Fibromyalgia Is Insidious!

Fibromyalgia is all about the symptoms — chronic pain from head to toe. The brain amplifies regular bodily sensations and interprets them as pain. But fibromyalgia is hard to diagnose, since there’s no test for the disorder. Doctors reach a diagnosis by excluding other possible diseases, so it can take years to learn what the problem is. They can do pressure tests on trigger point locations, to see if you have 11 or more tender areas. Often you don’t even realise something is painful until someone or something presses on that spot. Even my 12 pound cat stepping on a trigger point can send me hanging from the ceiling by my nails!

Fortunately, fibromyalgia isn’t life-threatening, but there’s a cost to the lack of productivity and mental toll it takes on a person and her loved ones. Risk factors include family history of fibromyalgia, having rheumatic disorders or infectious diseases, like Lyme, and a past traumatic event, like a car accident. If you have widespread pain and normal test results for other potential conditions, bring up fibro to your doctor as a possibility.

I’ve been off the grid for 4 or 5 days, and it’s all because of fibromyalgia. I had been feeling fairly good for a few days, so I decided it was a good time to join the local community center and start working out gently with weight machines. I booked an appointment with a trainer for the following Tuesday, and planned out my schedule to go once a day for an hour. I knew that some days I would be feeling better than others, so I knew that even if I just used the treadmill to walk, at least I would be getting out of the house and doing something. I thought that getting there is half the battle, so if I just showed up, I might be motivated once I got there, to do a little bit more than just walking.

Well I never made it to my appointment. I’ve had a lot of dental work done the past two weeks, and it’s left me in so much pain. Not pain from the dental work itself, but from tension, which flares up the fibro. I’ll say that I’m not the greatest dental patient. Bad experiences from childhood left me extremely reluctant to go to the dentist on a regular basis. I used to have laughing gas just to get my teeth cleaned until about 5 years ago. So now when I sit in the chair, even though things are a hundred times better than they were when I was a kid, I stiffen my muscles. I can’t help it. You could break a 2×4 over the back of my neck, that’s how stiff it gets, partly from just being tense, and the rest from having to hold my mouth open wide for so long. My dentist says it’s like doing micro-surgery on me, because my mouth is so small inside, and my facial muscles are so strong. That makes holding my mouth open for long periods very difficult, and the stress and pain radiates down into my neck and shoulders.

Fibromyalgia is an invisible disease. You can’t tell by looking at someone that they are in pain, other than by the fatigue in their faces. If I walking with a cane, or had a limp, or my arm in a cast, people would understand that I’m limited in my mobility. Because I have no outward signs of this condition, I’m sure that people question my Disabled Parking Permit, or that I have to cancel plans sometimes with little notice. I hate it! I’ve lived with fibro for over 30 years, and have come to accept that this is just what I have, not who I am. It’s still an ongoing battle with myself though.

When I’m feeling able to walk for a short distance, I don’t use the handicapped parking. I figure if I can walk the store, I can walk an extra 50′ to get to my car, but on the days when I’m feeling really rough, I’ll use them to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. I live alone, and have no one to go grocery shopping for me, pick up my meds at the drugstore, etc. Sometimes I’m in so much pain I can hardly walk, and my brain is foggy from the fatigue and loss of sleep. Sometimes I have to go out for groceries because I’ve been in a bad state for days, and have run out of things. I have no choice; I have no one to help me, so on those days I use the handicapped parking to make my energy output a little easier.

I realize now that I don’t need the monthly expense of a gym membership. On the days when I am feeling fairly well, I can climb the stairs in my condo building, do inclined pushups against the wall, lift soup cans to do arm exercizes, or hook up my Dance Dance Revolution to my Wii system, and just move. On the days I’m out of commission with a fibro flare-up, I just have to concentrate on being gentle with myself, and wait for the flare-up to pass. Sometimes it’s a day or two, other times it could be 4 or 5 days.

So although it would be easy to dismiss my lack of getting to the gym, as lack of ambition, that would be wrong. I still managed to photograph and list 18 items for sale on Kijiji. I cooked for myself, had a friend over for coffee, did grocery shopping, and kept my place clean. Some weeks, that has to be enough. I used to be a dynamo, who was extremely organized, and had pride in my home and appearance. Now that I’m a certain age, I’ve learned to listen to my body, accept that I have this condition, and know that the pain will eventually subside.