Accepting Being Sick

Fibromyalgia is a monster that comes in and tries to steal everything away from you.  A few months ago I would have said that it does steal everything away from you, but I know better now.  Every day is a fight though, to retain your independence, self-worth, self-esteem and your life as you know it in general.

We get used to the pain for the most part.  S0me days are better than others.  We learn to deal with the myriad of other symptoms, but there’s one thing we never really get used to and that’s the lack of understanding.  Most doctors don’t even understand it and most act like they don’t even want to mess with it.  Without doctors on our side 100%, we fight this battle alone. I can tell my doctor doesn’t know much about it because he always refers to it as Fibromyalgia pain.  The pain sucks, but that’s far from being the only thing that Fibro does to you.  What about the debilitating fatigue, hair loss, rashes, hearing and vision problems and the list goes on and on.  They really need to change the name of it because it minimizes what we have to go through.

We don’t want pity.  The last thing I want is for someone to tell me how sorry they are that I have Fibromyalgia.  That makes my condition seem hopeless and it’s not, at least it doesn’t have to be.  We do still get to live our lives.  We just have to find alternative ways of doing it.  We have to manage our time differently than a healthy person.  We have to look at the bigger picture in order to plan ahead, but before we can even begin all that we have to accept that we have a chronic illness and that despite that we can still be who we’ve dreamed of being.  We have to learn to love ourselves just the way we are.  We have to accept our limitations and learn to NEVER use our illness as an excuse not to do something we are capable of doing.

I hope everyone is having a good day.  *Gentle Hugs*