I Have Fibromyalgia And This Is What It’s Like To Always Be In Pain

Pain has always been my normal, which is actually not normal at all.

I appear to be an ordinary 24 year old woman. I go to parties and college football games, having a writing occupation and a group of amazing friends. But beneath this disguise of “normality” is the continuous self-management of my sometimes-debilitating illness: fibromyalgia.

I have always managed. I usually took additional restroom trips for the UTI symptoms which were not UTIs. I took the naps for enigmatic leg pain that’s only cure was to just sleep. I cracked Pepto-Bismol to avoid the digestive symptoms which would make my whole body numb.

Many doctors sent me for tests. And all came back normal. In writing, I was in good physical shape, so all my management was silent and cautious. People seldom observed the pain prescription I took before basketball games, or the times I had slip away in the middle of a school day to rest for a while in my car.

Chronic pain is an interesting thing. Kind of identical to a mother who learns to tune out her shouting child, it can affect you every day of your life and you can fail to observe you have a problem anymore. The doctors have cleared you to live that “regular” life, but you just work over the symptoms. You see them as unlucky irritations, and nothing more. The pain slowly grows worse over time—but only a little bit worse than the day before, and not sufficient enough to be frightening.

Researchers think that we cry in fragments to signal to others that we are in a need of help. When you have chronic pain, you are not sure that you do. You know it really hurts, but you can’t explain it. You always try to get help, but it has been useless. So what do you going to do? Shout? Writhe on the floor? No. You have learned these pain reactions do nothing to take away the hurt. And you only learn to live with it. Growing up, like I did.

But after 15 years of baffling pain, my body denied to be ignored. At last I fell apart in the summer of 2011.

One June morning I woke up with thigh pain, slinking down the left side of my body. It put me aside from my exercises, and then it got worse. It was hard to take breaths and impossible to fall asleep. I ended up in the ER for the first time in my life.

Share via Pinterest Courtesy Of The Writer The writer with her niece, February 2016

I appear to be an ordinary 24 year old woman. I go to parties and college football games, having a writing occupation and a group of amazing friends. But beneath this disguise of “normality” is the continuous self-management of my sometimes-debilitating illness: fibromyalgia.

I have always managed. I usually took additional restroom trips for the UTI symptoms which were not UTIs. I took the naps for enigmatic leg pain that’s only cure was to just sleep. I cracked Pepto-Bismol to avoid the digestive symptoms which would make my whole body numb.

Many doctors sent me for tests. And all came back normal. In writing, I was in good physical shape, so all my management was silent and cautious. People seldom observed the pain prescription I took before basketball games, or the times I had slip away in the middle of a school day to rest for a while in my car.

Chronic pain is an interesting thing. Kind of identical to a mother who learns to tune out her shouting child, it can affect you every day of your life and you can fail to observe you have a problem anymore. The doctors have cleared you to live that “regular” life, but you just work over the symptoms. You see them as unlucky irritations, and nothing more. The pain slowly grows worse over time—but only a little bit worse than the day before, and not sufficient enough to be frightening.

Researchers think that we cry in fragments to signal to others that we are in a need of help. When you have chronic pain, you are not sure that you do. You know it really hurts, but you can’t explain it. You always try to get help, but it has been useless. So what do you going to do? Shout? Writhe on the floor? No. You have learned these pain reactions do nothing to take away the hurt. And you only learn to live with it. Growing up, like I did.

But after 15 years of baffling pain, my body denied to be ignored. At last I fell apart in the summer of 2011.

One June morning I woke up with thigh pain, slinking down the left side of my body. It put me aside from my exercises, and then it got worse. It was hard to take breaths and impossible to fall asleep. I ended up in the ER for the first time in my life.

Share via Pinterest Courtesy Of The Writer New Year’s 2015

I appear to be an ordinary 24 year old woman. I go to parties and college football games, having a writing occupation and a group of amazing friends. But beneath this disguise of “normality” is the continuous self-management of my sometimes-debilitating illness: fibromyalgia.

I have always managed. I usually took additional restroom trips for the UTI symptoms which were not UTIs. I took the naps for enigmatic leg pain that’s only cure was to just sleep. I cracked Pepto-Bismol to avoid the digestive symptoms which would make my whole body numb.

Many doctors sent me for tests. And all came back normal. In writing, I was in good physical shape, so all my management was silent and cautious. People seldom observed the pain prescription I took before basketball games, or the times I had slip away in the middle of a school day to rest for a while in my car.

Chronic pain is an interesting thing. Kind of identical to a mother who learns to tune out her shouting child, it can affect you every day of your life and you can fail to observe you have a problem anymore. The doctors have cleared you to live that “regular” life, but you just work over the symptoms. You see them as unlucky irritations, and nothing more. The pain slowly grows worse over time—but only a little bit worse than the day before, and not sufficient enough to be frightening.

Researchers think that we cry in fragments to signal to others that we are in a need of help. When you have chronic pain, you are not sure that you do. You know it really hurts, but you can’t explain it. You always try to get help, but it has been useless. So what do you going to do? Shout? Writhe on the floor? No. You have learned these pain reactions do nothing to take away the hurt. And you only learn to live with it. Growing up, like I did.

But after 15 years of baffling pain, my body denied to be ignored. At last I fell apart in the summer of 2011.

One June morning I woke up with thigh pain, slinking down the left side of my body. It put me aside from my exercises, and then it got worse. It was hard to take breaths and impossible to fall asleep. I ended up in the ER for the first time in my life.

For Support and discussion join the Group “Living With Fibromyalgia and Chronic Illness”

Reference: I Have Fibromyalgia And This Is What It’s Like To Always Be In Pain By Jenna Birch retrieved from Self.com