Originally Posted by Esqmommy
The Fibromyalgia is interesting to me. As a family law attorney, it comes up when we deal with support issues. People who have illnesses like that are often fighting for their positions, and that they have a "real" illness...many courts (read judges) and attorneys, and their former spouses, believe it's a made-up illness, or at best, exaggerated. If it comes up in one of my cases again (had it once), I'll contact you (KLue and Tiffany) to point me to the latest research and thinking on the illness.
In my one case, my client suffered from it tremendously. Her ex was saying she needed to get to work and stop living "off him"...but he dropped his claims. She really was quite sick and incapacitated so much. The court case only made things worse...Fortunately, he dropped the matter and continues to pay her support. I often wonder how she's doing...probably not well. It was really hard for her to just get up every day.
Ugh! I remember when no one had heard of it and everyone thought it was "
all in my head." I was actually pretty much bedridden for 2 years with it and it was almost impossible to function. Thank God I'm nowhere near like that now! I do take medication specifically for it and while it doesn't fix it, it does reduce the symptoms enough to allow me to function. It's an auto immune system disease and 99% of the time the person with FMS has some other problem, like Celiac Disease or Diabetes or something along those lines. It's a disease that hates to be alone and thus invites a lot of friends along. :roll: If someone says they have it, likely they have other problems as well. Sadly, it was one of those "Disease of the Month" things where doctors everywhere were over diagnosing it and people who didn't have it were being told they did. I went through this with my MIL, who was told she had it when she had NONE of the symptoms, except for having some muscle pain. She weighed over 300 pounds so obviously she was going to have some muscle pain! :P When I went through all the other symptoms, even she said she couldn't have it. I think a lot of times doctors get lazy and diagnose it when they can't find an answer easily. JMO
Now back to the Dear Jane quilt. My software hasn't come in (ARGH!) and it looks like it won't be here for at least a few more days. (Banging head over here!) I'm going to see if one of my friends will let me make a copy of some of the week 1 patterns from her book and hopefully I can get started. I really don't want to fall behind!