Pics & Memes that visualize fibromyalgia and other invisible chronic pain illnesses

[JayCS]

This is me on the way to the bathroom at night … in the mornings … after lying down for 10 mins. … or even keeping any position… It just came upon me on my way to the bathroom…

#37 - I’ll be right there - just wait - getting there - don’t rush me - I’ve got all day… ehm, night

#38 - Keep calm - keep your crown on, or put it on again afterwards

#39 - Keep calm - this is how you do the ice-waddle in your room

Extend arms to the sides to keep balance. Keep your knees loose

#40 - majestic - this is how to do it dignified and in style

#41 - yay! I’ve got there!

#42 - when even waddling doesn’t work at all

#43 - eaaaasy does it!

#44 - it’s urgen!!

#45 - alone in the big wide world

#46 - on my way!

#47 - Waddle on!

When things get cold and icy, And your path looks kind of dicey, Waddle on!
Keep you toes all pointe out-y, Keep your knees all loosey-goosey, Waddle on!
Kep your hands outside your pockets, Take short steps so you won’t rocket, Waddle on!
Take it slowly, Holey-moley, So you won’t fall down and roll-y, Waddle on!
#48 - A bit urgent, but … Whoopsy!

Ehm - don’t laugh too much… - As a kid I didn’t like people laughing at penguins in wildlife films we went to - too much of an empath and a bit of a mobbing victim. But you can laugh at me … now, I’m grown-up and not letting anyone mob me anymore… - #40 (majestic)
Strange tho - despite not being able to walk when I have fibro-stiffness, I can press myself up right up to stand on a window sill to put one of the darn blinds up when they fall down once again… my wife is scared when she sees me do it, but it’s worse when she tries to help, so I send her out of the room…
The most interesting maneuver/manoeuvre is probably going back to bed in the total darkness - having to waddle slowly backwards so my right calf find the frame of the bed and not my shins any more… can’t find a gif of that. have to buy an infrared cam to tape that…
BTW I was thinking of saving these pics as png, seeing as they are penguins… but then realized it’s gifs I need to illustrate…

[JayCS]

#47 - me yesterday (combined with too long in the cold outside)

Me, after too much peopling
(in the sense of socializing, not meant rudely, of course)

[AussieMom]

Oh My JCS!!! I LOVED the penguins! Especially that first little guy!!! And the one that is sledding on his belly - TOO CUTE!!!
I used to laugh so much at Tim Conway, playing the old man that shuffled in Carol Burnett shows, but, believe me, I look just like him (with a slower shuffle), right after wakening in the mornings! Ha!
Hey, if you are in total darkness, going back and forth to bed at night, here’s what hubby and I do - We have 2 motion sensor nightlights. One in the hallway, and one in our bedroom. They really help!

[JayCS]

#48

@AussieMom

Tim Conway, playing the old man that shuffled in Carol Burnett

Tim Conway shuffle in Carol Burnett Show (PerkyPossibleCockatiel - whatever that means…?)
Just laughing my head off at “Clock Repair”… Seems to be a running gag that Harvey Korman falls out of the role/steps out of character by laughing with the audience…

“motion sensor nightlights” good idea… but…not sure if my wife’d wake up from that like she did from a normal one, but maybe I’ll ask. Thanks!

[Freedom]

I started out this morning feeling grumpy and whiny. But…those memes are hysterical! Now I have a big smile on my face! Thanks!!!

[AussieMom]

Oh YES, JCS! Harvey Korman would get SO cracked up at Tim Conway, that he couldn’t stay in character - which made it even funnier!!! Thank you for including this video in the FMS memes - You have compiled quite a collection, so far, my friend - And we all LOVE it!!!

[Freedom]

It’s so nice to laugh! Fibromyalgia knocks the laugh right out of me most of the time.

[JayCS]

#49 - hijacked from @strugglinginKs

A chuckle for your day . .

[exhausted pigeon]

I am not an early bird or a night owl I am some form of permanently exhausted pigeon.

[strugglinginKs]

Hijack all ya want! Wasn’t sure if I should post it here or not so did it that way.

[EnjoyLife]

These are hilarious. I needed that.

[AussieMom]

@strugglinginKs

Wasn’t sure if I should post it here or not

Hi, Struggling! JCS lets us women do whatever we want - Afterall, we’ve got him outnumbered, LOL!

@JayCS - really glad you hijacked that! I was thinking the very same thing…Great minds and all…

[JayCS]

Yup, and yup! Actually I had the exhausted pigeon as a meme without a pic, so it’s pimped mine (ehm: the one I found) up, and also got me thinking I can always praps find better picced memes if I pic-look for the quotes I’ve found and am not quite satisfied - which occasionally happens, just occasionally… There’s always something I can improve seems to be my motto, and it’s not about speed it’s about effectiveness, i.e. acceleration, …
This pigeon isn’t as expressive as @strugglinginKs 's, but cute too… My wife would see me in this birdy more than in the above, she calls it “above the line” (when someone gets silly because of tiredness)
#50

I am not an early bird or a night owl I am some form of permanently exhausted pigeon.
#51

, or praps rather:
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.
#52

Wheelchair race at the paralympics 2012.

My wife was just shaking her head that I’m writing this stuff after getting up way early enough, instead of eating breakfast to cycle early to the bus to the ozone, bc it’s raining, so all of these pics are describing me in one…

[AussieMom]

LOL, JCS, the bird in #50 looks like he fell out of the tree one too many times! (Kind of like I feel today!)

