#SOL14 Every(thing on my)body Hurts

I read that a slice isn't a list. But today, my mind has been sliced up across a timeline; a list of wins and losses in the past eight years.

Eight years.

It's like a lightbulb the pops and dies -- just like that, and it's gone.

Last September I willed myself back into the healthy lifestyle that I love. I always feel best when I'm eating real food and moving my body daily. In November, I injured my shoulder. I ignored it, thinking it would get better.

It didn't. In December, the Husband suggested a chiropractor. I went. Along with looking at my shoulder, they took back x-rays. The verdict: a backwards neck and leaning tower of Pisa back.  For nearly two months I was at the chiropractor three times a week, doing an odd assortment of physical therapy and adjustments.

My back and neck, which had never hurt before, now burned with daily chronic pain.

I went to a shoulder specialist. And a back and neck specialist. They saw no reason in the x-rays my chiropractor took for me to need such radical therapy. They gave me a steroid shot and sent me to a physical therapist.

For the next month and a half I went to physical therapy twice a week. I went through the prescribed stretches at home every day.

My shoulder is 95% back to full strength. My neck and back, though better, still hurt throughout the day. I lean over to turn on the bath faucet, and my back cries out. Stoop down too quickly to grab my shoes in the morning, my back cries out. Roll over too quickly in bed.... yep, you guessed it. I spend the day rolling my head from one side to the other, rubbing my neck, trying to release the tension. Nothing seems to help.

My doctor, upon palpitating specific points on my body, considered fibromyalgia. An entire battery of lab work was ordered. Every other possibility they could think of ruled out, the final diagnosis became probable fibromyalgia.

"Stretch," my doctor says, "Stretch, stretch, stretch. Fibromyalgia loves the stretching."

I stare at her blankly, nodding, but I'm thinking about 2007. June. Six months after I made my decision to stop living an unhealthy life. Six months after I started walking, then running, five days a week. Six months after I stopped eating all fast, fatty, and fried foods. Gave up soda for water. I was strong. Healthy. Happy. I could workout without pain; I could work out with joy.

Now, stretching hurts. Sitting hurts. Everything, it hurts.

I'm trying to find my way back to a place where I want to PUSH myself into caring enough to do something about it.

But even that, it hurts.