5 Lessons a Doctor Learned About Fibromyalgia Only After She was Diagnosed

During her second year of medical school, Ginevra Liptan started having mysterious muscle pain and fatigue. Later on, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. With a disease marred with judgments and stigmas, Ginevra received her crash course on the disease that would not only affect herself, but also her medical career. 

She learned her first lesson during rounds when her senior physician announced that fibromyalgia didn’t even exist. Most doctors and even her closest friends in medical school did not believe that the disease was real. They would mainly dismiss it, referring to the patient as a hypochondriac or even hysterical.

Before being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, Ginevra believed that she was a compassionate and emphatic person, which was why she had chosen to go medical school in the first place. As she experienced more symptoms of fibromyalgia, she realized she would face judgement from her peers because of a lack of knowledge and belief of the chronic disease. Here are the biggest lessons that she learned about fibromyalgia as both a doctor and a patient.

Ginevra Liptan started to feel pain in her muscle when she was in her second year of medical school. Later on she was diagnosed to be suffering from fibromyalgia. Below are few of the biggest lessons which she learned about this medical condition after being diagnosed.

• Ginevra says that there is a lot of sexism in the medicine world and hence this is known to be the main reason why there is yet no cure for this disease. It has been more than 30 years and the exact science behind this disease has not been understood yet. Too much time has been wasted only on debating on whether if this disease exists for real or not. Since this disease has affected most of the female population hence they have known to be affected due to sexism. Ginevra was of the opinion that if this disease were to affect the male population then probably there would have been a cure by now.
• There are no obvious symptoms of this disease hence often the patient becomes frustrated explaining about his symptoms which others tend to believe does not exist. Often patients think this disease as a burden which the family members, the employers at work and the doctors just do not seem to understand it.
• As a fibromyalgia patient, there is often chronic cases of pain which occurs at certain locations of the body but explaining this pain at office or at home may seem like a tiring task. Explaining this to someone who has never experienced anything of this sort earlier is never an easy job. Hence Ginevra prefers to share her experience with the doctors so that others may not be able to struggle the way she had to.
• Since the time Ginevra was diagnosed with this disease and until now, there has been a lot of knowledge about this medical condition. Significant progress has also taken place in terms of treating the symptoms caused due to the disease. But still, there has been a large section of the medical fraternity who deal with such patients but are still unaware about a lot of facts about this disease. Most of them are so busy that they do not have time to look out for a treatment of this disease.
• When Ginevra was first diagnosed with this disease, she has reached out to lot of doctors and they had suggested that the symptoms she was facing were due to depression. But all of those doctors were wrong in their diagnosis. Even though she was depressed but it was due to the fact that the disease was making her fall apart and no one could understand her situation. The doctors also could not help her that time hence it led her to being depressed. Pain is known to cause alteration in the brain and thus activate those sections which are linked with depression.

Individual suffering from this illness should also be treated for depression so that they can deal with what they call as invisible illness.