This is my story…. My story of fighting everyday. My story about strength, sadness, weakness, but most of all, Pain. I was recently diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. This has been a long journey for me and my family. After 9 months of crying in agony, muscle stem therapy, several medications being thrown at me by so many different doctors, and nights with no sleep due to worry and fear, I finally got my answer to what has been hurting my body so badly.
I have spent days and nights wondering what the future will look like for me. I’m never not in pain. Depression has been a friend that I never wanted to meet or get to know. Doctors had so many theories as to what was causing this sudden change in my body. Multiple sclerosis, Lyme’s disease, Lupus, Lou-Gehrig’s disease…. No one really knew and it was torture for me. I fought and cried with doctors to understand that this was not being made-up.
Fibromyalgia is a neurologic chronic health condition that causes pain all over the body as well as other symptoms. I never knew what Fibromyalgia was. Never took the time to research it. But now, I live it and it hurts. It hurts every aspect of me and my life. It hurts my son. I cannot be the mother I was months ago. I can’t jump with him anymore, I can’t run with him. When he asks if I can play he’ll first ask, “Are you hurting, momma?” That is not what a 3 year old should be concerned with, but here we are. It has affected us financially as the unscrupulous disability insurance company whom I pay for their services biweekly, have denied my claim. There has been no paycheck for 3 months and there is a possibility I may also lose my job.
This is my story not to get sympathy from friends or family reading this, but to let other Fibromyalgia sufferers know that they are not alone. It sucks, it hurts, it’s so stressful, but you’re not alone.
The pain is literally everywhere in my body. I don’t want to express my pain out loud, because I’m afraid to sound like a chronic complainer. I don’t want to limit what I can do, because I don’t want to seem weak or lazy. But in reality, I am limited. I am hurting. I am tired. I am most likely screaming in anguish on the inside. Migraines are an everyday struggle along with burning and dull pain throughout my entire spine. My fingers hurt all day as if I have been typing up a Harry Potter book non-stop. My feet ache in my sleep like if I just ran a 50k marathon barefoot on hot burning coals. I want a massage so bad, but the touch on my skin stings. What a normal person defines as painful it is x20 for someone with Fibromyalgia. That is exactly how my Rheumatologist explained it and she couldn’t have explained it better.
There are over 200 symptoms that affect a Fibromyalgia fighter. It causes dysfunction of the nervous, muscular, integumentary, hormonal, digestive, immune, endocrine, reproductive, and lymphatic systems. Some patients have better experiences than others. Some days are good and some are the worst ever. Everyday will always be different.
There is no cure, but I hear there are some ways to cope with the pain. No one body is the same so what works for one person might not work for the other. This is all just a trial-and-error process and I am truly hoping for the best.
This is called the invisible illness, because it cannot be seen on x-rays or blood tests, and it does not affect the major organs, but it is there. It does not alter the look of our bodies, but we feel it.
This is my story, my story that has been changed forever.
