TABLE 2.
Themes, categories on feelings/emotions in men with fibromyalgia.
| Theme and categories | Spain | United States | Quotations example |
| 1. Psychological level | |||
| 1.1. Anger/rage | 4 | 6 | “Sometimes, when you cannot support the pain anymore, you feel angry and pay it with the other people. People think you are crazy. My personality has changed…” (P4-Alexander Spain) |
| 1.2. Frustration/impotence | 19 | 14 | “I’m divorced, I have to pay child support, I saw myself with a lot of impotence when I finished working, I went out crying every day” (P2-Jack Spain) |
| “Um … I mean it’s embarrassing to have this sort of thing that shuts your body down so that it feels like you can’t do anything. Yeah. I guess I would say embarrassing” (P2-Don US). | |||
| 1.3. Uncertainty/fear (in the diagnoses and the disease process) | 25 | 29 | “I am 30 years old, and I had a lot of CT scans, resonances, colonoscopy, laparoscopies…. “In the beginning, it was all just misdiagnoses, that if you have cancer, that if you have different misdiagnoses, you get depressed, anxious and psychotic” (P2-Jack Spain) |
| “This diagnosis… at least for me is recent. It is disappointing because you kind of want a… hey you have this blood test. It means that you have this and here is the pill for it. I guess that ties into the same general theme… uncertainty. And an unknowing in will I be able to manage this or not?” (P7-Henry US)” | |||
| 1.4. Stress | 10 | 14 | “A doctor told me that I suffered from post-traumatic stress like war soldiers and their tragedies. I did not experience a war, but my life has been like a war…” (P2-Jack Spain) |
| “Yeah, and now I’m not working so now there are financial worries… I’ve started selling stuff to pay bills” (P4-Mattew US). | |||
| 1.5. Anxiety | 13 | 13 | “I’m anxious because I’ve been in pain and undergoing tests for three years. At first you think it will pass but it doesn’t” (P2-Jack Spain) |
| 1.6. Depression/sadness/suicidal thoughts | 15 | 19 | “If I remember the intensity of the pain… I just couldn’t do anything… [(muffled) you know. I didn’t go out with friends or anything like that… I sort of withdrew. That was part of being depressed about it. My depression started in that period. Generalized anxiety disorder started” (P3-Andrew US) |
| “Hitting rock bottom, we’ve all hit it several times, but you always think it can’t be worse, but it is, and each time you’re going to stop further. Like you go up two stairs and back four” (P3-Samuel Spain) | |||
| “I get depression because of all my hobbies I had were physical. I’m not able to do any of them. So that’s a lot of… and my relaxation was reading. I can’t concentrate to read. All my fun stuff has gone… And my social life has gone too” (P4-Matthew US) | |||
| 1.7. Futility | 16 | 2 | “I am feeling a zero on the left. I was complaining about what I couldn’t do as a father and couldn’t do as a worker. We feel useless” (P8-Jonathan Spain) |
| “They were recommendations based on the fibromyalgia clinic that I went to. It sounded great during that week, and they are very good about trying to encourage you to do those things. They did all that they could do, but I haven’t honestly implemented much of anything I learned there yet… although I respect everything that they suggested. In real life you can’t turn on a dime” (P7-Henry US) | |||
| 1.8. Guilt | 3 | n/a | ”I go to the hospital 8-9 times in a month to get medication and a nurse told me not to go so many times. I feel like a burden” (Jack, Spain) |
| “My father is 81 and my father-in-law 70 and they are better than me. You thank for them, but you see that you don’t value anything” (P4-Alexander Spain) | |||
| 1.9. Acceptance | n/a | 20 | “Um… I try to look at everything positively. And with fibromyalgia that is just my nature… to be positive…. That is just my nature and just the type of person I am” (P3-Andrew US) |
| 1.10. Hope | 4 | 5 | I have never in my life experienced hopelessness. With my congestive heart failure everyone was crying, and I was like no I don’t like to sit and worry about it. [(muffled) My attitude was positive…. I’m a problem solver. I’m a project manager and all of my career I have been a problem solver, and this is a problem solving issue. So, I just don’t have that feeling of hopelessness… you know. I just put it into problem solving. That is just my nature and just the type of person I am.(P3- Andrew US) |
| 1.11. Relief with diagnosis | 3 | 3 | He pulled out the book and said it’s fibromyalgia. That was back in ’98. About 1998… that time period. It was part relief now that I know what it was, I can actually deal with it… that was my mindset at the time.” (P3-Andrew US) |
| 1. 12. Enjoy in leisure time (have fun) and with the ordinary daily events of life | 4 | 7 | “I enjoy nature and my dog. I go for a walk with him, and he helps me a lot with nature, with animals, with flowers and insects. I have done a course in organic farming. (P5-Adam Spain) |
| “I ride my motorcycle. That this summer has gone way down. Now only half hour top” (P4-Matthieu US). | |||
| 2. Social level | |||
| 2.1. Couple/family/social misunderstanding | 15 | 12 | “Few people understand this illness. If you tell a person you’re in pain, they think you’re faking it. They look at you from the bottom up and see you’re fine. They think it’s not true what you say” (P8-Jonathan Spain) |
| “I think that a lot of people feel like it is just a cop out thing. You know what I mean? I mean if I could say I have MS or this disease or that disease that’s what is causing this then they would get it better” (P1-US Steven) | |||
| 2.2. Work misunderstanding | 5 | 6 | “I was replaced and did not get disability” (P5-Adam Spain) |
| ”Discrimination yes. My last boss… She needed someone who could be there every single day at work. It came down to that they recognized that she was discriminating me for my fibromyalgia. I mean if I am working on a skyscraper… I can’t do that in a wheelchair… and that’s obvious… you know. But if I’m in a wheelchair and I am physically in pain I shouldn’t be punished for that. At least that’s what I believe” (P3-US Andrew) | |||
| 2.3. Stressful job | 4 | 3 | “I think about retiring every single day (laughs). That is five years away and I don’t know if I can do this for five more years. I really don’t. So, I don’t know what to do really. I am in this place right now where I just have to figure something out” (P1- Steven US) |
| 2.4. Misunderstanding by doctors | 8 | 10 | “They don’t know a lot about fibromyalgia. They don’t know a lot about chronic pain in general. I don’t know. I guess someone is going to have to make some recommendation or something to figure this out. (P1-Steven US) |
| 3. Physical Level | |||
| 3.1. Suffering | 7 | 4 | “For me, it is a struggle of continued pain” (P2-Jack Spain) |
| 3.2. Snowball effect suffering | 3 | 2 | “Then comes overweight, poor sleep and other symptoms. At the beginning you do not have depression or anxiety but with chronic pain, they appear… and as time passes, the pain increases too…” (P3-Samuel Spain) |