Have you ever wondered what the absolute worst case of fibromyalgia would be? After all, it’s a disease that affects everyone differently. And it makes sense that some people are affected by it more severely than others.
So what would be the worst case of fibromyalgia? How severely could it affect your life? And what could you do to treat it?
What Is Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is a disease that is not well understood. Essentially, it creates a general feeling of pain and fatigue around your body. There are a number of possible explanations for what causes fibromyalgia, but no one is sure what the right one is.
Some doctors believe that fibromyalgia is an autoimmune disease. That means that the body’s immune system begins to attack the healthy cells which make them inflamed and tender and causes aching in certain points around your body.
While no one knows exactly what the cause of fibromyalgia is, it’s a debilitating illness that affects people in a lot of different ways.
What Does It Do To Your Body?
Fibromyalgia causes a number of very different symptoms. And it varies so much that no two people have the exact same reaction to fibromyalgia. However, the most common system, and one that all fibromyalgia sufferers have, is chronic pain.
The pain is located along 18 specific points of the body. These are usually in your joints on both sides of the body and the level of pain can be different for different people. The level of pain can also change throughout the day.
And another common symptom for people with fibromyalgia is fatigue. Fibromyalgia sufferers often find that they can’t sleep very well, and when they do, they don’t wake up feeling refreshed the next day. As a result, people with fibromyalgia end up feeling something that is usually called a “fibro-fog.”
Fibro-fog is the name for a sort of mental cloudiness that comes with fibromyalgia. It usually presents as short-term memory loss, or trouble focusing on tasks.
Finally, fibromyalgia can cause some slightly more unusual symptoms. People with fibromyalgia often have irritable bowel syndrome, and gastrointestinal problems are very common among people who have fibromyalgia. And there are other conditions like constant itching which sometimes affect fibromyalgia sufferers.
What’s The Worst Case Of Fibromyalgia?
So if you’ve been diagnosed, you’re probably wondering how bad your fibromyalgia might actually get (what the worst case of fibromyalgia might be, basically).
Well, the good news is that your fibromyalgia won’t kill you. But fibromyalgia can still severely limit your quality of life.
Fibromyalgia affects many people by causing them to feel a constant feeling of pain and fatigue. So for people who have fibromyalgia, daily life can get very difficult.And the stories of people who have suffered from the illness for decades are heartbreaking.
Generally, fibromyalgia begins in its early stages with some warning signs. These are things like chronic fatigue and mysterious pain in eighteen points around the body. This pain is what causes most fibromyalgia patients to go to the doctor for a diagnosis. Though, if you have fibromyalgia, you probably already know how that goes.
Fibromyalgia then progresses into the chronic stage, where the pain and fatigue are constant. This is what most fibromyalgia patients live with every day. And though there are treatments, not all are effective. And everyone’s fibromyalgia seems to respond differently to different drugs.
Even the most up to date and cutting edge treatments might be completely ineffective for a lot of people. And this kind of treatment-resistant condition is the worst case of fibromyalgia since it is unresponsive to treatment and can often seem to get worse.
This is a tricky subject to discuss with any certainty, however. While most doctors will say that fibromyalgia isn’t a progressive disease for most people, some sufferers definitely report that their disease gets worse over time.
Can Fibromyalgia Make You Disabled?
So if you’ve just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, there’s a chance that your pain and fatigue levels might begin to plateau and stay roughly where they are, though some days will be worse than others.
But in the worst case of fibromyalgia, the disease will get more painful and debilitating over time.
For people whose situation is the worst case of fibromyalgia, they will likely suffer their entire lives with constant, and unmanageable pain. This leads to serious problems in their daily lives.
Often, they lose their jobs due to the fact that they are effectively disabled. The constant pain and fatigue and the mental cloudiness, or fibro fog, makes working impossible.
And for people with extremely severe fibromyalgia, even getting out of bed is close to impossible. They require heavy doses of painkillers to even walk. And it takes them heavy doses of sleeping medication to get anything close to a full night’s sleep.
For those people who have the worst case of fibromyalgia, every day is a physical struggle. But it can be an emotionally struggle as well.
Can The Worst Case Of Fibromyalgia Affect Your Relationships?
Having severe fibromyalgia makes it difficult to maintain relationships with friends and family. People who used to enjoy your company sometimes drift away because your chronic pain and lack of mobility become tough for them to deal with. While that isn’t even remotely fair, it’s often how people are.
So in the worst case of fibromyalgia, expect to lose some of the friends you had who aren’t really friends. But the good side is that you will see who truly cares about you because they will stick around.
In addition, dealing with such a severely limited quality of life is extremely difficult emotionally. The constant pain can make it feel like life isn’t worth living. And suicide is tragically common among people with severe fibromyalgia.
It’s important to get help if you feel like you might be considering taking your own life. Suicide is never a good solution, and the saying that “it doesn’t end the pain, it only spreads it to the people who care about you,” is very true.
Fibromyalgia is a horrific disease to live with. And it takes a special kind of courage to endure the worst case of fibromyalgia.
The preceding article is from FibromyalgiaTreating.com and posted here for sharing purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.