In the summer of 2009, my family went through an extremely traumatic experience with one of the kids that we had taken in. To make an extremely long & painful story a little shorter, we found out that he was physically and sexually abusing my 2 Miniature Schnauzers (Yawkey & Brady) amongst other things. The situation deteriorated to the point that we had to get a restraining order against this boy, but still had to live in the house with him until we were finally able to go to court to get his sorry ass evicted (you wouldn't believe how many more rights perpetrators have than victims!).
During this time, I began to experience severe muscle and joint pain. My skin would burn & tingle; I had migraines all the time and would go days & days with no sleep. At first I chalked it up to depression, but I know the difference between the mild achey feeling that comes with depression & the all-inclusive, overwhelming pain that I was in, so finally out of desperation, I went to my doctor. OH, what a freakin' fun time that was! I've never been one to go to the doctor unless I was ill, but all of a sudden I was at his office every darned week. Every visit began something like this..."Let's talk about your mood". MY MOOD!@#$ My mood was tired, frustrated & pissed. I kept telling him that it was more than just my "mood". So they scared the shit out of me and sent me for every test imaginable. I was tested for cancer, AIDS, thyroid, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, you name it...I was tested for it.
The kicker was that all the tests kept coming back normal. By this time, I was out of work on medical leave and my family & doctors thought I was either lazy or crazy. The breaking point with my doctor came when he said, once again "I think it's just your mood". BOOM!!! I yelled (well croaked because I had no voice for several months) & replied that if he told me one more time that this was "just my mood" I'd smack him. Luckily for me, he's known me since I was 18 & took it in stride. Finally, he said that there was nothing he could do for me & referred me to a rheumatologist.
Meanwhile, my mom & kids (I had 2 other kids we had taken in at the time) were, by turns, scared, confused and frustrated. I couldn't make myself get up to clean, do laundry or make dinner. I felt like a failure as a mom, a daughter & a friend. I didn't leave the house except to go to doctor's appointments & pretty much avoided even speaking to people. Trying to explain it was too difficult & almost embarassing.
Well, the day that I met with Dr. Manning was amazing. He spent a full hour just talking to me & listened intently to everything I said. Then he told me that I have Fibromyalgia. Not really knowing what that was, I was so relieved to have a name to put to this BS. It really wasn't all in my head. I blubbered on his shoulder for what seemed like forever. He told me that I was completely sane (my kids will argue that LOL) and that he wanted to help me. *insert angelic voices & trumpets here*
Just having someone validate that I really was ill & not crazy was so liberating. Didn't take the pain away, but at least I finally had an answer. I'm still struggling to come to grips with the Fibro and so is my family. After further discussions with Dr. Manning, he figures that I've probably had the Fibro for 5-7 years, but it was kind of sitting there like a gremlin just waiting for a good reason to show itself and the stressful situation we went through was enough to let it out of the cage.
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