What do you do when nobody believes in fibro?

[RickGreen]

I have suffered for years with all the symptoms of fibro but had no idea it existed.
Then after months of tests and questions I was finally diagnosed which frankly did not make me any better!
As I was letting friends and family know my results I was staggered by how many people where telling me either they had it or they know someone who has it.
The biggest hurdle I have at the moment is that the vast majority of people in my neck of the woods simply do not believe fibro even exists, in fact most think it is a made up illness and just something to fob off people when they can't find anything wrong.
It has gotten so bad that I have stopped telling people about my fibro and just say something like "oh you wouldn't believe me if I told you".
Personally I don't care what it is called and I don't care what it is. All I know is my pain is very real and there is no treatment up to no that has helped in any real way.
I am so very down about all of this and even told my doctor about it who immediately put a control on my drugs and put me on a watch list, very constructive and just made things worse!
So please tell me what do I do and how do I convince people that it is real?

[SassyLassie]

Hello~Unfortunately, when a person is diagnosed with fibro, folks just believe it is all in their head, it is sad, I go through it all the time, I finally just don't tell others how I feel or just say I hurt all over. If they don't believe me, I just think the heck with them, they are not worth my time anyway, true friends will believe you. It seems like if you have any other illness like a sore throat, heart issues, etc, people take you serious, but things that really don't have a clear-cut diagnosis or cover a wide range of symptoms, people think you are lying.

I am sorry your doctor put you on a control list, that is not right, wasn't he the one that told you that you had fibro in the first place?

I wish I had an answer as to how to convince people, but sadly, if they are not going to believe you, nothing you can say will change their minds, maybe one day if they are diagnosed with it, they will understand.

[Nazareth434]

Yo0u tell them "I have Fibro- Fibro can best be explained this way... Picture a battery- when the battery gets drained, you recharge it- people sleep at night and recharge to 100% by morning. People with Fibro only get to recharge to about 1/2 or even 1/4 by morning because of a defect- and by noone they are so drained they need to recharge again to make it through the rest of the day', and we never get to over 1/2 charge- so everything is much more effort for us because our bodies are running low on energy all the time... Oh, and our muscles and joints hurt all the time- we don't get breaks from that like a normal person does- Our muscles can't keep up with our normal every day lifestyles- and it's tough!"

[Sara_MHModerator]

Thank you very much for this description. That will hopefully help people!