Does anyone else get competitive with themselves?

A serious question; does anyone else get competitive with themselves? I mean stupidly so, to the point where you actually put yourself into a negative situation in some way. I do. I am honest enough to admit that. I do get competitive with other people, although I don't tell them, but it is when I get competitive with myself that I end up getting in trouble. What can I say? I am my father's daughter and I have his competitive nature.

Me and my dad

That was okay, to a degree, when I was healthy. I used to enjoy weight-training and bought myself a multi-gym when I was 16; it was great fun and I really enjoyed the competitiveness. The fact that I could see progress in the amount of weight I was using and the number of sets, as well as definition. Yes, I know, looking at me now it's hard to believe, but I did have pretty good biceps, triceps, quads and calves in particular. Leg work was always my favourite.

So when I had a Wii back in 2007, coinciding with an improvement in my health conditions, I did the same as I always had. I got competitive with myself. The game records all your stats so you know how much you are doing each day and whether you have improved. I started off quite sensibly doing five minutes of yoga a day. Now that may not sound a lot to a healthy person, but believe me when you have health conditions with pain and fatigue as two of the main symptoms, it is an awful lot.

The best I had been for over three years; I managed a boat ride and sitting on the beach.

My competitive problem reared its head a couple of weeks down the line, when I started to increase the amount I was doing. Now that is something that pacing suggests, that you gradually increase the amount you are doing. The key word in that sentence is 'gradually'. I got carried away. At one point I was up to an hour a day yoga and cardio. I didn't go beyond that, but even though that was spread out through the day in five or ten minute sessions, it was far, far too much for someone whose fibromyalgia and M.E. are as severe as mine. 

The result was that I crashed. I ended up being stuck in bed not for days, or weeks, but for months, with only brief periods of being able to get out of bed. This was particularly frustrating because I had started studying with the Open University again in February 2007. Even with that, despite taking the exam at home, I attempted to type it. I almost passed out while I was doing the final essay because I was in so much pain. The sweat was  pouring off me and my invigilator was all for calling a doctor out. I called time on the final essay, leaving it part done - another frustration - and that was the point when I crashed.

My graduation in November 2013

I can't even say that I learned my lesson, because I didn't. I started volunteering as a tutor with the Expert Patient Programme course in 2008. Rather than doing the requested two courses a year, I did back to back courses. Okay, yes, it is only two and a half hours a week. But for me, that was (and is) a lot. By the time I finished the session I was in so much pain and so fatigued that I would spend the following six days stuck in bed before I got up and repeated my mistakes. I volunteered for every training course, award event and promotion event that I could. You would I would learn at some point, but no, I didn't.
.

The Mayor of Dudley, with myself & Ann Tee, there as representatives of the EPP volunteer tutors

The reason I am telling you all this is because by being honest I am hoping that I can learn from my past mistakes and begin to gradually improve. I am not expecting miracles, I am simply going to take baby-steps and be thankful for any small improvement that I may have. I have spent most of the last year in bed and my hope is to improve enough so that I will be able to to out of bed every day. That is my first goal and I am not going to get too competitive with myself. If anyone suspects that I am getting too competitive, please feel free to tell me off!

Pain = millions of lost working days = isolated people

Pain conditions are hard enough for those living with them to understand, let alone those fortunate enough to neither have a pain condition themselves nor to be living with someone who has one. Government statistics from 2013 show that approximately 15 million people in England alone are living with a long-term health condition. Many of those people will be experiencing pain of some description; in fact, several years ago the British Pain Society estimated that 10 million people across Britain were living with pain. If we choose to look at that purely from a financial point of view this means that millions of working days each year in Britain are lost due to pain. That alone should be cause enough for pain to be openly discussed, yet it remains one of the most taboo health issues around.




There are a huge variety of reasons that someone may be suffering from pain, ranging from an acute form such as a sprain or broken bone which will be fully healed in a matter of weeks through to chronic forms which may remain for the rest of a person's life. People may experience regular flare-ups of pain every four to six weeks due to painful periods, for example, or have neuropathic pain which is present all the time. It is individual and will vary person to person, even where the cause is the same. The only real way of knowing just how someone's life is impacted by pain is to talk to them about it. Yet here in Britain we tend to shy away from actually discussing such matters. Oh, we will casually ask if someone is alright, but what most people really want to hear in response is "I'm fine, how are you?" There is often some rather obvious discomfort if a person living with a pain condition answers truthfully and begins to enthusiastically discuss their pain.




Possibly because we have so many wonderful medical treatments around now - thank goodness - it is often assumed that pain can be completely controlled by medication. People can be forgiven for believing that someone living with pain is guilty of exaggeration, because surely with all the medication available nowadays, pain can be controlled?


The sad truth of the matter is that many pain patients continue to suffer awful and debilitating levels of pain, some of which remains a mystery to doctors. For people like me who have a combination of several different pain conditions and take a variety of medication, the pain remains a very frustrating symptom.


So why is talking about pain such a taboo?


In all honesty that is a question that I cannot answer without a serious amount of research. I suspect though that there is an element of embarrassment there, a feeling of not knowing whether or not people are 'supposed' to ask personal questions about an individual's pain and perhaps plain discomfort at seeing someone else in pain. Certainly I know that my mom hates to see me in pain, as does my husband who is my full-time carer. His way of dealing with it is to be as proactive as possible by doing things such as learning to administer IM injections of pain reliever for those times when the pain become really unbearable, which has definitely made a big difference.


