-5- WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME AGAIN? Fragments of a life is all I the life I have at this time. The disease has robbed me of any semblance of continuity. To keep from going mad, I limit my daily focus to the fragment at hand, living that fragment as fully as I can. I did not always live life on the installment plan. During good times I could do it all, having many projects and activities on the go at once. I could divide my attention in such a way that it was common for me to do three things at once... human computer multitasking. It all came so easily to me. As my body was busy baking cookies and doing up the weeks' laundry, I could easily work on the fabric of the university term paper due shortly , while also working out the next month's finances for the University Mature Students Association I was involved with at the time. No problem. Add the kids running in and out ,along with the friends dropping in for coffee (or to work in the driveway on a car)..and the weekend madhouse ran smoothly enough not to feel stressful at all. I felt that I could do anything I set my mind to... as the song proclaims.." I am strong, I am invincable, I am woman." I could even schedule my sick time, for the most part, to fall on Sundays. I was far too busy the rest of the week to take time out for the extra sleep necessary when being sick. My monthly periods were awful, but somehow I managed to convince my body that it had only one day a month to suffer and on that day suffer I did. But it was routine as usual the next day, regardless. The "good" periods really were times of glory for me. I was a superwoman, admired by others and on top of my world. I kept the household running smoothly, and the family as well. I did well in my university studies and was a key member of the Mature Student's organization on campus where I was both the organization's coordinator and a peer counselor. Then I got sick again. I struggled through the remainder of my degree and cut out all but the most necessary parts of my life, and with time I got "well" again. Then came another "good" spell, and superwoman once again emerged to run a household, chair a civic government committee, be president of a local museum society, and work as a project specialist on a municipal heritage project, all at the same time. My motto was that the impossible just takes a little longer. I survived by the "compromise" of just doing everything well as being good enough and not to sacrifice anything for just one goal. It sounded good at the time. What I didn't seem to realize was that my conception of just doing something/everything well was seen as extreamley perfectionistic by those on the outside, making my abilities amazing to many. I had the reputation of being able to cope with and conquer any problems that I encountered; that I was as brilliant as I was compassionate but sometimes difficult to work with. This was because I expected nothing less from my co-workers than I expected from myself. And I expected that I was able to solve any difficulty that I might face. As I basked in the glory of my good periods, I put the bad spells out of my mind entirely. I could not seem to find a pattern of any sort to the precipatation of the bad spells in order to find a course of causality. My overall health had never been all that good and for years I was advised that I had a sensitive immune system and that I would have to learn to live with it. I just assumed that I _had_ learned to live with it and exercise control over my life. But the bad spells continued to interrupt the good periods never-the-less. Sometimes it felt that I had been run over by a tank, by the suddenness from which I went from good to bad. I could be on the top of things and happily cruising along life's highway. What would be a major crisis to someone else was but a minor annoyance to me. Then, suddenly, I would get sick. Once it was a flu, another time pneumonia, a severe ear infection, or a kidney infection. Wham! I was on my back and down for the count. I always struggled on, but my strength had left me and so I had to cut back on the number of "fragments" I could put my remaining reserves to. In university I managed to graduate at a reduced life-load. I was left feeling burned out, and that was what my doctor had told me was wrong. "Burnout". I didn't just burn out, I went down in flames. Other times I would slowly wind down, running out of energy. I felt like a leaky vessel. My allergies would act up and I would have a general case of the miseries. I could accept the idea of Burnout as a reason for feeling lousy, but all the supposed cures and treatments for it tended to make matters only worse, not better. I felt like I was sinking into a dark, fuzzy hole and that my life-force was slowly being drained from me. I knew in my heart that something was not at all right. Then I would get well again and I would be running full tilt once more, and enjoying it. The bad spells slowly took a toll upon the good periods, and with each cycle the peaks became lower and shorter while the valleys got deeper and longer. Finally it felt like there was no way out but for the mercy of death itself. During the bad spells I would try to pick myself up by my "bootstraps". Under