asking bc i keep seeing people say “2 years” or “6 months” like it’s normal and i don’t have a good frame of reference for whether mine was fast or slow. for me: symptoms started around age 24, widespread pain, fatigue that sleep didn’t touch, brain fog bad enough i missed deadlines i used to hit easy. first doctor said stress, gave me a pamphlet abt exercise. second one ran bloodwork, all normal, shrugged.
took almost three years and four different doctors before someone actually pressed on tender points and said the word fibromyalgia out loud. what i want to know is the part in between. not just the number of years, but what actually moved it forward. was it a specific doctor who finally listened, a specific test that ruled something else out, or did you just keep showing up until someone took it seriously?
bc right now i’m five months into waiting for a pain clinic appt and i keep wondering if the wait itself is doing anything or if i should be pushing harder somewhere else. also curious if the diagnosis actually changed anything day to day for you. i assumed getting the word would feel like relief and mostly it just felt like confirmation of something i already knew, plus a new box to check on paperwork. baseline pain didn’t move, work didn’t get easier, i just had a name for it now.
how long was it for you and what was the thing that finally got you across the line?