Progression Of Symptoms

The medical community as a whole says that Fibromyalgia is not a progressive illness.  I highly disagree with that.  Even my family doctor told me that I'm getting worse.  This is an area that I'd love to see more research in.

My symptoms progressed from a child to a teen ager.  From a teen ager to a young adult.  From a young adult to middle age.  Now in my mid-40's I can see and feel a difference almost monthly.  I hate to see what kind of shape I'm in when I reach my mid-50's and beyond.  I worry that eventually I'll end up in a wheelchair.

I'm by no means an expert; I only have my personal experience and the countless stories of others that I've met, but there isn't a doctor out there that could convince me that Fibromyalgia isn't progressive.  Everyday pain is worse for me.  Flares come closer together, last longer, and are more intense.  What is your personal experience?

I handle the pain, because I have to. There isn't any other choice.  I must say though, it becomes harder and harder to deal with on a daily basis.  I awoke this morning with my lower back feeling as if someone poked a hole in it while I was sleeping, and poured it full of concrete.  It still feels that way.  The pain and stiffness just won't go away.

Constant, nagging pain wears on a person's mental state.  It's easy to allow yourself to fall into the dark hole of depression.  That's something that's a constant battle.  Everything combined, the pain, the fatigue, the depression, makes living life feel like a war zone.  Always trying to dodge a bullet.  

The medical community has come a long way concerning Fibro over the years, but we still have a long, long way to go.  I'd love to see a case study done, that follows people with fibro over a 20 year span.  If it was done with a big enough sample, I'm sure doctors would come to the conclusion that Fibro is a progressive illness.

There are researchers out there who would love to do more research on Fibromyalgia, but they just don't have the money to do so.  The NIH's categorical spending says that in 2015 $10M was allocated to Fibromyalgia research.  In 2016 it's supposed to be $11M.  In retrospect, screening and brief intervention for substance abuse received $30M in 2015 and will receive $31M in 2016.  Call me what you will, but it makes me sick that $20M MORE is being spent on something that is someone's own fault, than to try and find a cure for something that none of us asked for.  You can see the breakdown chart by clicking HERE.  Someone who's addicted to drugs or alcohol made the personal choice to pick up that needle or that bottle of alcohol the very first time they did it and every time thereafter.  Not one time in my life did I make a choice to be burdened with an illness that is slowly destroying my entire life and ripping away any quality of life.

In my opinion, we all need to shout and cry until we don't have a voice left, for more research of Fibromyalgia.  For more funding for Fibromyalgia research.  The old saying "You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit" does not apply.  I refuse to sit quietly back and just accept this illness as fate.  If those of us who doesn't personally suffer with Fibro won't try to do anything about it, then how can we expect anyone else to?  We can't.  It's up to us, my fellow fibromites.  We need to band together and make things happen.

The Beat Down, Defeated, Flu Feelin' Fibro Blues

That moment when every. single. muscle. in your body hurts.  When you're sitting perfectly still, yet you get sharp stabbing pain in random places.  It leaves as quickly as it comes, yet when it comes it makes you wince.  The time when it feels as if there are weights attached to your hands ...you can actually feel the heaviness and pain in your shoulders, as if your arms are being tugged downward.  

A time when you're hungry, so hungry, that you actually feel nauseous, yet there is no way you have the energy to go fix something to eat and you know that even if you could muster the energy to spread some peanut butter on bread, or throw something into the microwave, that the pain that would come with it isn't even worth satisfying the hunger. A time when your joints ache, and your skin burns, and you feel like you have a fever ....you're sure you probably have a fever until you grab the thermometer and see that you don't. 

Your joints hurt to move them.  You have a headache.  Your skin is sore to the touch.  You're achy.  You feel like you have the flu, but you know that you don't.  

You're entire body from head to toe, feels like you met a monster in a dark alley, that took a huge club and beat you with it.  Slamming it down over and over while you curl up in fetal position, praying you'll live.  Then you realize that a monster is beating you down in a dark alley.  The monster has a name, which is Fibromyalgia.  It even has a couple of nicknames.  One being Fibro.  Another, even shorter yet, is FMS. 

After searching high and low to find something to defeat this monster with, you realize that there isn't anything.  Nothing known to man can beat this monster.  You realize that there isn't anything you can do, to defend yourself.  It's going to follow you for the rest of your life, and when you least expect it, it's going to start beating you again and again.  Over and over until you wonder if you'll survive.  At times, you'll even wish you wouldn't survive, so that you could finally escape the wrath of pain and fatigue.  So that you wouldn't have countless endless days ahead of you, feeling like this.  

A lot of people don't believe in monsters.  They tell you that it's all in your head.  The Fibromyalgia monster is no different.  Some people don't think it exists.  They tell you that it's all in your head.  That makes it even scarier.  It gives the monster power over those that it's attacking.   

All of this combined wears a person down.  Slowly but surely, you start to feel sad and depressed.  You feel defeated.  You feel like a failure in life, due to the many limitations that this monster imposes on you.  It steals your friends.  In some cases, it steals your family.  It takes away jobs which takes away self-worth and self-esteem.  This my friends, is what I call "the beat down, defeated, flu feelin' Fibro blues".  This is where I'm at tonight.  Cowering from the monster.