[JayCS]

Male fibromyalgia, me n’ my fibro-mates… (or: and I… )

#53 - inspired by … - OK, just guess

Men Suffer from the Grip of Fibromyalgia, It’s not Just a Woman’s Disease

#54

“Doctors may not even consider fibromyalgia in a male patient, and some doctors speculate that only 10% of diagnoses are men because men are less likely to complain about pain.
In a study, men tended to have:
Lower reported pain intensity
Lower tender-point count
Lower depression rates
Longer duration of symptoms when making the first complaint to a doctor
Higher overall disability due to symptoms
Also, ongoing pain in men was especially linked to pressure-triggered hyperalgesia (amplified pain) in the neck”.
As pain and judging it is very subjective, I can imagine such a study not being very well controlled. Interesting tho, that I call a pain of 7 what many others call 10.

#55

Men get fibromyalgia.
It’s not just psychological burnout or depression it’s not laziness it’s not malingering, it is the result of widespread dysfunction in the body and the brain that’s hard to understand, difficult to ?beat, and, so far, impossible to cure.

#56

Fibromyalgia affects men - we understand your pain
“my head is pounding”
“aching all over”
“I cry too sometimes”
“my nerves are hurting”
“I need help”
“they’ll think I’m weak”
“I’m suffering too”
“I can’t hang out with my friends like I used to”
“AHHH!”

#57

Men with Fibromyalgia - Shining a light on the 10%
(Seems to be about 4:3 or 1:1, cf. Males - My Fibro-mates :-) - ratio, differences etc)

#58

People Might Think a Man with Fibromyalgia is Weak
They are Wrong!
Men with Fibromyalgia are the quite warriors who have been strong too long!

#59 - same pic as 58, but different message

As a man living with fibromyalgia I suffer in silence, this is how I feel every dayday! Every day I fight a battle, every day I fight to survive, every day I fight to be strong, every day I try to do the best I can, every day I find the will to go on, every day I find reason not to give in, every day is filled with pain, every day is filled with sorrow, every day I live with fibromyalgia and I won’t to let it beat me … ever
#60

“I only get one life, and I will not let fibromyalgia take the joy from living it.” Morgan Freeman

#61 - you what?!? - Impaired moral judgment?? Where’d they get that from?!?

OK, so as it will now appear, men - my fibro-mates - have a different style of suffering than women… - my fibro-misses, -Mrs., -mams, -mums, -huns… - Looks a bit as if those who’ve made these pics take the ‘Well you look OK’ for granted in men, i.e. it doesn’t have to be shown, and it shows them writhing in agony more actively as opposed to the more passive pics made of women.

The quote of 10% males inspired me to research current studies on the male/female ratio: Seems to be about 4:3 or 1:1, cf.

Males - My Fibro-mates - ratio, differences etc

Ratio women to men seems to be almost 1:1? (Can’t believe it myself tho…) Reading 9:1 as ratio again (in a meme in the meme-thread), I had a look how qualified wikipedia’s claims are that it is something like 2:1 or (German wikipedia) 1:1. The English wikipedia cites a source that is not generally readable (costs 30$), which makes bloodcurdling claims, which I’ll quote first, but the German wikipedia bases that on a well-constructed German Randomized Controlled Trial from 2013 saying at most 2…

[JayCS]

Have you seen that, there is a diagonal double arrow at the bottom to the right of each pic, if you hover there with your mouse? If you click on this, not only will that pic go really big, you can scroll to the left and right thru all the pics in one post, in the last post #53-#61… without reading my blurb ;-).

[Freedom]

I’ve rarely seen any memes about how men feel when they have fibromyalgia. It really opened my eyes to see the pain etc. on their faces/ bodies.

[JayCS]

Sometimes when my wife asks, and my Ache/pain is 5/6 at I say my body is crying out. But what gets outside is only me panting, the odd grunt, sometimes a sigh, never a moan or complaint, at most an exasperated “Oh, man, ey” (not sure how to translate that…). When I’m at 7 I brush tears out of my eyes. 8 is when brushing doesn’t help and an occasional groan escapes - treatments rather than the fibro itself. 7 & 8 meant the pain’s going to be there quite a few days. (Now I always know how to get it down to 3/4 at most.)
So like on all the women pics I always smile and laugh (sometimes gallow’s humour) and people say “Oh, you look good today”. Which conversely means these men-memes are probably just expressing all of our pain, not just male pain - or w’d you disagree?
Searching for I found very few ones similar to these men ones, very seldom with mouth crying out, and even if, not that ‘real’. Perhaps it’s generally accepted aesthetics that women realistically in pain somehow don’t look good enough to show. Or is it more complicated: we don’t want to see them, b/c we’d cry right away, whereas we sort of admire a man in pain? This is an example of the few I found with mouth open and a rope symbolizing chronic pain:

#62

[JayCS]

Now we need some on a lighter note - inspired by @strugglinginKs - with fogginess outside and inside …

#63 - reminds me of the funny study suggesting that 45% of us have ADHD…

#64

#65

#66

#67

#68 - shd I keep this in the closet for a few months? - well I can always remind of it…

[strugglinginKs]

@JayCS

people say “Oh, you look good today”

I have come to hate this phrase! It rates right up there with “How are you today?” Both are a polite thing to say when you see someone, but you don’t really expect an answer or want one.

[strugglinginKs]

These are SO TRUE! I have made and lost so many lists and what I was going to add to said lists. And I can’t even count the times I have taken my list to the store, had it in the cart so I can see it AND still lost it.

And boy does the vocabulary get interesting some days.