The Ides of March Madness

This morning when I came out of the shower I was delighted to find three things of deodorant on my vanity. The delight came from the fact that I've been looking everywhere for one for the past twenty-four hours. It was as if they materialized overnight.

My house isn't filled with fairies. The cold rain has kept me inside with a sick toddler who is recovered enough to wipe her nose on everything. Sadly, she's not quite well enough to risk exposure to other children. So we are playing at home.

I've cancelled our activities saying the baby is sick. The statement isn't accurate. The toddler is sick. When her fever breaks and she has an hour where she feels better this girl is fast! (Missing deodorant, one lives in our swim class bag, unpacked, one in overnight luggage, in closet, unpacked, the toddler is an evil elf. She also hides keys and throws away phones.)

My Father was visiting. He lives in Colorado, a very cold place that I can't visit comfortably during most of the year. He doesn't read blogs. He also doesn't have a smartphone which made me change my social media ways during his visit.

I put the phone down. My virtual world went silent. Life continued with a few less breaking news stories.

I did glance at twitter where I have my own special world. A friend of decades, who is a RN, forwarded an article about women with chronic health issues. I am going to find a way to link twitter to this blog later today.

The article is about how doctors don't treat women in pain or with any other chronic condition the same as men. It mentioned that many women never get a "real" diagnosis and instead are diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

The story also described the disparity in women in research for new medications which is as old as research studies. I was saddened to see it printed again that Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of last resort. To me it is a specific condition that I have lived with for a decade.

Once again I'm blogging from my phone and don't know how to link the article to the blog.

It made me realize that after a decade, nothing has changed in the world of women living with chronic pain. At the same time the existence of this blog means everything has changed because at least now the women with smartphones are complaining about it.

I will update and edit this post throughout the day. So if you come back and re-read this blog in a week it will have an article attached and be completely different.

After I have more tea.

Cheers,
ALJ