By Jayanti Shekhar
The Womensday.com story - Living in pain - simply does not discuss the experience of Carolyn Bishop but reflects the suffering of entire humanity from fibromyalgia.
Carolyn says in her article, "When the nurse told me that I had fibromyalgia, I started crying. Finally someone was taking me seriously. Lyrica isn´t a miracle drug, but as soon as I started taking it, I began to feel better. When my daughter too was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, she started taking Lyrica as well as a number of other drugs and supplements. I do not worry about her being on some of these drugs at such a young age… Best of all, she won´t have to spend decades in pain wondering what´s wrong."
The story inspired me to find out what actually fibromyalgia is? Why it takes decades to get diagnosed?
Fibromyalgia has been studied since the early 1800s and referred to by a variety of former names, including muscular rheumatism and fibrositis. The term fibromyalgia was coined in 1976 to describe the symptoms more accurately, from the Latin fibra (fiber) and the Greek words myo (muscle) and algos (pain).
Fibromyalgia is a human disorder classified by the presence of chronic widespread pain. Fibromyalgia means pain in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons – the soft fibrous tissues in the body. It can affect every aspect of a person's life. While neither degenerative nor fatal, the chronic pain associated with fibromyalgia is pervasive and persistent.
Symptoms of fibromyalgia are often aggravated by unrelated illness or changes in the weather. The primary symptoms of fibromyalgia include widespread musculoskeletal pain, severe fatigue, and disturbed sleep. It is often seen that those suffering from fibromyalgia will have other associated conditions and symptoms like a heightened and painful response to gentle touch (allodynia), needle-like tingling of the skin, weakness in the limbs, nerve pain, and functional bowel disturbances. Many patients also experience cognitive dysfunction. It is because of these overlapping symptoms that fibromyalgia diagnosis becomes difficult. The difficulty with diagnosing fibromyalgia is that, in most cases, laboratory testing appears normal and that many of the symptoms mimic those of other rheumatic conditions such as arthritis or osteoporosis......
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/70552 
