She’ll continue to lie and say, “I’m fine,”

That morning she gets up and the first thing she looks at me and says “I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired”, I rubbed my eyes and was not sure how to react…. Planted a kiss on her forehead and asked if I could get a glass of warm water or should I assist her to the washroom, her tears just rolled out and curled onto me and said, “let me just lay down for some more time next to you”.

A few minutes later, she looks at the clock he screamed and said: “Have you gone mad, laying next to me, kids are getting late and you have to make breakfast for them and see that they had packed their school bag properly….”

She continued “You go ahead I will join in some time”, I knew it was one of her anxiety moments and I knew she will take well over half an hour to come to the kitchen, I am used to her Mood swings, that how my wife is… has been suffering from Fibromyalgia for at least last two decades.

Even on a bad day, she does as much as she can…She tries to hide how She is feeling to stop us from feeling uncomfortable and help us feel better. This doesn’t mean the pain’s not there…and it’s tiring, hard…frustrating…you feel in her eyes what she is saying, “please try to understand” …

Pain, Pain and Pain everywhere…It is a pain that is difficult to explain to anyone who doesn’t have this wretched disease. At any moment, it can affect one or two areas or the entire body. The pain is felt deep inside and on her skin. It’s in her joints, muscles, bones, and nerves. No two days or hours are ever alike.

When you ask her “how are you?”, She’ll almost always say, “Fine”. And weirdly this exchange is not that different from what happens when people who know her, and know her to have a chronic illness ask her how She is? They’ll say out of duty or even real, genuine concern, “How are you?” And She’ll say, “Oh, I’m OK.”

She is not OK.

But she can’t just say that. Because the truth is ugly and uncomfortable. If she actually said how she was, they would squirm from the awful reality of her chronic illness.

Just imagine if she actually said, “Well my pain meds aren’t effective for me anymore, so I spent all night debating if my nerve pain was enough to warrant another trip to the ER for a few hours of morphine-induced relief.” She can almost hear the palpable discomfort, pity, and guilt.

So instead, she’ll say, “I’m fine.” Or, “I’m OK.” She says this for our benefit. she says this to comfort us. And it works. Most of the time, when she says she is fine, people aren’t actually looking. They don’t notice she shifting her weight to distribute the nerve pain running up her legs.

So, for now, she’ll continue to lie and say, “I’m fine,” until the truth gets easier to swallow.

Fighting a battle every hour, with a smile on her face & eyes, so that her, loved once are happy…. Proud to be a part of your journey.