Are you still able to work wit FMS

Dear Bloggers,

For nearly everyone I know with Fibromylagia, it is not the pain, or the fatigue, or even the restless sleep that frustrates them the most, it is the feeling of no longer being productive or able to contribute to a normal society. Also the misunderstanding of the illness by other family members leaves deep emotional scars. How many of us have had to quit our jobs or restructure our lives completely because of this illness? Sorry it is not an illness but a so called syndrome and it is not recogneized by the beneficiary services. It is not a health issue but a mental problem. Most of us I am sure. And for those of you still maintaining your lives and careers, it is through sheer strength and will that you are able to do so.

For myself, Fibromyalgia has forced me into a change. I was working in a passenger ships reception at a high-pressure, fast-paced ferry company when I first was diagnosed in 2009. For months I tried to hang onto the position I had spent several years building within the company, but ultimately I had to let it go. It was not an easy choice to make, but it definitely led to an improvement in my life and allowed me to manage my symptoms without the stress and pressure I faced daily as a receptionist. And yes I loved my stressy job.

I became a bus driver and worked for a temps office, able to set my own schedule, and as long as I met or exceeded my and their goals, I could work as much or as little as I needed. Some weeks I worked full-time, others I put in less than 20 hours. My position required me to drive a lot, but all of my rides were within driving distance so I became a master at routing myself and to take advantage of my "good" days and I had enough breaks to recharge for the next run. The planner knew that he could count on me if he needed someone to fill in.

For several years I was pretty succesful and even thrived in my ships career. At the time it was a very compatible career for me. Then in 2009, as I was sailing to one of my destanies, I was hardly able to get out of my bunk, I waved it away as it was nothing serious and I probably would get the flue. And the comfortable life I had spent the last ten years of building up my carrer was shattered in an instant. Even though I had been living with Fibromyalgia for ten years, I had no idea how relatively manageable my symptoms had been. Sure I had some bad days and debilitating flares, but this was only in the winter season. But nothing like I began experiencing after this bloody morning.

So once again I was faced with a decision. I knew I could no longer manage my sailing territory and my health. I could have pursued the opportunity to go on disability, but I was afraid if I allowed myself to be labeled "disabled" I would start to believe that I no longer had anything to contribute. When I ended up at the UWV office they straight away told me that there are no benefits for this syndrome called FMS. This was puzzling me as the Danish government declared me not able to work a full time job and I was also entitled to a disability pension. It made me angry and confused as I was sitting in between two different opinions. And I made the choice to work as a bus driver but in my own speed. Please do not get me wrong I honor and respect those of you who have and need the security of disability, it was simply my personal decision to eliminate that as one of my choices. So what to do then?

For the first time in my life, I decided to follow my passion for driving. I didn't just wake up one day and decide though. It came about out of the natural progression of me trying to manage and improve my health. Things were pretty dark immediately after my job loss. As the weeks and months past, I continued to feel worse, not better. My despair led me to go and do the driving course and exams needed to become a bus driver and to get my license of course. I started driving for the summer period, and this continued until the 31^st of December last year.Unfortunate the contract was finished. 

Thinking about my health and wellbeing, and then a weird thing happened - my life began to come back into focus again. I felt like I had a voice and a purpose again. And then slowly, I started for an other region in the same  company again. Maybe this was not the best choice that I have made. As all other temps I am just another number where no one is happy and among the ones with a steady job sickness is up to more then 10%. I would call it a low social people management close to modern slavery. 

It is by far my least lucrative career, but that doesn't even matter to me. I am healing through my driving, I am reaching out to all of you that there is always something that you still can do, and I am doing something I am passionate about. So do I thank Fibromyalgia for bringing me to this spot in my life. I don't think I will, even though I believe everything happens for a reason, and that I am exactly where I am meant to be, I also think my path was a little too painful for me to be grateful. Maybe I will just be grateful that I made it through.

So this is my story, but I am really curious to learn about all of you. Are you able to work while managing your Fibromyalgia symptoms? Do you simply push through it, or have you made adjustments to allow for the unpredictable nature of Fibromyalgia? Have you had a career change? Are you on disability? And if you are on disability are you still able to earn a supplemental income? Any thoughts you have on working with Fibromyalgia, I would really appreciate if you shared them in the comments. As you might have guessed I am planning to find another place to work again, all in quest for better health and wellbeing. 

