It started so slowly that I didn't even realise the symptoms were linked. It took my father watching a random show on television to put it together. The first time I realised something wasn't normal I was at home and I noticed how fast my heart was beating. I had never had palpitations before so when I could see my heart beating through my chest I got a little scared. The palpitations kept coming back and I started to feel dizzy. I first thought that my blood sugar was low. Its hard to explain the fog, the only way I can try is its like I am watching myself through a long lens. I can see my actions but I cant control them. I started to get these a lot over the next few weeks, at home, in work and even when I was driving - this scared me even more.
I had lived with pelvic pain for a long time as I suffer with endometriosis and poly cystic ovary syndrome. I put the pain in my legs and back down to these but then I started to get pain in my arms and chest too. The pain was different it moved and changed and there seemed to be a constant ache and soreness to my chest and shoulders. My joints seemed to feel sore all the time and I would get a burning sensation in my legs. I use a tens machine to help me with the pelvic and lower back pain but it got to a point where I didn't know where to put it to help as I just hurt everywhere.
I started to get other symptoms too, tingling in my arms and numbness in my face and neck. My morning sickness got worse and seemed to be worst when I had to be up early. Over months of this building and getting gradually worse I decided to visit the doctors a few times for different symptoms. I was used to blood tests and I had my fair share to come over the months. What I wasn't used to were the ecg tests. After each set of tests I began to panic until I got the negative results and then I was just confused and frustrated. Don't get me wrong I didn't want to be sick, I just wanted to know what was going on with me.
Its hard when you have an invisible illness, my endo sisters will agree with that but when its invisible from the professionals too its just plain frightening.
Then one day a couple of months ago my Dad asked me a question that at first I dismissed as one of his random ideas but that question eventually led me to answers I may not have got without him. “Have you thought about Fibromyalgia?” No I hadn't but to be honest I didn't have a clue about it. I knew a couple of people that had it but I hadn't really looked in to it. At first look I thought yeah the symptoms seem to match but when my dad pushed on the “tender points” on the back of my neck I didn't feel horrendous pain, yes it wasn't comfortable but id felt worse pain. Over the next week or so I started to look in to it a bit more. I couldn't get over the fact that the symptoms seemed to match up so much. I looked in to these “Tender Points” again pushing each set and realised that the points my dad had pushed on the back of my neck had been wrong (he had a “senior moment” as he calls them) and suddenly it all seemed to lock in place.
I reached out to one of the people I knew that had been diagnosed with Fibro and asked them if they thought my symptoms matched up. I didn't want to go to the doctors again for no reason, Ive suffered with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life and I didn't want them thinking I was a hypochondriac. My friend agreed with me and said I should definitely see my GP.
More blood tests to rule out inflammatory markers and Thyroid conditions later and I am now at the point where my GP has confirmed I have Fibromyalgia. Months of being scared, confused, frustrated, nauseated, numb, fogged, in pain and more tired than you can imagine and I am only at the beginning of this journey.
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