And the diagnosis is... (June 2009)

Over the last two years, I have been experiencing episodes that could stretch from a few days to a span of several months of "extreme discomfort" as a general physician put it. I do not think he heard me clearly because I would repeatedly press the term pain . I have been in pain and I have been in discomfort. I have had my foot run over by a '99 Chevrolet Blazer twice in ten minutes, and yet I was still able to limp away without so much as a tear coming down my face. I have had a woman three times the size of myself snap my knee during hand to hand combat training, but somehow I still managed to limp along for the next two months without so much as a bandage on it. I know pain.

When I spoke with the doctor, he kept correcting my descriptions as if he knew what I was feeling better than I did. Last time I checked, doctors can not astral project themselves into patients' bodies and then possess their bodies. So how does this schmuck know what I am experiencing? After he rolled his eyes at me, I left and found another doctor, who also turned her nose up at me. I guess they were more focused on the tattoos on my skin than to believe the legitimacy of my problems. I would hear "well you obviously don't experience that much pain if you are willing to sit time and time again under a needle for several hours" a lot.

But what they neglected to realize is that once the needle was out of my skin, so was the hurt. The throbbing pain that radiated from my joints and the sharp stabbing sensations shooting up my muscles never go away. It is like someone is constantly wrapping their bare hand around the lower part of my spine, clenching it and pulling on it. Or how about the headaches? It would begin as a pressure in the back of my head; within the hour, the pressure has built up to sharp explosive sensations shocking the rest of my brain. Perhaps the fatigue was the worst part of all since I was never able to go out and spend more than an hour with friends before I got hit with waves of bone-tired exhaustion. Twenty minutes standing would stretch into what seemed like eternity because the aching was so strong.

Sometimes I was believed to be lying in hopes of obtaining narcotic pain medications, while other times I was believed to be seeking attention. I was never fully able to comprehend the sense in this. If I just wanted drugs, I would find a drug dealer rather than making appointment after appointment and paying hundreds of dollars each visit just to return home with no relief in sight. If I wanted attention, would taking a knife across my arms not be more effective?

One day, I made an appointment with a neurologist that my mother used to see for headaches. When I made the complaint that my joint pain, muscle aches and dizziness accompanied my headaches on a regular basis, he referred me to a rheumatoid arthritis specialist. He wrote out some scripts for my headaches and sent me on my way to this specialist. I was tired of this wild goose chase with doctors. Once I saw one, I would have to go see another and then another. But to my surprise, she took me seriously when I made my complaints.

She poked me in different places of my body, watching me twitch or inhale sharply with pain, as she would question me about my life. She asked about my major in school, what kind of jobs I held in the past, what my home life was like, and if I ever experienced anxiety or depression. Before she was done, the over-sized paper napkin I had been wearing over my naked body had been exposed to her. She'd torn through it to examine the multiple bruises spread across my arms and things, back and neck.

I was putting my clothes back on as she began to query me some more. This time it was the usual medical questions such as: Do you have any pain in your chest? Difficulty breathing? Or numbness and tingling sensations in your limbs? Does it ever feel like your skin is stinging or having a needle-like prickling sensation? I think I said no to maybe two out of twenty different questions. I was waiting for her to imply that I was being melodramatic or perhaps imagining all of the symptoms, but she asked me if I knew what Fibromyalgia was instead. It was then that I closed my eyes and dropped my head. All I could do was breathe. It was like getting a death sentence and she hadn't even given a diagnosis yet.

You have to understand that I am very familiar with the effects Fibromyalgia has on family and friends because my mother has it. Despite her complaints of aches and pains, among a number of other symptoms, I never figured that one day I would be experiencing the same exact pains. More importantly, she was 37 when it started to dig its way into her life and drag her down. I am only 20 and I am already slowing down like an old woman. It never occurred to me that one could get it at such a young age let alone have it slam into you at full force rather than progressively getting worse.

The doctor ran several more tests on me before she felt comfortable giving me the diagnosis. It was not until afterward when we began discussing treatment options that she told me she had been the one to diagnose my mother's disease as well. I felt relief in a way because I did not go through nearly as many doctors as my mother had before I was able to find one who believed me. But that was not going to relieve the pain.

Now if you are not already aware of what some of the things Fibromyalgia does to a person, here are a few other things that it does. It is more difficult for me to bounce back than your average person. You can run a mile and feel a little slow for a few hours in the morning the next day, but I am out for a week if I run a mile. Recovery is something that takes more time for Fibromyalgia sufferers, and unfortunately there is not nearly enough progress made in the treatment for Fibromyalgia. You can not take pain medications because it makes the pain worse in the long run, but anti-depressants and sleep medications aren't enough to solve it either.

What has got to be the worst part about having something like Fibromyalgia for me is the simple fact that I am still young. I am still eager to do a lot of crazy and exciting things that I may not necessarily be able to do now. Jump out of airplanes, go dirt biking through the desert in Arizona, or deep sea scuba diving perhaps. I will not be able to travel Europe without spending most of my time just looking at the view beyond my hotel room from bed. It is difficult to cope with the thought that on some nights, I will not even have the energy to make it all the way through dinner with my family before I have to quit eating and just lay down.

And then I begin to wonder what it will be like for me six or seven years from now. What will happen if I get pregnant? Will it hurt the baby? Is there a possibility that I am going to give it to my child? What happens to me after I have had my children? How am I supposed to keep up with them? Am I supposed to just leave it to my spouse? What if my partner can not take the stress of living with me and my number of problems? What then? The scariest thought is that I will not be a good mother because of this disease.

Fortunately for me, I am only 20 years old. I have plenty of time to test out treatments, innovative medications, and to discover a way to manage the disease so that it does not consume my life. This is not a death sentence as I had originally perceived it to be. It is a gift of life in its truest form. While it will be a long journey ahead, I can not imagine having it any other way. How can one appreciate the good if there is no bad? I will experience the worst only to accomplish the best.