I’m just sitting here thinking about fibromyalgia. This is turning into a bad day for me. I’m in pain and feeling foggy. I forgot to take my morning dose of Flexeril. So I’m paying for it now.
Fibromyalgia is odd in that a good deal of physicians don’t believe it exists. Others use it as a dump diagnosis, as in we’re tired of dealing with so you must have it type of diagnosis. The rest treat it…differently.
Out of the physicians who treat Fibromyalgia there are different camps. Some think it is a symptom of depression. Others treat it like a kind of arthritis. Some think it is neurological. And there is some evidence that it might be part of a retrovirus. There are new studies going on now so hopefully we’ll know more soon.
The funny thing is how people start…it starts with a sharp pain that you can’t ignore, the sudden tiredness and memory problems. Patients almost always have other problems that seem to be under control. The problems seems to start after an accident or illness.
This brings me to what I’m getting at. Is that really when it starts? What if it happens earlier and we just don’t notice or dismiss it? What if this isn’t a sudden thing as it seems but rather reaching an unavoidable peak?
I assumed a lot of things about myself. Even when I was in great shape in my twenties walking hurt. Exercise was exhausting and extremely painful. As a child I would sit out of gym class because it was too painful to run. I assumed that this was normal for everyone. Sharp stabbing pains in my arms when I write with a pen or pencil, thighs not being able to move after block of walking, fingers aching after kneading dough, crazy fog about the brain for no reason other, falling asleep in the middle of the day, I thought that was normal for everyone.
So when I reached the point of realizing that no one I know finds this normal, I felt awful. Pain and exhaustion. It sucked.
But really is that when it started?
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