Friday’s Guilty Pleasure for 2/21/2014

Friday’s Guilty Pleasure is BACK! (Hopefully. I’m taking things day-by-day.)

We’re jumping back into the swing of things with a brand new guilty pleasure. Green Ginger Tea from Tazo Tea.

My new obsession, Tazo Green Ginger Tea

I have absolutely fallen in love with this tea. Now, I am not a big tea drinker, hot or iced. But I was introduced to chi lattes at a certain coffee chain (I don’t drink coffee either, I just go there for the tea…and for chocolate chip banana coffee cake, it goes great with the chi tea) and have slowly been developing a liking for it. Very slowly.

I decided I wanted to try ginger tea because I’ve been hearing so much about it being good for inflammation, with all the inflammation I’ve been having I figure it couldn’t hurt. I also heard that it was good for digestion and a bunch of other things. Okay, I heard a lot of this from Dr. Oz, one of my youngest daughter’s favorite TV shows. The idea that a little tea could double as an anti-inflammatory and help with a slew of Spoonie and Chronic Babe type issues seemed worth checking out.

While ginger tea was on the shopping list, I wasn’t necessarily looking for Tazo tea. I was looking for Tazo chi tea and when I got to the store there was a 2 for something like $7 special on Tazo, and since they had the ginger tea I thought why not. Tazo is definitely more expensive than some of the other brands, but in my limited tea experience, you get a little stronger and more flavorful tea for the price. Since I don’t drink a lot of tea it seemed like a worth while investment.

This tea has a really great flavor. I was worried that it was be…I don’t know sort of bitter or hot because of the ginger. But it’s got this great tiny touch of heat to it that warms you from the inside out. It’s green tea so it doesn’t have the strong tea taste that I don’t like and it doesn’t have a lot of caffeine. The description says that there’s pear flavor in it, but I don’t really taste it. I put honey in mine, but that has a lot to do with first making it when I was getting over a cold and the honey helping with the sore throat.

So check it Tazo Green Ginger tea if you like tea. If you don’t like tea you might want to check it out too. It’s really yummy.

Thanks for sticking around and checking out my Guilty Pleasures. If you have an idea for next week’s Guilty Pleasure – or if you would like to be the special Guest Blogger and write next week’s Guilty Pleasure post, drop me a line here! I would LOVE to hear your ideas. Especially all you Spoonies and Chronic Babes – what are the those little guilty pleasures that make the bad days a little better? Let’s share and help each other!

Down the Chronic Illness Rabbit Hole

I feel awful about not keeping up with things here on my blog. I decided late last summer that I would be posting at least twice a week and that I would be talking about things that would be helpful and hopeful to other people with chronic illness. Then winter rolled around and I started down the Chronic Illness Rabbit Hole.

You know what I mean, when all the little tricks you have to pull yourself out of a flare or pick yourself up don’t just do not work, they seem to make things worse. The times when you feel like you’ve finally reached the bottom and feel just as awful as you could ever feel, only to wake-up the next day and discover a whole new level horrible. I feel like I’ve been traveling down this particular rabbit hole for months. In reality I skirted the edge for a while, started to fall and clawed my way out a few times only to have the ground give way underneath me again. But as I’m sure anyone who’s been in the hole will agree, it doesn’t matter how far you’ve fallen or for how long, it’s always too long.

Logic would say I should call my doctor. The one who told me it was vitally important to immediately go get my hip x-rayed, then didn’t follow-up for more tests after getting the results for 3 weeks. Which was more than 2 weeks ago and I’m still waiting to find out details about the additional tests. (I’m guessing it’s nothing important – and since it’s gotten better, and worse and better again it really might be inflammation/flare like I tried to tell them.) If you’ve read about my experiences with the new doctor you know I don’t have a great deal of trust in her or her office, this latest…hiccup…fiasco…call it what you will…is not helping.

She hasn’t seemed at all interested in anything to do with my Fibro. She hasn’t really asked about my quality of life or interested in how I’m doing in a total sense. I did fill out a questionnaire at my last visit (granted it was my 2nd with her practice and we have no background or relationship yet) that asked some quality of life and general wellbeing questions, but she never followed-up on them. Her intern didn’t follow-up on them. Why have me go through the exercise of filling out a whole page of questions about ability to walk up and down stairs, fatigue, etc. and then not even look at them?

So why should I call? I’m not having specific or steady inflammation in any particular joint (though there is some wide-spread inflammation), and thankfully I’m not in a ton of pain. I’m not having specific symptoms that she’s found acceptable in the two conversations we’ve had. I just feel like hell. 24 hours a day. No energy. No strength. Just hell.

This isn’t really about her or her office. Maybe it should be. Maybe I should call. But this is more about that nasty little hole you get sucked into when your illness rages on and on and on.

Part of you tries to rage against it. But we know that doesn’t necessarily make things any better — more often than not it makes things worse. Part of you wants to crawl deep inside that hole and hide until you feel better — but not doing anything doesn’t help in the long run either, it just makes it harder to crawl out of the hole. You get up each day and do the best you can to survive and try to figure out how to get out of the hole.

Here I am, not the farthest down I’ve ever been, but definitely further down than I’d like to be. All I can say is that I’m doing the best I can. My focus has to be taking care of the day-to-day things like getting my kids to school  and making sure they’re fed each day and in bed at night. As much as I want to reach out, to be part of the world, sharing with others and helping others going through the same things, I really need to spend my energy (or my spoons if your familiar with the term) on taking care of the absolute our needs and try not to feel too guilty about all the things not getting done.

I’m interested in hearing from you. What do you do when you find yourself going down the Chronic Illness Rabbit Hole? Share your thoughts below in the comments.