Fiona's Health - back in Cambodia at last.

Well it has been five and a half weeks of acute illness. Two months of alerting symptoms and in hindsight, eight months since the first few seemingly unrelated sporadic chronic symptoms appeared.

However after four weeks off and on in Bangkok Hospitals, (and countless people's prayers), I am now finally back home with my family in Cambodia and ready for the next part of the recovery phase. At this point in time the different specialists agree that I have Fibromylagia.

(Though as with so many chronic illnesses, this could be reviewed in time to actually be CFS or other chronic condition). Also it was found that I have a bicupsid aortic heart valve and I tested positive for syncope - heart related

You may desire to rush away and google Fibromylagia, however it really does seem to be such a varied condition in it's symptoms and severity that you may just as easily be misled as informed.

So here is what it means to me:

1. Persistent pain at multiple points in the body. The worst areas being head and torso pains which do not go away, rather simply changing in how widespread and how severe they are.
2. Daily fatigue, with sporadic (and reducing) episodes of disequilibrium, visual disturbances, cognitive slowness, blank moments "not there for a second" and muscle twitching,
3. Acute episodes (often post physical or mental exertion or when tired) which include exacerbation of existing symptoms with the addition of nausea, chest tightness, extreme muscle weakness, cognitive impairment (memory, processing, concentration etc), burning, tingling and/or numb limb sensations, light headedness, pale, shaking and fainting.

The neurologist has prescribed some medication to address the pain, disequilibrium and nerve symptoms. These in addition to lots of rest appear to have improved my condition and the lengthy acute phase that sent me to hospital has been curbed. Although acute episodes do flair up easily upon exertion or tiredness.

So at this point in time I need to continue to rest and recover. Some days are bad days and some days are not so bad days, more and more thankfully however, I have on occasion what I can call "good" days. But it is not predictable. I may be able to go out for a couple of hours one afternoon, appear to interact quite normally with people and be just especially tired for the evening, but I may just as easily be wiped out by the activity and experience a painfully acute episode for the next 24 hours.

For the moment prolonged, standing, walking and stairs are particularly difficult, so you can imagine immigration queues at airports! Hence Graham once again organised a wheelchair service, which is the like the most understated service airports offer! A porter is assigned to you and facilitates every step of the process. You should have seen the awesome vehicle that they used at Bangkok airport to get wheelchairs to the plane! First they wheel you onto a

hydraulic tail gate that lifts you into the back of a huge van. (There was two of us in wheelchairs for this flight) Then they drive over to the plane. The whole vehicle chassis then rises on a scissor lift system until you are in line with the cabin door and they wheel you right out over the front of the van onto the plane!

Anyway, the prognosis is that the good days will start to become more normal and that I will be able to return to working productively. I will however need to manage my workload and associated stress levels more carefully then ever before. It will not take as much stress to manifest symptoms and the severity of the acute episodes could be debilitating.

Thankfully Cambodia is where we believe God has called us to be at this point in time and life here is fairly simple. We have a peace about being here and find the work very rewarding. I am looking forward to teaching mathematics again at Hope School and am happy to hear that there are a few keen students awaiting my return too.

So thank you to all those who have prayed, assisted my family, asked after us, covered my classes and been a blessing in many other ways.

I look forward to being able to adding future blog posts that do not revolve around me!

Blessings

Fiona Brown