You know that feeling of waking up in the morning with a pulsating headache and no recollection of what you did the night before only to see the notifications on your phone regarding comments or texts you sent but have no memory of? Is that not the worst feeling as you hold your breath while going through your messages PRAYING you didn’t say anything too foolish or even worse, reach out to someone you would normally cringe at the thought of when sober?! Well this is how I woke up this morning and while I wish I could say it was my own doing from a crazy night of drinking, I am happily married and the mother of four kids so that is not the case. This is one of the symptoms from my FM that I have been dealing with for the last several months. Normally the groggy feeling and head pressure would indicate that my stents in my superior vena cava are closed but that has not been the issue this time. The headaches are more frequent and the “hangover” feeling is happening just about every morning. I wake up literally confused and not remembering what I did the night before. Tim, my husband, will often joke with me by making the night sound a lot more exciting than the fact that we really just flipped through Netflix for an hour before going to bed with nothing accomplished for the night.  Oh and how can I forget the drunk messaging.  I am drunk texting or Facebooking…without being drunk!! Ok, in all reality though it’s the little details that I tend to forget so no worries, I’m not going to forget I have kids and just take off leaving them somewhere, even though at times I might feel like doing so….but that’s a whole other blog.  These memory issues in the morning and fogginess throughout the day is due to the lack of oxygen to my brain and nights tend to be the hardest on me. I have just skimmed by on passing the oximetry sleep study which measures to see if my oxygen level drops at night however since my results are to be considered passing doctors do not want to provide any type of intervention at this time.

This blog stuff is completely new to me so I am still trying to figure out how much of my life I am willing to expose for everyone to read. Regardless of what I do share I am not doing this for sympathy….I am doing this for awareness and understanding. A lot of times when I tell people what I am dealing with I usually follow up by saying there are a lot of other people worse off than me so I can’t complain and I do really feel that way however the recipient of this conversation looks at me questioning how I can say that because from what I just told them, my situation is pretty bad. I don’t like attention but I want others to recognize I am sick and do have limits and some days are harder than others. I am stubborn and do not like my illness to hold me back so I continue to push myself to the limit. I am determined to not let this disease get the best of me and while I might push with full force that does not mean this is an easy battle for me, it simply means I am not giving in.

And finally, I will admit I’d rather have to deal with a typical hangover verses my “hangover” because that is an easy fix….just stop drinking…I mean seriously, I live with a hangover just about every day…why on earth would anyone self inflict this type of misery on themselves!! 🙂