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Have you had the flu this year? You know the feeling: aching muscles, headaches, dizziness ... pretty awful stuff. Imagine what it would be like if you couldn't get rid of those symptoms for years and Doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. If you're one of the thousands of people who've suffered from this phantom illness, there may now be an answer. "Sometimes it's so burning and so stabbing... And it feels like somebody has come up and stabbed me with a knife. My pain is so much a part of my life that I'm always thinking about it." Linda Martinson does a fine job of hiding it, but for 8 long years she could barely get out of bed. Methadone and morphine are now the only things that kill the unrelenting pain.
Chronic muscle aches, headaches and sleepless nights put a strain on her marriage -- but her husband Don was always by her side, even when Linda wanted to give up. "There were times when I know that she was contemplating suicide... I knew she didn't want to live her life like that." Linda went to 13 different doctors, but they found no source for her pain and even called them "phantom symptoms." Finally, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a little known chemical brain disorder that affects 5 percent of the population...mostly women.
"Some of them think they're dying because the pain is unbearable and the fatigue is just terrible for these patients. And they're often diagnosed as having something else." Rheumatologist Dr. Paul Brown says routine laboratory testing for these patients may reveal nothing, but those who suffer from fibromyalgia will be sensitive to pressure in certain tender points around the body, including the neck, shoulder, chest, hip, knee and elbow regions.
Although there is no known cause for fibromyalgia, it is thought to be triggered by an infection or serious trauma like a car wreck, as in Linda's case, or a boating accident.
"I was thrown from a boat into a rock and I had blacked out ...after that it seemed that things kept slowly progressing downward." 47-year old Ellen Langan was once an active woman...dance and theatre kept her busy, and a new daughter kept her in shape. Then life suddenly got worse. Even playing with Anna became difficult, and the body aches were unbearable. "I'm always having to say mommy is too tired, you know, I can't do that I'm sorry."
Her husband, Steven Krafchick, knows her pain first hand as an attorney who helps win compensation for patients with disabilities like fibromyalgia, he says it's *not* all in their heads. "I deal with injured people everyday and use the skills that I have to try and get them through the medical legal insurance maze." Steven continued to say: "By providing a name for it and suggesting that it was fibromyalgia that helped a lot and really gave people something to hold on to." But unfortunately, there is no cure. So while scientists are searching for an answer...Linda is finding her own. She's written a book of poems about the reality of chronic pain... A kind of therapy that has given her solace for now and hope for the future. "You have to have hope, if you don't have hope it is pretty hard to go on." To order her book, you can call 1-800-356-9315
Until a cure is found, muscle relaxants, pain medication and alternative therapies like acupuncture have helped some patients lead more normal lives.
For more information on the condition you can consult the following
resources:
BY PHONE
Fibromyalgia Alliance of America: 1-614-457-4222 (Non-Profit)
BY WEBSITE:
National Fibromyalgia Research Association: http://www.teleport.com/~nfra/
Oregon Fibromyalgia Association: http://www.myalgia.com
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