Can Fibromyalgia have superpowers, or does it only feel that way? I am not sure, but on the morning of September 27, 2006, my Fibromyalgia intensified to a level I did not think was possible.

I was driving to one of my sales accounts that was nearly two hours away. It was one of my least favorite accounts because of the distance, and because they were very high maintenance but very low volume. So I was already in a mood when the traffic on the freeway slowed suddenly from a comfortable 70 MPH to an irritating 20 MPH – you know, one of those congestions in traffic that occur for no apparent reason, and let up again as quickly as they began. After years of driving San Diego County to call on my accounts I had become a very conscientious driver. I am convinced you see the worst of human nature on the roads. People get ugly when they get behind the wheel. On this morning I began slowing with the traffic and kept a good distance between me and the car ahead of me. I was going 20 MPH max, probably less, when I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a giant green beast flying up behind me. I didn’t even have time to think “Oh shit!” before the truck slammed into the back of me and sent my car flying off into the center median. Fortunately the median between the north and south lanes of traffic was big and grassy, and my car ended up there instead of in the back end of the vehicle in front of me.

I sat stunned, with my eyes closed and my head spinning. It felt like someone had injected a gallon of nauseous fluid into my brain and if I moved or opened my mouth it would all come spilling out. I think I was holding my breath because all of a sudden my body forced me to take a huge gulp of air which quieted the nausea a little. I could hear the young boy who hit me standing at the driver’s side window, knocking and asking me if I was okay. He kept saying “ma’am, ma’am, ma’am,” and I could hear the anxiety in his voice. I finally opened my eyes and turned to him just to put his mind at ease, but my brain still felt like it was swimming in that nauseous liquid.

I ended up in emergency again, this time with severe whiplash and a concussion. Again I was looking at another long road to recovery. I kept thinking how lucky and grateful I was that I had not suffered any broken bones or more serious injuries, but I had no idea the extent of the injuries to my brain and how this accident would change my Fibromyalgia from a relatively mild and livable case into an extreme superpower! So what does Fibromyalgia with superpowers look like you ask? Putting the brain trauma aside for now, I will just describe to you the changes in my FM.

Pain! Oh I thought I knew pain. I thought the pain and flare-ups I had experienced over the 10 years I had been living with FM was the most my body and mind could ever possibly manage, but I was wrong. You know that scale the doctors have, when they ask you to rate your pain from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most pain you have ever been in? Well I had not so infrequently expressed my pain as severe as an 8 or a 9 in reference to one of my many recurring flare-ups. But what was an 8 or a 9 before the accident was now a 5 or 6. My new 8-9 kicked the old 8-9′s butt. My new pain scale was re-calibrated to the kind of intense, burning, stabbing, aching, nauseating, unrelenting pain that makes you think if it doesn’t let up soon you will surely lose your mind or do something drastic to make it stop. It was the kind of pain that found me curled up on the bathroom floor in misery while my husband looked on unable to even touch me to help me get up. It was not a nice pain!

But my FM superpowers did not stop at my ability to feel pain at an unimaginable level. They also awakened my senses to sounds, smells and bold-vibrant colors. I have excellent hearing – superb is how my ENT described it – which should be an asset right? Well with my FM superpowers, my previously enjoyable ability to hear the many nuances in the world around me, became a detriment in that now I felt like I was constantly being yelled out. The TV, radio, if my dogs barked, when the alarm went off –  any loud abrupt noise was like a full-fisted slug to the back of my head and a green light for my pain to shoot up on the pain scale. Intense smells and bold colors had the same physical affect on me. Sensory overload with a punch to the face for good measure!

And lets talk about the weather shall we. Before the accident I had heat sensitivity, but only to extreme heat, and no sensitivity to the cold. But with my new FM superpowers, my body responded to changes in temperature like a delicate flower. Anything above 85 degrees and my pain left me wilted and useless, and anything below 65 degrees my body was tense and knotted with pain. So now I am equipped with a handy dandy, built-in weather device. I can sense the slightest change in temperature and tell you the degree based on my pain level. How handy is that!

I could go on and talk about the fatigue and the sleep deprivation and my complete inability to formulate an intelligent sentence, but I think you get my point. So that is how my Fibromyalgia got its superpowers, and this is my new and current reality. My Fibromyalgia is everything it had been to the power of ten – with several new symptoms thrown in for variety and superpower affect. They do not come with a cape, or an invisible airplane, or any of the cool accessories you might expect for a superpower. But if I were to narrate and chronicle them into a comic book, they would look something like this - 

Comic Fight Club

Just a glimpse into my internal fight club if I were to illustrate my Fibromyalgia symptoms. I am currently taking bets that I am eventually going to kick all their butts if anyone is interested.

