What is Fibro Feelings?

Recently The Helpful Hubby and I went to Switzerland. I wasn’t sure how to expect my body to respond and it did better in some ways, worse in others. I was having a horrible time with my IBS the 72 hours before we left – probably due to the stress of traveling. Due to IBS cramps I was unable to sleep the night before we left and since I can’t sleep on planes It wasn’t until the night after we arrived that I was able to get some rest. Surprisingly my body rallied though and the afternoon and evening we arrived was spent exploring Basel, before heading to Bern for the evening. The other exciting part of the arrival was that I didn’t even have to take any pain killers during our 5 and 7 hour flights!

During our trip we walked miles and miles in ~90 degree weather day after day. While this was very hard on me in some ways, such as experiencing the worst fibromyalgia foot pains of my life and fighting fatigue, I was happy to find that my back, which is usually very easily aggravated, did not hurt much at all! My body also fairly easily adapted to the time-zone change. The only day-time hours when I felt like I would fall asleep were when we were traveling my train and my body was being lulled to sleep by the train’s rocking motions. I found returning to my home time-zone a little rougher. I could not stay awake past 5pm and it took ~3.5 days to feel like I was near the normal schedule for my time-zone.

Although I did twist both my ankles when I tried keep up with others and jog 5 (ONLY 5!) strides my wrists and knees only hurt when we visited very high altitude mountain peaks. I believe this is from the difference in pressure. I also seemed to be much more sensitive to the altitude change than others – When we went up high I often felt dizzy, nauseous, had shortness of breath, had a headache, mentally out-of-it and worst of all, my feet and legs swelled so much that I could not wear some of the sandals I had brought. I really should’ve taken pictures of them, they were so swollen that I lost my thin ankles to a tube cankle with an ankle roll of fluid in my skin and it hurt to bend my toes. I started referring my ankles/feet/legs as my “sausages.” My feet barely fit into my tennis shoes after adjusting the shoe laces to be the loosest they could be and still tie. 14 days after our first climb into the mountains the swelling finally went down. My ankles almost looked too thin to me after being used to looking at my “sausages!”

I will be writing other entries about this trip, so stay tuned for one event neither The Helpful Hubby nor I will never forget!

The sun setting at the airport