Ever since Sunday, when we through a somewhat “impromptu” neighborhood BBQ party, I’ve been mostly flat on my back. This, of course, is due in part to the combination of incredibly bad allergies and overexerting myself, something that a person with fibromyalgia should know better than to do.
But never in my life have I experienced the kind of incapacitation I endured yesterday. We’re talking pain, serious pain: the kind that left me literally in tears most of the day as every joint in my body, from my ankles to my neck, felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and whacked me. Repeatedly.
At one point just getting to the bathroom left me in such agony I seriously contemplated asking my husband to bring home a pack of adult diapers because, let’s face it, I wasn’t about to risk his back by asking him to carry me to the toilet.
By evening I felt quite a bit better thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, which is to say that I’d stopped begging for death and had merely resigned myself to another night of excruciating discomfort. And what was my husband’s response upon seeing me finally stand upright as I hobbled my way to the bathroom? He suggested we go outside to join our neighbors for cocktails on the front lawn while our children all played in the cul de sac.
Uh-uh. No way. That kind of “summer time fun” is precisely what landed me on the sofa all day yesterday and I wasn’t about to put myself through a repeat performance. So out he went to mingle with the neighbors while I remained indoors where both the A/C filter and a generous dose of Benadryl kept me, if not wholly comfortable, at least mostly symptom-free.
Later, after the sun went down and all the kiddies (and their parents) had gone back into their respective homes, my husband casually said it was a shame I “didn’t feel like” joining everyone else to socialize. Like it was a choice I’d made freely. Like I’d somehow spurned their company. Like it was utterly selfish of me to not want to spend yet another day gasping for breath and ignoring the feeling that someone was slowly pushing an ice pick through every joint in my body at the same time.
Yeah, I’m selfish, all right: the only thing I accomplished yesterday was rolling from one side to the other while managing not to bite through my own tongue as I tried not to scream from the pain. Silly me. Next time I think I might have to find my own ice pick and give my husband an object lesson just so he knows what it feels like when he volunteers me to throw a party at which his only responsibility is remembering to put his beer down before turning the meat on the grill.
Chubby Mommy 
Not that flying is all that great. But at least I still have a little wiggle room in an airplane seat. 