Woman pens book about living and coping with painful illness
By Kirsten Ballard
Published in News on May 14, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Annette Jackson sits on her couch with her dog Jack, a 9-year-old westie, who showed up at her door one day. Jackson says that the energetic dog often makes her laugh, one of the few things that keeps her mind off of her pain. She has written a book about her battle with fibromyalgia entitled "I Hurt Like Hell."
Annette Jackson knows all about pain. She wrote the book on it.
In her book "I Hurt Like Hell," Mrs. Jackson explains what it is liking living with fibromyalgia syndrome, or FMS. The disease affects 80 million people worldwide.
Her FMS sends constant shooting pain signals along the nerves in her back and neck. She is in pain from the minute she wakes up until she goes to sleep.
It started in 1997 with what she thought was carpal tunnel in her hands. The pain pathways spiderwebbed through the rest of her torso. She was only 32 years old.
Simple activities like vacuuming and walking her westie Jake became torturous. Her saving grace is a Tens Unit, a small device clipped to her back that sends small electric shocks to distract the brain from the FMS pain.
She compares fibro to diabetic neuropathy.
"It's painful nerves, it's not an acute pain, like I broke my leg," she said.
She says she cannot sit, stand or bounce on her head for more than 5 minutes without having to move around and change positions.
In 2005, she was told by doctors to stop working. The once active, busy woman became housebound. Her medicines and constant fatigue make driving unsafe.
"I am not a lame person, I couldn't sit here and do nothing, so I decided I would push for awareness," she said.
She felt called to write the book. She kept finding all of these scholarly, dictionary-like books that define the illness.
"There are a lot of books out there, but they're not written by people who have it," she said. "I wanted to read the book that I would want to read if I had it."
She began writing in 2010. Typing is impossible for her, but through technological advancements, she was able to use talk-to-text software to dictate her book to her computer.
"That technology is great for (people with fibro), or even people with arthritis," she said. "We have a voice now."
The book published in 2012 with only 48 pages. It has been sold in 14 countries.
"It's not a long book. One, I couldn't write a long book and number two, a lot of my readers couldn't read a long book," she said.
For Mrs. Jackson, even holding the telephone is painful.
The book is available on Amazon.com as an e-book and hard copy.
In "I Hurt Like Hell," Mrs. Jackson describes her pains and her use of methadone to try to break the cycle. With fibro, she can sleep for 22 hours and wake up exhausted. People with FMS have difficulty entering REM sleep.
"Some days I don't get out of bed," she said.
But she says laughter is her greatest medicine. It releases serotonin and helps immediately.
When she stopped working, she was worried that she would lack a purpose. Now she passes out fibro awareness bracelets and offers support to her readers through online forums. She started an online support page that has more than 900 members. The purple butterfly is the symbol for fibro.
"We all wish we could become that butterfly," she said.
For Mrs. Jackson, it's not about finding a cure. It is about finding understanding.
The invisible disease is often mistaken for laziness. "I don't have many friends because I always have to cancel," Mrs. Jackson said. "There is nothing more comforting than someone saying 'I know how you feel.'"