Originally written back in November 2017, then never posted due to me getting sick.

As a Florida resident I have to keep an eye on potential hurricanes. Tropical storms have never been an issue, unless I need to drive through flooded roads, but hurricanes I don’t mess with. In the twenty years I’ve been in Florida I’ve seen quite a few cat 1, 2, and 3 hurricanes. I’ve had giant old trees fall yards from the house I was staying in, and see roofs ripped off buildings where I have worked. Hurricanes are stressful and post cleanup can be exhaustive, not a good combo when one has Fibromyalgia. While my thirty years old home is in a good location, on a good grid and my street has never flooded, none of that helped during Irma.

Hurricane Irma came through and it was not as severe as it was expected to be, but the local utilities haven’t been maintaining their lines. Before I moved to South Florida the utility lines were always kept clear, after moving back I discovered massive overgrowth across the entire grid. Two months ago I had the power company out to see about doing line clearings, it was scheduled for the end of September, but because of the hurricane they still haven’t done the clearing. Luckily during Irma the overgrowth didn’t damage the lines around my house, but did damage the lines further back in the grid. The power line damage from overgrowth caused us to be without power from before the hurricane hit us through the entire week.

The house itself took no damage during Irma, front yard looked untouched, yet the backyard looked like a tornado went through it. Trees and bushes in the backyard were all pushed westward, branches twisted around branches. My orchid tree took the most damage from the wind, it looks like half a tree now that all the leaves and branches are on one side of it. My lemon tree took almost no damage, although we lost most of the lemons. Most homes in the neighborhood had little to no damage, but there was plenty of yard cleanup.

First day after the hurricane was bearable. Without electricity we had no AC, but the weather had not warmed back up. It was fairly easy to start on limited cleanup and it seemed like I was going to be in good shape. On the second day the Florida summer heat returned, along with mosquitos. We had a tiny generator to keep our fridge running and a fan on us, even still the late afternoon left us overheated and exhausted. Thankfully I kept my Quell unit charged, so while the fatigue grew, the pain was kept managed.

The hurricane hit us on a Sunday night, power was restored to us Friday afternoon. I was struggling to function at this point, having slept only a few hours each night. When power came on, and stayed on, that gave me an adrenaline rush that allowed me put the well system back online, but not much more than that. Over the next few days I struggled to sleep, then struggled to stay awake. I managed to take the plywood off the windows, one window a day.

After that, it took over a month for me to recover. I struggled with sleep over the following weeks, each week sleep improving by a tiny bit. Each day I felt extremely drained, heavily foggy, struggling to do the most basic of chores. I could mostly keep up with work, but at the expense of house chores and personal projects. I flared up bad and was in a flareup for most of October. The flare would occasionally become extreme and my immune system was weak. Got sick a few too many times over the past month. Now it is early November and I’m starting to feel more like myself. I’m able to keep up with my chores and have resume work on my projects. I have good days and I have bad days, but the good days are starting to outnumber the bad days again.

Sleep is so important to manage fibro, the entire body weakens without enough of it. It was a hard recovery, something I hope to not have to go through again. If we get hit with another hurricane I have a nice generator ready to keep a couple of window units running.