My journey to becoming a bundle of physical pain started with an ongoing intense wrist ache that no matter how much rest or physio or yelling at it to “just be normal!” wouldn’t stop hurting.
It prevented me from writing essays, carrying books and holding onto the barre in ballet classes. I eventually became too fatigued to even make it through the door.
Then the pain spread to my knees and ankles, it swept across my elbows and shoulders.
It was so overwhelming that when I looked in the mirror I was shocked to see a normal teenage girl instead of the old woman compressed by agony that I felt like inside.
It was a wildly confusing time in my life, partly because it felt like no one believed me.
Despite my constant plea to doctors, relatives, teachers and peers that “EVERYTHING HURTS” I was still being greeted with mild sympathy overshadowed by a larger attitude of disbelief.
The experience was traumatising for my parents, who saw their outgoing and energetic daughter reduced to a shell of a person radiating pain and distrust.
After a few doctors’ appointments where x-rays turned up no sprains, breaks or imbedded alien implants – doctors started telling my mum that I must just have depression.
“It’s in her joints, not her brain,” she would tell them, frustrated and they would wince with an expression that said “is it?”
There was a moment where after continuous random re-injury and ongoing joint pain where a freak accident led to my elbow being broken at school.
Despite my arm looking like a mangled diagram in a first aid textbook no one called an ambulance because they were used to me screaming and crying in pain.
The situation greatly affected my mental health which was already stretched by years of trying to convince people that I wasn’t lying to them about my pain.
Eventually, my parents ended up sleeping on my bedroom floor to watch over me.
I screamed and howled that the universe must not want me to be alive if it was continually inflicting pain on what doctors could only describe as normal healthy 16-year-old body.
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was 19.
After five years of vague accusations of lying from medical professionals, the chronic joint pain I’d been experiencing since I was 14 was given a name.
My overwhelming feeling was of relief - not at the prospect that what I had was incurable and vastly unknown to medical professionals - but that the feeling of being gaslit by my own body could finally be abated.
When you are diagnosed with a chronic condition, the doctor often adds a fun spiel about which celebrities have the same disorder that you do.
I was right! This wasn’t just a normal part of growing up! Also, Lady Gaga has it too and she seems to be doing alright for herself!
A serious medical diagnosis might not seem like a cause for celebration, but it came after my high school experience being turned into a torment of aching joints and accusations of fabricating a mysterious pain to avoid dodgeball.
However, even when I was finally able to name the condition that had plagued my adolescence, I was given no more treatment options than I was when they were saying I was making it up.
This is because, despite affecting between two and ten per cent of the Australian population, fibromyalgia has no cure and no specific treatment.
So, to deal with my pain I take anti-inflammatory medication, use heat packs and swim when I can bear it.
There is still an overarching attitude surrounding my body because I’m young and fit, I should be able to cope.
No medical professional has given me an alternative so that’s what I do. I cope.
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