The Old Sailor,

Counting down to a big change...........or will this be amrageddon for me.

Dear Bloggers,


I wanted Bruce Willis to play the starring role in a movie about my life. I wanted to write a book about my job the way Paolo Coelho does. I wanted to speak to large groups of eager educators and make them laugh with my nutty remarks. These were all goals of mine when I was not suffering from anything, and was full of energy and ideas before I started sailing. I wanted to find happiness through success and this would only happen if you worked hard and did your very best. At least that was what I thought when I started years back making something out of my miserable life, when I did my days in the army I had to find a job to make some money. I was motivated and focused to make a difference and become something in live. I started off as a dishwasher in a local hotel and worked myself up as a bartender and waiter in the hotel restaurant. After a few years I became headwaiter.

Unfortunately there was only work in the summertime and during the winters I did many different tempsjobs. I worked in factories, became an iceskate essembler, was taxidriver and freelanced in the weekends as a bartender in one of the bigger towns. After a few years I had finished my education as
bartender/waiter and dreamt about earning good money and start my own bar elsewhere. First of all I went to Australia with a friend and worked for a wholesaler in Sydney. We made enough money to support ourselves and had a good time. But when the recession broke out we lost our jobs and had to turn back after a few months that was the first setback in my life, but soon I carried on.

And that spring I found a new challenge I wanted to become a sailor with a great salary. My past from the army gave some hindrances and I had to try again, and I ended up on a cruiseship. The life onboard was not very glamorous and the sun and Jim Beam became my best friends. When I came back home I applied for a job as a bartender on a ferry again. This was luxury compared to the liner as I had my own cabin. I hoped that I could climb up the carreerladder and be headbartender at least. Those where all soapbubbles about to burst as in the higher ranks there was no place for me and I saw a lot of good and bad "bosses" in my sailing days. The months between contracts and ships I filled with doing temp jobs and later on I worked as a freight driver. I drove the big cemetmixing trucks and delivered beers and soda for the Heineken company. Until I could not lift heavy anymore due to costochondritis and I needed to do an office job. I started to work as a receptionist on board again.

Everything was going exactly as I had hoped for and planned. I got a job onboard a ferry to the United Kingdom and everything in life was picking up again and we bought a new house to have more space. I never felt at home in this house so we did put up the for sale sign again and will move back to where we came from. The housing market is very slow and we did not have any serious buyers, but we have time as we do not need to sell. If we sell it, it is another part of my life that can be closed. There were good moments and bad moments for us and believe me there were more bad than good ones. It relieved me when my wife agreed with me that I could not really be happy here and that we both missed the lake, why did we move here anyway? My wife and I wanted to live closer to her parents so they could easier help out babysitting. We hardly ever had any benefit out of it and our kids went to a nanny two blocks away.

I did a good job as there were not many complaints on my behalf, paperwork was not my hobby and will never be. And I really enjoyed what I was doing although there were deadlines to catch. And those deadlines were giving me at least a lot of stress situations as I was mr. plentyfix and I could turn a bad situation into a reasonable one. Until the load was getting to heavy as I could not say NO. When slowly my body started to give up on me. It started with pain in my hands and fingers.The rest of my body quickly followed and by the next month, I was changed into an old man as I was completely turned into a rheumatic person. I was diagnosed with FMS is a rare neurological condition that involves neurotransmitters giving the wrong signals and telling the system of muscles and the nerves throughout the body that I should feel pain. It is rarely damaging, but recovery can be very slow and often patients are left with residual effects. There is also the possibility of relapse when you have a lot of stress.

After being diagnosed with fibromyalgia by the rheumatologist from the local hospital, I was in good health, but body and mind were still ravaged from the syndrome. I was unable to stand or walk for a longer period of time and had very poor use of my hands. I spent the next three months in a local health center where I received three intense therapy sessions a week. By the end of the summer. I was fully discharged from the care of doctors and specialists and had no residual effects. I felt nearly like the same person I was the day before this all started. At least, I thought I was the same person. Until a moisty day came along and I was hit by muscle pains from hell.

