Imaginary patient

"Drink something to calm down and take your blood pressure," a hoarse, disinterested voice told me when I called 911.

"But I don't have any medicine, nor a blood pressure monitor," I said tearfully as the other party hung up. Braking in my left leg, tingling all over my body, excruciating pain in my neck and severe dizziness were obviously not enough to get someone from the emergency room to attend to my case.

I was already supposed to be at a very important dinner, which meant everything to me from the perspective of that time, but today - absolutely nothing. The thought of failed plans further spiced up the cycle of panic and pain.

I called a taxi and decided to go to the emergency room myself. I thought, maybe they will take me more seriously when they see me. Wrong assumption.

I was sent home with a diagnosis of a mild panic attack and a recommendation to stay away from stress in the coming period and "take a blood test just in case". I felt no relief because my struggle and walking from doctor to doctor that May night had only just begun.

The neurologist who was on duty that evening at the Clinical Center made me feel like Moliere's conceited patient with her scathing comments and remarks in the style of "you're nothing, you're just neurotic." However, I knew even then that this situation was far from imaginary, that it was not about any higher power that destroyed my plans.

After numerous neurological examinations, magnetic resonance imaging, examinations by physiatrists and rheumatologists who attributed the excruciating pain to poor posture, doctors named the condition fibromyalgia on a piece of paper. "What the hell is that? Why did this happen to me all of a sudden?", I asked myself at the time, with a grain of doubt that it was a wrong assessment by the doctor.

Well, they were right. It is a real disease, more common than we can imagine, far more annoying than incurable and dangerous. It's boring, first of all, because you have to get rid of all the stress in your life in order to go the long way to remission. However, there is no physical cause for these symptoms and no damage to joints and muscles. In short – everything hurts you, but it's nothing to you.

Our faithful companion - stress - is considered one of the main causes of fibromyalgia. The disease often arises after a major psychological or emotional trauma, and regular stress leads to the culmination of symptoms.

Some doctors characterize this disease as chronic pain of a neurological nature, others claim that fibromyalgia is one of the most common rheumatological diseases, and the third, the most optimistic, say that it is all in the head, fibromyalgia is a psychosomatic condition.

I do not wish to impugn the expertise and intelligence of any of the groups of doctors mentioned. However, the disagreement about the very definition of the disease made me wonder which one I want to accept. Maybe it's all "only in my head".

The symptoms did not subside, they grew in parallel with fear and anxiety. Anxiety would then lead to psychological overload, which would increase the pain and thus my personal vicious circle was born.

I filled the hot August days with what is an integral part of the life of an average pensioner. And I'm not going to lie, even though I'm too young for it, I loved it. Every day would start and end the same: from morning acupuncture and massage, to afternoon rest and watching reruns in who knows what order Family treasure to evening trips to psychotherapy. Then I felt like I was missing out on a lot and that my life was slipping before my eyes while I was doing nothing. But doing nothing is sometimes all we need to do to help ourselves.

I was further encouraged by the research I dug up after spending hours with the 21st century's favorite doctor – the internet. That research showed that the chances of recovery are almost 80 percent for those who receive a timely diagnosis and struggle with symptoms for less than two years. Then I realized that for me, fibromyalgia was nothing like what the doctors made it out to be. For me, she is just a collection of all the fragments of my life, which were outlined on my body in the form of pain. Nothing more.

As soon as I stopped seeing myself as a chronically ill person, the psychological pressure was less and less, and therefore its somatization in the form of pain. With a lot of respect for the new diagnosis, I gradually returned to my life part by part of the old everyday life.

A second, even a hundred second opinion of a doctor will not help us as much as we can help ourselves - at least that is my experience. I knew from that evening that I was not a self-righteous sick person. I'm not someone who has serious health problems either. I balance on an imaginary line between the two.