the dreaded symptoms

I'm kind of letting this blog take shape all on it's own, since I don't really have it mapped out. It occured to me today, that my goal is to increase awareness/understanding of FMS and that if I'm going to do that I should probably define the disease/syndrome itself.

I recently got the book "Taking Charge of Fibromyalgia", it gives a good outline of symptoms/criteria for diagnosing the disease so I'm going to borrow their good work...lol

their definition reads: "history of widespread pain for at least 3 months...Pain on the left and...right side of the body. Pain above the waist...and below. This includes: cervical spine or anterior chest or thoracic spine and low back pain"

Most common symptoms listed are:
-muscle pain
-tender points
-sleep disturbance

listed as frequent symptoms....but in my opinion they are common symptoms....
-extreme fatigue
-subjective swelling
-joint pain/restless extremities particularly legs
-neurological symptoms
-headache
-irritable bowel/bladder
-morning stiffness
-raynaud's phenomenon
-memory problems
-difficulty with concentration/short term memory
-decreased painful sound threshold
-dizziness/vertigo
-heart palpitations....

Now to be fair the list goes on for pages, I'm just highlighting what seems to me to be the most frequently mentioned symptoms when I have conversed with other's. These definately give an overview of my personal symptoms.
When typing them it seems like an extremely long list! ick...the sad part is, that it is just the basics of the disease, as it affects everything in your body and how you function in general.

I'm so scared that by posting these types of things that I will only scare more people off. I guess what it comes down to is that I'm pretty uncomfortable with sharing vulnerable parts of my life...it's one thing for Bret and Lee to know the dirty truth of this disease and how it affects me, but it's a totally different proposition to be posting it on this blog with no control over who sees it.
But....
that's the whole point right? If I don't take the risk, then I can't expect the general public to understand this disease let alone how it affects those of us who have it.

So I'll leave you with the plea to take this information in, and not be judgemental, rather supportive of anyone in your life who has FMS. Second, PLEASE leave comments so I know that this is at least reaching more than just "aplseed" and myself....lol....if nothing else it's proving to be rather cathartic for me....(blink, blink, blink)

jan/hobbz