This blog will be an attempt to chronicle my struggles with Fibromyalgia since my July 9, 2002 diagnosis. Later, I will construct a timeline, but for now, I'm going to get as much info in this blog as humanly (as a human with FMS) possible.

Today, for example: This is the fourth day this week I have awakened with a headache. For months, I have not felt like getting out of bed, but force myself to because there are things that I have to do, like take my son to school, run errands, etc.

I get exhausted when I don't do much of anything. I used to walk for exercise, but even that is too much for me. When I lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, I walked everywhere (despite everyone telling me not to) and I wasn't too tired or anything afterward. But in the beginning of 2002, I hurt my back, and my health went to hell from there.

Since I've been in Oklahoma, I haven't had the funds to go see a doctor, so I haven't seen a doctor in over a year. My symptoms have gotten worse in the last several months, and I am miserable. I have been denied Disability thru Social Security twice, and in April, I will be going before an Administrative Law Judge for a third go-round.

I hope to use this blog to convince the SSA that I do have a problem, and that it does affect the quality of my life enough to where I cannot work. I've been looking for work for the last year, but I have not found anything, but not for lack of trying. I've had a couple of temp jobs, but those only served to remind me why I stopped working to begin with.

I joke that my cat, Columbus, diagnosed my condition, as he loves to walk all over me when I am laying down, and it hurts to the point that I have to shoo him off. I knew something was wrong with me at least a year before my diagnosis based on that alone, but at that time, I had no idea what it might be.

MorelaterZ--