Introducing Amy

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to introduce myself - my name is Amy and I am Dee's 22 year old daughter.  You'll see there haven't been any posts for a while and that's because I'm sure you can imagine managing a blog on top of all of the other things my Mum tries to keep on top of is often too much.  Therefore, we have decided from now on to do the blog together because we both think it's important not to let the blog slide.  So once a week Mum is going to talk to me and I'm going to put it down as a blog post - I hope this is ok!

Also, we're going to do it a bit differently - we're going to track and rate how Mum feels and her different symptoms every week; with a bit of luck it will help us as a family identify triggers and patterns and also things that help ease certain symptoms.  You never know, some of the things we talk about might ring a bell with you or a loved one - its surprising the difference little things can make.

Every week we are going to rate sleep, pain, migraines, fibrofog, IBS and tiredness out of 5.  1 being minimal, and 5 being chronic.  We're going to try and compare this to what Mum has been up to this week and could therefore have triggered it - whether she has been travelling a lot with work or under a lot of stress in other ways.  Then, we'll talk about what Mum has done to try and combat this and how successful it was.

As Dee's daughter, I hope that this weekly journal will help us as a family understand better what affects Mum's FM and what we can all do to help alleviate this.  As a house full of adults we should be better placed to empathise, but I'm sure sometimes we are too wrapped up in ourselves to see the potential affect our own behaviour has on Mum and her FM.

I hope this makes sense!