Fibromyalgia

An Intro-so to speak 

Can you imagine going through your day with your back on fire while you still keep going and doing and taking care of all the regular things that you have to do in a normal day? I don't mean a slight burning sensation either. I mean you actually are ON FIRE. Instead of running or dousing yourself or stop, drop and rolling,  you just keep plugging along while that fire just keeps burning on and on and on.

Oh, and there are knives too. Yes, there are. They are stabbing you sometimes or twisting in those places they live deeply within your muscles and joints. The sensation does not ever stop. Not even when you sleep. If you sleep. It goes on and on and on. There are times it lessens and times it again intensifies to the point you feel like just screaming but you don't. Not once.

There is exhaustion too. That may well be the worst thing of all. It sounds crazy since for most people the kind of pain I describe would seem to be worse but it really isn't for me. The exhaustion from what seems like nothing at all is what really is the worst part of the whole thing for me. Through the exhaustion, while that fire burns ever so brightly and intensifies and climbs higher and higher and even spreads further and further, you smile. While the knives plunge into you over and over and over again, you smile. Yup, you smile and say it's a wonderful day and you love your life. Why you might ask?

Because it is. And because you do.

I love my life. I am blessed beyond measure with so much. A wonderful son, a husband who I adore and who adores me right back, a home filled with laughter and critters, and a "job" that I absolutely love. I say "job" because I love it so much it is not "work" so much as it is a passion. I have and am so much more than I ever imagined, so much more than I sometimes think I even deserve. 

And I also have something that I never asked for, that I don't deserve and I most assuredly do not want. When I was first diagnosed I didn't believe it. I refused to believe it. It worked. For a while. Until a time came that I could not longer deny the fact that something was very, very wrong with me. Something I could not explain in any other way. So, I finally admitted it and tried to come to terms with it. That may well have been the single most difficult thing I have ever had to come to terms with in my life. And believe me when I say there has been plenty but this diagnosis was something that took me several years to accept.

I have fibromyalgia. But fibromyalgia does not have me.

This is my place to bitch, whine a little, celebrate a lot and share what I feel and what I know about this wretched "condition" that is all too familiar to far too many people.