I was handling this whole Fibromyalgia issue pretty good, well...ok...as good as I can, when suddenly,
Bam, I was completely knocked of course by a simple inquiry for a swimming pool, in my neighborhood, where I could exercise. Let me tell you what happened:
My doctor told me that I should contact the Arthritis foundation and he gave me the number he had which was for a city that is about 50 miles from us. (I should state here that I go to the VA hospital that is also about 50 miles away, for my health care). They
referred me too someone in Los Angeles which is about 100 miles from us.
Thinking that kind of weird, I checked online and found, on a national
Fibromyalgia, a number for a chronic pain support group in my area and e-mailed since that number was also long distance, In our financial situation, our house phone doesn't have long distance and my husbands cell phone was out of minutes.
I got a message back that she wanted me to call her. My husband added minutes to the phone, ouch, and I called. She was in charge of the support group for the entire county.
The person I called informed me that the resource for swimming, a program set up for
therapeutic, warm water exercising, was closed down for lack of funds. Then the woman started bemoaning the fact that the recession was making it so that most services were being cut out and I agreed that it was a sad state of affairs. Then, well, I guess she needed someone to talk to, because she started rambling on about how she was sure that our State government was taking a nose dive and our entire state was going to be in a state of upheaval. She let me know that if I really needed anything I needed to start working out bartering agreements with people in the area to get the help I needed with housework and other problems I was having. She told me that the best advise that she could give me was to move out of state and start new somewhere else. I can't remember what else she said beyond that. I was already in tears.
I, at first, was alarmed, but it turned to
disappointment that a support person would give such discouraging and depressing information to someone that was just diagnosed with a chronic pain problem. But then as the night wore on and I reflected on the call, I was more able to put it in perspective. After all, most support
group leaders are people who are also dealing with the same disorder or have a loved one that is. Why wouldn't she be just as affected by it as I am. It could be that she was having a bad day or was depressed herself.
She did finally give me the phone number of the lady that leads a support group in my city and I'm now just a bit nervous to give it a call.
As far as my knitting goes. It's something that helps me when I'm stressed better than just about anything else. I put a pretty good dent in my pair of socks I'm working on, last night, as I tried to calm down so I could sleep.
Happy knitting!
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