Fibromyalgia Talks

Hi! My name is Fibromyalgia and I'm YOUR invisible chronic illness. I am now velcro'ed to you for life. Others around you can't see me or hear me, but your body FEELS me. I can attack you anywhere and anyway I please. I can cause severe pain or, if I'm in a good mood, I can just cause you to ache all over. Remember when you and Energy ran around together and had fun? I took Energy from you and gave you Exhaustion. Try to have fun now! I also took Good Sleep from you and, in it's place, gave you Brain Fog. I can make you tremble internally or make you feel cold or hot when everyone else feels normal. Oh, yeah, I can make you feel anxious or depressed, too. If you have something planned and are looking forward to a great day, I can take that away, too.

You didn't ask for me. I chose you for various reasons: That virus you had that you never recovered from, or that car accident, or maybe it was the years of abuse and trauma. Well, anyway, I'm here to stay! I understand you're going to see a doctor who can 'get rid' of me? I'm rolling on the floor laughing. Just try! You will have to go to many, many doctors until you find one who even BELIEVES I EXIST! You will be put on pain pills, sleeping pills, energy pills, told you are suffering from anxiety or depression, given a TENs unit, get massaged, told if you just sleep and exercise more I will go away, told to 'think positive', poked, prodded and, MOST OF ALL, laughed at when you tell the doctor I am debilitating.

Your family, friends and co-workers will all listen to you until they just get tired of hearing about how I make you feel and that I'm a real disease. Some of them will say things like, "Oh, you are just having a bad day." or "Well, remember, you can't do the things you used to do 20 years ago." not at all hearing that you just said 20 DAYS ago. Some will just start talking behind your back, while you slowly feel that you are losing your dignity trying to make them understand, especially when you are in the middle of a conversation with a 'normal' person and can't remember what you were going to say next! Eventually, most of them will be like all the doctors who say to you...."It's all in your head!"

If ANY of this sounds a bit familiar to you or about someone you care for then you know that Fibromyalgia (or FMS) is NOT something to be laughed about and shrugged off like it was just a very bad cold or flu. It IS here to stay -- there's no cure for FMS. All that can be done, for now, is to treat the symptoms brought on by FMS and other cross-related ailments. 'Fibromyalgia Talks' was given to me by one of my doctors. She found it on the Internet and thought enough about me to save a copy and gave it to me during my next office visit. I apologize to it's author for not properly giving credit to the one responsible for it's existence.

Having said that, I felt compelled to pass it along for the same reasons it was passed on to me in the first place. No, we're NOT crazy! Yes, we DO feel that bad! In conclusion, let me add some of my own 'famous last words' with THIS piece of revelation: "We're not sick because we're depressed. We're depressed because we're SICK!" We're sick and tired of being SICK and TIRED, so if you have nothing nice to say, please, PLEASE, say nothing at all. Your doubt speaks for itself -- it always does.