Describing Fibromyalgia and CFS to those who haven’t experienced chronic pain and illness can be, at mildest, a challenge! Here are some example descriptions, from people who’ve tried to put it into their own words:
From Jenn Vesperman:
Think about how you feel when you get a flu, all sniffly and sneezy and with a headache but when you’re lying down you feel kind of ok, you know you could get up and straighten that picture that’s hanging crooked, and while you’re up you could wash all your hankies that you’ve used while you had the flu, and hell with it, you could go to work today. You’re not feeling that bad, really…. …. and then you stand up, and immediately reach for the arm of the couch to keep from falling over. You can’t even stand.
Now imagine having that sort of flu – every day for ten years.
From Carol:
Imagine how a privileged nineteenth-century lady would have felt after entertaining her peers all afternoon in her crinolines and curls. That what my worst pre-CFS fatigue could be compared to.
Now imagine a miner; a miner who has put in a 12 hour shift pounding on rock with a pickaxe. As he leaves the mineshaft for home, he is run down by a large piece of machinery. Before he comes to, he sucks in a few lungs full of the machine’s exhaust fumes.
How that miner is going feel when he regains consciousness could hardly be described as fatigued. I know. I often feel like that. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Give me a break.
Additions to this page are welcomed! If you have any descriptions that might fit on this page, please contact me or leave a comment so I can add them.
Imagine having the crap beat out of you with a group of people using baseball bats or imagine falling backwards off a 5 story building and landing on the concrete or imagine being run over by a bus and living to tell the story—–this is my life without the broken bones and bruises and abrasions!!! Internally my body is somehow attacking itself when no germ is present causing inflamation in my joints, knots and muscle spasms that don’t stop, pain amplification in my nerves, and total and complete exhaustion that sleep does not refresh you—-this is my life with Fibromyalgia and CFS!!! Just like a flu that never ends but worse—-you know you are not going to be fine and back to work in a week or two—-this is day after day after day—–your 1st realization every morning before you are even fully awake is PAIN–the oh crap,I thought it might be gone today–a constant dream for me to wake up one day and it would be gone–but NO, not today,not tomorrow, not the day after—NEVER!!! And even if my family wants to help me I hurt worse sometimes just being touched!!! I NEED hugs but they hurt so bad too!!! Raising kids is almost to much and its not fair to them either to have the mom who can’t do what other moms do–I feel they are being cheated too—–someone find the cause and cure quickly because I think my 15 yr old daughter has started showing symptoms of the fibro for the last 3 1/2 years and my doc says it can run in families!!! Lord help her!!! Not fair doesn’t even begin to say it…………..