I would like to talk to someone else though; not just about the pain and how it impacts on my life, but also just about the world as a whole. That would be pretty spiffy actually, if someone came to visit me and just chatted.


Does anyone have any other ideas why pain is such a taboo discussion topic?

Memory, distortion and a fantastic childhood experience...

Pete and I were talking about memories last night and how our perceptions of events can change over time. We have a couple of very obvious examples where extended family members tell people that they did something that they could not possibly have done, due to age or other factors. I am sure that a lot of other people can think of similar examples too, either friends or family members that tell the world that they did something selfless or had a worse upbringing than they did and so on and so forth. 

I did a course a while back, called Understanding Global Heritage, through Open University where memory and the effects of time were discussed as part of one of the units. I found the concept of memory distortion (article on memory distortion) particularly interesting, especially as it is something I have witnessed first hand. I have kept a diary  - on and off - for years and tend to make quite long, detailed entries for significant events. One particular conversation with an individual was something I had found extremely distressing at the time and so had written down everything the person had told me. In great detail. Several years later we were discussing the events in general terms and I raised the particulars that the person had told me. They insisted that they had never told me, that these events had, in fact, never happened and that I was obviously making this up. At the time I was both shocked and confused. I started to doubt my own recollection of the conversation, until I re-read my diary. Now, no doubt I had my own perceptions of the conversation at the time and these formed part of the diary entry, but the conversation and events in question did most definitely happen. I was actually quite worried about the person in question until I read through the module unit and did some research of my own into the subject. I still worry a little because of the actual events, but a lot less than I did initially. 

It also made me think about the events that have taken place in my own life, things that I remember (or how I remember them) and stories that I have been told by people who are no longer around. I do not want those stories to be lost; I want there to be a record of them somewhere real, not just online but something tangible. I have decided that I am going to buy a nice, good quality, attractive note book and start writing down all those events that I can remember, all the stories I have been told, so that there is a record of them. Even if the only person who ever reads it is me, at least I will remember the events the way that I remember them now and not further distorted by time and place. 

One of the greatest sets of childhood memories that I have is of growing up spending almost all of every school holiday in Wales on a farm in Pembrokeshire - or Dyfed as it was when I was very little. To have grown up being able to collect eggs every morning, to help feed the calves buckets of milk, help herd the cattle, go to the cattle market with the farmer and his wife, pick fruit and veg, ride on a tractor and oh, so much more! I had the greatest time imaginable when I was a kid and I have to say that I am so glad that I had the opportunities that I did. I would not have traded my time on the farm, which I still go to by the way, for anything. While friends would maybe go off for two weeks in over-crowded Spain, with 'organised fun' (I cannot think of anything worse) I got to explore a fantastic farm and have a truly amazing childhood. I want each of those memories to stay as fresh and true as I can make them. Although I wish I had written some of them down sooner, I think that I am going to have a great deal of fun remembering and getting them down on paper now.

Okay, I admit to being lazy and needing a good push in the right direction

Actually made it to Weight Watchers for the second week in a row, which is fairly unusual for me as for quite a while now I have generally only been well enough to go once every four or five weeks. I am definitely not complaining as I actually lost two pound this week. I am not thinking about how many more pounds I need to lose, just concentrating on trying to eat sensibly using home made food prepared by my Chef (aka my husband, Pete). I do like that Jane, our Weight Watchers Leader has such a strong focus on freshly prepared food and has done since before Weight Watchers jumped on her band wagon. She has also had a focus on moving more and exercise for a long, long time and does encourage people no matter what their circumstances. This is not an advertisement for Weight Watchers, more like praise where it is due for a lady who had the right idea long before anyone official came out and agreed. 

I think that for me the only way I actually lose weight is to really have a lot of structure. That means planning meals for the week, including snacks if possible and making sure that I stick with that plan. Admittedly an A1 sized flip chart sheet sitting in the living room is hard to miss, but even with it being on full view, there is the option of ignoring it. However I know that if I ignoring it my arse is gradually going to get bigger and bigger until I actually become wedged in a doorway and someone has to call the fire brigade to rescue me. Not really the image I want to leave a load of firemen with!

I do have a tendency to be the same with everything. It really is not only the food planning and weight loss that ends up being last minute and guesswork. It is certainly something that I have found myself doing time and time again when it comes to essays and studying. Yet get me on a subject I am truly interested in and I will do well; for example the OU's now defunct course "AA310: Film and Television History" was the best course I have ever done with them. I actually enjoyed doing research and writing essays. I found the subject fascinating, particularly my last essay where I discussed feminism in Joss Whedon's series 'Firefly'. Sounds odd, I know, but there is already some interesting research and academic writing on the subject in general and Joss Whedon's many TV series in particular. I ended up gaining a distinction on that course and came very close to getting a First Class Honours degree because of the renewed interest that course inspired in studying. 

Unfortunately the interest in studying is rapidly on the decline right now. I get interested in my current course for about five minutes, then realise that I do actually find the tutor mildly irritating and the course rather bleurgh. I think that once this current degree is completed, my second with the Open University, that will be it with that particular institution. They are moving away from the freedom of choice that made the University an attractive alternative and becoming much more like a traditional University. Yet many of those 'traditional' institutions seem to be moving more in the direction of some truly inspiring distance learning courses. All good things come to an end, I guess.