Inspiration

My first experience with acupuncture went fine. I like the lady who does it, which is nice. I’ll have to ask her more how it works, because I don’t really understand it. First I laid on my back and she stuck needles in my feet, lower legs, and one on each arm and hand, and a little disturbingly, about three in each ear.

There was a small prick as each needle went in, and then I nothing or just a faint burn (especially if I moved the muscle it was in). The ones in my ears I could feel as pressure the whole time they were in. Then I just laid there for fifteen minutes. After the allotted time, the needles were removed and discarded and I flipped to my back, where the process was repeated.

There wasn’t much pain, but I have to admit it was a tad unnerving to lay there knowing I had needles sticking out all over my body. And when my nose started itching, I didn’t dare lift a studded arm to scratch it. ;-)

All that said, it was definitely worth it and wasn’t bad at all. This weekend I seem to be able to do a little more with a little less pain, so it seems the meds and acupuncture are, indeed, helping. Praise God for that!

Tuesday was my middle sister’s birthday. She’s had a challenging year, trying to finish her biology degree with debilitating health issues. She’s worked so hard, and is almost done, but probably won’t quite finish her incomplete class in time to officially graduate in 2008.

SisJ is a wonderfully sweet, caring lady, very sensitive to the feelings and needs of those around her. I’m proud to have her as a sister and friend. It’s really nice having her back home now. Mom, Sis, and I went out to a birthday dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, our favorite restaurant--an everything-natural salad buffet with homemade soups and breads. It’s perfect for the two of us with our many food allergies.

Last night I had the opportunity to go see a presentation by Coco Roschaert, a Deaf-Blind Canadian lady who just got back from working in a school for disabled children in Nigeria. After a hiatus here, she'll be going back for another year and a half. Yesterday’s temperatures were over 100 (thankfully we only have a few days a year that hot) and we were all crowded into a little second-story room with no AC. But it was worth sitting there drenched in sweat to get to hear the stories Coco told.

Until just ten years ago many disabled babies born in Africa were left in the forest to die. Considering that, access for the disabled has come a long way, however is still far behind America. Coco’s job at the school was to find places on campus that needed improving or better accessibility.

Coco mostly uses tactile sign language to communicate. (That is, she gently rests a hand on the signer’s dominate hand to read the signs while they sign pretty much normally.) In Nigeria so few Deaf-Blind people are educated or employed that tactile signing is not well known. Instead, the people there attempted to talk to her by actually physically grabbing her hands and forcing them into the signs they wanted--very alarming and uncomfortable for her. She said the first few weeks her arms were covered with bruises.

All of her stories were very inspiring. Coco went all the way to Nigeria. And, Fibromyalgia or no, I can definitely get through the rest of school with God’s help, and face whatever else He has for me. Bring it on!
.

Of movie-making and doctor-picking

Yesterday I got to be an extra in a little Christian movie, Dialtone. About twenty-five of us stood scattered in the middle of a field of waist-high grass and thistles. We wore dark shirts and stood in solemnly--after all, we were dead. ;-) They did shots of us in each section of the big field and hill, and later will compile them to make it one shot of a full field. Afterwards I even got to do a one-liner. The movie will be about 45 minutes and entered in the San Antonio Film Festival (if I remember correctly) this fall.

After the shooting, they had a bunch of equipment to pick up and carry back down the long trail to the parking area. I didn’t carry anything heavy, but I really shouldn’t have stayed to help pick up after everything else. It’s just so ingrained into me to help out--what can I say, my mom taught me well. I’m having to learn to undo some of that now that I have Fibromyalgia and trying to not let myself feel guilty for not helping with things.

I thought I was doing okay during the shoot and that evening, but today I’m paying for it. I have that flu-like ache all over my body, even my hands. I can’t quite figure how standing in a field and climbing a bit of a hill can make my hands hurt, but whatever. It was still fun and I got to mostly rest today, even if that wasn’t what I’d planned for today.

Tomorrow I’m going to an acupuncturist. Though I know it doesn’t work for everyone, I’ve heard that it helps with both pain and sleeping problems for many people. My insurance referred me, so I’ll only have a $20 co-pay each visit. The HMO sent me this list like six pages long of acupuncturists I could pick from. Yowz. I don’t know much of anything about it, so I didn’t have a clue how to go about picking someone.

Finally I just prayed that God would lead me to the right person and started calling all the females on the list who lived closest to me. I left four or five messages asking them to call me back. Then someone called me back. I asked if she’d worked with Fibromyalgia patients before.

Ha. Turns out she started working for a rheumatologist who specialized in Fibro. She did her thesis on Fibro. During her research she saw that acupuncture seemed to provide great results for people suffering from Fibro, so she decided to train to become one herself.

Um yeah, I think she knows a little about Fibromyalgia. And that was the very first lady who called back. Thank you, God!
.