This post at ERnursey just got me riled, including as it does the following paragraph:

“In our society there are too many people who do not work. There is a huge group of people on welfare as well as a surprisingly large contingent of young, able bodied adults who are on disability for such things as ‘back pain’ and ‘fibromyalgia‘ among others. First of all don’t get me going on how they get their disability approved when there are people with real disabilities and serious medical issues get denied.”

So I replied with the following:

“Linz said: As someone who developed Fibromyalgia aged 21, when I was very fit and was just finishing a 3 year slog of a degree in meteorology and physics, I have to say I object to this post most strongly.

Fibromyalgia is not just pain – that’s a common misconception. Pain is one of the easiest FM symptoms to work through. When you’re in the bathroom 20 times a day with IBS, when you have such severe cognitive difficulties that you can’t keep an instruction in your memory for more than a few seconds and when your muscles will spontaneously give up, causing you to be unable to stand…that’s when employers don’t want you. I worked until I was told by an employer I was working for only a few hours a week in a quiet cafe that I was not giving enough to my job. They objected to toilet breaks, my smile slipping, not offering to work overtime for no good reason. What was I to do? I have a degree I slogged hard for, that should have enabled me to work around the world. I had a career lined up as a professional yacht racer and meterologist. I was extremely fit and never played on an X-box. But my body still gave up on me – as did much of the medical profession!

I am now, thankfully, getting back to productivity thanks to treatment from a specialist that my family had to pay out of pocket for me to see. I hope to start regular work again next year. I have helped myself even when no-one would help me, despite it often being their job.

Going on disability was never something I wanted to do and was something that I fought as long as I could – incidentally making myself worse in the process. Outdated views of Fibromyalgia were a large part of why I ended up on disability in the first place. If the medical professionals I saw when I first got sick had been up to date on Fibromyalgia I would never have ended up so sick or on disbility.

I suggest you learn more about this debilitating condition before you make such assumptions – it might help in your work!”

 I can’t stand this kind of outdated bigoted view and personally think that a medical professional publicly expressing such an opinion  should be a reprimandable offence (if only!) having suffered from a lot of this crap from people whose job it is to care and to help. The Hippocratic Oath (yes I realise – who couldn’t – that not all professionals in the medical field take the oath) says do no harm – what do medical pros think they are doing with this baloney?

Let me know your opinions…