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.
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