The beginning of the battle

I have been dealing with the symptoms of fibromyalgia for almost 17 years. It started with an odd feeling in my feet when I was a senior in college, May 1991. It felt like my feet itched. Looking back, I realize it was the tingling sensation that fibro patients often feel in their extremities. I applied lotion to it and just could not imagine what was causing it. Within a few months, I began my now popular practice of cramming my feet between the wall and the bed to find some relief from the discomfort.

Step one in my journey to find a diagnosis was to see a podiatrist; at that point the discomfort was limited to my feet. I was fitted for some rather expensive orthotic inserts for my shoes. I was teaching at the time, and luckily they were supportive and allowed me to wear tennis shoes at work. I wore them for six months with no relief. Strike one.

With this blog, I hope to share some of what I went through arriving at a diagnosis of fibromyalgia so that others know that they are not alone in their struggle. It seems today fibromyalgia is much more accepted as a condition than it was when I began 17 years ago. Not sure if that makes the struggle any easier, but knowing that there is help out there hopefully is comforting.

This entry is filed under June. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.