Running and riding for endo

Ok endo warriors, my fellow sisters in pain and suffering, this is for you.

I am taking part in 2 events to raise money for endometriosis - the Nike Run to the Beat in September, and Cycletta 40km bike ride in Brighton in November. This is a big deal for a mum of two with extreme pain and fatigue who is on a mission.

I may have to walk the courses on the day, I may crawl it, but I will do it.

I would like to thank Freya lingerie for supporting me during my training and for sponsoring me to attend the Cycletta event.

If you would like to help me, you can donate to my JustGiving page here,.  Contact me for info on how your brand can get involved. If you want to join me and take part with me, let me know, and above all else please spread the word and donate.

Let's do this.

 

Geek chic - a real pain

 

One of the strangest outcomes of my endo is that it has really brought out the geek in me.

Not in the sense that I have a range of gadgets to help me cope, but that when I am incapacitated and having to veg out, I turn to my trusty Mac. Blogging takes my mind off things, and the fact that I am, without fail, having to spend a lot of time on my own dealing with pain and fatigue I have a new found love for social media and all it entails.  Twitter, Facebook, blogs and RSS feeds rock my world in those long hours.

The wheat cheat: intolerance and loving yourself

I have an intolerance to wheat.

I know this.

It makes my endometriosis pain much worse.  I feel hideous when I eat too much of it and I detoxed from it back in February.

Life, but not as you know it.

This little post is to share with you all how saddening, maddening, frustrating, painful and tiring it is living with endometriosis and it's associated entourage of symptoms.

Every few weeks the pain gets so much that my body hits a wall of exhaustion and chronic fatigue sets it. I don't just mean tiredness like you have after a big night out, or even the wall of foggy sleep deprivation I felt when the twins were still night feeding.  No, this is a tiredness that makes my very bones ache. My glands come up, I feel sick with tiredness, my pain reaches a whole new level of attacking every nerve, sinew and muscle. My head aches, my whole body feels battered. Shattered. Broken.

The F word

One would have thought, dear readers of my blog, that I would be wise to it by now.

One would imagine that I would re-read my posts, check through my diary, and say "ah, last month at this part of my cycle I was in bed for 2 days, so I shall therefore be prepared".

No. The f word comes to bite every month, without fail, and I am always annoyed by it.

Fatigue.

Immense, all-consuming exhaustion. Bone aching, head to toe, marrow-draining tiredness. The kind that rest and sleep don't quench; this is a body in pain, an inner dis-ease of dis-order, the kind that reminds me that ease and order are, for the moment, a million miles away.

This kind of fatigue is non-negotiable, calendar gate crashing and whole-heartedly shit. I have a life to live, children to play with, work to do, runs to train for, but no - endometriosis says I must be in bed, dreaming with the familiar hallucinations of white-hot pain.

Nudge me in a month's time. I always forget.