UPDATE NOW WITH LINKS!

[link] A great account of what it's like to live with an illness that depletes your energy - thankyou , this actually made me cry it's so true!
[link] - A bit clinical but it's concise and full of everything you need to know about Fibromyalgia! Thankyou

Hooray for unofficial days

So people all over DA have all kinds of conditions, and they tell everyone to raise awareness. It's not attention seeking, it's educating the masses and maybe helping someone out there to diagnose themselves or catch their illness at a treatable stage.

Well, I have fibromyalgia. It is a fairly newly accepted syndrome, in the same family as ME/CFS, MS and Lupus. Thankfully, it isn't terminal as far as anyone is aware, but it does deteriorate.

Fibromyalgia is basically muscle tissue converting to unusable fibrous tissue. Using muscles prevents this happening - kind of use it or lose it deal. BUT you can't conciously excercise most muscles, so muscle weakness and spasms in the diaphragm and bowels are common side effects, causing breathing problems, hiccups, acid reflux and IBS.

In other muscles, limbs and what not there is pain. Oh yes. Like that fluey achey pain. And they swell up and spasm. It's fun - cos they do that and trap nerves MOAR pain! And yet you HAVE to move to stop it. It's soooo incredibly difficult doing that when all you want to do is curl up and sleep.

Cell renewal is slowed too, at least for me - hair and nails weaken, if you cut yourself it is slow to heal (cat scratches take forever to disappear!) and I take a long time to recover from colds and stuff. Yes, oh yes, immune system gets battered too. Darn that ineffective spleen!

Sertraline is depleted also. You know, that stuff that makes you happy. So, as well as feeling pain, you get depressed which makes it all feel 10 times worse. The pain makes you tired anyway, but fatigue is multiplied soooo much by sertraline depletion.

It's still considered by some to be one of those imaginary illnesses - but I do try and correct people as best I can. It is a real illness, and can be genetic. That's officially theoretical, but seeing as three generations of my family have ALL been affected by fibromyalgia I am pretty certain. It's in my boyfriends family too so it's almost certain our children will suffer from it too.

But you know what guyz I work, I go to uni, I have a great life. It can be managed and lived with. And that's what I really want people to know.