Fibromyalgia Awareness Day 2012

About 30 years ago, when I was in my mid-30s, I was experiencing fatigue and pain throughout my body. My old-time doctor attributed it to overwork and stress. One day I picked up a women’s magazine and read a cover story about fibromyalgia. The article, which showed an outline of a body with specific tender points indicated, stated that having most of these tender points was a sign of fibromyalgia. I had almost every one of the tender points, and when I read that fatigue and widespread pain throughout the body are symptoms of fibromyalgia, I was convinced I had found the answer to my problems.

I took the article to my family doctor. He said he wasn’t really sure that fibromyalgia existed, but he would refer me to a rheumatologist. The rheumatologist told me that I was lucky because my fibromyalgia was so mild. He said most of his patients were either bed-ridden or confined to a wheelchair, and since I was ambulatory and able to hold down a job, I should be thankful. Then he went on to prescribe a powerful drug that had been in the news because of its potential danger to cause heart attacks. If my fibromyalgia was so mild, why did I need such a potentially dangerous drug? I left, threw the prescription away, and never went back to the rheumatologist.

Through the years, I have managed my pain with over-the-counter medications, and on the rare occasions when that didn’t control the pain well enough to keep me functional, I would get a short-term prescription for stronger pain relievers. I seldom mentioned that I had fibromyalgia because I know so many people with the syndrome have so much more difficulty than I did. I’ve never posted about fibromyalgia awareness before—perhaps I felt like my “mild” fibromyalgia didn’t qualify me to speak about the condition.

However, in the last couple of years, my symptoms have been getting much worse. I’m on several prescription medications from my family doctor (not my doctor from 30 years ago who has long since retired) and have now accepted a referral to another rheumatologist. I’m writing this post is at the very end of the calendar day on Fibromyalgia Awareness Day because I have been in bed with heat and massage and pain pills for most of the week. I guess now I’m qualified to talk about the condition.

According to the National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association:

Fibromyalgia (pronounced fy-bro-my-AL-ja) is a common and complex chronic pain disorder that affects people physically, mentally and socially. Fibromyalgia is a central nervous system illness and is also referred to as a syndrome rather than a disease. Unlike a disease, which is a medical condition with a specific cause or causes and recognizable signs and symptoms, a syndrome is a collection of signs, symptoms, and medical problems that tend to occur together but are not related to a specific, identifiable cause.

Fibromyalgia, which has also been referred to as fibromyalgia syndrome, fibromyositis and fibrositis, is characterized by chronic widespread pain, multiple tender points, abnormal pain processing, sleep disturbances, fatigue and can be accompanied by psychological distress that comes with all chronic illnesses. For those with severe symptoms, fibromyalgia can be extremely debilitating and interfere with basic daily activities.

You can find more information on the association’s website.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or suspects they have it, learn all you can and take appropriate action. Medication may be needed, but lifestyle changes, such as managing sleep, diet, and exercise, can also help.

Each individual needs to find what is most effective for him or her. My next step is to lose weight—being overweight doesn’t cause fibromyalgia, but I know from experience that I tend to have less pain when I weigh less. The severe pain I have been experiencing should be a good motivator to get serious about losing weight!

Do you have or do you know someone who has fibromyalgia? If so, do you have any tips about dealing with this condition to share in comments?

May 2012 Is Stroke Awareness Month

May is National Stroke Awareness Month. As I’ve written about before, I had a stroke 20 years ago, and I don’t want you or someone you love to go through that.

To learn what stroke is, risk factors, prevention, how to recognize when someone is having a stroke and what to do about it, and more, visit the National Stroke Association website and read some of my previous posts:

• May Is Stroke Awareness Month
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – the Beginning
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – The Next Three Days
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – the Aftermath
• National Stroke Awareness Month: Stroke Risk Factors and Symptoms
• Stroke Awareness Month  2011

Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and a major cause for long-term disability. If you don’t want to be a part of those statistics, educate yourself about stroke during Stroke Awareness Month.

National School Choice Week: Freedom Always Works

A good education is critical for a child’s future success, but too many children are trapped in low-performing schools with discipline problems and failing students. Parents should have the freedom to choose the school that is best for their children. January 22-28, 2012 is National School Choice Week, “shining a spotlight on effective education options for every child.”

A Tale of Two Missions with Juan Williams dramatically demonstrates that when it comes to education, freedom always works.

Now Choose Life, so That You and Your Children May Live

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. ~ Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (NIV)

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court chose death and made abortion legal in the United States.

Since that day, nearly 55 million children created by God in His image have been murdered before ever being given a chance at life.

This joyous story of a reunion of a birth mother with her daughter conceived in rape and given up for adoption is unlikely to happen today. Children conceived in rape are routinely aborted, as if the children should be punished for the crimes of their fathers.

Added 1/23/12: I learned about a pro-life advocate who herself was conceived in rape. Rebecca Kiessling has a dramatic story to tell that changes hearts and minds about exceptions to abortion.

