The Chronic Pain Chronicles, Part 4: Fibromyalgia

Photo by Žygimantas Dukauskas on Unsplash

Fibromyalgia.  It's called a disorder, it's called a condition but the musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues can be debilitating. In my opinion, it's not categorized as a disease because no one really understands the actual cause. Fibromyalgia seems to be a myriad of symptoms that mimic other disorders and there is no test or lab results that can determine it. There is only the process of a doctor administering pressure to 18 various points in your body and if you feel pain in 11 of those points, it's determined that you have fibromyalgia. Yep...that's it. That's all. Your primary care physician and your rheumatologist will probably prescribe to you the same pain meds and muscle relaxers. But I guess I shouldn't really gloss over that since the medical society used to think this was only a woman's issue and it was possibly her imagination or emotional instability...but that's a WHOLE other vlog.

So, it's the early 2000s and now I've entered the world of chronic pain. EVERY...SINGLE...DAY. 

I was working for Big Pharma when my former employer burst on the scene with a new medication for the treatment of Fibromyalgia. I have to admit, I had never known about it and when I did, I became a part of the "Is it real or is it imagined?" crowd. Sad...and true. I learned about the new med (as a dutiful employee would) but worried more about if our company stock prices would increase because of it.

I was already intimately acquainted with lower back pain and now there's pain in weird random places in my body. Was I coming down with a cold or flu? Was it fatigue? Was I getting enough rest? Did I need to do yoga or work out more? I made an appointment with my PCP because I wanted to have blood work done. I started thinking that it was possibly a deficiency of some sort. Unbeknown to me, my PCP started touching parts of my body and it hurt. It felt as if she was touching me in places where there had to have been a bruise...but there were no bruises. "You have fibromyalgia.", she said. My first thought, "You've got to be kidding me.", my second thought, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" And then I was prescribed the very medication that my employer (at that time) manufactured. I took the meds as prescribed, didn't notice a thing and stopped on my own. The 800mg tablets of Ibuprofen that I was taking 3 times a day was keeping me working but I felt like if I kept this up, my liver would shut down before its time.

Women are warriors of pain...plain and simple. Because of our biology, we are destined to experience it in our lives. A woman is going to experience it monthly or during childbirth. Blessed (and rare)is the woman who has experienced neither. My Mother had 7 children (6 survived) and she would often say that she didn't have time for pain. Small children don't understand when the Mother is unwell or in pain, they are only concerned with what they are accustomed to being provided by the Mother. For that reason, my Mother (who is an octogenarian) said she never experienced menopause. She thinks she was too busy with life and kids to have even figured out what was happening to her or when it was happening to her. So, when women start talking about the trials of menopause, my Mother's reply is usually, "Can't relate.".

You never think that you'd become accustomed to pain, but I think I did...or have. Those same pain points (when touched) feel like bruises, my memory is a joke and I never know how I'll feel from day to day. No one should have to live with pain, but I was becoming accustomed to it...and some days I somehow functioned through it. Years later, I experienced pain I could not function through...and it almost cost me my life.

To be continued.