Time to reeducate ourselves

What Fibromyalgia Isn’t….

This is the very first blog I’ve ever done, and I started it a few days ago in honor of Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. What started out as a plan to write about what Fibromyalgia is and its effects on me personally, has turned into what will likely be quite different because of events over the past few days. Thanks to some insensitive people, I have rediscovered inner strength that I had forgotten long ago and have begun a sort of metamorphosis that has been long overdue. One of the most important things a Fibromyalgia can do for his or her health is to cut out the negative people. I took this step for the first time after years of convincing myself that I couldn’t cut these people out because they were family. Let me tell you, not only can it be done even if they are family, but it felt great to finally remove that stress that they had been causing me.
People suffering from fibromyalgia are often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and forced to try to cope with our symptoms because of legal, financial, and insurance restrictions keeping us from potential treatment options. We’re often labeled by society as drug addicts or pill seekers because the only treatments available to us are often narcotics. Many of us would be better served by treatments such as massage, acupuncture, nutrition/dietary modification, herbal supplements, spa therapy, and medical marijuana. Unfortunately, these therapies are often not covered by insurance, expensive, and sometimes illegal.
There are many misconceptions about fibromyalgia. Even though the syndrome has been widely accepted by the medical community for nearly 30 years, there are still a minority of people in and out of the medical profession that refuse to believe it is “real”. I’d like to talk about what it’s not…
~It’s not “all in our heads” or hypochondria-medical studies have proven biological changes within fibromyalgia patients…proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s a very real PHYSICAL condition.
~It’s not like any other condition…so please, don’t try to “cure” us. You may be trying to help, but it really does get tiring trying to explain why we’re not going to try it….it may actually make us worse. We know our own bodies.

~It’s not “visible”. Just because we look fine doesn’t mean we feel fine or that we’ll be feeling fine later.

~It’s not caused by depression. For most of us that have depression, the depression was caused by the pain.
~We’re not making excuses or lying. If we say we can’t do something…we really can’t. If we won’t try your solution, we may have already tried it or already know it’s not the answer. Please don’t take it personally or treat it as an excuse. Again…we know our condition and our bodies.
~We’re not drug seekers or addicts. We want nothing more than to take no medications. Bodies with chronic pain process chemicals differently than those with acute pain…it’s a scientifically proven fact.
The bottom line is that Fibromyalgia Syndrome or FMS is very complex and stressful. It has a lot of symptoms and associated conditions. If you know someone that has it, please try to take a moment to learn about it from a reliable source. Most importantly, be supportive!