Through the years, I have written a number of posts about abortion and the sanctity of life, especially on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made the lives of unborn children less valuable under the law than the convenience of their mothers. Here are links to some of them:

• Absolute Truth vs Personal Opinion
• Abortion: Legalized Murder
• A Thirty-Six Year Tragedy
• The Most Basic Human Right: Life
• Slavery and Abortion – Moral Relatives
• The Case Against Abortion

O Lord Jesus Christ, who dost embrace children with the arms of thy mercy, and dost make them living members of thy Church; protect unborn children from being murdered in the womb; turn the hearts of lawmakers and people to end the evil abomination of abortion; and allow every child created by thee to fulfill thy plan for their life; through thy merits, O merciful Saviour, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest one God, world without end. Amen. (adapted from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

photo credit: Caitlinator

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day

Didn’t Abraham Lincoln end slavery 149 years ago with the Emancipation Proclamation?

Fortunately for slaves on Southern plantations, yes. Unfortunately for many other slaves around the world, no.

According to the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST):

There are more slaves in the world today than at any point in history. Slavery is more affordable, more wide-spread, and more entrenched in 2011 than it was in ancient Rome or the antebellum South of America. Modern-day slaves, also called human trafficking victims, can be male or female, from any country, or representing any ethnicity. They can be enslaved in any industry, although common industries include domestic servitude, agriculture, the commercial sex industry, factories, and the service industry. Human trafficking is truly a global crime.

Today, January 11th, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Most of us believe that if we had lived during the days of slavery before the Civil War that we would have stood against it. Now there are more slaves than ever in history, and we all need to realize the magnitude of this problem and make our voices heard to bring an end to it.

Love 146, an organization to end sex slavery and exploitation, has posted quotes from the nineteenth century regarding slavery for the past several days. I recommend you begin with the first post and read them all. Then ask yourself if you feel compelled to help the cause of ending slavery of all kinds around the world.

National Adoption Month

November is National Adoption Month. According to the US Department of Human Services Administration for Children and Families, the month is

set aside each year to raise awareness about the adoption of children and youth from foster care. This year’s National Adoption Month initiative targets adoption professionals by focusing on ways to recruit and retain parents for the 107,000 children and youth in foster care waiting for adoptive families.

The issue of adoption is very important to me for two reasons:

1. As parents, Jack and I adopted our son at age 11.
2. As a passionate advocate for life, I want loving homes for children who are allowed to live through their birth rather than being killed in the womb.

We adopted our son more than three decades ago after years of being unable to have children of our own. Like most parents, we wanted a baby, but adoptable babies were scarce and still are. Millions of babies are murdered each year, while families desperate to have children remain childless. “Unwanted” babies may not be wanted by their birth parents, but they are wanted by parents who would love and care for them.

On the other hand, older children languish in foster care crying to be part of a family while parents looking for children never consider them because they aren’t newborns.

Older children can be extremely difficult because of their experiences during the early, formative years of their lives. Often, they have been removed from abusive or neglectful homes. Many have been bounced from foster home to foster home year after year. Educators may give them little attention. The children may have disabilities, physical and mental. They find it hard to love and accept love because they have been rejected so often in their young lives they have given up believing anyone will ever care for them. They may have been born with fetal alcohol syndrome or addiction to drugs their mothers took during pregnancy. Most likely, they will have low expectations about their own futures.

No, adopting an older child is not easy. It can be stressful and heartbreaking. I don’t talk about our experiences out of respect for the privacy of our son, who went through some difficult times but is doing well now.

Sometimes everything works out from the beginning, and the children adjust well. Other children end up in prison or on the streets in spite of their adoptive parents’ love and best efforts.

But what a blessing when a child who has been in all kinds of trouble through his teenage and early adult years turns his life around—gives up drugs and alcohol, gets a steady job, and marries. Without a loving family from whatever age he was adopted, that responsible adult might be in prison for life, homeless, or even dead from substance abuse or gang violence. Knowing your adult child is self-supporting and happy makes all the pain and heartache worthwhile.

There were few adoption and parenting resources available for us when we adopted our son. After the legal process was over, we were on our own, with no guidance on how to deal with the issues that had developed in the first eleven years of his life. I’m so glad to see so many resources available now to help adoptive parents understand what to expect and know how to best deal with problems that arise. If you want a child or children, consider adopting an older child who has been in foster care. Do your research and find the information you need about how to adopt and parenting after adoption.

Jack and I and our son would have all benefited from our having more information.

And from the other side of adoption, I encourage pregnant women who, for whatever reason, feel they can’t care for a baby to carry the baby to term and allow your baby life with a loving family through adoption. No, that’s not easy, either. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to carry a baby for nine months, then hand the child over to someone else. But it’s the most loving thing a mother can do if she doesn’t want the baby or can’t care for the child. Your baby and the adoptive parents will be blessed, and you can know that you have been the source of great happiness for other people.

You may not be a prospective adoptive parent or a birth mother, but you can share adoption information with anyone you know in either category. You can thank birth mothers who gave babies up for adoption and adoptive parents who made a good home for a child in foster care. You can raise awareness about adoption and thereby contribute to bringing children and parents together.

photo credit: tiswango

National Alzheimer’s Awareness Month & National Caregivers Month

November is National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month and National Caregivers Month.

