Getting the warm fuzzies!

I survived a whole day at work today.  Don’t get me wrong – I'm really paying for it now, but it felt good to push past the pain, the stiffness and overall feeling of almost-dead-ness and be relatively productive.  Now I’m propped up in bed, electric blanket on, and waiting for the painkillers to do their thing before I settle in for the night.

I wanted to share with you something that made me smile today.  In fact, it gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling that I’ve not had in a while.  You see, like I said yesterday – I have incredible colleagues.  They are so understanding and supportive, and I consider myself to be very lucky to work with such great people.  That said, they still surprise me sometimes.

One of the girls asked me today how I do it - how I turn up to work, without complaining about the obvious fact that I'm in pain, and just get on with it.  "But don't you just think 'Aahh, screw it' sometimes?  Don't you just get depressed?".  I didn't really have an answer for that - of course, I have my days.  We all do, we're human after all.  But I explained that I didn't want to be labelled "Negative Nancy" or "Grumpy Gertrude", so I whack a smile on my face and do my best to get on with things. I'll have a cry every now and again when the pain or the frustration overwhelms me, but I try to keep a lid on it as much as possible.  She smiled and said "You're amazing." with such sincerity, it almost turned on the tears.  But then she followed that with the words that really did set off the waterworks.

"I wish I could live in your body for five minutes, just to be able to understand what it must be like."

I felt the tears prick at my eyes.  I was overwhelmed by her compassion, and a little part of my was so honoured that she wanted to feel my pain.  To understand it.  To try to live a full and fulfilling life, while being in agony.  They were such simple words, but they didn't need to be complex to have meaning.  They truly made my pain more bearable, if only for a moment.   

So to Ash - thank you for making my day.  I appreciate the sentiment, and only hope you never have to experience what it's like to live in this body for more than just a moment.  

Oh, and my copy of Hero Food by Seamus Mullen arrived today!  Woohoo!  Now to recover enough from this flare to get myself out to buy the fresh ingredients for - and then cook - some of the delicious looking recipes in there.  Yummo.  Thanks for being one of my RA Heroes, Seamus!