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Fibromyalgia & The Family

© Cynthia Webber (Jausten)

Having just spent a very frustrating week with my family, I decided to search for some new sites which dealt with chronic pain and the family. Although I have lots of books which offer information for the family when one member is living with a chronic illness, it seems that they are tired of having me throw books at them to read, so hopefully I can educate not only them, but those who read my weekly articles about coping with fibromyalgia.

The site which I am featuring this week is the Colorado Health Net Chronic Pain Center. This site is full of easy to understand information, and there is an on-line book by Cecil E. Maranville which is filled with real-life concerns and issues for both the person who is coping with chronic pain, and chapter two is related to the family and the issues which arise for family members when one member has a chronic illness, such as fibromyalgia.

"Chronic pain needs to be seen as a sickness that will affect everyone in a family even though only one person has the illness." These words by Mr. Maranville are definitely true for my own family! My frustration with my lack of energy, high pain levels, and my inability to do all the things that I used to do has caused me to become irritable and depressed at times about my own self-worth. Also, my inability to add as much to the household income as I was able to do when I worked as a nurse, is affecting my marriage. The issue of not enough money to spread around for the necessities of life is causing my husband to be living under a great deal of financial stress, and with three teenagers in the household, our food bills just keep getting higher!

The two older ones are in university and, thankfully, they both have part-time jobs, but this limits their ability to help me around the house. My 18-year-old daughter was doing the majority of the cooking and cleaning, but with university, work, and other activities, she has recently had to stop doing these chores for me. My inability to keep up with the dust and clutter of the house is causing tension among the entire family. It is as though "nobody" does anything, and "everybody" thinks that they are doing more than any one else. I don't know who "nobody" and "everybody" are, but obviously they are figments of our imaginations.