A New Year's Resolution

A New Year is almost upon us.

Have you given thought to your New Year Resolutions?

Were you successful in your last resolution?

I swore I was going to loose weight and get healthy.

I was doing great until a load of flare ups and worsening symptoms.

This year will be different.

Why?

Because my resolution is different.

I'm not hoping to loose a ton of weight and get skinny.

I'm not even hoping to give something up.

We, as a human race,

set ourselves up for failure.

Most of us anyway.

This year I'm not setting goals that are unreasonable or unreachable.

All I want for the New Year is to survive.

That's the simple way of putting it.

This past year...

Well year and almost 3 months,

have been difficult.

We (my doctor and I) spent 8 months trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Why I was in so much pain all the time.

Finally he decided that it had to be Fibromyalgia.

We had done scans,

X-rays,

blood work galore,

and nothing popped up.

I even did physical therapy.

He finally started treating me for Fibromyalgia.

The meds helped but didn't make any huge difference.

Most days I couldn't even tell if they worked at all.

He said that I probably had this for years but it went undiagnossed,

He was probably right since I've been in pain for years but too busy taking care of my son's medical needs to worry about my own.

But I questioned him anyway.

He said it was a flare up.

A flare up that lasted over 8 months?

A flare up that a year and almost 3 month later am still undergoing?

In June he left the clinic and I started seeing another doctor.

One who agreed with the Fibromyalgia diagnosis.

Until I started getting more and more symptoms of Lupus.

I've been tested for Lupus 3 times now.

Have had 1 positive and 2 negative tests results.

A neck X-ray that shows that the degenerative disk disease in two disks in my neck have gotten worse since June.

The doctor says someone my age shouldn't be this bad.

Now we're waiting on CT scans of my brain.

There's something more than Fibromyalgia going on.

What it is,

we aren't sure of yet.

My doctor and one he consulted feel it could be a brain tumor.

That's the reason for the CT.

We just don't know yet.

So you see why one of my New Years resolutions are to survive.

I want less pain,

Less flare ups.

Or at least a way to cope with them better.

I don't want to be stuck in bed,

unable to participate in everyday things like playing with my kids.

I don't want to miss out on more than I already have.

I want to get more active because I feel it could help.

I want to find more energy and stamina.

I need to get myself up and moving.

What I want most of all though,

is to find out what is causing all this pain.

That's it.

It's that simple.