Call me pedantic, but when I hear someone say “I feel your pain,” I bristle. Sure, the sentiment may be sweet, but let’s get real.
Physical pain is one of the loneliest, most isolating experiences possible. If it isn’t happening to you, you can’t share the sensation. And because pain is invisible, and particularly if no cause is found, it can be tough to muster even the slightest whiff of genuine sympathy—let alone pain-relief by proxy.
This is the experience of many women who deal with fibromyalgia (FM), or chronic pain, on a daily basis. The word speaks for itself. “Fibro” means fibrous, “my” stands for muscles and “algia” is pain. But the illness itself is far less simple to decipher.
Until relatively recently, many doctors pooh-poohed women who walked into their offices complaining of deep-down fatigue and persistent pain pretty much everywhere. These women were dismissed as neurotics or hypochondriacs when all they wanted was help. Some are still looking. Despite The National Fibromyalgia Association reporting that between five and seven percent of Americans (the vast majority women) have FM, it takes an average of five years before they are officially diagnosed.
It took Jemma far longer. For fifteen years, she was knocked out by spells of intense, excruciating pain in different parts of her body, which hit, persisted, and then disappeared abruptly. She had hordes of conventional tests and yet the concrete cause of her suffering eluded doctors.
The trouble started when she was twenty-five, in the gym doing press-ups. The sudden pain in her neck spread to her head… and lasted a year. Jemma’s doctor said it was sinuses, and she had three operations. None helped.
The next time, two years later, Jemma was crumpled with stomachache. Her appendix—which turned out to be just like any other appendix: evolutionarily redundant but not inflamed—was removed. And Jemma’s ache stubbornly stayed for another year and half.
Apart from an excruciating episode of jaw pain—when she insisted her dentist pull two totally healthy teeth—Jemma then remained pain-free for almost six years.
“I married a wonderful man and we had a beautiful son,” Jemma explains. “Everything was going well. Then my body crashed. Pain screamed from every limb and joint and it was so bad, I couldn’t sleep. I was bedridden, crying, and my mother-in-law had to take over. Some days, I was in so much agony, I fantasised about suicide.”
Ali is another woman whose life was shattered by the sudden onset of unexplainable pain. This attractive actress was packing for a romantic weekend away with her boyfriend when she had an intense pain in her neck.
“The GP [doctor] said it was just a muscle spasm,” says Ali. “I flew to Venice in a neck brace and couldn’t turn my head. Talk about a passion killer.”
In fact the spasms, which migrated to between her shoulder blades, kept coming. She was referred to a rheumatologist and an orthopaedic specialist. Ali was diagnosed with chronic pain, but neither specialist could find its cause.
“I sensed everyone was coming to the conclusion I was a nutcase,” Ali recalls.
Still suffering two years later, she was alone—the boyfriend had left—and broke.
“I couldn’t perform properly and I couldn’t temp for weeks at a time either,” she says.
Like Ali, Jemma was referred to a rheumatologist, who eventually diagnosed FM, which is so strikingly similar to chronic pain syndrome, some doctors believe they are the same.
Jemma, like Ali, was offered antidepressants. Both women still find a low dose beneficial.
This supports the predominate theory on the cause of FM. Research has shown people with FM have lower levels of the feel-good brain chemical serotonin, which also plays a big part in pain control and regulating sleep.
Some experts speculate physical trauma, like an injury, viruses (although no one virus has been identified), and hereditary factors all influence the onset of FM. The problem is lack of evidence.
