Did I have Fibromyalgia?

I told my new PT where I was going and he wasn’t happy at all. He warned me that I may come out of there with a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. Unfortunately, many of his clients had been going to this particular doctor and all of them had come out with a new diagnosis. He gave me some paperwork to read and recommended the book: All About Fibromyalgia: A Guide for Patients and Their Families by Daniel J. Wallace and Janice Brock Wallace. I immediately ordered the book and read it page by page prior to my appointment with the surgeon. I did not feel that the book was describing me in any way.

Unfortunately, things turned out just as my PT had warned me. I spent a few minutes with the Surgeon. He had me do a few different muscle tests and he left. He came back a little while later and said, “Let me tell you what you have.” I knew what I had. I had a compression fracture in the thoracic region of my back that was left untreated and was now causing me severe pain. I had seen the x-rays. I had already told him that I was not taking pain killers as I was nursing a baby. He said, “You have Fibromyalgia and the only thing I can offer you is a prescription to kill the pain. Come back when you are no longer nursing and we’ll see what we can do.”

I wonder if there are other women who did not have the warning that I did. Did they walk out of his office with a new label? Did they now look through every thing in life with fibromyalgia-colored lenses. Every ache, every pain, every day that they just didn’t get enough rest the night before and they wanted a few more hours of sleep, did they blame it on their fibromyalgia? I wonder.