Fibromyalgia through the generations

There is so much information out there about Fibromyalgia that those who have firm diagnoses by well informed physicians are now begetting a generation of children who are getting diagnosed early.  Early diagnosis I can imagine must save a lot of heart-ache that the pioneering generation have had to (or are still, in some countries) suffer due to hatred, anger, intolerance, suspicion, labelling, as well as lack of medical understanding.
 

For me, I don`t think I have met one person who will accept 100% what I tell them about my body because for most people seeing is believing and I do not look sick.  The peculiar thing is that I grew up thinking that EVERYONE could tell that I was not performing as well as I would like to.  I felt the puffed up eyes and assumed everyone could see them.  I felt the pain and figured that people could somehow tell I was in pain if only by the way I moved so slowly.  Instead I was labelled "lazy".  Let us hope that the generation of children who are getting diagnosed early are being spared this lack of trust from our fellow human beings.  Not being taken at your word is probably the worst insult that someone can give you in my opinion. Eventually I would end up so frustrated that I would cry for understanding from others.  Privately and publically too.  But the previous generations of people suffering fibromyalgia were mistakenly categorised as "sensitive" or "touchy" in the sense that our psyches were called into question instead of our bodies.
 

Yes people with fibromyalgia are sensitive to physical phenomena - a wide range of sensitivity can occur within one single body that houses the sufferer.  One person may have a body that hurts when the light is too bright, when the sounds are too high-pitched, when the weather is not sunny and mild and of a certain range of barametric pressure, when the body bends for too long, when the feet stand for too long, when the clothes are too tight, when the demands are too high, when the worry is too much, when the food is too salty, too sweet, too spicy, too full of preservatives, too much fibre, and on and on it goes.  This is just one body we are talking about.  One person that has to live in that body that hurts in one way or another 24/7, 7 days a week.  During the flareups it is even worse because you can add the typical viral symptoms of sore throat, elevated temperature, even more lethargy and nearly intolerable aches of the muscles and joints.
 

The parents of these children usually have been through it themselves and can add a degree of empathy to their childrens` lives that most of us "oldies" have not been granted.  And if the children are unlucky enough to have parents who have no idea what is going on with their child, then at least this generation will benefit from all the advocates for medical recognition, humane acceptance, medical research and group facilities that the prior generations have worked towards.  We still have a long way to go because fibromyalgia remains incurable and most medical, psychological, and physical help is only available to the wealthy.
 

Written by zzirf