I recently grad­u­ated from col­lege and, I fear, am offi­cially out of excuses to act like a col­lege stu­dent. That, in no notice­able way, has altered my behav­ior, but I have noticed a fairly sig­nif­i­cant change (besides the size of my bank account).

Instead of dream­ing of what I want to be when I “grow up,” I am mak­ing it hap­pen. I got the steady job with the nice pay­check, I have a list of goals with a rough time-frame, I take time to read for fun and for busi­ness.… And, in doing these things I felt I never had time for dur­ing col­lege, I have found the length of my To Do list only con­tin­ues to grow. At the begin­ning of the month I added My Life With Fibro to my To Do list.

D Day
I offi­cially became a fibroy­outh™ at 14. After years of con­stantly hurt­ing, vis­it­ing doc­tors, and under­go­ing tests, I was diag­nosed with fibromyal­gia by Dr. James Arkins. He was quick to rec­og­nize the symp­toms because, he said, his wife had FMS. He was also quick to refer me to a spe­cial­ist, since options for treat­ing fibromyal­gia were limited–especially for some­one my age.

Mov­ing For­ward
My sur­vival and suc­cess in high school and col­lege can be attrib­uted to the team of resource­ful sup­port­ers I recruited over the years. Fol­low­ing my diag­no­sis, fam­ily mem­bers and friends came together to help me learn about, and min­i­mize the symp­toms of, fibromyal­gia. It was a strug­gle to find infor­ma­tion that was per­ti­nent to teenagers with fibromyal­gia. My team net­worked on my behalf… talk­ing with their friends, read­ing about research and treat­ment, even buy­ing me prod­ucts to try. We spent years col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion for fibroy­outh™ and putting ideas to the test. Now I want to help oth­ers do the same.