When most people talk about surviving the holidays, they mean making it through all the social commitments while still managing to put on some kind of festivities for the family.
When I say it, I mean it nearly literally. It's apparently my body's grand holiday tradition to get sick during the last two weeks of the year. This year was no different. What started out as sniffles quickly escalated into a full on respiratory infection. Sinuses, lungs, the whole shebang. It was not pretty. I ended up missing 3 days of work and all of my holiday family gatherings. Fourteen (!!) full days of snotty nose, sneezing, coughing, hacking stuff up, and fevers didn't leave me with much else to do. In times like these, I turn to Doctor Who. I watched a lot of Doctor Who these past weeks.
When I finally accepted that the Doctor was not, in fact, going to save Christmas for me this year, I started wondering about why am I always getting so sick. Is it possible that having autoimmune issues makes me more susceptible to getting sick with other crud? A cursory internet search says it's a possibility, but like most things involved with Fibromyalgia, the jury is still out. I can only speak from my own experiences, and right now, I'm going with yes. I know I've had a positive ANA, so my immune system is all hyperactive. And the Fibromyalgia on top of that doesn't make healing any easier, especially when I can't distinguish between fibro symptoms and anything else that's bugging me. My totally unscientific conclusion is that any time your body is out of whack it makes it easier for infections to take hold and stick around. Not only do I get sick easily and often, but I get knocked out by the sickness. I've always been kind of prone to respiratory crud anyway, but the past few years whenever I get it, it takes me down for a good week. That's not normal. But it is my normal.
There has to be a relationship there, I'm just not sure what it is. I know that, at least for myself, there is a definite pattern.
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