Member-only story
I’m ready to be realistic about living with fibromyalgia
There is no cure
I sit down to write this, having returned from literally the hundredth visit to a medical doctor. You see, I live with a chronic condition which sends intense, persistent pain through most of my physical body, every day, all day long. Doctors call it fibromyalgia, a blanket term for a mysterious set of symptoms they cannot explain.
I manage this condition (to a point) with reduced stress, better sleep, food choices, getting regular massages and over the counter pain meds — to name just a few things in my self-care arsenal.
Yet, they only help temporarily.
The pain reaches such a height on some days, that I’m functionally disabled.
I can barely get out of bed and struggle to do basic life tasks like folding laundry or cooking a meal. Taking out the trash is absolutely exhausting and don’t even get me started on the ramifications of sweeping and mopping floors. I often pay dearly for being too physically ambitious.
No doctor or researcher understands why my nervous system and the nervous systems of millions of others of fibromyalgia sufferers, turned on the pain receptors and never turned them off.
