“You ever had one of those wars where everything goes wrong?” Hawkeye, M*A*S*H

From the earliest history classes, we’re taught how it’s very hard to win a war fought on two fronts. You can easily be overtaken. If you start to ignore one front to concentrate on the other, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. Just ask Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler.

And me.

I have endometriosis and fibromyalgia. It seems like I’m constantly fighting a two front war to keep both illnesses from overtaking me. Sometimes the war is quiet, sometimes it’s a full frontal assault while also getting flanked. I know I’ll never fully defeat them, but I can try to keep a cold war from heating up and play the game of appeasement.

The last few months my endo has been on the offensive. I’ve been throwing everything I’ve had at it just to keep it semi-manageable. Think of it as my troops riding in on shower stools, armed with spoons shimmering in the sun, pain medications flying through the air pelting the endo, and waving heating pads as flags.

As I’ve been occupied on the endo front, the fibro front went largely ignored. I was staring at it over a no-man’s land, too worn out to battle it. It wasn’t flaring too badly (were my propaganda bombs of “you will never beat me” effective?) so it was easy to only focus on the endo front.

Little did I know that my fibro had been using this time for efficient strategizing and gathering reinforcements. I also went through a fibro medication change at this stage too. Remember the phrase “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream?” I was so caught up in the endo fight that I wasn’t aware of the dangerous side effects this new medication was having on me. I should have caught it much earlier than I did. It resulted in a hospital stay, my first brush with mortality, and the realizations that ignoring one illness in favor of another was not a wise strategic move or that taking on too much at once will cause me to be less effective as commander in chief of this war.

As I began paying attention my fibro again, I realized that I had been very negligent. All I had been doing was shooting the occasional pill at it, thinking that it would immobilize it long enough for me to deal with my endo. Then I changed fibro medications without thinking how beleaguered my poor body and mind had been during the endo assault; I should have waited for a more opportune time to try out new weapon advances. I had pushed aside all the intelligence reports I had about the lifestyle changes–maintaining the home front if you will–the little things that I could do to undermine fibro’s control on my body. This was apparent when I went in for an hour full body massage and my massage therapist never left my shoulders.

I now know that I need to be waging war on both fronts. Even if I ignore one illness, it doesn’t retreat or disband. At the least it will become a subversive, causing minor skirmishes; at the most it will be waiting and ready to strike at your most vulnerable, bringing about total war. From now on, I will be vigilant, surveying both battlefields routinely. After all, like George Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

Article written by staff writer, Sonja K. Peterson

Sonja is a cat mom with endometriosis and fibromyalgia. She also had a hysterectomy for adenomyosis. She blogs about her experiences at The Mud and the Lotus www.mudandlotus.com