Hi!

[longmagpieroads]

I'm Bethany and I'm 22, almost 23, and in October, I will have had fibromyalgia for ten years. Fibro is a "common and complex chronic pain disorder that affects people physically, mentally and socially. Fibromyalgia is a syndrome rather than a disease. Unlike a disease, which is a medical condition with a specific cause or causes and recognizable signs and symptoms, a syndrome is a collection of signs, symptoms, and medical problems that tend to occur together but are not related to a specific, identifiable cause." Taken from this site - NFA

I just had my sixteenth anniversary of being diagnosed with severe allergies. I am allergic to most of plant life. The bushes, the flowers, the shrubs, the trees, the pollens, and ragweed and molds. Even grass.
I've also got Sensory Integration Disorder. Sensory integration disorders are central nervous system disorders characterized by imbalance among the primary sensations of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. these sort of dysfunctions can affect attention & arousal (hyperactivity or hypoactivity), movement, speech, balance, and auditory and visual perception. Basically what it means, is that I don't process sensory input the way that other people do. Because of that some stuff is harder for me to grasp than other stuff. For example, I have very little spacial concepts knowledge/reasoning. I don't always know where my body is in space, which is why I trip all the time or bang into things for no apparent reason. Also why learning how to ride a bike was so hard and why learning to drive took so long.

So hi ya'll. Nice to meet ya!

Comments

[green]

Nice to meet you, too! My daughter was born with SID, too.

[longmagpieroads]

We only recently figured out that was what had been "wrong" with me all these years. It was kind of a relief to know what I had had a name and I got some decent coping strategies that have worked pretty well for me.

Nice to meet you!

[green]

*nod* My daughter went undiagnosed for awhile, and we couldn't figure out why she would get so scared in certain situations. Now we know she felt off balance and like she was going to fall. It was particularly hard to understand when she was a baby and we'd lay her on her back (the way they tell you to do) and she'd do nothing but scream.

Occupational therapy helped a lot, once we knew what was going on.

[longmagpieroads]

Yeah - just knowing about it and having researched it, I know now what are some of my triggers and can take steps to move around them. Knowing is half the battle, as they say.

It explained a lot to my parents, who couldn't understand why I could not eat certain foods or took so long to learn certain things.