How do you explain your illness to those who don’t have it?
While I haven’t come up with a good way to explain chronic fatigue syndrome, I describe fibromyalgia as a full-body migraine. Anyone who has ever had a migraine understands immediately, and most people at least know someone who does have disabling migraines.
If someone wants more info, I can go on about the fact that fibromyalgia is a neurological disorder and talk about recent research. If they’re really curious, I can hand them a paper I wrote.
Help me out here, please? What’s the best brief, “gets to them” description you know of for your chronic illness?
I use “like being beaten up and then run over by a truck”.
Stumbled across the blog via Cynthia’s blog by way of the Stitchers Bloggers Weekly Question. I passed it on my to my mom. I’m 23 and a second generation sufferer who’s still figuring out how to cope with it and keep working for a while.