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Living with Fibromyalgia
Part Three - Making a Life
By Jeff Durbin
By any standard, Julia Baurichter has had a busy life.
After working two years as a speech therapist, she returned to Baylor University for a master’s degree in speech pathology. Later, she had three children - all by cesarean section.
After five more years of raising a family, she returned to her career. For ten years she taught speech pathology at a public school, and clinics.
Her approach to life was geared toward achievement.
"I had this attitude, ‘I can push through this, I can keep on working, doing, being,’" Baurichter says.
Investing in Health
Baurichter was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1985, and by 1990 she had accepted her condition. In fact, the act of going back to work that year, after 13 years of raising three children, led Baurichter into acceptance.
Fibromyalgia is a daunting medical condition to face. It affects about 3.7 million people in the United States, mainly women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its symptoms can include widespread pain in the muscles, sleep disorders, fatigue, headaches, and irritable bowel syndrome.
To deal with both her job and her fibro, she had to devise a part-time work schedule, make sure she took time to rest, and manage her pain.
Still, having a career and family along with fibromyalgia forced choices that Baurichter did not want to make. For example, she says she feels guilt over the money spent on medical bills, insufficient time with her kids, not being able to do volunteer work, and even not being able to prepare family meals as well as she would have liked.
But Baurichter can still say that fibromyalgia has given her something back.
"Today I can say I’m grateful I’ve had it," she says. "I have compassion for other people. I’ve had to pray for strength to overcome pain. I’ve had to rely on prayer and study."
And Baurichter has had to learn to deal with people under the duress of pain.
"Knowing what it’s like to live in pain, it’s given me a caring and concern for other people,” she says.
Keeping Your Identity
Still, though Baurichter treats her fibromyalgia aggressively, she prefers not to spend more time than necessary thinking about it.
"Most people who know me don’t know I have it," she says. "That’s not helpful. Even my husband doesn’t want to hear about it every day. It can be overwhelming."
Since the summer of 2000 she has reduced her medications and started using alternative methods. Her symptoms have abated with the new approach, but Baurichter knows what fibro can still do.
"This can hit you," she says. "I can have days that absolutely kill you."
Nowadays she has perhaps one bad day a week; often it’s the Monday after a busy Sunday at church of singing, teaching, and leading practice for a team of teenage puppeteers. This is a vast improvement: Baurichter estimates that about half of her days in last 20 years were bad.
She has kept a health calendar at times, but says it is too burdensome. The good news, Baurichter says, is that for the first time in her life her body is more predictable.
Making Memories
Baurichter has recently left speech pathology work. With new requirements in the field she would need to relicense and recertify, so she figured the timing was right for her to get out. Though two of her three children-Russ, 22, and Matt, 20-are out of the house, her daughter, 16-year-old Anna, keeps Baurichter busy at home.
Baurichter also fights to preserve her freedom of choice.
"I used to think I can lay in bed and groan or make memories for the day," Baurichter says. “Now I say, ‘I had a bad headache that day, but look what I did.’"
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