How bad can it be?

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martins

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BACKGROUND My ex wife has fibro I'm not here to deny this I'm not a doctor but she's an accounts clerk / office manager she was working full day 45 minute commute 5 days of the week and a full day of work 7-8 hours per day. No sign of fibro.

Covid pandemic hit she was working from home but it was too much?

My salary has increased and now she's so disabled she cant work and is asking the court for life time support.

She seems to function in every other life activity fine

So how debilitating can fibro be?

I'm not here to attack her just gather facts
 
BACKGROUND My ex wife has fibro I'm not here to deny this I'm not a doctor but she's an accounts clerk / office manager she was working full day 45 minute commute 5 days of the week and a full day of work 7-8 hours per day. No sign of fibro.

Covid pandemic hit she was working from home but it was too much?

My salary has increased and now she's so disabled she cant work and is asking the court for life time support.

She seems to function in every other life activity fine

So how debilitating can fibro be?

I'm not here to attack her just gather facts
Hi martins,

I will need to tell you that you are not going to gather any friendly replies here with an opening like that.

I suggest that rather than asking those of us who are dealing with and often disabled by fibromyalgia to justify our pain and our experience and our lives and defend your wife to you, you simply do some research. There's a lot of information out there that you can get without our having to take out time to give it to you.

This is the wrong place for you to be making a request worded the way you have in your post.
 
It is very difficult to understand an invisible illness when you yourself have not experienced it. I know fibromyalgia is very difficult to understand not living with it yourself. The degree of debilitating pain can vary for the individual sometimes from minute to minute and what can be effected is also variable. Some that don't have a personal experience with fibromyalgia may think it's not a big deal, everyone feels tired and has pain from time to time. My fibromyalgia has left me with the inability to work. This was extremely difficult for me as work was a great distraction and something I enjoyed. I was great at my job in healthcare working with some of the best physicians in the world (not an exaggeration). I use to be able to work 60-70 hour a week. I had to stop working after the pandemic because it had such a major impact on my health (I've fortunately have not had COVID myself). The stress of all going on in the world made my very real, yet invisible, medical conditions so bad that I had a major health crisis. My fibromyalgia pain is constantly at a level of at least 6 out of 10 on a pain scale every minute of every day. I can peak on some days when I'm in so much pain that I want to die because it is so painful and debilitating. It gets so bad that even clothes touching me puts my nerves in intense pain.

Fibromyalgia is a VERY complex condition that can ebb and flow with some good days and some bad days. The bad times can very in intensity.

COVID had a massive impact of people increasing the number of individuals that have developed health and mental health conditions. It also has made previous conditions much worse for many people!

If you truely want to get an insight on the impact of fibromyalgia, I want to recommend to you to take a listen to my podcast. My podcast can be found on Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and iHeart radio. The name is The Sweet with the Sour by Ren. This podcast shares my experience with chronic pain (fibromyalgia), anxiety and depression. I created it to let individuals know they are not alone and to perhaps let people who do not have invisible illnesses themselves but would like to maybe understand what it may be like for someone like myself.

Particularly to the episodes:

What Does it Feel Like (October 4th 2023 season 1 episode 10)

Everything has a cost, a price to pay (September 15, 2023 Season 1 episode 7)

How do you balance the invisible and unexpected (December 11, 2023 season 1 episode 19)

Brain fog, mashed potato, squirrel (September 8, 2023 season 1 episode 6).
 
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Hi martins, welcome to the forum!,
🥤🍕👍🏻, in answer to your question of how debilitating can fibro be = EXTREMELY (I know with some of my really bad flaire up's its left me in bed for day's!) I can't really speak for your wife (and her fibro) as I'm not in her body and her level/pain/fatigue (and capacity to do things) may be different to mine, but i can't imagine a 45 minute daily commute would've been very comfortable for her, (i hope your day is well) 💫💫💫
 
My salary has increased and now she's so disabled she cant work and is asking the court for life time support.
She seems to function in every other life activity fine .... So how debilitating can fibro be?
I know and get this situation you're in, so I can empathize that you want it to be fair.

Generally: As said, fibro can be severely debilitating so that it is not possible to work at all, and it can be moderately debilitating so that it might be possible to work a bit, but it's a tough condition however severe it is.

Me in comparison: I worked even longer hours than she did, before. I had small signs the 10 years before, certain pain flares and stiffness, but nothing that would question working, then it suddenly really flared up, shortly before covid. I had to stop working for 10 months to get healthy enough to work at all, and even then could only work 10h/wk. Working from home during lockdown in my job doubled my stress and again caused a big 3 month flare. Then it was the jabs that kicked me out totally, so I can only do 5-10h online now, cos luckily I don't have as much brain fog as others do. If people see me for a few minutes, they can think I'm "fine", often I can carry really heavy things, or in the first 1-2 years I could sometimes cycle almost as fast as I used to. But that lasts for about 10' and if I push thru and override pain, that can debilitate me for hours, weeks or months. I can play table tennis for 20'-30', and on good days win, which looks "fine" on the surface, but then I need a long break.

Your case: It is well possible that she seems to function in every other life activity, whilst she can only function for several hours, by pushing thru, and then ends up not able to move for days. Forced to work too much, this would end up in big crashes, perhaps a total crash. Working from home or even more so getting long covid from a covid bout or the jabs can also have been the last straw or even the cause. A diagnosis of fibro may be part of several co-morbidities or be a sign of other conditions which can all be severely debilitating. (In my case it's MCAS, which fibro and maybe some kind of ME/CFS may be part of.) So it's not necessarily about fibro, i.e. the precise diagnosis, it's how capable someone is of moving, tolerating stress, sleeping, thinking clearly enough etc. which may all be very limited.

Another part is however, that whilst fibro is usually a life-long condition, it can worsen with age, co-morbidities etc., but also with de-conditioning and not finding things to do against it, it can also get a little better by pacing, avoiding triggers (like work stress). This will be just as individual as the severity, so might need to be checked at intervals to see how it's changing.
Me on the receiving end: I've long considered maybe being able to commute again. But despite finding many small things that help me I've given up hope of that for the time being, due to increased co-morbidities. So I'll have to go on disability for at least a year or two, even if that means considerably less money. Being able to work also depends on how stressful the working environment is, and mine has got considerably more stressful due to not being able to phone any more and an unfavourable boss change.
 
Martins, I'm confused as to why you have to pay anything for your "ex" wife specifically (is there's a different law in your country?) but I am a bit confused? If she has a disability it should be under government help, if there's child support involved then that would make sense (to a certain age but there's no mention of that) I honestly dont understand how the responsibily falls to you 🤷🏼‍♀️
 
why you have to pay anything for your "ex" wife specifically (is there's a different law in your country?)
Dunno about martins, but in Germany there was/is a law for having to pay for an ex-partner, even life-long, unless there was a marriage contract otherwise. The idea was that if one partner wasn't working while married, they shouldn't have to afterwards either, or if working less then they could continue that and get it topped up by the ex-partner. The lawmakers decided this was unfair and that in these new circumstances, people should usually be expected to care for themselves after about 3 years of adjustment. But sickness is still one of the circumstances where it can still be life-long - unless the sickness came after the separation. The two pensions are still also necessarily "balanced out", too. Tough - and who wants to spoil a marriage by setting up a marriage contract...
 
Wow, I've just learned some new thing's 🤯 (this law "could" be used by manipulative people this makes me sad) I don't like this law
 
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