FMS

I've been debating this post for a long time, and I have to thank Suzie for inspiring me to finally write. First, a disclaimer: This post is not meant to gain sympathy or pity. I want to enlighten my readers. I also want to be able to talk about this in my real life, and writing here is a way for me to expose myself without actually looking someone in the eye and telling them. Maybe I will find the strength to tell more people in my life what is wrong with me. If you are looking for my usual fare of funny vulgarity, scroll down to another post or read through my archives.

I have Fibromyalgia Syndrome aka FMS. This means that my body is pretty fucked up. I'm not going to give you a ten page report on how I feel, but I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. I'm exhausted almost all the time. My muscles ache all the time, with varying degrees of pain. My whole body is stiff most mornings. My short term memory isn't the greatest. I have bowel issues, which are fairly well controlled by avoiding gluten (the protein in wheat, rye and barley). My sleep sucks because I don't get enough deep sleep so I wake up feeling like I was run over by a large truck. I get knarly headaches, bad PMS and very crampy periods. Changes in weather make it much worse. I also have issues with anxiety and FMS increases it. Stress makes my symptoms increase tenfold.

One of the worst parts is that I look fine. Unless I'm in a lot of pain to the point where I'm walking funny people don't see that there is anything wrong with me. It really messes with me mentally/emotionally because people think that I'm just lazy. Or that I'm sleeping so much because I'm depressed. It takes me much longer to get enough deep, refreshing sleep to equal 8 hours of a normal person's sleep. If I'm having a good day, where I have a "normal" amount of energy I tend to do too much, so the next day I'm fucked and in lots of pain. I've had to learn to let the little things slide and concentrate my resources on things like work and parenting. Some days blogging is difficult because my hands are so stiff and swollen.

I have good spells and bad spells. Sometimes I wonder how long I can take the pain day after day. Then I have several days where I'm almost pain free and life is so good. Today is not one of those days. We had a thunderstorm here last night, and I woke up this morning in utter misery. I cancelled my morning appointment and went back to bed. When I finally got up, I had to take pain medication to function. I hate taking pain killers, and I avoid if them if at all possible. So now I'm blogging away, the pain is manageable and I feel stoned.

If you know someone that has FMS, please try to be understanding. Think of the last time that you had the flu. Your whole body ached, your muscles were screaming and you had no energy at all. Imagine living your life that way, and have some compassion.