Living with fibromyalgia, fighting for a normal life

Ironically, I still remember the day I thought I’d lost my mind.

It was rush hour, and I was running late for work. I lived eight MRT stations away from my office, and I had about 15 minutes to rush through all eight to get to work on time. It was a lost cause, I knew, but I still hurtled up the stairs to the ticket counter — that station’s escalator was almost always out of order. A crowd filled up the loading dock, waiting for the train. I stood all the way to my exit station.

When I got off, carried by the sea of other office workers, it happened.

It was as if a shroud fell over my brain and certain things became hazy. I knew where I was—Ayala station. And I knew why I was there—I was going to work. But I couldn’t remember exactly where my office was, nor could I recall the name of the company I worked for. Impatient passengers rushed past me, but I was too petrified to move. I thought as hard as I had ever thought in my life, but no words or images came. The terror I felt then, I can still feel now whenever I recall that day.

I don’t remember how long I stood there. But eventually, everything came back in focus. I remembered where my office was; I could say which company I worked for. After finding my way to work, I dismissed what happened as a mental hiccup. By the end of that day, I’d almost forgotten about it.

Collage art by Jannielyn Ann Bigtas

For years before that episode and a few years after, I felt like something was off in my system. I couldn't tell what it was exactly. I had intense migraines; there were days when my limbs felt like they were being squeezed to the point of breaking; I had difficulty organizing my thoughts; and depression came and went like a pendulum. I’d had to quit jobs because I just couldn’t get out of the house.

For months, I had to stay home and work freelance because doing otherwise proved almost impossible. And even then, I’d had to drop some projects because (1) the depression held me down, (2) I couldn’t organize thoughts well enough to write a coherent sentence, let alone a whole article, and (3) my hands were too stiff with pain to type.

I saw a total of 11 doctors for consultations over that period, and was admitted to the hospital three times because of the intensity of the symptoms I had. But no one could give me a correct diagnosis.

The cardiologist told me I was too young to have something wrong with my heart; he suggested I have my eyes checked instead. The pulmonologist told me to eat more greens and less junk food (which was a good tip, I must admit).

The internist thought I was making it all up; he gave me the number of a psychiatrist. It didn’t help that all the tests they did on me—and they did a lot—came out negative. It was exhausting trying to find out what was wrong with my body. I could almost forgive my doctors’ confusion (and condescension).

Despite all this, life went on. I got married and had two kids. In a way, I also gained my own cheering squad whose talent it was to know when I needed my hands held.

In 2011, one of my husband’s friends suggested I see a rheumatologist. In his clinic, the doctor pressed some tender points on my feet, arms, and back, asked some questions about how I felt, and then diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, a chronic nerve disorder that affects how the body processes pain signals.

In 10 minutes, the rheumatologist gave me a diagnosis that 11 other doctors couldn’t in 8 years. A single lab test confirmed I had Fibromyalgia — which, until a few years before then, wasn’t recognized by the medical industry as a chronic disorder.

One of the symptoms of fibromyalgia is “fibro fog”— what people with fibromyalgia go through when they have difficulty focusing on, and remembering, things. That explained the mental hiccup at the Ayala station years ago. Other symptoms include muscle and joint pain, unexplained fatigue, intense migraines, shortness of breath, difficulty in organizing thoughts, insomnia, tingling in the face and limbs, and depression.

The problem with all those symptoms—which vary in intensity from person to person—is that they’re invisible. Everything happens inside the person experiencing them, making it difficult for people without fibromyalgia to understand it, and for doctors to give the correct diagnosis. 

The next course of action was medication. I was given a low dose of pills that relieve nerve pain. There is no known cure—or cause—for fibromyalgia yet, so its treatment is still largely symptomatic. Later on, I learned that the reason my doctor prescribed the medicine sparingly was that continuous use of it raises the risk of stroke. So despite the consequences, I decided to stop taking it. The symptoms wouldn’t kill me, anyway, I thought; a stroke could.

READ: I had a heart attack at 36

I went back to living with fibro; until 2016, when another friend of my husband’s suggested I see an upper cervical chiropractor.

The chiropractor—over at N8 Upper Cervical Chiropractic clinic—explained that the reason my brain couldn’t correctly process signals was that the top bone in my spine (the atlas) was slightly misaligned, squeezing the nerves to one side, consequently making a mess of signals.

For about a year, on weekly and then monthly check-ups, he put my atlas back in place just by laying me down on a special bed and tapping the back of my neck once, where the atlas is. He also put me on a strict diet and told me to get moving—“Drop all sugar, bread, white pasta and white rice. Eat more leafy greens. Get more sun. Exercise.” Sugar and gluten, he explained, are inflammatory food and would just wreak havoc on my nervous system.

The effect of those check-ups was tremendous. My family and I finally felt that we had control over fibromyalgia instead of the other way around. It does get difficult sometimes, especially with the diet. The devil is not in hell, I realized. He’s in dessert.

Although I still get attacks of fibromyalgia now and then, getting back on track has become relatively quicker because now I know what my body needs. More importantly, I know what it doesn’t need.

It’s been a little over a year that I’ve taken over the reins from this disorder. I can now work regularly. And every day that I go to the office, it gives me a thrill to be able to talk to people without losing my breath.

Every time I walk without my legs feeling like they’re on fire, I do a little mental dance of joy. Whenever I pick up my kids from school and drive home without my face tingling, I feel like I’ve won a battle. Because it is a daily fight to live a normal life. And I’ll take every tiny victory that I can. — LA, GMA News