The Journey Begins...

So I guess you're wondering what this is all about… What on earth is 'Fibro' and why is Kez writing a blog about it?

Well… All will be revealed in the next few posts as I talk about my main symptoms in a bit more detail. I hope to share my new journey with you all and to bring more understanding about what Fibro is and how it affects me and others like me.

I'm not writing to ask for sympathy at all, I just want more people to understand what I and many others are going through at the moment and hopefully this will help people to understand why I make the decisions I make.

I'll begin by explaining a bit of the back story and we'll go from there…

2nd Hip Arthroscopy
Aged 17, April 2015

So… When I was about 14, I began having hip pain and we all thought it was due to a gym injury. I had lots of appointments, tests and even a couple of operations but nothing seemed to help! When I was about 18, I stopped getting treatment for the pain and hoped it'd just get better, some days were worse than others anyway. The pain began to be normal to me, I didn’t think much of it, it just happened and I didn’t know anything different anymore.

When I was in my first year of uni (aged 19ish), I had more trips to A&E than I can remember. Sometimes it was abdominal pain, other times it was bowel troubles, but every time I waited about 6 hours just to be referred back to the GP who sent me, or to be told that nothing major was wrong. I saw plenty of specialists about these issues but would always get referred on with no answers.

I remember one time I sat and cried in a gynaecologists office because they told me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. These pains and symptoms were very real and I was upset and frustrated that there was no answers! I had counted about 10 doctors I'd seen by this point and one week I did like 3 trips to my GP and 4 trips to A&E!!

So as you can tell, this was a confusing, frustrating time for me with no answers and lots of tests, some more invasive than others. I even got discharged from a hospital once because I said that one of the tests hurt too much so they abandoned the procedure and referred me back to the GP AGAIN!!

So about 7 years after the hip 'injury' and after over 2 years getting to know the staff in A&E pretty well, I was referred to an Orthopaedic surgeon who diagnosed me straight away with hypermobility. After some nerve testing, he referred me on to a rheumatologist. My appointment with the rheumatologist was something that changed my life in a dramatic way…

His diagnosis for me:

Fibromyalgia

AND

Ehlers Danlos Type III Hypermobility

And that is what this blog will be about. I am still figuring out the symptoms of both of these illnesses and as I do, I'd like to share these with you so that we can all understand it a little better!

Thank you for reading, I really appreciate the support.