Fibro-what?

For a while now, I've been downplaying my condition and calling these days "fibro-days," but I'm going to use my blog space to record what it is and what I intend to do to banish it.  I've reached the point that I'll eat pea soup every day if that's what it takes.

Everything hurts.  The bottoms of the feet hurt. The brain is foggy.  Moving from one position to another is excruciating. I feel very teary. After about three days of this, I'm totally grouchy!  Even certain sounds hurt my ears--and I don't mean just Donald Trump's voice.

Yesterday, I stretched my stamina by having an otherwise wonderful 5th birthday day with Elena, but at 2:00, I said, "I just have to sleep," and we came home and I did, while she watched videos.

"I got the wrong thing," she reported. "I went to You Tube and what I saw was inappropriate."

"What did you see?" I asked, redirecting her to Netlfix Kids.  "I don't remember," she said, "But I'm pretty sure it was inappropriate."

We started the day at the McNay.  The museum wasn't open, but she loved the grounds, the big trees, the ponds of gold and orange fish.  Using my camera, she took about a hundred pictures of the fish.  "The museum looks like a big pink cake," she said.

Then, she found some old trues to climb.  "Old trees are like grandmothers," she said.

At Build A Bear, we replaced the hideous Christmas-present troll with an Appaloosa.  She loves the ceremony of choosing the stuffing and saying magic words over the fabric hearts that go inside. She loved it so much that we chose a pink panda for her birthday present, a little Catherine bear who can sort of ride Snuggles, the horse.

While we were having lunch in the Tower of Americas, when we overheard a girl about her age crying, I said, "You never have been a drama queen."

"Oh yes," she said.  "I can be a drama queen--just not with you.  I always like to be my best with you."

She loved being in the turning tower-top for lunch, gazing at the city down below!

Afterwards we'd planned to go to Yanaguana to play, but here's where I gave out of steam and my feet hurt too much to walk all the way.

By bedtime, I was almost unable to move; by morning, it was even worse.

While my rheumatologist insists that diet doesn't play a role in CREST syndrome, I'm convinced it does.  I'm going to ban sugar and gluten for starters and see what other dietary changes make a difference. A situation has to get pretty ragged to make me consider giving up the usual comfort foods, but ragged this week has been.

A young Kansas woman is renting my apartment for the NIA blue-belt workshop this week.  When she arrived last night, she told me that she'd had something that sounds very much like my condition (all-over pain) and that she's found enormous improvement through the exercises of NIA. So, after I get the inflammation under control enough to start, I'm heading back there, too.