You know you have fibro if…you’re so exhausted from lying down that you have to go and lie down.
You know you have fibro if…you dream for someone to tell you what to wear, because having to create an outfit yourself makes you weep.
You know you have fibro if…you start to tear up at the thought of the energy necessary to lift your arms above your head and wash your hair.
You know you have fibro if…you lack clean dishes and you start thinking that the 5-second rule is probably more like the 1.5 hour rule.
You know you have fibro if…the fact that you must wake up and experience the air touching your skin causes an existential crisis.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you wish you couldn’t remember your old life, so you wouldn’t know what you’ve lost.
You know you have fibro if…the only part of you that hasn’t been poked, examined, tested, or diagnosed is the lint in your belly button.
You know you have fibro if…your desire for non-swollen ankles outweighs your horror of donning support hose.
You know you have fibro if…you wonder if you qualify for an emergency government food airlift that lands directly next to your couch.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been out of touch for so long you think using “fibro” instead of “fibromyalgia” makes you hip and cool.
You know you have fibro if…Sunday night means cozying up with 10,000 pill bottles and a giant box.
You know you have fibro if…you know better than to get too excited at a no-pain day, and you have your pain meds ready at Defcon 1.
You know you have fibro if…you have five doctor’s appointments in five days.
And the 5 doctors are all located in different, neither-close-to-you-nor-close-to-each-other parts of your city.
And then you know you have fibro if…despite your best magical thinking attempts, you find that you don’t actually have the stamina for 5 doctor’s appointments in 5 days.
You know you have fibro if…it takes you an hour to get dressed, but no one gets what a big deal it is that you accomplished it anyway.
You know you have fibro if…when deciding on frozen dinners, having to choose between bone-in and boneless chicken brings you to tears.
You know you have fibro if…Ultram is your boyfriend.
You know you have fibro if…Ultram is your boyfriend AND you are also totally cheating on it with Darvocet.
You know you have fibro if…you love your massage therapist so much that you want to marry her and have her babies.
You know you have fibro if…exhaustion, pain and being beaten down by life is pretty much your middle name. And sometimes your last name too.
You know you have fibro if…despite the picking, scraping buzzing, etc., you are so exhausted that you fall asleep in the dentist’s chair.
You know you have fibro if…you spend so much time alone at home with only the cats that your relationship has devolved to the point where you spend all your time tattling to your husband about the the fact that “they keep looking at me funny!!” and, “they won’t stop touching me!”
You know you have fibro if…you are constantly having to choose between the lesser of two bad side effects.
You know you have fibro if…you have a Ph.D in appreciating the little things in life. And you’re pretty much over it.
You know you have fibro if…there’s only so much “inspiration” you can take before you just have to start stabbing people.
You know you have fibro if…you have an out-of-joint jaw, an 8 fibro pain, and 0 anxiety medication, and your response is, “Hm-must be a day that ends in -day.”
You know you have fibro if…your good intentions cannot only pave the road to all seven circles of hell, but all the roads to at least 75% of the planets as well.
You know you have fibro if…you do everything you’re “supposed” to do, and some days you just have really bad pain anyway.
You know you have fibro if…on those days, you just need to be reminded that this is what having a chronic illness looks like.
You know you have fibro if…no matter what you’re wearing or how you look when it strikes, you have learned to get up and go the moment you feel you can exercise, shop, clean, etc.
You know you have fibro if…suddenly feeling better after a streak of painful days is just as disorienting as suddenly feeling pain after a streak of good days.
You know you have fibro if…wait…what was I saying? And why am I in the kitchen again?
You know you have fibro if…”playing chicken” now means facing off with your illness to see who blinks first: your fibro, in the giving of pain; or you, in the succumbing to the pain and the need to take some very strong painkillers.
You know you have fibro if…you need to lie down from the pain, but the pressure of the bed against your skin makes the pain 100x worse.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been to at least three new doctors to explore different pain relief methods and the first question they ask you when you tell them you have fibro is, “And how do you know that?”
You know you have fibro if…you’ve undergone so many medical procedures, that when someone needs to share about “the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life”, you are the person they call.
You know you have fibro if…a part of you sees emergency gallbladder surgery as a kind of vacation from having to deal with your chronic illness.
You know you have fibro if…the hope of magical thinking springs eternal in you.
You know you’ve been in pain for too many days…when you start referring to things like putting on pants as “having to climb Mt. Everest.”
You know you have fibro if…your criteria for deciding whether or not to break open the heavy duty painkillers are things like, “Hm, are my eyelids burning yet?”
