I am sick.

This isn’t unusual, is it? I mean, technically with fibromyalgia, I am always sick.

I am stuck in bed.

Again, also not unusual. It seems like every other day chronic pain exiles me to life between the sheets.

I woke up 24 hours ago with an itchy throat which I blamed on my allergies. And then, you know how it is, my chest hurt, my throat hurt, my nose started dripping despite my Nasonex nasal spray. By last night, I was a little wreck with the feeling that a fireball was being consistently launched from my stomach up through my throat.

So this is new. Ever since I got fibromyalgia, it’s been kind of creepy how many times I get sick. It happens almost never. Thankfully. Though a cough or cold often disables the fibromyalgia, the facial pain of coughing and the fatigue and lack of exercise due to a cold can trigger it in full force. Usually by the end of a cold, I’m on muscle relaxers, painkillers and cough syrup.

I am trying to stay positive. I’m reading “Awareness: The Key to Acceptance, Forgiveness and Growth” by Miriam Adaham, a frum psychology book. I have learned that my personality type is “the Spiritual Alchemist or Decadent Depressive.” This explains how easy it is for me to connect with G-d and with spirituality as well as with totally decimating depression. “Decadent Depressive” makes it sound much cooler than it is. Apparently, my motto is “I feel; therefore I am.” My super-power is, among others, empathy and the ability to feel things deeply. My weakness is empathy and the ability to feel things deeply. Thin skin, you know?

I don’t know if I should be offended that this book has got me pegged so well. Who knew I was so easy to read? Who knew there were so many other people like me (though apparently not so many because it’s not the most common personality type)? Apparently, I need to work on discipline to get through depression so despite being totally sick, I went biking on my recumbent bike at 12am. I woke up at 6am (this wasn’t so much discipline as an inability to stay asleep) and I will be totally disciplined about getting some writing done (but not so much that I strain myself) and of course, cuddling up with my latest Netflix fix, “X-Files: I Want to Believe.”