholics may relate to a term I use called the "shopping anointing". You know those days where you find all the bargains and everything looks good on you and then there are those lousy days when the "shopping anointing" is just not upon you and you stumble across everything else BUT what you are looking for and nothing seems to "work"? Well that's what happened to me whilst shoe shopping. None of the flats matched my dress, they were just too casual. So I moved onto the second best option which was low high heels and finally found some shoes which matched my dress perfectly and were exactly what I wanted but no, of course they didn't have my size! In the end I just ended up getting the plain black ones in the photo above. They weren't the best, they were a little on the casual side but all the nice and fancy formal shoes had too big of a heel for me to manage. That's one thing that frustrates me when shopping. You know exactly what you want and it doesn't exist. I was so frustrated that I had to fight back the urge to cry in the middle of the shopping centre, not only because I couldn't find what I wanted but because of the pain that it had taken to walk each step and the knowledge that I would be spending the next two weeks recovering from exhausting myself just over trying to find some nice damn shoes. As I am writing this, let me tell you- I am not going to sacrifice my health for the sake of shoes EVER again.
Okay, getting off topic. Coping at a function or party can be a challenge with a chronic illness. I, for example, find loud music, bright lights and big crowds much too overwhelming when I'm fatigued and ache all over. It's not a great mix. That said, the function room was lovely. It wasn't too big or too small and the lighting was perfect speaking from a chronic illness perspective. The music wasn't too loud either which was great. Socially I found the night a challenge because I was asked the inevitable question "what do you do?" like a thousand times. Depending on who asked and how comfortable I felt about disclosing only brief details of my health issues, I mostly just rambled my way through by replying with "I'm starting a craft business", which mind you, is totally true but is just so far off from happening because of pain and fatigue. And if people pressed for more answers sometimes I ended up resorting to blurting out "I have chronic fatigue syndrome, so I don't do much" *long look of amazement*. I especially hate the question "what did you do today?". "Oh nothing", is not really a satisfactory answer. How do you explain to someone that you physically cannot do much because you had to reserve all your energy for that evening out when you look perfectly capable of being super woman? I'm still working on a creative answer to this question and I'll be dedicating heaps of posts to the social aspects and difficulties of dealing and living with a chronic illness. I also found it difficult being so fatigued and in pain that my being there was just enough. I just wanted to sit the whole night and that is really tough when you've got people asking you to come dance and when you say no your met with oh come on. No, I am not a party pooper. Neither am I a wallflower. I hate sitting on the side lines watching everyone else enjoying themselves. I long for the day when I can get up, kick off my shoes and dance without any pain.
Aside from throbbing pain and fatigue I had a really great night but at this present moment I'm wondering if it was at all worth it. The pain is insane. When I got home I spent half an hour in the shower trying to soothe the pain and spent half the night crying hysterically because everything ached, but sometimes you've just gotta choose to live a little and I decided to have a good night out, knowing full well the consequence of pounding pain that would follow and so now I have to deal the ramifications. I did however, meet some lovely new people and that is exactly why I went. So, all in all I'm happy. And I know that I don't want to live in isolation because of my illnesses anymore.
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