You know you have fibro if…instead of numbers, your time-telling devices all have designations like, “Everything Makes Me Weep O’clock”.
You know you’ve been housebound for way to long when, after a brief foray into the sun, you pick up your keys to go back inside and then burn yourself because you’ve forgotten that SUN MAKES METAL *REALLY* HOT.
You know you have fibro if…when showering, you wonder how you could possibly fit a bed in there, or at least a small chair, because you’re too tired to stand up through the entire thing.
You know you have fibro if…you try your hardest to convince your body that 150mg of Lyrica is the same as 300mg so you can please God!, get some relief from the swelling. But no matter how hard you try, it just won’t work.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you just NEED the French fries, or, (as I like to call it), “Carbohydrate Therapy”.
You know you have fibro if…your prayers frequently read as follows: Dear God-I’m still not OK with the whole fibromyalgia thing, but I do appreciate the fact that getting a really good haircut does help ease things a bit.
And any math you’re required to do looks like this: French Fries + Coke + Percocet + Mindlessly Surfing The Internet=Truly, Does Life Get Any Better Than This?
You know you have fibro if…you strongly believe that your right to wear jammies all day should be protected by The Constitution.
You know you have fibro if…sometimes you just have to go after what you really want, even though you know you’ll pay for it afterward.
You know you have fibro if…you have a billion frequent flier miles from all the times you have had to visit the State of “Numb With Exhaustion”.
You know you have fibro if…you count your day as a success because you you did NOT vacuum the house while suffering a raging migraine.
You know you have fibro if…you need a pharmacy’s worth of medications just so that your body can do a mere fraction of what healthy people can w/out even having to think about it.
You know you have fibro if…legally speaking, your name should be “Magical Thinking”.
You know you have fibro if…you can no longer wear clothes with zippers, belts, buttons, buckles, snaps, or any other kind of fastening.
You know you have fibro if…no matter how quickly you walk, you inevitably lag at least 2 feet behind the rest of your group.
You know you have fibro if…your husband has begun to refer to all of your attempts at movement as “glacial”.
You know you’ve been in pain for too many days in a row when, even though your rational mind knows that you’ve only pulled a muscle in your chest, the REST of your mind keeps screaming that you actually have walking pneumonia/breast cancer/and/or some fatal, unidentified chest-pain disease.
You know you have fibro if…Dammit! Why do so many of the things I need to do require you to wear pants?
You know you have fibro if… your husband’s frequent reaction to seeing your hair is actual alarm.
You know you have fibro if…you day is made or broken, depending on whether or not NCIS is a rerun.
You know you have fibro if…you watch a commercial for “Pajama Jeans” and thought, “What a great idea!.” And then you start to think that maybe you haven’t really given the “Snuggie” a fair chance.
You know you have fibro if…you really need summer television to BE HERE ALREADY! so you can start telling the days apart again.
You know you have fibro (fog) if…you pull out of the drive-through window at the bank and then realize you’ve stolen the deposit tube.
You know you have fibro if…the most passion you’ve been able to feel for months is directed at your Kindle and its “1-click purchase” button.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve just finished a 1-hr. search of the house for something you couldn’t find, and then realized you’d been looking for an item that you’ve never actually owned.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve ever yelled out, “Hey, God-if I have to navigate the world in a body that moves and feels like lead, then putting on pants should burn AT LEAST A BILLION CALORIES! I’m just sayin’.”
You know you have fibro if…you haven’t just fallen off the information highway, you’ve crashed into a 15-car pileup, slammed through the guardrails, flipped end-over-end into the gulley, and then fallen down a well.
You know you have fibro if…your pants are never, ever, EVER coming off again, SO HELP YOU GOD, because it has just taken you the last 5 hours to get them on.
You know you have fibro if…you’ve been in so much pain for so long that you’ve lost your mind, and therefore think it is *totally* appropriate to do a workout video that contains the word “Bootcamp” in the title.
You know you have fibro if…you can have clean hair, or you can put on pants, but you can’t have both at the same time.
You know you have fibro if…you are frequently mistaken for a cast member on The Walking Dead.
You know you have fibro if…your skill at dealing out your daily medications rivals that of any professional Blackjack dealer.
You know you have fibro if…your best choices are always the “least worst” options.
You know you have fibro if…you are constantly walking the tightrope between suffering the symptoms of fibromyalgia, and suffering the side effects of the medicines you use to treat them.
You know you have fibro if…very time you go to a new specialist they remark on how you’re taking too much medication, but after all the tests come back negative and you ask them what else you could possibly try they shrug, mumble, and hand you a prescription for more medication.
