Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion. Know what that means? Let me explain: a diagnosis of exclusion is a condition for which there is no single test that can definitively identify your illness. It is concluded upon once other tests related to the patient’s symptoms are exhausted. For the analyst in me, that’s like saying “Hey! We don’t know what is wrong but instead of continuing to look we’re going to lump you in this pile with everybody else that we can’t seem to pin to a diagnosis. And oh, by the way, there’s no known cure for this one.”  Inspired yet? Me neither.

Momma was sick in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s. At that time, they didn’t have a name for it. Basically, she was a hard working mother and wife. She was a nurse and according to the docs she saw “nurses make the worst patients.” At least, that’s what she was told over and over and over. But she continued to get up every day and drag herself to work where she taught teenagers about careers in healthcare even when the healthcare profession had failed her. She refused to give up. She later told me that she wanted to give up on more than one occasion but she had to stay strong for my sister, my dad and me. Finally, after seven doctors and six visits with a psychologist, they decided that her pain was in fact, real. No shit. (Her words, not mine.) She burned the candle at both ends and had two kids. Watching the pain that she suffered through, I would never let this happen to me.  She couldn’t raise her arms over her head, her shoulders basically froze with her arms just out by her hips. And her hands! Oh, her hands. Her middle and ring finger would swell such that they drew back toward her wrist. How she held a pen, I still don’t understand to this day.

Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue.   New diagnoses. Not a lot known about the two other than the fact that they go hand in hand. For the chronic fatigue, you need to sleep…but not just sleep. It had to be good sleep. Deep sleep. The kind of sleep that we all need but probably don’t get. The phrase, “slept like a baby”? Yeah, THAT kind of sleep. And the fibro….hmmm, “Well, Mrs. E, if you sleep, your fibro symptoms should improve.”   Really? It took 7 doctors to come up with that?

So, she fought her battle for five years. Pain, swelling, redness, tenderness, exhaustion, depression…yes to all. And one day, one glorious, wonderful, beautiful, unbelievable day, she felt better. And then again the next day, and the one after that. Through divine intervention, a food sensitivity discovery and the unfailing power of the human spirit, she began to heal. Later, she and my dad started exercising. They walked, they went to the gym, they lost weight, they felt and looked great. And five years later, I got my whole momma back.

I certainly would never let this happen to me.

And yet, here I am.   Here I am.