Life with fibromyalgia syndrome: A socio-spatial examination of chronically ill women's experiences of everyday life, doctor -patient interactions, and health care services

Fibromyalgia syndrome [FMS] is a chronic illness that primarily affects women. Its diagnostic process involves no objective testing and its symptoms are 'medically unexplained.' One significant outcome of this is that some do not recognize FMS as being a legitimate diagnosis. Those living with this illness, then, must negotiate the ways in which others, including health professionals, construct their reported bodily symptoms.

This study, informed by feminist materialist and biopsychosocial theory and situated at the intersection of feminist and health geography, puts forth an analysis of the experiential evidence shared by 55 women living with FMS in Ontario, Canada during in-depth interviews and their answers to a standardized test (the Sickness Impact Profile). Its purpose is to document and explain the life-changing processes of negotiating a changed/changing socio-spatial life after developing FMS and of becoming a chronically ill patient and negotiating the health care system. In particular, it examines the ways in which women's bodily experiences, roles and routines of everyday life, relationships with others, and negotiations of social institutions are affected by, and sometimes changed as a result of, their lives with FMS.

The interviews reveal that while women's involvement in certain spaces of their pre-FMS lives diminish, the home space and activities undertaken within it loom larger in their lifeworlds. Participants' discussions of preparations undertaken for doctor-patient interactions also demonstrate relational connections between different spaces in their lives. For example, doctor-patient interactions are understood to be shaped by a series of events and spatio-temporal remappings of the paths and routines undertaken in other spaces, including the home. The women's experiential evidence also illustrates how they engage in activities and actions which are informed by decision-making that guides their journeys through the health care system while such experiences are simultaneously shaped and constrained by the delivery of such services.