What Does Fibromyalgia Feel Like?

If you are suffering from fibromyalgia, you “hurt all over” all the time. The pain can vary in intensity, and often is described as deep persistent ache, or stabbing, burning, throbbing, gnawing, shooting muscular pain. Almost always exacerbated by exercise and most often even present when you are resting. The pain can be migratory and differing from day to day. In addition to the pain you live with debilitating fatigue, depression, stiffness, sleep problems, irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, loss of mental clarity, numbness and tingling in your hands and feet, and even have sensitivity to being touched.

The pain of fibromyalgia is widespread and experienced around the neck, shoulders, upper back, lower back, hip, arms, hands, knees, thighs, legs, and feet.

The pain is felt within the muscles, as well as at the joints where ligaments attach muscles to bones. There is often extreme tenderness over many locations around the body; these locations are called fibromyalgia tender points, or fibromyalgia trigger points.

Fibromyalgia is the type condition that can happen to anyone, of any occupation, status or class, educational or financial background.

How a Sufferer Describes Her Symptoms:

Here is how Audri N. describes her fibromyalgia pain:

“Imagine being beaten and having huge bruises over your entire body, with a full body sunburn on top of that, and having someone taking a stick and repeatedly poking all your tender spots while you are trying to run a long marathon. For someone with Fibromyalgia, everyday tasks are just as exhausting as running a marathon. Even simple things, like taking a shower, require 5 times the amount of energy for someone with Fibro and CFS, than it does for a healthy person.

In addition they often feel like they have the whole body muscle aches of the flu. Imagine trying to live your life with the pain and utter exhaustion of the flu and never getting any better. This is why every day activities are often utterly debilitating for someone with Fibromyalgia.

Okay, now that you are sufficiently bruised, sun burned and achey from the flu, don’t sleep for two days straight. No coffee, sugar or carbs to keep you awake either. How tired and slow do you feel? Can you still think normally? Yes? Go another day without sleeping, until you are so tired you can’t remember how to spell simple words and chewing food to too exhausting.

Now that you are tired enough, take 50 clothes pins and putting them on yourself in random places over your sunburn and bruises. Make sure to get your legs, arms, neck, shoulders, back, hands and feet. Leave them on and try to go about your normal day even though you have the flu and feel like you can’t even get out of bed. Leave the pins on and try to take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, go to work, run errands, cook a meal, clean your house, go see a movie with friends, play with your kids, pay your bills, mow the lawn. If the pins fall off, put them back on in a different spot.

Don’t take anything for the pain, because it won’t really take the pain away anyway, since the clothes pins are still on. Leave those clothes pins on until it hurts so bad you want to scream and you have tears in your eyes, and you can’t possibly stand another second. Go ahead and take them off. How long did you last? Feel the pain radiate through your whole body? This is the kind of pain someone with Fibromyalgia lives with EVERY DAY. Only, we can’t take the clothes pins off, the flu and bruises and sunburn never go away, and the marathon never ends. Even when sitting or laying down,

We still feel the pain and are still exhausted. According to the McGill pain scale, Fibromyalgia is directly under Childbirth as one of the most painful things a person can endure. Fibromyalgia pain ranks higher than sprains, bone breaks, tooth fractures, arthritis, post-shingles nerve pain, chronic back pain, phantom limb pain, and cancer.

THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. This is really what it is like for us every day.

Everyone experiences some level of pain in their lifetime, but the difference is, eventually they heal, the pain goes away and they can go back to living their normal everyday life as if nothing has happened. For someone with Fibromyalgia, the pain never goes away. They cannot just go back to their normal life as if nothing has changed. Their life is forever changed, and they often lose the ability to work or do things they once enjoyed, because the pain and fatigue consumes their entire life and every waking moment. When your life is so drastically changed, you feel like a part of you has died, and you are only a shell of the person you used to be. You are mourning and grieving the life you lost, only no one else knows the person you used to be has died. They don’t care, because they can’t possibly understand. How could they? They aren’t the ones who have to live in your body and endure the pain you feel every second of every day for the rest of your life.”

Fibromyalgia is a debilitating condition that can be resolved and cured. A ten year fibromyalgia study which ended in 2007, described not only the real causes of fibromyalgia, but the exact steps to cure and resolution of its symptoms.

And that makes suffering from fibromyalgia optional, not necessary!

To your good health.