Setbacks are bound to happen in a long process like changing one’s life, right?
Of course they are! Because nothing in life is linear. Nothing in life is that “shortest distance between two points” (i.e., a straight line). Not even this process, that we had such a great start to, is going to trend always forward.
I was removed from one of my pain medications, and have discovered that I really needed that medication to keep going at the pace I was going, to achieve what I wanted to achieve. It sucks, y’know? To be off to a great start, to make phenomenal progress, and then to have it all cut short and taken away in the blink of an eye by something completely out of my control.
Perhaps this would be a good time to give a little bit of background on yours truly — just so you know who it is you’re dealing with here — health-wise, at least. This is my last year in my 30s, which is a big part of why I wanted to make these changes this year. I am 39. No shame in that age, it’s just a fact of who I am.
I have fibromyalgia and diabetes type 2. I am considered morbidly obese at nearly 370 lbs (when I started this journey, I was 372. I have fluctuated in the 360s since then — more on that later). I am nearly 6 feet tall, and genetically take after my father more than my mother. Due to the fibro, I am in nearly constant pain, all over my body. Nerves, muscles, tendons… they all hurt. Lately that pain has been almost too much to bear. I have struggled with it causing issues with my sleep, with my movement, with my hygiene. I can’t stand for more than a few moments, and sitting brings the aches after just a few minutes.
I was diagnosed with diabetes when my A1C was about 12.9. How did it get that high, you may ask? I was on psych medications that drove it up. I take medications for schizoaffective disorder (a combination of schizophrenia and — in my case — bipolar disorder), severe anxiety, OCD, and cPTSD symptoms (like the night terrors). All together, my psych meds make up about half of the medications I am on, with diabetic/fibro/eczema meds making up the rest. I take a … lot of pills each day. And they all have their drawbacks. But I’m getting better at managing my symptoms of the various conditions I have to work with.
The one that just boils over is the fibromyalgia. It makes it so that I can’t get off the couch. No matter how much I know that exercise would help me in the long run, getting up is an impossibility in the here-and-now. What good does it do to tell me to walk around my apartment building when I can’t leave my sofa? What benefit is it to tell me to get in a pool at the gym, when I can’t get in my car and go anywhere?
I started this journey, hoping that I would be able to get past this stage and feel better about myself. Feel better about my weight. Feel better about my pain level. Feel better in general. That was my hope. Today is a setback. This whole week is a setback. But you know what? Setbacks aren’t the end of the project. They just mean you start from a different point when you start back up again. You let yourself have that moment of losing your shit and crying your eyes out about it, and then you pick yourself back up and start again.