What Does Fibromyalgia Feel Like? (Midnight edition)

It's just past midnight and I'm hopelessly awake. My body is exhausted, yet there is no rest to be had. I have worked my mind into a frenzy these last two days, culminating in what was both a wonderful opportunity for personal growth and the crashing of a wave of stress all at the same time this evening.

My jaw is clenching, and now my teeth are hurting. The muscle spasm in my back at the biopsy site (from three years ago) is causing me to contort to one side, and the burning thigh on the other side keeps me in this odd quasi-fetal position that is becoming more painful by the minute. I'm both sweltering hot and freezing all at the same time. The soft whooshing of my hubby's c-pap machine is starting to make my ears ring. I can scarcely keep my restless legs still, but every movement feels as though the skin is being peeled back. I've tossed and turned so long that my nightshirt has bunched ... and every wrinkle feels like wadded up cardboard. There is a grain of sand, certainly from a shoe or kitty paw, somewhere under my left leg, but I cannot find it. I can, however, feel it, and its jagged edges seem to be grinding into the flesh mercilessly. My neck muscles are spasming now, and as another heat wave hits me, I toss the covers back off of my already-icy legs to try to gain some relief.

Every night, to some degree or another. Every night, this is my norm.

This is fibromyalgia.

There is little rest, when the still silence magnifies every tiny little twinge into a complete nerve explosion. Pain can't be rated on a scale anymore, because there are so many different kinds of pain. Some, by necessity, I've created a mental block to. Others, like that silly grain of sand, I can't ignore. It seems ridiculous, really, like some sick exaggeration of The Princess and the Pea.

But it is the new norm. And now, it's half past midnight. So I stretch my stiff legs out, straighten the nightshirt, try once more to find that sand ... YES!!! It's gone now!! Maybe now I can sleep, between the neck and chest spasms, the burning thigh, the restless legs, the hot flashes and freezing feet ...