I suffered for a long time without a diagnosis. It took them four years to finally diagnose me correctly. I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and mixed connective tissue disease.

My pain is so bad that sometimes I just have to lay in bed without moving and I can’t leave the house unless its going to the doctor to get a pain treatment.  And sometimes those don’t work. It took me a long time to find a doctor that believed in my symptoms and didn’t tell me it was all in my head.  If I go to a new doctor, I get the grunt under the breath as soon as I say fibromyalgia and I usually don’t go back to that doctor.

Every day is hard for me. I can do everything the doctors tell me, but it doesn’t matter how much because the pain is so persistent.  I wish I had good days, but I don’t.  There are days when I just sit and cry, but that is when I talk to someone in my family and it distracts me from the pain.

Nobody should be like this.  Doctors have an oath to follow that says first do no harm.  Well, I know a lot of doctors who have broken that oath.  There were days when I was in the emergency room and had nurses making comments about me.  You can’t see my disease, but I know if they could be me for a day those people wouldn’t be so judgmental about our situations.

No woman should be left without treatment.