How to use a pain body map for a fibromyalgia appointment

A pain body map is an outline of a body that you mark. It does one job: it records where. A mark is a place on a drawing, and a drawing can be pointed at.

Location is one of the things a doctor asks about. NIAMS says a doctor taking a medical history will likely ask about the location, severity and duration of pain. A map answers the first of those three and nothing else, which is why the rest of this page is about what goes beside it.

A mark on its own is a dot. Three things turn it into a record: the date it belongs to, the side it is on, and a short description in your own words.

The description does not have to be clinical. NIAMS notes that people often describe fibromyalgia pain as aching, burning or throbbing, and those are usable words. The NIA’s advice for describing a symptom is to be clear and concise, and to make notes before you call or visit.

A drawing’s left is not reliably your left. Some maps are drawn as if you are looking at someone, some as if you are looking in a mirror, and a map that gets re-drawn or handed on can lose which it was.

Writing my left shoulder beside the mark costs three words and survives all of that. Do it even when the mark is unambiguous to you today.

When something changes, date a new map and keep the previous one. Two dated maps are two records. One map that was rubbed out and re-marked is one record, and the thing it used to say is gone.

A stack of dated maps holds dates and marks. That is all it holds. The NIA lists what a doctor asks about a symptom: when it started, how long it lasts, how often it happens, whether it is getting worse or better, and whether it keeps you from your usual activities. Only the first of those is a date. The rest are things you would have to write down separately, in words, wherever you keep them.

• Where you marked, on a date. A place, a side and a day, in a form that can be looked at rather than recited.
• How many marks are on that dated map. A count of the marks you made on one map, on one date. It is a count of marks and nothing else: not a score, not an index, and not a measure of how much of the body is involved.
• What you wrote beside them. The words are the half a doctor can ask about, and they are the half a drawing cannot hold.

• It cannot diagnose. A marked drawing is not a test and not a diagnosis. How fibromyalgia is diagnosed is a question for your own doctor; NIAMS describes it, and this page does not.
• It cannot measure a cause. A mark records a place. Nothing about its position says what is happening there or why.
• It cannot prove a change. Two maps that differ show two days you marked differently. That is not a measurement of improvement or decline, and this page does not present it as one.
• It cannot replace the conversation. It is something to point at while you talk, not a document that speaks for you.
• It is not a score. A map with more marks is not a worse person, a worse week, or a higher number.

All three pages were checked on September 17, 2026. They are cited as sources. No author or institution named here has reviewed this page, and none has reviewed or endorsed Tend.

• NIAMS, Fibromyalgia: overview, symptoms and causes - the words people often use to describe fibromyalgia pain, including aching, burning and throbbing.
• NIAMS, Fibromyalgia: diagnosis, treatment and steps to take - a doctor asks about the location, severity and duration of pain, and the source’s own account of how fibromyalgia is diagnosed.
• NIA, What do I need to tell the doctor? - describing symptoms clearly and concisely, making notes before an appointment, and what a doctor asks about timing and usual activities.

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