If you are a caregiver for an Alzheimer’s patient (or know one you’d like to help), I’d like to recommend a helpful book. The author Nancy Nicholson, in addition to being my sister, is a social work consultant with experience working with Alzheimer’s patients as well as personal experience as a caregiver for our father. Help! What Do I Do Now?: Caring for Your Loved One with Alzheimer’s is short and easy-to-read but packed with useful tips.

The video below shows the willing sacrifice of an Alzheimer’s caregiver, representative of millions of caregivers around the world.

National Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2011

When I first started writing Dream or Destiny, I had no idea domestic violence would play a part in the story. I knew very little about domestic violence, and I always had doubts when authors told me their characters took over the story from the writer. However, that is exactly what happened to me with Dream or Destiny.

When I started writing about David, the hero, he let me know he and his sister had been abused as children, and his sister had been abused as an adult. I tried to ignore him, but he wouldn’t let me. Finally I started doing online research about domestic violence. The statistics were shocking, but what impacted me the most were first-person accounts of abuse. I became passionate about raising awareness and saving women and children from violence at the hands of those who claim to love them.

I am pleased and humbled at what readers who are knowledgeable about abuse say about Dream or Destiny. The book has received a number of excellent reviews, but one of my favorites is from The Bluestocking Guide. Bluestocking is an advocate for victims of domestic violence, and she writes not only a great review of the book but also an excellent article on domestic violence.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. You can learn more about domestic violence by reading my series for Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2009. Please don’t be as oblivious to the problem as I was forty years ago. I was teaching a Sunday School class of third graders. I carried a cup of coffee into the classroom and sat it on the table beside me. One of my students came up to speak to me and knocked over the coffee, spilling it on my dress. I felt stupid for being so careless as to bring hot coffee into a room full of rambunctious kids, but I was surprised and puzzled at the boy’s response. He backed away from me, holding his hands up in front of him, saying over and over again, “I’m sorry. It was an accident.” I told him it was my fault for setting the coffee on the table and assured him I wasn’t burned.

Only years later when I became more aware of domestic violence did I realize that this child was most likely a victim of child abuse. He apologized over and over again to try to keep me from becoming angry, and he backed away and held his hands in front of him to protect himself—expecting me to strike out at him. I will always regret that I didn’t recognize the signs of abuse and do something to help him. I often wonder what happened to the boy. His father was in the military, and the family moved not long after the coffee incident.

Please learn the signs and what you can do to help. If you notice signs of abuse in a woman or a child, take action. You can save someone from severe physical and emotional trauma—and you might even save his or her life!

World Alzheimer’s Day: What Is Alzheimer’s?

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, a time to spread awareness of this disease and the people who suffer from it. Shockingly, one in ten people over the age of 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (AD). If you and your family are not affected yet, you most likely will be in the future.

I was one of several caregivers for my father during the seven years he lived after his diagnosis. Now I am the sole caregiver for a loved one who doesn’t recognize his diagnosis. I have learned that, contrary to what many assume, the Alzheimer’s patient is still the same person he or she has always been. Their memory deteriorates, and their behavior changes, often for the worse, but the behavior changes are part of the disease process and reactions to the fear and confusion they are experiencing. As the disease progresses, it may be difficult to recognize the personality of the individual, but deep down, it’s still there.

On his deathbed, we saw and felt my father’s spirit though he couldn’t communicate in any tangible way.

My sister Nancy Nicholson tells our father’s story in her book of tips for Alzheimer’s caregivers: Help! What Do I Do Now?: Caring for Your Loved One with Alzheimer’s

You can read another touching story in I Am Still Here.

O ALMIGHTY God, who art the giver of all health, and the aid of them that turn to thee for succour; We entreat thy strength and goodness in behalf of all thy servants who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and for their caregivers. Guide the minds and actions of those seeking a cure for this disease that patients may be healed of their infirmities, to thine honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The video below explains the progression of the damage to the brain.

Stroke Awareness Month 2011

May is Stroke Awareness Month. Stroke, also known as brain attack, is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of long-term disability. A stroke is a medical emergency that can happen to anyone. Immediate treatment is critical to survival, so learn the symptoms and maybe save a life.

I know a lot about stroke. I went through one myself, and my husband has had a mini-stroke (transient ischemic attack, TIA). I recognized the symptoms and called EMS immediately, and Jack recovered quickly. You can read more about my experiences and what I’ve learned about stroke in the following posts:

• May Is Stroke Awareness Month
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – the Beginning
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – The Next Three Days
• National Stroke Awareness Month: My Stroke – the Aftermath
• National Stroke Awareness Month: Stroke Risk Factors and Symptoms

I even wrote a novel, Stroke of Luck, with a fictional storyline based on my experiences.

Yet, I’ve learned a lot more in the video below, Brain Attack: A Stroke Survival Guide, with Al Roker. There are several blank sections where there were ads when it was on TV—but it’s worth waiting through the gaps to see the entire show.

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