Rebuilding a tolerable life: narratives of women recovered from fibromyalgia, 2020, Eik et al

Paywall, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09593985.2020.1830454
Sci hub, unable to access

 

I find narratives meaningful. Stories are IMO very powerful ways of sharing a POV.

But they aren't science. What they are is generally fiction. Exaggerations for dramatic effect to deliver the most emotional impact.

Of course for every person out there, there is the real story of their life. Generally not as powerfully dramatic as fiction. And the problem here is that people when faced with adversity want a story that will make sense of things that often don't have any obvious sense to them and they want the story to reveal the struggle they feel in coping and the efforts it takes for them to function which are not at all obvious to others.

Enter the behavioural psychologist. Manipulative to the point of mastery. Tell the ill person what they want to hear (attentive listening then validation of suffering), frame the problem as one that they (psych) have the keys for the solution ( fear of exercise / behavioural modification) and inform the ill person that it is within their power to 'overcome' (a powerful word) and 'win' making it more an epic gladiator struggle where they gain validation through hard work. Getting validation from someone especially when previously experiencing the opposite is a very powerful human motivator.

Validation through hard work. I've heard that concept before in another rather unpleasant (evil) context.

 

Gobbledygook

 

Dr. Robert Bennett, rheumatologist at Oregon Health Science Center, and a clinician with over 5000 patients and a researcher who discovered low growth hormone levels in fibro patients said (in the 1990s):

one third of patients get worse, one-third of patients get better, one-third of patients stay the same.

To write of "recovery" in fibromyalgia means they were not properly diagnosed.

 

[My emphasis in quote]

Do you mean "low growth hormone levels"?

 

"Never heard from them again" seems to be the criterion for = "recovered".

Then of course the same people are puzzled at all that "doctor shopping" and don't see the link or imagine that it could concern them, showing that sometimes ignorance truly is bliss, as long as you don't care much about professional responsibility anyway.

 

if we had a system similar to the one in education that weeded out piss poor teachers/ schools for the medical profession to remove the licences of those who are simply to lazy or stupid to keep up with the actual science rather than bullshit that only exists to save costs .

 

Whoops, yes.

 

Perhaps, but they do say recovered and ipso facto that is extremely rare.

I'm being very generous here that there's a problem with low to no-cost translation services from Norwegian to English.

As in: "The close analysis reveals a recovery narrative portraying a complex and ambiguous process consisting of small dramas (my bolding) about the efforts trying to rebuild a meaningful life."

Oh, yes, it's about women, so it's their small dramas--lost in translation or denigration of females?

One last thing: The main researcher is a physical therapist, there's an RN, a psychologist and another PT.

Post edit note: According to the American College of Rheumatology: there is no cure for fibromyalgia. Good night.