After years of contemplating doing a blog or sharing what I know and have come across over the years about Fibromyalgia, I finally decided, yes, this is it!  I'm going to do it!  So here I am.  The inspiration for me to do this was an article my sister emailed to me http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/26/whats-wrong-with-me which was similar to what I have experienced in the last 4+ years.  I couldn't help myself and really felt like maybe this was the way to help others.

Strangely my sister is going through her own Fibro journey, and this begs the question is this odd 'syndrome' genetic?  So far, as far as I understand there is no science that confirms this.  If anyone knows any different, I'd be interested to hear about it!

So I was trolling through the internet to see what other blogs were available to peruse, and there were definitely loads, mostly American based (which is fine, I have nothing against them... ha!) but not a lot of bloggers in NZ that I could find.  I was intrigued that the blog stories were all so very similar to one another as far as their journey from misdiagnoses to being formally diagnosed, and then dealing with the lack of knowledge and support for sufferers. I also noticed that many people used language like 'sick' and 'ailing' etc, but for some reason I have never acknowledged myself as sick, in fact, I'm guessing it is probably because I have never truly believed that I am a sufferer.  I guess that might even be a personality trait, I don't suffer for anything (although I know my husband would argue this point to death...!).


My story probably goes a ways back and I don't think I will be able to cover it all in my first post... so I will just type whatever comes to mind as it does, but I will also go back to the beginning purely because if anyone wants to compare, especially new and still skeptical possible Fibro 'afflictees' (love my new word I just made up!), your journey might not end up as long and arduous as mine!!!

Where to begin?  I suppose it may have started many years ago (1994) with a hit and run car accident that my friend and I were in (we were the 'hit' not the 'run'), where I ended up with severe whiplash... however I wasn't to know this until these past few years, because, and I will get to this later, there is suggestion in my Fibro investigations that there is a HUGE correlation between Fibro and neck/back injuries!!!  However, I will begin around 2007 after my carpal tunnel surgery.  I was having a lot of sleep trouble, waking many times during the night, pretty much since 2000 (because I had children! whom I adore, but sleep and babies don't mix well!)... after the children started to sleep through I still had the habit of waking during the night, but also further extended by numbing and tingling in my hands due to carpal tunnel.  So to make a long story short, I had 3 surgeries all up, 2 on my left hand and one on my right hand, the most recent was 2012 (the 2nd on my left for the Guyon nerve).  

Whilst all of this carpal tunnel stuff was happening I happened to be moving some boxes and hurt my back by irritating a disc in my low back... ENTER MY TRIGGER! Yes, this was the beginning of what I call my discouraging journey (2007).  So off to the Dr to be advised that I had irritated a disc, some medication for pain (ibuprofen and Panadol) and rest until the irritation calmed.  

After this disc issue settled I was feeling like I wasn't rested in the mornings and thought it might be down to being low on iron or something (as I was part-time vegetarian (ha ha - meaning only eating chicken and fish)... and I had two very sore spots on either side below my rib cage.  I had had these sore spots on and off for years but my family Doctor (when I was a teen) said (and feel free to laugh), "Well, since you have this pain on both sides of your ribs, you have nothing to worry about!".  So, this Doctor I saw on this particular day wasn't my regular Doctor, but as soon as I mentioned the two sore spots below my ribs on either side, she said, "Oh my, I shouldn't say this, because what I'm going to tell you isn't very nice and you would never want to have this, but you might want to think about looking up Fibromyalgia!" So she wrote it down and off I went to begin searching up this strange syndrome this Doctor said I would never want to have!  

What ensued of course was this irritation never EVER going away completely, but also the start of intermittent sleep and lack of, compacting so much that over the next few months it hurt to move AT ALL mostly at night.  I winced just when rolling over in bed, but the scariest moment of all was experiencing brain fog so bad it felt like I had left my body -- and not so good when one is sitting at an intersection and the lights have turned green!!!  I didn't know what to do next?  Press the gas or press the brake, go forward, turn left, it was beyond me.  Once I figured out and the fog passed, I pulled over and called my husband in tears...