Life really brings all kind of surprises and things to keep us entertained. About a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia syndrome, and life has become very different since then.
The symptoms were no energy at all, to the point that I just couldn’t stand up from a chair; generalized pain in the whole body, that made very difficult any kind of movement (whatever could be tried with the very little energy left); and complete dizziness, that made it very difficult even to remain seated in a chair.
The doctor kindly told me in five years I would be in a wheelchair, and that I should take those news as an early warning, so I would have time to build a ramp in my house, to access it with the wheel chair. The same with a vehicle, especially adapted for a handicap person in that scary wheel chair.
He also mentioned that my legs would be failing me sporadically, but every time more and more, until they would fail completely, and that would be the moment to change them for wheels…in a chair.
To be honest, after the doctor’s appointment I went straight to my car, sat in there and started to cry!
I became a car mechanic because I love machines in general and cars in particular. Restoration is such a pleasant activity for me, yet from a wheelchair everything becomes very limited. My dreams of some day have the time to go traveling the land and see places; walk different grounds and breath the different local airs became gone in an instant. For a person like me, who wanted to do many physical things, the news of five years to be in a wheelchair became a death sentence. Life is over!
Then the statistics say only about one percent of people who acquire Fibromyalgia get to recover, yet about 50 percent of the people with the syndrome reach complete disability in a couple of years. Nice!!
It took me a while to recover my mind, so later I became determined to be part of the one percent that recovers from the syndrome. Yet the problem that my legs were effectively failing me more and more, reminding me of the fifty percent, rather than the one percent. Many times it felt like if I was fighting the wind. Just a crazy man who refuses to accept reality.
But then, if I could not escape the wheelchair, I thought, I am a car mechanic, I will make a chair that will allow me to go places as I was planning before. I will not be stuck in life just because my legs refuse to work!
The reason to acquire the syndrome was a very stressing job I had at that time, and it took me more than a year and the collecting of many other reasons, to finally quit that job and go cold blood into the waters of starting something on my own.
One of the other reasons was that, in order to still function half way with the stress at work, I had to live in overdose of medicine, reaching a point were I was taking about 10 times the normal dose. I lived dizzy, and that meant I had to drive dizzy! After a couple of close encounters in the highway, I decided it was better to try something else, or instead of a wheelchair it would be a coffin!
Still, in all that time I came to enjoy more intensely the little things life offers for free, and that we usually pass them by without a second thought. The beauty of clouds in the sky and the sound of rain; the breeze in the face and the sun in one’s shoulders; the little, everyday things that, even though I used to enjoy them before, now became of even more importance to me.
It felt as if life was slipping out of my hands, so I stopped my walk to look at what life really was!
Then, after quitting that job, about a month after, the symptoms of the syndrome were reduced considerably, to the point of now need about half of the prescribed dose, rather than ten times, as I was using just a couple of months before. My legs hurt everyday, but not like they used to, and the sporadic failing is gone. Very rarely I have dizziness, and just some pain and stiffness in my legs that makes me walk funny sometimes, and the pain in my hands that refuses to leave and it seems will never go away, but at least now I know, I will not end up in a wheelchair!!
From the dark clouds of a storm that suddenly took place in life, to a quiet rain that slowly started to disappear, to the sunshine in my shoulders once more. A year and a half; what a ride!
I don’t have the energy levels I used to have just two years ago; now I live in pain and the stiffness of my legs is always there; I am dependent on the medicine for the rest of my life, and every physical thing I do has to be at about half the speed I used to have, so it takes me longer to accomplish everything, like fixing a car or working in a project in the backyard. But now I know…there will be no wheelchair!!
Still I have the problem of doing something on my own, related to income, but I feel confident thing will go fine. Now I live life more day by day, rather than on dreams of the future, so it is one step at the time, everyday, just to remain alive, while enjoying this wonderful gift that is life!!
Raul
.