I don't know how long I've had fibro, to be honest. I know since having my first child ten years ago, my body's seemed to be falling apart.
Shoulders, hands, arms, knees, hips, back....it's just been pain after pain. At different times I've been diagnosed with carpal tunnel, bursitis,
arthritis, some knee thing I forget the name of at the moment, depression, and basically just brushed off as whiney.
This present doctor, I basically just went in one day almost in tears, probably the second time I met him. I'm lucky he didn't just brush me off
as overemotional or something. I just told him look, here's the thing, I hurt all the time. Some nights I can't sleep, because my knees or hips
touching the bed hurt too bad. Some days I can barely lift my kids. Other days I am almost completely fine! There is rarely a time I'm not aching
somewhere. I just don't know what will happen if I'm like this at 32! He did the pressure test, and asked me questions, and talked with me,
and then did some tests to rule out other stuff. That brought us to the diagnosis of fibro.
As he explained it it all made sense. It was a relief, to know i'm not crazy or dying from some weird disease, but also depressing because I have
a few relatives (whom I know of, but don't know well) who have this and I knowi t doesn't go away.
A few things that I realised later that aren't normal....stuff like if you bump gently into something as you walk past, or you scratch a bug bite, it shouldn't still hurt that you touched your thigh, like ten minutes later. If you cat stnds on you but hasn't sat yet, the pressure of his paws, shouldn't hurt so bad it makes you grit your teeth. Aching all the time? not normal.
A lot I had brushed off myself as 'normal' for aging.
Turns out, I'm not actually that old!