I am Adriana Niño de Rivera Mejía, Mexican, I am 52 years old and I have a degree in Communication Sciences. Literal, From the day I was born I faced adversity: I was born six and a half months premature, but I clung to life.
I never had the desired health, not even as a child, or as a teenager, but when I entered university the Way of the Cross began. I started the first semester of the degree and I started with pain in my left neck, very strong, I was 21 years old. To be honest I’ve always had a cheerful character, I’m optimistic and above all I don’t give up so easily, so I went on with my life, but soon I started with more discomfort.
The first thing I did was go to the orthopedist, and they sent me RX, anti-inflammatories, both topical and oral. Nothing worked and over time this became unbearable. For the story is not so long, I began to feel stiff and over time episodes of not being able to even get out of bed due to fatigue, muscle pain (what I called inflammation) and various symptoms like teary eyes, chills, a lot of anxiety, insomnia, depression due to the same situation, and I didn’t feel like going on, because my body wasn’t giving me. He suddenly had good days, but other fatal ones.
So I went back to the doctors to ask them to send me another study that would show what was happening to me, and the MRIs showed absolutely nothing, as well as the laboratory tests, and more specific tests, either. She had been a gymnast from 5 to 13 years old, and she thought that maybe it was an injury from so much physical effort, but neither.
The doctors sent me to take large amounts of medications such as antidepressants, anticonvulsants, as well as anxiolytics, but also ibuprofenwhich I took for years (later I found out that it greatly affected my intestinal microbiota and had serious consequences).
The painful path to finding out you had fibromyalgia
This is how time passed, and between medications (which I ended up giving up, since they never made me feel good), I was able to continue somehow, I even exercised, but the neck pain, stress and general malaise remained. At the age of 27, I started working as a reporter for Tele Guía magazine, and later for Geomundo magazine. The workloads were strong, after three years, I had to leave that job and stop permanently since my physical and emotional health did not give more.
This time I went to all the medical specialties you can imagine and I I found something that surprised me a lot: the doctors didn’t believe me, or they told me I was a hypochondriac, or it was just pure stress. I have always been someone who fixes herself, puts on makeup, wears shoes or likes to be dressed up, even on my worst days, so adding that nothing came out in the medical tests, they always accused me of making up, or that I wanted to call the attention. And so the years passed, until someone told me to go to a rheumatologist.
And finally in my late thirties I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
That day I thought: “I finally know what I have, and it even has a name”. But my happiness did not last long and after serious gynecological problems (bleeding from fibroids for which I almost lost my life) came other consequences that pushed me to the limit. But I kept clinging to life and thinking that if I had survived being born, I had to continue and draw strength even though I couldn’t go on anymore, since I had been facing this hell for thirty-odd years.
So when the pandemic started and when I saw that no one could do anything for me and doctors, friends, family and even those who had been my partners still did not believe me, I gave myself the task of doing research to have quality of life, and above all to understand what was happening to me for sure, although I already knew that it was fibromyalgia.
I searched the internet for how to contact disease associations in Spain, since I had already investigated that that country had a high percentage of this condition. Very excited, I took on the task of interviewing doctors, patients (specialists in the subject), nutritionists, and expert people who led me to
understand that it is a real condition (and that I was not going crazy, as many told me), but also due to the research that has been done on fibromyalgia in Spain, there was a way to cope with the disease, despite the fact that there is no cure.
Fibromyalgia has its world day
It is such an unknown disease that it was not until 1992 when the WHO recognized it as such, and it is May 12 when its day is commemorated worldwide. To conclude, I would like to say that I gave myself the task of investigating more of this musculoskeletal condition in order to have a better quality of life, and I put my life testimony, medical interviews, and what has led me to have a better quality of life into a book. .
It should be made clear that for Those who suffer from fibromyalgia it is very important to go to a rheumatologist to diagnose them, since it is confused with other conditionsand never self-medicate.
With my book I don’t pretend that they do everything to the letter as I do, it is my experience of
life and the changes I have made in it, and that have served me well. My main advice: whether you are already diagnosed or not, never lose faith. Nothing in life is easy, but you can live with fibromyalgia, it’s a matter of disciplining yourself, not playing the victim and getting up, even though sometimes it seems like you can’t go on. And as I say in my book: “If I could, anyone can.”
Adriana Niño de Rivera is a Mexican communicator. Her book “My Struggle with Fibromyalgia” is available on Amazon.com. Twitter: @pildorin / Instagram: @adriananderivera / EMail: adrianan60@yahoo.com.mx.
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