Shocking Injuries That Hurt Less Than Fibromyalgia
Constant widespread pain can make acute pain seem like small stuff
In 2018 I learned what a ‘comminuted’ fracture is. It meant my foot had been splintered into fragments, itty bitty freakin’ pieces. I’d had a very bad fall, but like many fibro fighters, I’ve had many bad falls before that one, and I was too overwhelmed with trying to survive life while disabled — so I pushed through, walking on my poor lil’ shattered foot for 10 days.
The pain from fibromyalgia was far worse, so the pain from my foot was almost a welcome distraction, I figured it’d be fine. Eventually enough people looked at my foot with repulsion and told me I really needed to get that looked at, so I did. I was shocked when the doctor told me it was broken, and very badly at that. (Oops, fibro overshadowed a thing doctors actually regard as painful again!)
And I’m not the only fibro fighter who’s done something like this, far from it. For instance, a recent fibromyalgia subreddit about problems regarding the 1–10 pain scale led to many stories about having traditionally high-end pain injuries but not experiencing them that way due to the way constant fibro pain distorts our definition of “bad” pain…fibro hurts so much worse than people who don’t have it can understand.
