"Tough girl, I'm in pain..."

I have blogged about having Hashimoto's Syndrome before. It came up for me yesterday in the worst possible way. I was asked how I was feeling.

It's a pretty simple question. "How are you?"

However, who really wants the actual answer? I assume no one does, because my answer is rarely going to be "I'm fine." My answer is going to be a variation on "I am operating with normal operating parameters." if I am able to get up in the morning. If I can't, then my answer will a variation of "I am not at full functional capacity."

I've spent most of the past week in pain. Day after day, grueling pain and I still went to work. I don't want a medal. I don't want sympathy. But if someone asks me how I am doing and I say "fine", I want them to understand that I am sparing them a rant about how poorly I feel.

Because the problem isn't just that I am in pain. It's that it makes everything else negative as well. I'm in pain, so I can't sleep. The medications make it difficult to keep food down, so I am not eating much. The food I can eat isn't the best for my diabetes, so I am spiking my glucose levels when I do eat. All of these things contribute to a negative space and while I try to keep positive, it gets to be a real challenge.

So when someone asks me how I am doing, the usual answer is going to be "fine" because no one wants the torrent of negative feeling that I can produce at any given time.

I could say more, but I don't think I have anything new..