My Fibromyalgia History

I developed Fibromyalgia in 1980 but was not diagnosed officially until 1993 when fibromyalgia was rediscovered. Fibromyalgia was originally called Fibrositis around the turn of the nineteenth century but was lost after that.

I was in the hospital for five weeks with every imaginable test being run on me. All the tests keep coming back normal although I was still in pain. They finally released me on condition that I see a psychiatrist. That didn’t help very much either. It was an expensive way to have to talk to another person.

In the 1950s people with fibromyalgia were called hypochondriacs. Fortunately today that is no longer the case. Fibromyalgia is defined as 11 of 18 trigger points hurting for three months or longer on both sides of the body. A doctor who knows where those points are can find those spots quickly and make the patient hit the ceiling even when they didn’t think those points were hurting right then.

Because the medical community let me down in the 1980s, I had to come up with ways to cope with life myself. I will be sharing how I did this in later posts.