Fibromyalgia stories: my diagnosis, by people living with fibromyalgia

I find it fascinating reading how people received their diagnosis of fibromyalgia and thought you might too so I am sharing many of them here from the fibro bloggers in our Directory. 

I have noticed a few common threads in these stories - many of us went to quite a few doctors before we received a diagnosis, many of us had to keep pushing to find out what was wrong, many of us found our symptoms were not taken seriously or took years to diagnose.

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'It took years for me to get a diagnosis … and I had to do it on my own.
Learning to become my own advocate, I finally discovered what was wrong. Of course, my symptoms were devastating. I felt like an 80-year-old trapped in the body of someone who wasn’t yet 40.' ~ Sue from Rebuilding Wellness.

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'Finally, they gave me a diagnosis of exclusion, something called Fibromyalgia, because their diagnostics are not sophisticated enough yet to source the true cause of the problem. They told me it is not terminal, but there are limited ways to treat the burning fire inside my muscles that debilitate me.' Leah from Chronicles of FIBRO

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'A visit to the Neurologist resulted in a bunch of tests but they couldn’t find any reason for the symptoms. He sent me to a couple of other specialists and they couldn’t find anything either. Eventually, through research of my own and pushing to see a Rheumatologist, I received a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia.' ~ Julie from Counting My Spoons

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'The rheumatologist was the first person who looked at me and said, “something is wrong, I can tell.” But all my labs came back fine, as always. So she diagnosed me with fibromyalgia because I did have all the tender points required to meet the diagnoses (and more). At the time, I didn’t really believe in fibro, not that I thought people were faking, more like it was a diagnosis you get when the doctor has no clue what is wrong. I fought the diagnosis for a long time.' ~ Shelley from Chronic Mom

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'In July 2009, I finally got to meet with a Rheumatologist, Dr van Zyl at Unitas Hospital. Within 10 minutes, he diagnosed me with severe Fibromyalgia! I was not crazy, and it was not all in my head! Finally, someone that believed and understood what I was going through.' ~ Angelique Gilchrist from Fibro Ramblings.

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'The second rheumatologist at 20 was the one who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. By then I had a family history with it as well as my father had been diagnosed. At this time the tender point test was still something they did. And I had a whole lot of pain in those spots for sure.' ~ Nikki Albert from Brainless Blogger.

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'The symptoms came on gradually, starting with back pain, infections, shoulder pain, insomnia – and finally a referral to a pain clinic where I was told I had a chronic, incurable illness. I left school and spent the next year in a state of shock.' ~ Katarina from Skillfully Well and Painfully Aware.

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'Fibromyalgia was a diagnosis I received around the age of 27. Like a lot of people with this condition I was ill for a very long time before I was considered to have something more going on than just being stressed out. My initial symptoms were dismissed on a regular basis by health professionals who believed I was simply burning out from work, but I was becoming more and more unwell. So unwell in fact I became like someone in my 80s and not my 20s. It affected my ability to work, to socialise, in fact my ability to do anything.

After much back and forth with the doctor and referrals to the wrong clinics, I was eventually diagnosed with Fibro by a Rheumatologist and discharged from their care the very same day.' ~ Sarah at Me, Myself, and Chronic Illness Blog

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'From my childhood years up until early twenties I went from doctor to doctor undergoing laborious blood tests of all kinds to rule many illnesses.

“She just needs exercise and vitamins” was a common response from the clueless doctors.

After the familiar, stressful blood tests again doctors in NYC diagnosed me with having a connective tissue disease, but rheumatologists in London disagreed and named the culprit fibromyalgia. There you go, fm diagnosis in its simplest form!' ~ Alisha at The Invisible F.

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