Life is like a pop quiz. You can’t plan for it and you only get one chance to do your best. My breakthrough came one day in rehab when I was asking for help to get through everything. I stopped asking when I realized that I had to beat this on my own. I needed to listen to people who couldn’t help
themselves and reach them a helping hand. I knew that I was strong enough to fight this battle with my body and I felt left alone. I learned life doesn’t follow your planner or your schedule. I had to learn to walk instead of running all the time. Life has only one purpose…to happen. If you only focus on all the things that can go wrong and being afraid that your body will give up, you will simply miss the beauty in the things that happen around you and also the small successes that you book yourself. I changed a lot during the course of those months, but more than anything, my belief in the power of the human spirit changed the most. People are capable of extraordinary things. We all have the power to take our current situations in life and make them better. The road to change is littered with obstacles, but they are not permanent hindrances, only temporary roadblocks.

I returned to recently to the job market and applied for lighter jobs the last few months and quickly I realized things were different. From a sailor with no energyloss, I had become a relaxed housedaddy that does not care about stressed situations anymore. A new episode in my book of life had started by ripping out the balck pages. I felt like I was watching someone else and I soon realized that it was the new me. That man in the faded green shirt wasn’t the man who started of this year as a slightly handicapped person. I no longer wanted to change the world. I didn’t want any awards or taps on my shoulder, telling me that I did a good job. I wanted to be happy and I couldn’t be that as a sailor do to the long working days, I needed to start off in something completely new. This summer, I will say goodbye to my career as a sailor and take a job as a busdriver on the citybus with a limited amount of working hours. While taking a drop in pay and, in some peoples eyes, taking a step backwards in my career, I found I had taken a huge step forward. I was doing something again, working with people something I cared deeply about.

I will start working again on Monday and I am really looking forward to it, as it has been a tough year with a lot of ups and downs. And people in offices that do not understand at all why you want to go back to work so badly. They do not see the financial trouble that you have as you need to fight the governments to get some benefits that you are entitled to. Also sitting at home is not my hobby and I am defenitly a lousy housekeeper. The disadvantage that you have as your curriculum vitae tells that you are a person full with adventure as you did so many different jobs. And the lack of experience will give you a lot of rejected applications and therefor very stressfull.

In addition to a change in my career, I had a change in my priorities. I decided to put my wife and family first and everything else as a distant second. I focused on being a "good" husband and having a happy marriage. I rediscovered my passion for my wife and also for recreative cycling, something I had started to lose during my last years of sailing. I took advantage of every good weather day and made sure that I would get a fair set of kilometres on the clock and biked like it was my last day on Earth. Of course the next day I was hoping it was the last day on Earth as usual I was a complete wreck due to the pain as I had overdone it again. I was totally out of balance and I could not except that the old me was not coming back. A psychologist told me that there was no need for finding the old me as he was dead and buried.

Together with my doctor, fysiotherapist, ergotherapist and a dietician I have put my life on the tracks again. And my train is not the fastest but at least it is rolling again. Only when we go uphill we need a bit of help, all the other parts I do without any help. The big difference with the old train is that this one has a break and there is no doubt that it will be used. The new me looks quite similair to the old me but inside there have been big changes.

Hopefully the new me will be a success and I do not need to get higher up. I have the ambition to do a job as good as it gets. I still hope one day there’s a movie made about me. I still hope Bruce Willis will be in the starring role. I still want to write a book. I still want to speak to large groups. These are all goals of mine. I am still motivated and focused. But I have to take care about my energy levels and make sure that my body can handle it. I now hope to find success through happiness. I want to be me…and I’m fine enough with that. Maybe I should change my hair, my house, my clothes, my future, my soul and my name.

How would that sound "The Old Busdriver?"

The Old Sailor,

How to keep the faith?

"Remain confident in the survival of all positive and negative life experiences."

Dear Bloggers,

It's not that I am deeply religious but I've planned to read the Bible once in my life and I planned to get a better understanding of fellow believers.

If you have the feeling that you have lost everything and it is getting hard to stay positive, you will start looking for getting out of this misery.

If your life slides down towards the valley; you will try to slow it down. But if your mind starts slipping too it is going to be a bit of a different story. I am luckely a realistic kind of person and I can quite quickly adapt to these kind of crisis situations.

Anyway no matter what happens it will give some kind of stress. The biggest challenge is to look for another job as I simply cannot sit back and relax.

