Fibromyalgia

In the last three decades, greater recognition has been given to this pathology, which many doctors of different specialties misunderstand. Patients who suffer from it are not adequately attended to and are often branded as exaggerated, causing great discouragement and uneasiness.

Something that has caught my attention in this collaboration with Costamed Group is the high incidence of this problem in Cozumel and the peninsula. We do not know why; the reality is that fibromyalgia is very present in Quintana Roo.

Qualified physicians should diagnose fibromyalgia, and one of the principles that qualified doctors have in treating chronic pain is believing their patient; understanding their suffering, there begins a proper doctor-patient relationship. Why do I insist on this? Because many of my colleagues find that their tests are normal, that they are a person who looks physically whole, congruent, well involved in their social and economic roles, they should not be suffering from this type of problem...but they do suffer from it, and then these patients are often undertreated, they are not understood, they are told that they are faking pain or that they are imitating some type of pain. Then it becomes a silent and invisible condition for everyone; it is common that other conditions, such as depression, are added to it.

Fibromyalgia is a vague and diffuse type of pain; it is not located precisely in one place; it migrates and travels through the patient's body; they feel that they have wires that are holding them or that they have a tremendous muscular contracture in the neck, in the back, in the abdomen, in the legs. It does not have a specific pattern except for these behaviors, nor does it respond to the usual analgesics.

The problem with fibromyalgia is that it can have a multifactorial origin. Many factors can influence the predisposition for fibromyalgia, and the treatment generally required is "medicinal. Fortunately, an intervention is rarely necessary; it needs to be a multimodal treatment for a problem with a multifactorial origin, that is, the neuralgic point: a doctor that understands fibromyalgia in-depth and its changing nature so that treatment is coordinated with other specialists, all working towards improving the patient's quality of life.