A comprehensive look at Fibromyalgia pain, its symptoms, triggers, and effective strategies to manage and alleviate discomfort.
This is of concern to me due to my low blood pressure issues and dizziness. And it makes me wonder. Especially since my doc mentioned I may have POTS. So the study is looking at the Baroreflex response. Without it we would stand up and get dizzy and could faint. It is mechanism in the body that tries to regulate our blood pressure. The response involves nerves in the blood vessels near, in and around…
I’m taking a disability studies class this term as part of my social work program. I study part-time, online. I thought I would post some of my reflections on reading articles for the class. People living with FM and CFS/ME don’t always think of themselves as ‘disabled’, but the way the world is organized and the way these conditions affect our bodies certainly mean we do live with a disability. Reflections on Eli Clare’s (2001) Stolen…
You’re sitting in the doctor’s office, being told you have an incurable illness. Maybe you have to leave your career, or pull back on your workload, with set accommodations. You can’t live up to being the involved wife, parent, sister, or daughter you planned on being. Travel becomes difficult, athletic ability falls off, and favorite hobbies or pastimes become more challenging. But mostly you just don’t feel like you. A period of grief ensues over…
Last week I found myself in the worst flare of my life. After a month of mounting stress, marital grumblings, and the sheer psychosis of living chronically ill I hit bottom. Bottom when you have Fibromyalgia really hurts. So I proceeded to walk around stooped over like a little old lady holding my lower back, wailing and crying and gnashing my teeth over how absolutely awful everything was. Then the anger I try so hard…
The world lost a woman yesterday.A boy lost his grandmother, three people lost their mother and a man lost his wife.This woman was a pistol, tough and strong and a force to be reckoned with.I grew up with her tales of adventure, living overseas while young and newly married, her husband in the military.I learned of a day in 1929 when this girl took a shoebox of money she was saving to the bank, to…
There is a book whose title I will not tell, written by an author that will remain unnamed, that everyone in the whole wide world made such a gigantic fuss about. Hollywood even made it into a movie! And all I heard from everyone I knew was to read this book. It is great! Empowered womanhood! You will love it! They all assured me. So I broke down and bought the darn thing in paperback…
Recently I posed a question in Fibromyalgia Support Group, our support site on Facebook. I am looking for more information about this Fibro-monster, but not what I can pull up in a quick Google search or another strange set of statistics gathered from who knows where. I want real honest to goodness patient-based information from the patients I interact with every day. The real people that have this illness. For there has got to be…
A thought just suddenly popped in my head, seemingly from nowhere, and I am finally able to put my finger on exactly what the stigma of Fibromyalgia brings to the table. See it’s not that we don’t want to get better or are lazy or are working the disability system or are crazy, drug-seeking or just feeling the normal aches and pains of age. That is what the ignorant must believe for some odd reason…
I frequently find myself either bitterly acting out or saying this to those around me. Apologizing to those whose lives are affected by my illness, as though it is something I did or like or want or don’t suffer horribly from myself. As hard as Fibromyalgia is to manage, the guilt on top of everything else is ridiculous! Do other chronic illness sufferers feel the same way or is this particular to our condition because…
I am sick of apologizing for being me. I am sick of apologizing for being sick and not as productive or efficient or clear-headed as I once was. I am sick of apologizing for the passion that consumes me to get Fibromyalgia out of my brain and actually doing something to better our lives. I am sick of apologizing for not going to bed early enough or keeping my house clean enough or taking the…