The Old Sailor appears no longer to feel safe on the spot where he always was safe. A very familiar feeling when something bad happens to you: literally and figuratively as the ground beneath your feet is sinking away and you from one moment to the other lost all grip. For me such a feeling is recognizable.

And the Bible poet writes: In you oh Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness, turn your ear to me, save me! The poet cries out as the most important thing that should be right in this situation. That there is someone who does justice to you and at least listens to you. You need an ear, which turns to you and will look at you now and what is involved here. A line below the poet asks: Be to me a protective rock? This man feels in a valley, which can be hardly any deeper, a dip where he never will come out. It suddenly calls on me, that this can be seen as my situation.

Only a long way later in the psalm it is the poet that realizes how bad it actually was with him or her. That is why we read, "I am become as broken crockery. A striking image: yourself being the pottery a pitcher, as a part of an expensive dinner set. So worth the trouble of respect: very, cool, healthy. And now suddenly broken, there are cracks in it. Always have felt yourself healthy, suddenly you where not quite sure. For example to live with it always the threat that the humiliating pain comes again as in the beginning. Not sure more of the job, the relationship where you were happy. Your partner to let go, or worse, losing him or her to death.

Broken pottery? never fully and enjoy carefree. Another long way away in the Psalm says the poet? But I trust in You, O Lord, I say: Thou art my God. My times are in your hand? Times, it says there. Time in the plural! Time as a whole firm, solid as a rock. But times, as a succession from one time to a different time, which also wrote Ecclesiastes. A time of joy, a time of sorrow. A time to weep, a time to laugh. Times of ups, downs of times. And all those times together in the hand of the Eternal. Also”My” times. The time of once my health and now became suddenly the time to care about.

The poet of Psalm knows all about this. The poet does not say in this psalm: it happens to me from God. The poet says: there is a hand, which held all the time, held it together, namely: the hand of the Eternal. That contradicts a blind faith in a kind of fatal, crippling fate. Confidence in the Hand that holds you all times of your life around, can create space for it anyway to keep.

We people carry our biography with us. The question is: Do I want to learn something from my life experiences? And dare I ask to be like: where am I?, Am I maybe too much?, Do I enjoy enough?, And where do I go? And last but not least, I dare my time, so my life. My times of ups and my times of downs. My times as a succession from one time to a different time. Can I through the lives of all my positive and negative life experiences remain confident in the Hand? Who holds me and keeps all these times of my life going?

For even as the poet at the end of Psalm 31 wrote to others to say: ”Be strong, all ye that hope in the Eternal” May it be so. I had never imagined such things were in the Bible. Do not think that I'm suddenly converted, but I understand better now that people can draw strength from their faith if the story is explained in the right way.

The Old Sailor,

Seks is goed voor je

Seks is gezond en is een probaat middel tegen stress en hoofdpijn

Vrijen is gezond!!

Niet dat we dit excuus
nodig hebben om te rollebollen,
maar het maakt de daad nog iets aanlokkelijker.

Hieronder zes redenen om straks te vrijen.

Verstevigen van de spieren.
Seks ontspant lichaam en geest. Drie keer per week vrijen doet 7.500 calorieën verbruiken. Bovendien maakt het leniger en worden botten en spieren sterker. Het testosteronniveau stijgt en vooral mannen profiteren daarvan.

Seks is goed voor het hart.
Tijdens het seksen slaan de hormonen op hol. Het oestrogeenniveau van de vrouw stijgt en dat is goed voor het hart. Bovendien blijft zo het vaginaweefsel soepel.

Extra zuurstof.
Bij het vrijen haal je langer en dieper adem. Extra zuurstof doet de organen beter functioneren.

Seks werkt cholesterolverlagend.
Seksen werkt cholesterolverlagend. Waarom nog speciale boter en andere voedingsproducten in huis halen? Door regelmatig te spelen tussen de lakens, daalt de cholesterol licht.



Seks goed voor hoofdpijn en artritis.
Excuses als ‘vanavond niet, ik heb hoofdpijn’ laat je beter achterwege. Hoofdpijn en artritis verminderen immers door een goeie beurt. De hormonen die vrijkomen bij seksuele opwinding zijn daar verantwoordelijk voor.



Seks, de ultieme Stresskiller.
Vrijen biedt de ultieme ontspanning en werkt als een heuse stresskiller.


Als de wederhelft meewerkt word ik nog stokoud, en supergezond