Being Diagnosed With Fibromyalgia.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you had a good week and are enjoying your weekend so far! As for me, I’ve spent the day chilling out not doing much which was just what I needed after a busy week. So, as you can see from the title of today’s post, I’m going to be talking to you about fibromyalgia.

You may remember from my previous post talking to you about my spoonie journey so far that I’ve lived with chronic pain for around 5 years now, and when I wrote my last post I had just found out that my neck curves in the opposite way to how it should and that it’s something I’ve had from birth. At that time the physiotherapists believed that that could’ve been the cause of some of my back pain, but wanted to do some more investigations which led to me being referred to rheumatology and having more tests and scans done.

And after all of the results came back the rheumatologist I was seeing told me that my pain likely isn’t actually coming from the curve in my neck, and that she believes I have a condition called fibromyalgia as we have pretty much ruled everything else out at this point. And so.. back to my GP I went.

My GP then decided to send my back to physio for the hundredth time and when I described my symptoms to the physiotherapist she said I was actually describing most of the symptoms that are present in fibro and that I one of the symptoms I have is funnily enough one of the tests that is done to help diagnose fibromyalgia. After my physiotherapist said that she said she would send a letter to my GP so that my pain could finally be diagnosed as fibro since I just keep being send round the hospital departments in circles with the only thing in common with my appointments being that everyone thinks I have fibro and only my GP can diagnose me with it.

And so a few weeks passed and a phone call to my GP later, my chronic pain was officially diagnosed as fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a long-term condition that causes wide spread pain across the body which unfortunately doesn’t have a cure at this present time.

Symptoms (taken from the NHS website) can include:

• increased sensitivity to pain
• extreme tiredness (fatigue)
• muscle stiffness
• difficulty sleeping
• problems with mental processes (“fibro-fog”), such as problems with memory and concentration
• headaches
• irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a digestive condition that causes stomach pain and bloating

Although there isn’t a cure for fibro at the moment, there are ways some people manage it; following an exercise routine, taking painkillers, antidepressants, trying relaxation techniques and trying therapy.

So, now that you know a bit more about what fibromyalgia is and its symptoms etc, something I’ve been asked a lot is how do I feel about being diagnosed with FMS?

Well, it might sounds weird since fibro hasn’t got a cure but I’m actually kind of happy that I’ve been diagnosed, like it’s obviously upsetting that it’s a condition I’m stuck with that causes me a load of issues, but I’m glad that after so many years of questioning what is going on with me I’m just happy to finally have the answers behind my pain because having to constantly go back to the GP with the same issue for years makes you start to feel like you’re going mad and that maybe it’s all in your head when it’s not. But now I know what is the cause of my pain etc, I can start looking forward at what I can do and try out to manage my symptoms.

In terms of the symptoms that I deal with on a daily basis, I typically have back pain, fatigue, lack of sleep, fibro-fog and headaches. To manage my symptoms I work out two to three times per week, take naps when I need them, make to-do lists and put loads of reminders in my phone and take pain killers. I also have an acupressure pillow I sometimes sit with on bad flare up days which is essentially a pillow with loads of spikes all over it to help stimulate blood flow and help with pain management. There’s quite a few different types of products out there that I want to try out for managing chronic pain, so if you have any favourites or any that you’d like to see me try out and review then let me know!

It’s a weird feeling having a condition that can be pretty debilitating whilst also being invisible to others, it can sometimes feel like other people don’t believe you’re ill because ‘you don’t look ill’ and appear completely fine to the outside world, so I’m working on validating my own feelings and making sure I don’t overdo things and cause myself a flare up. When you live with chronic pain everyday, I think we sometimes forget to actually acknowledge how much strength and energy it takes to do everyday tasks, and because we’re in constant pain we sometimes don’t bother to even tell anyone we’re in pain because it’s just normal for us; so if you see someone and think they’re perfectly fine because they appear fine on the outside, maybe take a second to remind yourself that not all illnesses are visible and let people know that their feelings are valid.

Even though I’ve only gotten my official diagnosis this year, I’ve actually been living with fibro for around 4-5 years, and in that time it has taught me several things:

• You can always tell if someone is ill just be their appearance
• Your feelings are valid
• It’s ok to rest when you need to
• It takes time to find what works for you in terms of symptom management
• You’re still you, even with a long-term condition
• Find people you can talk to about what you’re going through who understand

So now you know a bit more about my spoonie journey, what I’ve learnt so far and how it’s changed since last year! And with that, I think it’s time to stop my rambling and brain dump for today!

Have a great weekend my lovelies and look after yourselves!

Love,

What Is Classed As Selfcare?

