A Post Which Definitively Answers The Question “Which Came First ...”

Most of my regular readers know I have fibromyalgia. While I’d been complaining about muscle aches and pains for years, 2010 was the watershed year, a culmination of encroaching symptoms that would gradually but definitively destroy most of my life as I had known it up to that point. It didn’t help that my former primary care physician was an unprofessional imbecile. By the time I realized I had to augment him, and then replace him, I’d run the gamut of all the ways the state and federal governments screw around with a disability application. In all fairness, the PCP did have help - the psychiatrist I had used on and off for a decent number of years had suddenly taken leave of her senses as well.

Once I had gotten my medical care back on track I was, with the assistance of a social security firm, able to retire on disability (albeit 5 years before I had planned on retiring), collect my pension from the state, and get down to the business of daily life with a dreadful disorder.  Fibromyalgia is a terrible disease that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, if I had one. But it is part of who I am at this stage of my life, and I really do try to make the best it. I can’t hike up the side of a Korean mountain during monsoon season, but I can make it to the cruise terminal at Port Canaveral, so I consider myself pretty lucky.

If you are unfamiliar with fibromyalgia, here’s a quick overview: I am in pain all the time; the only thing that changes is to what degree of pain I am experiencing that particular day. I do NOT take opioids. I experience brain fog far too often to allow me to practice law or hold down any kind of job. You get the idea. My social life is limited by my disabilities, and I spend much more time with my medical providers (PCP, rheumatologist, (new) psychiatrist, mental health therapist, neurologist, orthopedist, endocrinologist, gynecologist, dental specialist, and let’s not forget those early-morning appointments at Quest Labs) than with my friends.

One question that has popped up over the past few years is “when did I get this disorder? What triggered it to explode in my late fifties - was it menopause? Unusual levels of stress at the office? The gastric bypass surgery I’d had in 2003?  I had no answers, although my old nemesis stress seemed the most likely.

And then, a month or two ago, I had an epiphany, brought about by something that popped up on my Pinterest feed, with a picture that left me staring. I haven’t been able find that damn picture since, but it had reminded me of an old photo, and then I knew that the egg had indeed come before the chicken.

Can you see it?

Do you get it?

By the way, can you bend your thumb so that it touches your forearm?

Work on it.  I’m going out to play in the dirt before the storms come.