For months after undergoing knee replacement surgery, Abu Dhabi resident Michelle Posney kept returning to doctors with unexplained pain spreading across her body.
Scans were normal. Blood tests showed nothing alarming. Yet the 57-year-old former teacher says she was battling crushing fatigue, migraines, stiffness and what felt like her “body being on fire”.
“When I finally got diagnosed, I cried,” she said. “Not because of the diagnosis — because I finally had answers.”
Specialists at Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City say such experiences are common among fibromyalgia patients, many of whom spend months — and sometimes years — moving between different specialists before receiving a diagnosis for the chronic pain condition.
Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.
Dr Mumtaz Khan, chair of rheumatology at the hospital, said fibromyalgia remains one of the most misunderstood conditions because symptoms often overlap with migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, while scans and diagnostic tests usually appear normal.
“Patients keep visiting different physicians and getting different names,” he said. “Some people will have headaches, some chronic fatigue, some IBS. It is a spectrum of the same condition.”
He added that many patients struggle emotionally because they are repeatedly told nothing serious appears in their tests.
“The symptoms can be quite disabling and devastating,” he said. “Sometimes patients think, ‘Everything is normal, so why am I feeling like this?’”
‘Showering became exhausting
For Posney, symptoms escalated gradually after her surgery and severe reaction to opioid medication during recovery.
While pain around the operated knee improved, she began developing widespread pain, exhaustion and what she describes as “brain fog”.
“Some days when I wake up, I already know my day is going to be non-productive,” she said. “One task could completely deplete the energy I have for the whole day.”
At times, even showering became exhausting.
“We think of ourselves in percentages,” she explained. “Maybe today I’m 50 per cent, so I can only do half of what I normally would.”
She says learning to manage energy, sleep and movement became essential after her diagnosis earlier this year.
“Before, I would just push through things,” she said. “Now my body gives me signs that I need to stop and rest.”
Posney added that one of the biggest challenges has been helping people around her understand the unpredictability of the condition.
“If I cancel plans, people think maybe I’m being rude,” she said. “But I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to wake up feeling on a particular day.”
Years of unexplained pain
Emirati mother-of-six Badriya Al Shamsi, 67, says she lived with unexplained pain for years before learning she had fibromyalgia.
The pain would move through different parts of her body — affecting her bones, legs and joints — without clear explanation.
“I kept going to different places and getting treatments, but nobody diagnosed the condition until Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City,” she said.
Al Shamsi said she initially believed the pain was simply something she had to endure while balancing family responsibilities and raising children.
Despite the condition, she continued pursuing education and work, eventually graduating from university and building a career at the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation before retiring.
She remains active in community activities, heritage programmes and poetry writing.
“I never surrendered to the illness,” she said.
However, flare-ups still affect her daily life and social activities.
“There are times when I become too exhausted to attend family gatherings or events,” she said.
She added that one of the hardest aspects was explaining the illness to family members who could not understand pain that had no visible cause.
“They didn’t know what fibromyalgia was,” she said.
‘Not in your head’
According to Dr Khan, one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding fibromyalgia is the belief that symptoms are psychological or imagined.
“It is a real condition,” he said. “The issue is that there are no objective findings or specific diagnostic tests.”
He explained that fibromyalgia is linked to what specialists call “central sensitisation”, where the nervous system amplifies normal pain signals.
“A normal touch can become painful,” he said. “The volume knob for pain is increased.”
However, he stressed that the condition itself does not physically damage joints, organs or tissues.
“It is not inflammatory and it does not destroy the body,” he said. “The goal is symptom control and restoring function.”
Dr Khan cautioned that fibromyalgia can also be both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, with some patients later discovered to have inflammatory arthritis or autoimmune diseases.
“You cannot label someone with fibromyalgia on the first visit,” he said.
He cited multinational survey findings showing patients waited nearly a year after symptoms began before seeking medical help, while diagnosis took an average of 2.3 years and consultations with nearly four physicians.
At SSMC, around 700 fibromyalgia patients were treated over the past year, he added.
The hospital is also preparing to launch a multidisciplinary ‘Fibromyalgia Flagship Service’ later this year, offering combined rheumatology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy sessions through a six-week programme that can be extended depending on patient response.
Dr Khan said non-drug interventions remain among the most effective forms of management.
“Sleep correction, stretching programmes, hydrotherapy, physiotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy can dramatically improve symptoms,” he said.
A newly licensed medication for fibromyalgia, Tonmya, has also recently been approved in the UAE, according to the specialist.
For patients like Posney, however, one of the most important parts of the journey has simply been understanding what was happening to her body.
“The more you know, the more you can advocate for yourself,” she said. “Don’t stop looking for answers.”
Source: Khaleej Times