Swimming in a heated pool:

Okay family. I am asking again for help in getting the folks at Choice Hotels to grant me permission to use their pool for four days at week about 30 min a day.

My doctor, Dr. Graham Bullard at SE Pain has been advising me (for almost four years) that he feels this will help so much with the arthritis and more importantly the myofacial pain and fibromyalgia. He is certain that swimming will reduce and may even turn active trigger and tender points either latent (not active) or get rid of them entirely.

I have hundreds of trigger/tender points and new ones keep popping up. I am having trouble brushing my hair now because they are now in my scalp. I wash my hair, wrap it in a towel and then pull it back gently into a ponytail. Brushing and combing causes terrible pain.

So please take a few mintues of your time to write to this hotel and ask that they let me use the heated pool and tell them how important it is. I see my doctor on Thursday and asked that another letter on letterhead be written as well. If everyone in the family wrote I think it could influence them in a positive way.

This is the contact information and the name of the hotel is Sleep Inn in Kannapolis, NC:

Mr. Dean Tarasenko
Manager of Customer Relations Dept.
Choice Hotels International
PO Box 1748
Minot, ND 58702
Tele: 1-800-300-8800
Fax: 701-858-5719

I went back into therapy last Friday. I felt that it was the best. I stopped taking anti-depressant Cymbalta (which was also prescribed to help with the fibro pain and boy does it ever work for pain!) last Nov because it was making me feel very very down. This happens sometimes.

Most likely will be back on another anti-depressant too. I have to admit I cannot do this alone and be effective.

Dear Beth, thank you so much for offering to be my Buddy for support. As we talked about on the phone; this would probably not be a good idea. A Buddy for depression needs to be someone that one can talk to openly; as your mother I would be doing you a big favor saying no. I would prefer we keep our wonderful and loving Mother/Daughter relationship. You and Jimmy have done so much to help me, so supportive and are always there to listen too. I appreciate it very much. Doing this would have been ever so much harder without you both. Yes, Dixie Beth is a sweet woman! :)

Nicholas is doing much better. It looks like he is going to loose that toenail for certain. Please give him a Grandma Cookie hug for being a big boy at the hospital! Oh I remember what it was like having small children and all the boo boos especially with Brian!

I had a pretty calm weekend. Didn't do much. Just tried to follow the advice of my therapist and devote the time to taking care of me and not worrying about so many other things. I spent several hours outside this weekend and that is always a good thing. I got some veggie seeds planted and two tomatoe plants I bought put into pots. Yellow squash! I am so glad this winter is almost over. This one was a particularly bad one for me this year and I don't exactly know why.

I hope you all are doing well!


Love,

Nancy