This is 50: How I Overcame Fibromyalgia

As I celebrate this momentous birthday, I couldn’t let this date pass without sharing some of the life lessons I’ve learned from living half a century. Turning 50 is a time to reflect on the experiences we have that have shaped who we are.

I've had a very rich and full life - one that I'm very thankful to God for. The focus of this story is the chapter that was spent living with and recovering from a chronic illness. I’d love to share my journey with you and offer you hope because I no longer consider myself to have this condition. I’m beginning my 6th decade of life with more energy and clarity than I had 20 years ago.

Disclaimer: I’m going to be sharing my personal experience here. This is not intended as medical advice or treatment for any condition.  This story seeks to spark curiosity that could change your trajectory if you’re looking for answers and feeling hopeless.

Chapter 1: When Trials Converge

It was New Year's Eve 2004. We hosted a party in our new house with our church friends, to bring in the new year. We had just moved house a couple of months before, and I was about to discover the news that I was pregnant with our fifth child. This was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time because my fourth child was only 5 months old.

Life was incredibly busy as you can imagine with four lively boys and I was someone who lived life large and did all the things. I was homeschooling my boys and I loved our busy life, but didn't give much thought to what the constant pace was doing to my body. Throughout the course of this year, my health went downhill dramatically due to the increasing physical strain on my body.

This made pregnancy hard work and in the last few weeks prior to the birth, some family issues arose that took a huge emotional toll. The physical impact on me grew - I wasn't sleeping, my iron levels were non-existent and I had constant joint pain.

Our baby's due date came and went, and I was determined not to be induced. Eventually, 10 days overdue and incredibly anxious, I agreed to an induction. An itchy rash appeared on my back, but as I couldn’t see properly, I ignored it.

We went to the hospital the night before the induction so it could start the next morning. I felt like my body had failed me. All my other babies had come in their own time, so why not this one?? My husband tucked me in, we prayed together and he kissed me goodbye. I drifted off to sleep eventually and woke an hour later at 2.30am realizing that my water had broken and contractions had started. Our prayers were answered and I didn't need to be induced. After a relatively uneventful labour, our daughter was born before the induction was due to start.

Our first daughter was a huge welcome surprise but overshadowing this by far was the fact that something was going seriously wrong with my body.

I had a severe headache that had persisted throughout the labour and wouldn't stop. It was the mother of all migraines, and I didn’t get migraines. The nursing staff couldn't find anything wrong with me and I was sent home to manage on my own. After 3 days I decided to go to our local doctor to see if he could discover why I was feeling so ill. Completely by accident he noticed the rash on my back and announced that I had the shingles! This was the rash I'd developed prelabour and explained the terrible pain I was in. Looking back, I now realise this was my body physically manifesting all the stress I had been feeling.

I struggled along with this diagnosis and caring for a newborn in those first few days after her birth, and hubby was fantastic as always, caring for both me and the rest of the boys with his loving nature and good humour.

But the big bombshells continued to fall.

A few days after our daughter's birth we received a letter from our landlord saying that he was not going to renew our lease and we had 30 days to find a new place to live.

As we searched for a new house, the boys developed chickenpox as a result of me having the shingles. I felt like so many things were hitting us all at once. Even as the pressure continued to grow, we received wonderful support from our church. Some dear friends helped us pack up, move house, and settle in to the new one. Our life finally went back to normal.

But the toll of shingles and stress would echo on for me.

Chapter 2: Learning to Cope With a New Normal

As my body healed from shingles, I realised I now had a new normal of pressure and pain throughout my body.

This looked like a whole range of symptoms, but included joint pain and high-level nerve pain, the kind that feels like you’ve bumped your elbow and everything was on edge. Accompanying this was crippling brain fog that made it difficult to concentrate on simple tasks.

I muddled through like this for quite a while before deciding to get things investigated and the specialist gave me the disheartening diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia literally means ‘disease of pain’.

The specialist offered a bleak prognosis of a condition they doctors didn't understand but was categorised by the same group of systems. What was hardest to hear was that it had no cure. He pragmatically told me I would have to learn to cope with this new normal and mitigate my life accordingly. To say I was stunned was an understatement. I was offered some medication that they were using experimentally to treat people like myself.

Initially I tried struggling on by myself, but life became a cycle of sleeping terribly, followed by exhausted days, and living through a fog of pain that varied from day to day. Some days were mild and I could cope quite well, some days were severe and I was so exhausted that I could hardly get out of bed.

My life began to shrink because I couldn't plan for the future. I could never predict how I would be feeling and when we did make plans, I dreaded the coming event because I knew it was going to be an ordeal to get through it. I hated living life like this, because I knew my husband and children deserved better. I didn’t want to be someone who just endured life as a slog to be survived.

Eventually, I tried some of the drugs that the specialist offered, only to have my suspicions confirmed that they did little to help me and dulled everything except the pain. They increased my muddled brain which was so frustrating.  We were at the doctors clinic frequently and saw a range of doctors, some warm and sympathetic and some quite dismissive that this was even a real condition.

Chapter 3: Discovering Some Keys to Healing

'A healthy person wants many things, but a sick person wants only one' is so true.

If you’ve ever lived with a chronic condition, you’ll understand how consuming it can be. I wanted desperately to be better, and if you want something desperately enough, you’ll be willing to try almost anything.

For us, this meant getting educated, and so began our first deep dive into how our bodies work and what it truly meant to be healthy.

