Fibromyalgia

Our guest this week is Arushi Lohiya, from Jaipur, Rajasthan -India. She is a marketing & branding strategist, an amateur poet, animal lover, and a Fibromyalgia warrior. She graduated top of her class from Iowa State University, USA in marketing. At one time she was also a national level sports player and managed to combine both of her passions with a dream job in sports marketing. She was accelerating up the corporate ladder with brands like Coca Cola, ESPN, and Kingfisher Beer, basically living her dream when in 2012 at the age of 22 she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Since then she has not spent a single day without pain. Due to excruciating pain she can't sit, or stand for more than 15 minutes and is forced to spend her days lying down prone confined to her bed. To support my weak muscles, she ties about 10-15 crepe/ace bandages all over her body. She hasn't sat for over eight years now. Fibromyalgia left her disabled both physically and emotionally. While Fibromyalgia turned her life upside down, she has somehow made peace with her current situation through remotely working from home as a freelance marketing, branding and social media strategist for the past 8 years. She has embarked on a quest to spread awareness about fibromyalgia. She states: "Surprisingly Fibromyalgia has given me a huge gift - discovering the poetry in me. I have been using poetry to spread awareness about fibromyalgia as well as my journey through this fight in order to inform people what goes behind the scenes and making sure to be very vocal about it in order to remove the social stigma and fight the isolation that comes with a chronic disease." ​A very positive attitude for sure!!