If You Are Sick of Lupus Posts, Just Walk On By Because This Is Another One!

Thanks to the incredible heat we had last week and the stress I have been under the past couple months, I am in a doozie of a flair-up.  My symptoms are not nearly as bad as they could be and I thank God for that every day.  When I read blogs of fellow Lupus…?…onians? I feel like I am acting like such a baby for complaining at all.  But, all I have are my own experiences to compare things to and this week has been tough.

On a good note, this entry isn’t going to be full of complaints.  Complaints like how my back hurts so bad that it feels like there are knives going in my shoulder blades.  Or complaints like I think I pulled an eye muscle from trying to look around because it seems my neck has turned to stone.  Or complaints about how more hair is in the tub when I wash my hair or how I have 3…no 5 new lesions on my neck, chest, and face that make me look like I am battling puberty all over again.  Complaints like how I can’t really hit the brakes in my truck because my feet are in too much pain or how I can’t carry anything because while my neck was turning to stone, my arms and legs were turning into spaghetti.  I also won’t complain about how my hip has been having this amazingly painful electric shock thing going on and I feel like I am being intermittently tasered.  Or how my GI track feels like it is on a loopy roller coaster and I am seriously considering seeing if they make Pull-Ups in my size.  I will only buy them if they have Looney Toons characters on them though.  Because without them, they are just diapers for big people.

Nope!  You won’t have to read about any of that!!  You are welcome.

Instead, I am going to tell you about how I managed to become mobile yesterday despite the pain.

I remembered the day my doctor quoted Newton’s First Law of Motion to me.

A body in motion will stay in motion and a body at rest will stay at rest.

My doctor told me that people with chronic pain get themselves in a vicious cycle of which I need to be very mindful.

Onset of pain leads to decreased movement which leads to increase in stiffening of the joints and even more decrease in movement which leads to even more pain and so on and so forth until we turn into a big pile of hurting concrete.  Okay, the concrete was my imagination…he didn’t say that.

So yesterday, despite the pain I was in, despite the lack of strength in my body, despite the fact that my joints seemed fused together, I picked up some dumbbells.  I did a few bench presses with a light weight.  I did some stiff-legged dead lifts even though it felt like my elbows were going to pop.  I did 50 squats without holding any weights and I did 12 minutes on the elliptical.  The workout was NOTHING compared to what I can do on a good day and it seemed like a waste of time while I was doing it.  When I was done, I was 100% exhausted.

BUT!!!!!!

My neck moved!!!!!  For the rest of the day, I was able to turn my head from side to side without pain.  Some discomfort but no pain!  It was totally worth it!  

I decided yesterday that I need to do this every day.  I need to do SOMETHING every day to stay moving.  Even if it is just 5 minutes on the elliptical and nothing more.  No matter how tired I feel or how much I hurt, I need to keep moving.

And I need to accept that the goal of my workouts is no longer to loose weight and get ripped.  My goal is to stay mobile and not turn to stone.  That makes me sad but it is a reality and one I am willing to accept.

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