the premise that any problem is solvable if one has the right information to work with, I delved into books. I read every self help and psychology book I could lay my hands on. Even if I didn't understand them, I read them. The doctors had been impotent to help me and the psychiatrists' pills just made me sicker so I threw them all aside. I felt that the only one who could save me was the trio of me, myself, and I. So I read. I pulled myself out of a pit that swallowed me when my father died, in 1978, and plunged headlong into university in 1979. When I got sick again I first saw my general practitioner. He could treat my infection but as for the rest, he said it was all just stress . Other than to prescribe tranquilizers that I wouldn't take anyway there was nothing he could do. Same song, next chorus. So again I delved into my books. My psychology courses came in handy, and now I could understand more of the psychobabble than I could before. I would read medical book after medical book, discarding theory after theory, disease after disease. It was all in my mind, the doctors had said. But I was convinced that it was in my body, that somehow something had screwed up somewhere. If I could find it, I was certain I could deal with it. If it took stress reduction techniques, biofeedback, exercise, meditation, nutritional adaptations, then I would master each one in turn until I could control my seemingly useless body. Sure, I felt depressed. Who wouldn't be depressed if they kept on getting sick for reasons unknown and explanations sketchy at best. BEING TOLD OVER AND OVER AGAIN THAT SOMEHOW I WAS GETTING SICK BECAUSE I WANTED TO BE SICK WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME , OR ANYONE SICK.. I.E. DEPRESSED! I just couldn't reconcile my frustration with being sick and my elation at functioning fully with the idea that I did it all to myself. I could not imagine why I'd be sabotaging myself, kill my happy times and replace them with suffering and misery. I did not ever see debility as a comfortable or secure place to be. Once I began to cycle upwards I congratulated myself on my resiliency and pursueverence. I had succeeded in pulling myself up and I could now start to enjoy life again. I had beaten the demon within my body. Foolishly, I thought that as long as I was more careful and smarter than I had been during previous good periods, that I could stave off the bad spells indefinatly. Unfortunetly, the behavioral and lifestyle modifications I had made to "pull out of" those bad spells did not prevent their reoccurance from happening. I thought I was never smart enough, or diligent enough. The doctors "hummed" a bit, then told me what they had told me the times before. So it was back to the books for me. Reread, research, discover new material published since my last "episode" of my "syndrome" of "difficulties". How I hated being reduced to a syndrome of difficulties. I felt sick... disfunctional... my worst case senario. There just had to be some related causal factor for this syndrome of difficulties. Often I feared that I was losing my mind on top of losing the functionality of my body. My great memory would go. I would be unable to recall anything, long term memory was also lost in a haze. My emotions were no longer under the well practiced control of the conscious mind. I would become disoriented and suffer panic attacks. I could forget where I was at any time. Some days I could not follow a conversation. It was truly horrible when the printed word made no sense at all. I felt that I was losing everything. And still the doctors I appealed to for help continued to softly tell me that all I had was an assortment of nuisance ailments that would not cripple me, nor kill me, and if I would only to try harder I would get better. Here I was desperately struggling not to fall apart in body and mind and I was being told that I was not trying hard enough. Phooey! I was trying with all of my soul but I was caught in the worst hell that I could imagine. I often just wanted not to awaken from my next sleep. I was lucky again again as fate seemed to intervene on my behalf. The kindest words always came from my chiropractor as he sorted the knots and kinks out of my body. The physical pain responded well to his touch. Dr. Wingert often asked about what the other doctors had found out about my problems. He never told me that he thought that all my problems were mind induced. He was my rooting section in my search for causality and relief. While the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia I was given in 1985 was the one that made the most sense of those I'd been given, it did not explain the terrible fatigue and cognative difficulties that had grown ever stronger over the years. Dr. Wingert began to do his own research into Fibromyalgia, and he filled me in on whatever he found. He urged me to find a local support group for moral and informational support. He continued urging me for almost a year before I gave in and sought support. I contacted the local office of the Arthritis Society, and got the name and number of a woman to contact about the local support group. I called, and that contact would prove to put me on the course to save my sanity, and perhaps even my life. -----