Should Morgan Freeman Speak Out About Fibromyalgia?

 Esquire magazine printed a mesmerizing, perceptive piece of writing about actor Morgan Freeman.  In the article, author Tom Chiarella narrate the day he spent with Freeman at his home in Mississippi.  As they walked around Freeman’s property, Chiarella felt that he was in pain.  In the subsequent quote from the article, Freeman shows off the cause of his pain.

Every so frequently he grasp his left shoulder and shrink his body. It hurts when he walks, when he sits immobile when he rises from his sofa, and when he missteps in a moist field. It hurts a lot. It seems a kind of torture, although he never mentions it. There are times when he cannot help but show that he is suffering from immense pain, the fallout from a car accident four years ago, in which the car he was driving overturn and rolled, leaving Freeman and a friend to be pulled from the car using the Jaws of Life. Regardless of surgical procedure to mend nerve damage, he was trapped with an ineffective left hand. It is awkwardly engrossed by a firm glove most of the time to make sure that blood does not collect there. It is a clamp, his pain, a frozen shot up a relatively ineffective limb. He does not like to show it, but there are times when he cannot help but mislay himself to a world-ending contortion. It is such a large signal, so outside the general conduct of the man, that it feels as if he is acting.

“It’s the fibromyalgia,” he says when asked, it gets so bad, as it hurts whole arm. Tormenting.”

This means Morgan Freeman cannot pilot jets the way he used to, a leisure pursuit he took up at sixty-five. He can no longer go in a boat as well. There was a time when he would travel by water by himself to the Caribbean and hideaway for two, three weeks at a time. “It was complete loneliness,” he says. “It was the finest way for me to find quiet, how I found time to read.” No more. He can’t rely himself on one arm. He cannot drive, not attach anyway, not the way he used to — which is to say speedy, extensive open, devoted to what the car can do. And he can’t ride horses as much, although some time ago he rode every day.

He never mentions any of it as a failure, although how could it be something else? He never talks about the injustice of it. “There is a point to changes like these. I have to move on to other things, to other conceptions of myself. I can play golf and can work still. And I can be quite contented just walking the land.”

Wait. How can he play golf with a abrupt arm like that? How can you move backward and forward a club when you can’t raise one of your arms?

“I play with one hand,” he tells me. “I sway with my right arm.”

How does that work out for you?

“See yourself,” he says. “I’m playing at 3:00 today.”

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To Speak Out or Not to Speak Out – That Is the Question

Freeman’s disclosure that he has fibromyalgia spread like wildfire through the FM community.  Lastly, here was an A-list superstar acknowledging he had been diagnosed with FM.  A handful of other celebrities have had the guts to speak up about their FM, for which we are enormously thankful, but so far no one had the celebrity power of Morgan Freeman.

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Almost right away FM patients and advocates started calling on Freeman to speak your mind from the side of others with fibromyalgia.  It is still been whispered that a huge national FM organization has contacted him about being their representative.  Despite the fact that most in the FM community appear to powerfully support that thought, a few have questioned the understanding of Freeman being an FM spokesman.

From what I have read, those who are uncertain about Freeman representing the FM community come out to have three concerns:

1. Does he actually have fibromyalgia since he only reveal pain in his left shoulder and arm?

2. He is still very lively and so would present an inexact picture of how unbearable FM can be.

3. Since most people with FM are women, as a man he would not be representative of the bulk of patients.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these concerns.

Does he really have fibromyalgia?

I have to confess the first time I read the article I, too, wondered whether he had been diagnosed properly.  But when I revise it, I noticed that he said, “Along the whole length of the arm. That is where it gets so bad.”  His statement, “That is where it gets so awful” sounds like he most likely has other pain but it is the ache in his arm that is the most horrible.  For many years, I could have made a comparable statement about my left hip.  Although I had body-wide pain almost all the time, it was the pain in my hip that was frequently the most horrible.

We also have to keep in mind that the reason of this meeting was not to discuss Freeman’s fibromyalgia.  The writer just noticed Freeman grimacing more than a few times and asked him about it.  It is reasonable that Freeman would only talk about the pain he was bearing at the time.  Or maybe he did go into more feature but when composing the article, Chiarella chose to take in only what he felt was most significant.

So is whether or not Freeman actually has fibromyalgia a suitable anxiety totally.  When we are chatting about someone being a representative for a disease, it is our right to want to be certain they in reality have the disease.  We just should not jump to any decision based on one inaccessible testimonial.

His activity level doesn’t paint an accurate picture of FM.

People with FM are included into an extensive category of functional abilities.  Freeman appears to be quite high-functioning since he continues to work and play golf.  The article did note, nonetheless, that he has had to quit numerous actions that he esteemed.  On the other hand, some people with FM are entirely disabled, not able to handle even basic self-care everyday jobs.  The rest of us fall anywhere in between.  Whereas Freeman’s action level should not prevent him instead of people with FM, I would expect that part of his message would be to explain just how debilitating FM can be and to make clear that dissimilar patients have diverse levels of disability.

As a man, he is not representative of the average FM patient.

Honestly, I think the reality that he is a man with FM is a optimistic thing.  Whether we like it or not, when it comes to fitness issues, men are still given more trustworthiness than women.  Studies have shown that health care professionals are more probable to take a man’s symptoms critically, but attribute a woman’s symptoms to sentimental causes.  Even though the reception of FM has come a long way in current years, there are still some people, together with some medical professionals, who don not consider it is genuine.  Therefore, having a famous and extremely appreciated man like Morgan Freeman protest about FM might help get better our reliability among the doubters.

It’s a Personal Matter

Given the frequent urgings to boost and be a representative for fibromyalgia, I every now and then doubt if Freeman desires he had never mentioned it.  He possibly never dreamed uttering that one word in the center of a multi-hour interrogation would ever gather so much concentration.

In our keenness to have distinguished famous person like Morgan Freeman speak out from our side. I think we need to remember how doing so could bang his life.  Years ago celebrities did the whole thing in their authority to keep any fitness problems secret because enlightening an illness could wreck their careers.  Even though Hollywood seems to be a slightly more tolerant these days, I think there is still some uncertainty about casting an actor who has a known health problem.  And even if his occupation is not a main worry, Freeman strikes me as the kind of man who prefers not to stay on his pain and what he cannot do but somewhat to thrust to the front and spotlight on what he can do.

Yes, it would be magnificent if Morgan Freeman would make a decision to become an advocate for fibromyalgia.  The whole FM community would greet him with open arms.  His support could do wonders for rising alertness and raising money for investigation.  But eventually it is a private decision – each of us has to make a decision what is most excellent for our lives at any given point in time.  While I wish he will choose to use his superstar to help others with FM, I will esteem his verdict whichever way.

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Source: By Karen Lee Richards retrieved from ProHealth.com