Final Exams and Fibro Flares

When facing final exams I try my hardest to focus on the task of memorizing and understanding mounds of information. Often in those moments, when the stress level rises like water slowly filling up to my chin, my nose, and quickly I gasp before the waters rise up to my eye level....This is the level I have been at for a couple of weeks now. Finally, I am done all of my exams with just one last paper to write. At times I feel I plead with myself for more clarity, more strength to keep going, to keep pushing through the pain. Being Christmas time, I attend events in spite of the pain, pushing myself harder to stay longer, and to do everything. The problem with this is that there is this insane notion out, that somehow I can do everything. With all these health issues that remain invisible I never look sick, thus how could I be? I rarely speak of it out loud, because I don't like to be looked at with pity, or implied weakness, thus it must not exist. However, I feel like the internal pop bottle has been shaken too hard this week and the lid's about to burst off and create a sticky mess. 

In this dangerous state when my whole body cries out at me abuse, abuse, abuse! While my migraine pounds to the same agonizing beat, it would seem as though my body feels I passed a limit again and shall pay the price. Good thing I have a week between exams and actual Christmas events, a week dedicated to recovery with a side of house wife chores. All the while in my head I feel victorious, as yes I am ashamed that my homes a disaster, BUT my papers are finished (minus 1), my finals are finished, and I made it out to all the social events - for me in my state those a great heroic accomplishments. Because I try so hard, I push so hard, and sometimes its through physical limits and other times its emotional limits. After pushing so hard I achieved a lot and, proved to myself that despite my limits I can get terribly close to them and succeed. Yet, I don't recommend getting close to your limits or pushing too hard as this week I am in recovery and feeling all the painful side effects of pushing too hard. 

One of the main side effects, being that if, you are at a level 8 in pain, then hot buttons are triggered more easily due to the level of stress effecting the pain. My normal is a level 7 of pain which is only possible with 300mg of Lyrica in the morning, 1.5 mg synthroid for the hashimoto's, and 40 mg of Nortriptyline at night for pain. I have charted my pain levels using the Catch My Pain app from which you can see the images below:

   

Perhaps checking out that app can help with catching your pain levels :)

~Elysia B

Wasted Potentials?

I fell down a rabbit hole today, I read the Upworthy.com article titled: They Show What's Wrong With The Way The World Treats Girls Without Even Saying A Word.  The title kinda says it all, so by the end of the article there are two organizations you can look further into: "Organizations like The Girl Effect and Malala's Movement stand up for the health and well-being of girls around the world.." Both of which have more articles that open our eyes up to, just how poorly other women are being treated in the world we live in.

The girl effect has numerous statistic's and projects that gives you a better look into the dangers girls face while also providing a new perspective that's worth considering. In the Girl Declaration they feature 5 Goals and 7 principles, that can create change towards a better future for girls and end poverty in the world.

The point that stood out to me most was that they point it out in more financial terms which you can see in the above image that reads,

"The Return on Investing in Adolescent Girls is High, so are the Costs of Excluding Them. Just one additional year of secondary schooling boosts girls’ future earning potential by 15-25 percent. In Kenya, that means national income could jump $3.4 billion – almost 10% – if all 1.6 million Kenyan girls completed secondary school and the 220,000 adolescent mothers avoided pregnancy. In India, the stakes are even higher. With nearly 4 million adolescent mothers annually, India loses $383 billion in potential lifetime income."

Thats a big cost, and it continues further to show how,  "Investing in Girls Helps Solve Global Changes. Investing in adolescent girls is critical to a sustainable future for us all. Adolescent girls can accelerate change on issues ranging from climate change to peace and security. These issues play out on a daily basis in adolescent girls’ lives, yet we fail to make investments that target the unique needs of specific populations of adolescent girls. Building adolescent girls’ capacities accelerates change today and will equip them in the future to make informed decisions about issues such as land resource management, innovative solutions for a green economy and leading more equitable societies. " Continue reading here, Its worth the read or at least a brief skim.

I love that there are organizations in place putting these things together but they need funding to continue, why not support them this christmas season? I find it interesting that in america we focus largely on areas like climate change, environmental issues, food allergies, and  animal testing. There are so many climate change focuses that they even thought of introducing carbon taxes, on most make up brands theres bound to be something featuring animal testing and in almost all coffee shops there dietary fads that flourish. But aside from these popular issues, what about the problems actual people face? 

Aren't these people worth putting the time and energy into helping rather than primarily focusing on  environmental or animal movements. Because IF women are educated in other countries, THEN there would be more brain power going towards all these other causes. And, with all that brain power possibilities would become larger, and opportunities to create a bigger longer lasting change could effect those other areas. Would we not bring a bigger end to these popular issues if ALL women were educated and could then have the opportunities to help in coming up with better solutions? If we look at the UN Statistics on literacy to get a better all around look at the effect on the globe: 

So we can see that if there is 17% of the world's population that are illiterate, and 2/3 are women,  that makes up 11% of the world. Thus,  if 17% of the world is illiterate that's 17% of the brain power we're missing out on, isn't that worth changing or at the very least considering changing. Perhaps a literacy tax would be more beneficial than a carbon tax...

We waste food in america, it's just a fact we are privileged and grow up with increasing numbers of health issues such as obesity, which is a direct result of our privilege. But considering the global stats  of illiterate people, do we not also waste the potential of that 17% when we fail to aid them? 

These are just my thoughts, after reading the article what are yours? 

~Elysia B

    

Is there a way to block pain -- true or false

New Research

Recently published on Nov. 26th there was a new medical discovery that seems intriguingly like a glimmer of hope for those of us with all sorts of pain. In Saint Louis University, a way to block the pain pathways in animals. This would mean that they are stopping neuropathic pain at an animal level which is promising and hopeful for humans. You can read the article here, its titled 'Off switch' for pain discovered: Activating the adenosine A3 receptor subtype is key to powerful pain relief

So if there is this way to block pain in tiny animals do you think they will find a way to help humans? 

It seems to me that our brains are far more complex to those of rats with brains the size of my thumb. Could there really be hope, or is this a cruel statement prematurely made? 

~Elysia B