One of the strangest forms of FM pain
are what I call the stabbies. These feel like you are being stabbed
with a needle, a nail, or a skewer. The sensation of being stabbed is
very distinct. It feels real. You have to learn not to jerk each time
it happens.
They can come one at a time or in
clusters. The strangest I had was the sensation of a trident
slamming into my chest, a sensation so powerful that it knocked me
off my feet.
In my desperation to find something to
do, I began doing a lot of art research for an art project I had been working on covering the
history of the censorship of art. This is when I first discovered
Frida Kahlo, and a remarkable link to my experience of the stabbies.
Famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo
suffered pain her entire adult life after a bus accident when she was
18. The American College of Rheumatology suggests that perhaps Kahlo
suffered from fibromyalgia. The condition was unknown in her time, or
at least it did not have a name, but descriptions of her struggles
with pain certainly suggest that it may have been one of hr many health
problems.
She did a lot of self portraits that
reflected her own struggles in life. She was much more attractive in
photographs than in any of the portraits she painted of herself, which seem to magnify every flaw she apparently saw in her own appearance.
Nothing speaks more to me than her 1944
work, The Broken Column. It depicts her as broken, barely held
together. For people with fibromyalgia, what really gets your
attention are the nails. Put it all together, and it seems quite
possible that this painting depicts a fibromyalgia sufferer.

The Broken Column, Frida Kahlo, 1944
There is also an interesting drawing in
her diary. She depicts herself in pain, with 11 arrows that point to
parts of her body that are interestingly close to the conventional
fibromyalgia tender points.
We'll never know her true diagnosis with certainty,
but the fibromyalgia community has adopted her as one of their own.
Her fighting spirit despite so many difficulties throughout her life
is an inspiration to everyone.
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