Knowledge can feel like a curtain being pulled back, and it was this way for me as the awareness of the processes happening inside my body grew. We learned that we could influence our outcomes by changing what we ate, how much we moved and the environment around us. It was somewhat exhilarating to realise I could take responsibility for my own health but also terrifying at the same time. Once I realised that doctors couldn’t offer me more answers, I knew this needed to be the case. It was only going to be through my own education that I might discover information that might help me improve.

Some days I felt better than others, and so hope was kindled that there could be more good days. But as I reflected on what made a good day and a bad day, I realised that my routines were non-existent in many areas. I simply acted based on how I felt. Some major mindset shifts were starting to impact me as I was shaped by glimpses of what my health could be if I tried to be consistent with routines and habits.

What if I took responsibility for my choices rather than simply reacting to my symptoms?

Chapter 4: Taking responsibility

I knew I shouldn't blame others for my poor decisions but on serious reflection I realised I was doing just that about so many things.

I'd go to bed late and then be grumpy that I'd woken up late, felt super tired, and didn't achieve anything that day. It was 'someone’s' fault that I didn't go to bed on time. Someone should have made me.

I'd eat junk food and then have a terrible flare-up with pain, but blame ‘someone’ for not stopping me eating it.

Consistency and self-discipline were so hard when I felt so ill most of the time, but I began to suspect that this was what need to change for anything else to change.

One day I saw a Mel Robbins clip on YouTube. It was her pep talk to teenagers who needed to grow up and take control of their lives. They were still waiting for someone to show up and get them out of bed and tell them what to do next. She said the secret to adulting successfully is understanding: 'No one is coming for you!' and I realized I was still that teenage kid in many ways, waiting for someone to come and save me. Despite having the most amazing husband and family, no one could make me self-disciplined if I didn't decide to do it myself.

Chapter 5: How Do You Eat an Elephant?

The more I learned about health and inflammation, the more I knew I needed to start moving my body and getting fit.

But I hated exercise.

Exercise was pain and I felt like I already had enough of that. I would often feel like I'd done too much exercise because my muscles would ache so much, and I was always so exhausted, so surely I shouldn't have to do it?

I knew I just had to start somehow, and so how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Hubby encouraged me to just start walking.

He would come along with me for company and we started small. At first I couldn't even get up the hill in the main street of our little town without stopping several times. And I felt so ehausted! But with his help I continued to walk a little bit every day. I didn't feel better instantly, but gradually a 10 min slow walk turned into a longer, faster one. And then one day I walked up that hill without stopping.

I could hardly believe it!

As I began to exercise, an amazing feeling of stamina began to return. I had more energy, not less. I had a clearer brain so I could concentrate better.

We continued to research and learn about 'bio hacking', which is the term for enhancing your bodies systems through deliberate strategies and practices. I've always been a nerdy geek about science and so the idea that you could ‘hack’ your body’s systems to make them work better was fascinating.

Learning about the latest discoveries in health and human potential meant that I could experiment on myself to test what improved my fibromyalgia. I was beginning to understand that fibro had its root cause in inflammation. Once I connected this with how I felt, I could recognise that this was the throbbing feeling of pain under my skin, and there were many things that could be done to bring down inflammation naturally. Many of these ‘hacking’ protocols take advantage of your body’s natural systems and rhythms to bring you back into balance.

Chapter 6: Bio Hacking for Beginners

Over the past 3 years, I’ve continued to research and test different techniques, that together combined have meant my daily constant pain is gone. My brain is clear, I sleep well, and I now have so much energy.

I credit the biggest change with being the simplest —My short, slow walks have turned into strenuous workouts that give me strength and resilience both mentally and physically. I will never naturally love exercise, but I do love how it makes me feel. Already I notice the difference when I do workout after just a few days.

We continue to do a range of habits and techniques that have helped me so much. If you’re interested in some of the things I've done and still do, I’ve listed some of them below. The great news is that most of these things are completely free and simple to implement—you just need the mindset and determination to try them consistently:

• walking - the first magic step!
• Intermittent fasting
• Breathing techniques
• Exercise, both cardio and cross fit
• Infrared sauna (we have one in our bedroom)
• Yoga Nidra or NSDR
• Dry skin brushing
• Cold showers
• Early morning sun exposure
• Eating unprocessed food and limit sugar
• Prayer and meditation
• Consistent bedtime/wake time
• Sleep tracking and sleep hygiene

To learn more about the science behind this list, watch neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman who has deep dives into how they work.

Chapter 7: 4 Tips for Great Outcomes

It’s now been 3 years since I feel like I’ve had ‘fibromyalgia.’

I still have bouts of inflammation that manifest as pain, but they are mild and short lived because I recognise how to reset my body back to balance.

Some days I can hardly believe how good it feels to feel good. I’m so thankful to God for showing me new insights and for making them effective. And most importantly I have great hope for the future. The things I've learned will always stand me in good stead. They are great tools that I can implement when I need them, and the habits I've learned will always help me.

Whether you have a chronic condition or not, I feel we can all benefit from the following key takeaways from this health journey:

• Cultivate a strong mental mindset that doesn’t entertain self-pity, and reframes every situation into one of choice and growth
• Develop a robust life routine of daily habits that doesn't make excuses
• Stay fascinated - make learning a life long hobby that keeps you wide eyed and curious
• Take personal responsibility for your own health. Make this your top priority, your hobby. You get one life to live, so live it well.

So, if you have been battling with a condition like mine, I hope you'll have a look into some of the things above, and if you don't know where to start, just start with walking a little bit everyday.

If you have an experience you'd like to share, or a question about any of these 'bio hacking' ideas, drop a comment below.

I'd love to hear from you.

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