The testimonial of Natacha Waking up with fibromyalgia and non-disabling arthritis
Published 3 May 2019 • By Louise Bollecker
This testimonial is part of the graduation project of Gaëlle Regnier, a student in photography at the Agnès Varda School of Photography and Visual Techniques in Brussels. She chose chronic pain as the theme of this photo report to highlight the patients and their struggle.
The testimonial of Natacha
Waking up with fibromyalgia and non-disabling arthritis
"This morning I get up, and like so many other days for years, my body is like a dead tree. It takes time to get started. I put one foot on the ground and it's like my ankles are a cracking branch. A piece of green wood that sinks into my flesh, my bones, like thousands of splinters that go into my skin.
Like a bent tree, I shake before finding some semblance of balance. Walls, doors, furniture come to me as if they were attracted to me. Holding on to the walls so I don't fall, but my arms hurt, my shoulders are fixed with daggers of pain, my hands are in claws... not to mention my legs, my back telling me that I slept on a bed of stones.
I need warmth to relax this body which seems so often to me to be 100 years old. I will move, go out, move forward, have the courage to live a day that may be a hell but maybe not too much.
As always I will smile, I will stand and find beauty in a cloud, the flight of a bird, music, friendship and love of my loved ones. I will not show others what I am going through because it locks me even more in a cage of pain.
Tomorrow I may not be able to get up because I would have done too much today, I would have tried too hard to live but the day after tomorrow I will be there. I may think of splitting my time of life into rest periods that allow me to move forward, even at the rate of a snail.
Welcome to my world called fibromyalgia and non-disabling arthritis."
Other testimonials
Claire: "Continuing to work with rheumatoid arthritis"
Alain: "The labour market excludes the chronically ill"
Delphine: "Years of diagnostic uncertainty facing Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome"
Ornella: "Photo testimonial: KISS syndrome - from mother to son"
Marie: "Irritable bowel syndrome prevents peole from living"
Virginia: "Maintain hope despite the side effects of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis"
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3 comments
Do you think this photo testimonial is accurate? Can you relate to this?
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Hi, that’s definitely a creative view to explain chronic pain.
Another way is to include temperatures and struggle to adapt to change in weather .
Well done so far 😊
I overdid things yesterday and I also now feel like a bent and shaky tree. I haven't got out of bed yet and my legs are already hurting and protesting at the thought of me standing up. My spine and neck feel like rocks rubbing together when I move and the thought of staying in bed is so appealing to me that if I could stay right where I am I would.
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