It’s #SelfcareWeek ! And it’s got me thinking, what do we actually think classes as selfcare? For me, I typically start thinking about face masks and bubble baths. And well yes that can be classed as selfcare; but as amazing as those things are, there are hundreds of other things you can do. And over the last few days, I’ve been partaking in a few of these myself.

The thought for this post came to me whilst I was walking home from the gym; it occurred to me that even though I think of lots of luxurious things as self-care, there are lots of small things I do for myself that make me feel good, and these count too.

Here’s a few things I’ve been doing for myself that aren’t always considered self-care:

• Going to the gym, and doing what I want there, if I don’t feel like doing the stair climber today, I just don’t do it and I refuse to feel guilty about it!)
• Buying myself a hot chocolate when walking home after going to the gym.
• Putting on my moisturizer.
• Listening to the Peptalk app (I highly recommend this one for when you’re commuting and walking anywhere, it’s a great motivational tool!)
• Watching videos by Glamour, Ladylike, As/Is and the Try Guys.
• Self Affirmations.
• Watching Nikkietutorials (believe it or not I watch Nikkie’s videos when I’m at the gym and they make me so happy!)
• Cleaning my room.
• Playing with makeup.
• Putting on makeup when I’m not going anywhere!
• Lighting scented candles.
• Having a bubble bath.
• Unfollowing any social media profiles that make me feel bad about myself.
• Watching my favourite films.
• Cooking my favourite food.
• Singing in the shower.
• Talking to friends.
• Finishing work ON TIME.
• Related to the above – not looking at work emails when I’m off work.
• Making myself a great breakfast.
• Blogging.
• Painting, drawing and being creative.
• Getting 7/8 hours sleep.
• Wearing thermal socks.
• Using a 99p face mask.
• Chatting to my sister.
• Seeing my Niece and Nephew on FaceTime reeking havoc in my sisters house.
• Driving round to look at Christmas Lights when they go up.
• Making myself a cup of tea.
• Meeting up with friends for a chat/food/movies (basically spending time with the important people in your life)
• Wearing my favourite clothes.

Honestly the list could go on and on. I love selfcare, sometimes I do still feel selfish or guilty for spending time on ourselves, but we really shouldn’t. We’re stuck with ourselves for life so we better take care of that person we see in the mirror.

And at the end of the day, if something makes you happy and feel good, it’s probably your own version of selfcare. We’re all different so it’s impossible to say that one thing will work for everyone; telling someone to go take a bubble bath to relax if they hate having baths is pretty pointless. It’s a personal thing.

Some of the things in my list you might not consider to be selfcare, but for me, they are. Just doing one small thing for yourself a day can make such a difference to your mood and wellbeing. And myself from a year ago would say something along the lines of “I’ll start next week or in the new year”, but that’s not how I think anymore, the time to start is now.

That’s all from me today, I’m off to go get myself a hot chocolate and sit in a blanket with a book. Have a great weekend lovelies! You’re all amazing!

Love,

P.S. The UK Blog Awards are now open for voting! It’d mean the world to me if you could vote for me my lovelies!! 

Finding A Lump.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time. And what better time than than a few weeks before ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ begins. Just warning you now, this might be a bit of a long one, but I think talking about these things more does a lot of good, and if this helps anyone out there then I’ll be happy.

Only a small number of people know this about me, but about 1 1/2 years ago I was doing a quick breast check after reading about boobs in an article (I think it was from somewhere like cosmo?) and I found a lump.

Lucky for me, it ended up being labelled benign which means it’s cancer free and shouldn’t impact me. I recognise that I am incredibly lucky that my lump ended up being benign as not everyone is so lucky.

Let me take you back to when I found this lump, I think I was reading an article about why all boob shapes are beautiful (being a girl just wanting to like her body for what it is and all that.. still working on that now haha) when it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my breasts recently.

So that was when I decided to give my boobs a once over. And that was when I found a pea sized lump towards the bottom left of my left breast. It was like the entire world had stopped when I felt it, then the panic set in. That was when I got my mum to see if they could feel it and that I wasn’t going mad for nothing.

Unfortunately they could feel it too, which meant the next day ringing up the doctors to get an appointment. Sadly my doctors are a bit short staffed without as much people as they probably need for the area I live in, so I had to wait a little while before I could get booked in, but I know that they’re doing everything they can in the current funding situation.

The day of my appointment came and off I went to the doctors absolutely terrified because in the time waiting for my appointment my anxious had wreaked havoc with my head and I had basically come to the conclusion that I was going to have to have surgery or it meant death. Some people may think it’s silly that this is what I was thinking, but that’s the reality of anxiety for you, it’s not rational and you can’t control it.

