By Janice Sumpton, BScPhm; London, Ontario; POSTED: July 2021

I want to share with you the frustrations of living with pain and how it affects me every day, its impact on my family, and ways I have found to cope with the intrusiveness of persistent pain. The frustrations of chronic pain are many. Pain is always present and I can not escape it. My pain began at age 38. I am happily married with two children, ages 6 and 8.

There is the frustration of waiting years for a diagnosis.

The pain and overwhelming fatigue are real. As a health professional I know there aren’t always answers, but as a patient I need an answer. Fortunately, I have a very supportive family doctor who referred me to specialists to find an answer. After10 different specialists, multiple tests and invasive procedures, a rheumatologist diagnosed fibromyalgia. It is a complex disorder with constant pain throughout my body, overwhelming fatigue and difficulty thinking(cognitive impairment). In addition ,many other symptoms are pieces of the puzzle. I felt relief when given a diagnosis, despite the news that pain would be with me the rest of my life. I could now put on my pharmacist hat and find out everything that I could about fibromyalgia so I could live with this condition the best way possible.

The most frustrating aspect of pain is that it is invisible to others.

Pain is what the patient says it is.

My muscles feel like I’m going through the worst flu ever. The pain is throbbing, twisting, burning, aching, tingling or like a knife turning inside muscle. Sometimes it feels like a bug or snake crawling under my skin and I feel it moving. In the evening when I can finally sit down and rest, my ankles and feet are so uncomfortable that the only relief is to move them constantly, stand, or walk, which is the last thing the rest of my body wants. My pain affects what clothes I can comfortably wear. Only soft, light clothes are bearable because light touch to the skin is painful. The soft brush of my dog’s wagging tail hurts my legs.