Fibromyalgia/Stigma of Good and Bad Hours

learnFMnow Living With It 45 year old female who learned that a disease existed callled... Send Message Subscribe: learnFMnow

Sunday, November 08, 2009
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I wish to explain more about my perspective of the stigma of fibromyalgia. It seems as if the stigma exists no matter what state the FM patient happens to be in at any given time. We are not allowed to be sick. Yet we are also not allowed to have good days or hours without the ...

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beanie
Sunday, November 08, 2009 at 01:31 PM

i want to tell you how much i appreciate what you have so well written.i have been living with chronic cervical degenerative pain now for two decades and i share your sentiments completely! sometimes i am in so much pain i want to lie down on the ground and scream, but i can't because i am smiling and engaged in some social activety where people are thinking..."he's in pain?" it is the pain on the inside and smile on the outside (my two concurrent existensies) that is more and more difficult.....especially when i am with family member's i love and try to protect from my suffering....thank you again for your wonderful sharepost

beanie, d.m.d.

re: Untitled Comment
learnFMnow
Monday, November 09, 2009 at 10:35 AM

I am so glad I could reach someone out there who needs understanding. People tend to judge no matter what. You can grimace and they think you are faking. You smile and they think nothing in the world is wrong. I just get fed up with the everyday stereotypes of what people think pain "looks like". Pain is what we "feel" not what we can see. People living in chronic pain often react to pain much differently than one whom has just had their toe hit with a hammer. We learn to live with chronic pain because if not, we would not live at all.

Thanks,

Debra

a.k.a. learnFMnow

smiling in pain
beanie
Monday, November 09, 2009 at 04:28 PM

debra....i am most interested in how people in chronic pain live everyday at two different "levels"...i just went to a wedding and smiled and socialized (at night) while screaming out internally in a level 8 pain and stiffness!...sometimes i feel like just won't be able to do it....then what??

beanie