Once I went in for my appointment the doctor was so lovely and she calmed me right down; she asked me about what I’d felt, where and if I was in any pain. For the record, I’ve suffered with chronic chest pains for about 6 years in the left side of my chest reaching round my entire back and through my shoulder blades (I’ve been back and forth to the doctors for years about it with no avail), so I mentioned this in my appointment to see if this lump could be the cause of the pain if it had trapped a nerve or something, I didn’t know what it could be because I’m not a doctor and no amount of googling was helping me out.

I’ve recently found out the pain is actually coming from a few other conditions which I’ll talk about in another post, but I am okay and getting treatment so it’s now being managed. Right, back to talking about boobs!

After talking about what was going on, then came the examination. It was pretty nerve wracking getting my boobs out for a complete stranger, but it had to be done. She got me to show here where the lump was and then she felt my breasts for lumps. That was when she confirmed to me that I was right and that there is something there.

The doctor did then confirm to me that yes there is a lump, but the good news was that it was very small, around 8mm-1cm big, which meant it was probably benign which is great news. In order to just double check everything from my appointment, I was then given an appointment for an ultrasound so we could actually see what was going on.

The hospital appointment came round about two weeks after my doctors appointment which was pretty fast in my eyes. And I was glad because I just wanted to know what was happening and if I needed to start thinking about how I was going to potentially tackle the big C.

I brought my mum along with me to this appointment because 1.) We love doctor/hospital shows like 24hours in A&E and stuff like that, and 2.) She’s always there to support me in whatever way I need it. Going in for my ultrasound was pretty surreal, I walked into this dark room with 3 medical professionals in it, a load of equipment, a medical bed, 2 chairs and a curtain. My mum stayed with me for the entire thing, which helped a lot with the nerves.

So, I said hello to all of these very welcoming women in this dark room, took my top and bra off and laid down on the medical bed. It’s pretty weird having 3 women that you met 5 seconds ago staring at your boobs I’m not going to lie. The main doctor there did another examination on my breasts and then she put the coldest gel in my boobs I’ve ever felt haha. Then came the ultrasound machine, the doctor pushed it all over my boob until we came across a dark blob on the screen. My lump.

Here came the good bit for me. After a bit of moving around the blob the doctor came to the conclusion that my lump is definitely benign, and that I actually have something called a fibroadenoma. Fibroadenoma’s are a range of solid breast lesions that can feel hard, soft, smooth and rubbery, a bit like a pea, but they can be larger. Fibroadenoma’s are usually painless, but if they are causing significant pain they can sometimes be removed; you should also keep an eye on the lumps and go back to your GP if anything changes.

It’s pretty strange looking at an image of your boob on an ultrasound screen, especially because you only ever see ultrasounds happening to check on pregnancies.

So, once my ultrasound was done, I headed out with a leaflet about fibroadenomas and a huge sense of relief. I was and am incredibly lucky that my lump isn’t anything that serious.

At the beginning of this year, I thought my lump might had gotten bigger; but this was also around the time that I had lost a lot of weight, so I wasn’t sure if maybe I could just feel the lump more. So along came a second round of appointments to the doctors and hospital and lucky for me, nothing had changed other than myself losing weight.

This was great news for me as you can imagine. Some people aren’t as lucky as I am and I will be forever grateful that my lump is nothing serious. I’m still living with my lump at the moment, and it does cause some achiness now and again, but I know things could be so much worse.

What I want everyone to take away from this is to make sure you’re checking your breasts on a regular basis. You never realise how lucky you are until you have a scare like this. Even if you’re a man reading this, check your chest too, because men too can breast cancer. If you’re looking for some more information about what signs to look out for when checking your breasts, you can find that here! You can download a leaflet on what to look out for here!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed finding out a bit more about me and have found this useful; I know it’s been a bit long winded, but it’s an important issue that needs to be spoken about.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! And I also want to say a big thank you to all of my lovely readers for all of your support, and to celebrate my first 100 subscribers and say thank you to you all, stay tuned for a giveaway at the end of the month!!

So that’s it from me for today! Have a great week everyone! Love,

What happens when you realise you’re developing an Eating Disorder

*disclaimer – this could contain trigger warnings*

If you’re wondering why I’m writing this post, it’s because it’s something that I relate to a lot. If you’ve read my about me page or my previous blog post – Anxiety, Body Image Issues and Me you’ll know that I struggle with my body image and food. And this past week I finally went to my doctor to talk about it.. Which I will tell you right now, was terrifying.

So, what happens when you’re developing an eating disorder.. Well it’s not something you decide one day, like deciding you want to go for a bicycle ride. It’s something that happens over time, and often you don’t realise what is happening until it’s already developed.

