My Story

I'm what my family calls "Stubborn"... working through the pain. I can't
remember I time that I didn't have pain somewhere. Some days were worse than
others, but even on "Good Days", something hurt. I always got up and went to
work, or the grocery store, or the school play, or football or baseball
practice..... where ever my family needed me to be. But I was still in pain.
I'd been on steriods, opiods, ibuprophen, acetominaphen, any combination you
could conceive of. All they would offer was short term relief, never a cure. I
just tried to "deal" with the pain, and assumed that I had arthritis, or worse,
that I was slowly becoming a hypocondriac.

Then, about 4 years ago, I was at work and started to have the old familiar neck
pains. OK. I'd had them before. No big deal, right? WRONG! My shoulder
started to hurt. Then my arm. Then my chest got really tight. Oh, God, I'm
having a heart attack at work! Off I go the the Emergency Room! Everyone is
telling me that Mission Hospital has one of the BEST cardiac care units in the
country, so if I have to have a heart attact, I'm in the right place. WHOOPPEE!

I spent my 40th birthday on the Cardiac Care Unit, and had test after test after
unending test. A week later, the good news was that my heart was fine (THANK
GOD!), but there was no logical explaination for the pain I'd been suffering.
Then, something strange happened. The doctor asked me if I'd had any symptoms
that were not related to the chest pain. Well, YES! Muscle pain and fatigue
that moved throughout my body, trouble sleeping, memory problems, sensativity to
heat and cold, tenderness to touch, muscle twitching, stiffness, frequent
bladder urges, irritable bowels, migraines, the list went on. The next thing he
said caught me completely off guard. "Has anyone ever talked to you about the
possibility that you have Fibromyalgia?" WOW!

I left the hospital with a warped sense of peace. My heart was fine, but more
importantly, all those "little problems" that sometimes made me think I was
crazy or imagining were actually part of one real issue, and now it had a name.
I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't a hypocondriac. Even knowing that Fibromayalgia is
still a realtively misunderstood condition with no immeadiate cause or cure
didn't matter.

I still live with the pain and the laundry list of other symptoms, only getting
short term relief through medical treatment, but at least I know that I'm not
crazy, and more importantly, I'M NOT ALONE!