Things that confuse me

Because of my current obsession with medical stuff I tend to read a lot of medical blogs. In theses blogs medical professionals are a little more honest and blunt than they can be at work, for obvious reasons. Several of them have now referred to fibromyalgia in a way that suggests that it's not real in most cases. This prompted me to look up what it is.

O my God, I could have fibromyalgia! If I tried hard enough I could get a doctor to say that I have it. I mean, muscle pain and fatigue are a constant part of my life. And all this time I thought that my back hurt because of the extra weight that I make it haul around. And I thought that my shoulders hurt because of poor posture. And I could have sworn that the fatigue was because I'm up all night on the computer instead of sleeping.

I seriously believe that I could convince a doctor that I have this. That is, if I can find a doctor who believes that it's real. I now understand why healthcare professionals don't automatically believe that there's a real problem just because you have a fancy name to put to it. If I wanted to insure that I get narcotics I suppose that I could get a fancy name put to my pretend pain.

I understand that there are probably people out there who really do suffer from fibromyalgia and are not just in it for the drugs. For their sake I really wish that people wouldn't use this as a crutch to get meds. Nobody is going to take it seriously if 99 times out of 100 there's really nothing wrong with the patient other than an addiction to strong pain meds. I hate it when people fake an illness because it really does make it harder on people who are legitimately sick.

I sometimes wonder why people feel the need to fake an illness at all. I've found that when I go to the doctor with a problem that may cause pain the doc is usually very liberal about giving pain meds. The only time that I ran into a problem was when I was visiting my grandparents out of state and had a toothache from hell. The first doctor that I saw looked at the fact that I was from out of state and had no insurance and wouldn't prescribe narcotics, but that was okay since she gave me the antibiotics that I was after. When I showed up three days later looking like a pregnant chipmunk (which is how my mother described me) the doctor was very nice and gave me vicodin. I wanted stronger antibiotics, but he seemed to think that what I had was plenty strong. Whatever, it got me through long enough to get home and see my dentist. My point being that I almost never have problems getting the pain relievers that I need. Drug seekers just baffle me.