It has been nearly thirteen years now since the onset of my FM. At the time I was a healthy and active person. I worked full-time in management at a high-energy, high-stress job which I thrived on. I had one speed during this period of my life – fast and furious! In addition to working full-time, I took evening college courses. I had an active social life which kept me going the nights I was not in class. I was physically fit and active – rollerblading, hiking, backpacking. My days were full and my down time was pretty much non-existent.

And then early one morning as I was showering for work, everything changed. It was about 5AM. I had my back to the water and turned towards the wall to grab the shampoo. I felt my feet slip out from underneath me and understood immediately I was going to be hurt. There was nothing I could do. Slowly I started falling to my right, out of the tub and towards the toilet. There was only the thin, filmy shower curtain to slow my progress. With nothing to grab hold of, and no way to stop my momentum, all of my body weight was behind the impact as my head smacked into the porcelain toilet tank. The collision was strong, solid and in that moment painless. I fell to the floor stunned, awaiting the pain that I knew was lying just beneath the shock.

From there my memories are vague. I recall the nurse in the ER asking me “Can you point to your nose for me?” I recognized the word “nose,” but I could not contribute the familiar word to any part of my body. I hit my head just above my right temple. The impact was so hard I broke the lid to the toilet tank. Don’t think that hasn’t been a source of humor for my family over the years! It is one of the reasons my husband and I named our business Hard Head Media (the other being that he is the most stubborn person in the world!).

I was on disability for 6 months trying to recover from this accident. I never did. The trauma to my brain improved, but the symptoms of Fibromyalgia began to set in. The all over body pain was the worst of it. It was so bad I had to lay in bed naked because I could not stand to feel clothes against my skin. Even the weight of the sheet was sometimes too much. PAIN! Everything else was gone and pain became the dominant fixture in my life. Each time I complained to my doctor I was feeling worse, she said “You couldn’t possible be. Enough time has passed. You should be feeling better by now.” It would make me so angry and desperate to sit in her office and plead with her for help, only to be handed another prescription for drugs. I did not want to mask the symptoms, I wanted them to GO AWAY!

I was persistent. Finally she sent me to a Rheumatologist who then sent me to a Neurologist. The Neurologist was fun! I was his last patient of the day. My appointment was for 4PM. At 5:30PM I was still sitting in his waiting room. First he tried to send me away, but I refused. I wanted answers and he was going to give them to me. He took one look at me – not my chart, just me – and said “You want me to tell you you have a brain tumor. Well I am not going to tell you you have a brain tumor. But if it turns out you do have a brain tumor, you are the kind of person who will sue me.” He was a lovely man. We still exchange Christmas cards to this day! But he did finally do one thing right for me. I sat in his office determined and unintimidated and he finally consented that he thought I had Fibromyalgia. I had never heard the term Fibromyalgia before, but I was relieved to have finally been given a name for what he believed was causing all of my symptoms. He referred me to a pain specialist and she was the one who helped me get my symptoms under control.

Dr. DuQuett is her name. She was (probably still is) a no muss, no fuss kind of doctor. She was firm, direct, and not for a second did she encourage me to feel sorry for myself or let myself feel victimized. She is the one who refused to extend my disability. She forced me to redefine my life and discover how I could still be a productive person, even with a chronic pain condition. Tough love. First she put me through 16 weeks of therapy at a pain clinic though. There I learned how to reduce my symptoms with physical and aquatic therapy, meditation and relaxation, and biofeedback. I have said it before, I believe she gave me an incredible gift. I still suffered through many Fibromyalgia flare-ups after my treatment, and there were times that I did wish I was on permanent disability, but the majority of the time I managed, and sometimes I even thrived.

From when my treatment at the pain clinic ended in 1997 until the next inciting factor in 2006, I managed fairly well. My life was different. Fibromyalgia was a constant presence, but I learned to adjust to my new reality. I became a freelance sales rep and grew my territory into one of the top in the nation. I continued with my evening college courses, and in 2004 graduated with a degree in Literature and Writing. I got married to the amazing man who I had just started dating 6 weeks before the tub accident. We bought our first home together and traveled frequently. Life was good. But that all came to a screeching halt on the day my Fibromyalgia got superpowers! Dunt, dunt, duhn!!!

To be continued…

Continued here: How my Fibromyalgia Got Superpowers.