"But You Don't Look Sick!"

Fibromyalgia has been around since the 1950's, but never has it been so prevalent as it is today. Until the late 1990's and into the early part of this new millennium, it was also unrecognized as a genuine condition by the medical profession. Even today, there are those in the medical field who dispute fibromyalgia as a real health problem, despite the fact that in the U.S. alone, 2% to 5% of the population is afflicted with it.

Fibromyalgia is a condition in which every muscle, every ligament, every soft tissue, flares with pain. Many who suffer from fibromyalgia describe the pain as feeling like they've zigged when they should have zagged. Indeed, patients who struggle with this disease also struggle with chronic fatigue and sleep disruptions; most people with fibromyalgia experience fatigue to a degree where they're exhausted and they feel as though their limbs are weighted down, and no matter how many hours of sleep they get, they feel as though they haven't slept at all. Exercise is difficult, as well, because the activity causes pain, which in turn, discourages further attempts to be active. This, in turn, leads to weight gain due to becoming sedentary. However, according the Fibromyalgia Network, exercise is an important component in managing this condition, as it helps keeps muscles somewhat fit, without pushing them too hard.

Other common conditions associated with fibromyalgia include, but are not limited to, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic headaches, and TMJ. Anything from changes in hormone levels to changes in seasons or weather can aggravate the symptoms.

Now that you have an idea of what fibromyalgia is and what it involves, let me tell you a little bit about what it's like to live with it.

Every day is like Russian Roulette. You spin the wheel, and wait to see if you'll get to have a day where you can function, or a day where you're heavily medicated and wrapped in a heating pad, propped up on the sofa because you just can't move. If it's the former, you then have to try to pace yourself as best you can and hope you don't pay too high a price for taking advantage of the reprieve by doing something easy, such as light housework. If it's the latter, all you can do is try to remind yourself to breathe, and try to remember that even though you feel like this condition is killing you, you are not, in fact, dying from it.

Every moment of every day is filled with uncertainty. If you do some light housework, you may pay for it later... or you may not. If you go on that family outing, you may develop a severe migraine from the light or the noise... or you may not. When you wake up in the morning feeling as if you've fought with a Mack truck and lost, you don't know if you'll be able to even sit up without help, never mind trying to take the lid off the toothpaste tube. When you go to bed at night, you don't know if those muscle relaxers the doctor gave you are going to help you, or make things worse by relaxing your body too much. And yes, it's possible for the muscles to become too relaxed, which in turn, leads to pain that defies the charts. On a scale of one to ten, the pain can feel like a thousand after you've taken muscle relaxers to help you sleep.

This is a small part of what living with fibromyalgia is like. But it's not all there is. You also have to live with the disbelief others offer when you try to explain to them why you can't do things the same way, why you can't make it in to work, why you can't go out, why your life has all but come to a stop.

Fibromyalgia is an invisible disease. No one sees the pain, the constant sleep disruptions, the headaches, or any of the other symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. So, when you have to call in sick to work, or cancel an outing with family or friends, or beg off from any number of other things you used to do all the time, people aren't always understanding.

"You're not sick, you're just lazy," is a common misunderstanding.

Whether or not the medical jury accepts fibromyalgia as a real disease - and it is still highly controversial in the medical community - has no bearing on what those who struggle with it have to cope with. For those of us who struggle to cope with the disease, laziness is an option we only wish we had.