There are several different types of eating disorders out there, and no two are the same. The most common ones you hear about are:

• Anorexia Nervosa
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Binge Eating Disorder

Although the above three are most commonly spoken about, the other eating disorders although spoken about less, are equally as important and common among people. The other eating disorders are:

• OSFED
• Orthorexia
• Pica
• Avoidant or Restrictive Food Intake Disorder

The first time I realised that something wasn’t quite right was just before Christmas 2017, it was cold outside, I was 7 pounds away from what I had decided was my ‘goal weight’ of 9 stone 7 pounds. I think it was the week before Christmas and one morning out shopping I realised that I was extremely anxious about having Christmas dinner. Anyone that knows me, knows I would happily live off roast dinners, and that Christmas dinner was what I looked forward to the most. So naturally, suddenly worrying about my favourite meal of the year sort of hit home that something was not quite right.

Here I am in one of my old t-shirts in November 2017, before I knew what was happening!

I think part of the reason I was anxious about eating Christmas dinner was because I didn’t have any control over what was in the food. Before I lost a load of weight I wouldn’t give a monkeys about what was in it so long as it tastes nice. Because I didn’t have control over what was going in the food I was worrying about how much fat, oil and what I considered ‘bad’ food I would be eating.

I think I was a little in denial about what was going on at this point, I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I refused to admit that to anyone.. Including myself. So, Christmas finished, I ate hardly any Christmas dinner (and I basically only ate the vegetables and about 2 roast potatoes!!) than I would normally would, and worked out to try and burn the food off.

When I eventually admitted to myself that my relationship with my weight, body image and food was not good, I spoke about it with my family, friends and work family and they all were very understanding and supportive with what was going on with me.

Some of the symptoms of eating disorders I was demonstrating were the following:

• Religiously counting calories and ‘syns’
• Binge eating and then feeling incredibly guilty
• Excessive exercising to deal with the guilt of eating
• Restricting what foods I do eat (images below are what I typically eat in a day)
• Feeling guilty for eating
• Immense fear of gaining weigh and not continuing to lose it
• Obsessive with making my own food
• Constantly looking at workouts, low calorie recipes
• Denial of hunger
• Starving myself in the evenings so I would weigh less the next day
• Weighing myself continuously, every morning, sometimes evening and sometimes even more than twice a day!
• Fatigue
• Obsessively checking how fat and unattractive I felt I looked
• Anxiety around meal times
• Distorted body image (this one is a weird one for me to write because I know I must have it, but I just don’t see how my body image is distorted because fat is just how I see myself)
• Seeing certain foods as ‘bad’ and ‘good’
• Feeling of having no control or complete control around food.

It’s a long list I know!! But the thing is, all of these things don’t just happen over night.. They develop over time. Now, although it’s a long list, a lot of these things overlap within each other, and the good thing is that I’ve realised that these behaviours are not healthy. Below is what I would eat in a typical day, and it’s not great, and by realising this, I know taking the first step to getting better is the right thing to do; which is why I am now getting help.

Small bowl of porridge with 1 strawberry and a small banana.

Pear with Strawberries and Fat Free Yoghurt.

Wholemeal Toast with Scrambled Eggs.

 

It was not easy asking for help. It was in fact incredibly nerve racking and it felt so weird talking about what was going on in my head. I felt ashamed and strangely guilty of my eating/weighing/body image problems, but after talking to my GP, family and friends, I felt much less ashamed, guilty and alone.

The thing with getting help for eating disorders is that you assume you have to visually look like you’ve got an eating disorder and have a BMI extremely low; but that isn’t always the case. I have now been referred over to a service for young adults with the hopes that I will be able to get some help and potentially see a dietitian in the future if wanted.

If you ever think that you might have an eating disorder you should always go to your GP and ask for help!

You may be wondering what happens when you go to the doctors about potentially having an eating disorder. Well, when I did go to my GP for an appointment I was asked to tell my story of what has been happening to begin with, after that, I let the doctor know what symptoms of eating disorders I was suffering with (I took a list of what I wanted to mention in with me so I didn’t forget, my lovely co-worker suggested that and it definitely helped!), then we checked my oxygen levels, temperature, weight, BMI and I have been booked in for some blood tests to see if I have as a result of my eating habits, become deficient in anything. After going through all of that we decided that it would be a good idea to be referred to a mental health service for young adults (I’m 22).

Once I came out of the appointment I felt so much better knowing that I was going to get the help I needed I would highly recommend it to anyone worrying about any aspect of their mental health.

Anyway, that’s enough jabbering!! I’ll do a follow up post when I am in treatment for my own issues and keep you all updated with what’s happening!

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead everyone!

Love,