National Invisible Illness Awareness Week....

One of my FIAR friends told me that this week is National Invisible Illness Awareness Week. So to honor it, I have been asked to talk about my invisible illness. What is an Invisible Illness? Well it is any illness that you cannot detect by just looking at a person. I have four, possibly five invisible illnesses. I have Fibromyalgia, Multiple Heredity Exotosis, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), Mushroom Workers Lung and possibly Sleep Apnea. Wow! That's a whole shopping list! Please? May I have some more? - Not!

I deal with pain every day. I take 800 milligrams of ibuprofen throughout the day. That sometimes takes the edge off. Some days are better than others. I haven't really figured out why. Sometimes if I work especially hard, or I am lacking sleep, I'll run into a "crash". Basically I am so tired and sore it is hard to get out of bed. Here is the definition of Fybromyalgia: A common syndrome of chronic widespread soft-tissue pain accompanied by weakness, fatigue, and sleep disturbances; the cause is unknown.

I try to avoid crashes, but getting enough sleep is a problem for me. My dh thinks I have Sleep Apnea. He says I tend to stop breathing all through the night. When I wake up in the morning, I never feel refreshed. I am always exhausted. I have even scheduled a nap time in the afternoon to try and make it through the day. Here is the definition of Sleep Apnea: Sleep apnea is a serious sleep disorder that occurs when a person's breathing is interrupted during sleep. People with untreated sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times.

Besides not sleeping well, I will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with the contents of my stomach coming out my nose! (Sorry, too much information, I know.) That actually happened last night. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to, that's for sure. That is thanks to GERD. I went on WEB.MD and here are the symptoms they list:
* A burning feeling in the chest just behind the breastbone that occurs after eating and lasts a few minutes to several hours.
* Chest pain, especially after bending over, lying down, or eating.
* Burning in the throat -- or hot, sour, acidic, or salty-tasting fluid at the back of the throat.
* Difficulty swallowing.
* Feeling of food "sticking" in the middle of the chest or throat.
I pop Tums all the time.

The Multiple Heredity Exotosis (MHE) is a bone disease. Basically I have extra bones everywhere. They usually don't affect me too bad, unless they get bumped. Then they are excruciating. I do have one in my hip that is giving me troubles. That is part of the reason I pop ibuprofen all day long. The muscle in my left leg at the hip is attached to a bone growth. If I move a certain way the muscle flips over the bone and it is very painful. It hurts to lean down and pick anything off the ground, or do gardening or stuff like that. I did see the doctor regarding this, but they told me that once they take the bone out they will not be able to reattach the muscle, so I would lose the lift of my leg. I'm not quite ready for that.

The Mushroom Worker's Lung treats itself as asthma. It is kind of like coal miners lung. I got this very rare disease when I worked for a mushroom farm as their accountant years ago. Now I'm on medicines for the rest of my life, and I can't go near mushroom farms and I can't be around unwashed mushrooms. If I hadn't been diagnosed twenty years ago when I worked at the farm, I wouldn't be here today. The doctor told me I had to quit my job immediately as the mushroom spores were eating away at my lungs and killing me. So I quit my job, and have been dealing with the lung disease ever since.

So, that is my shopping basket of stuff. I don't usually talk about it. I don't really want to be a whiner. The Lord is gracious and He sustains me no matter what my body is doing!