Fibromyalgia Support Group
You're not alone in your pain. Fibromyalgia is a condition that can be difficult to diagnose and manage. If you're trying to cope with pain throughout your body, sleep problems, general fatigue, or other common fibromyalgia symptoms, you're in the right place. The community is here for you to talk about therapies and share your challenges.
Aloha...
Followed up with my rheumatologist today. I've been seeing him probably for about 5 yrs. He is one of the best I could find on this island. I generally see him about 2x / yr.
Anyway.... told him I recently moved.... and since the move I've had more pain and my sleep isn't so good. A lot of the disturbances has to do with the environment (bedroom is all windows, next to the pool, they tend to leave the pool lights on all night, shines into the bedroom, hubby likes to bring cats into bed, hubby gets up at night a lot, etc). We are still figuring out how to make it more dark.
So I asked the doc if there was a pain killer he could recommend that I could take when my pain shoots up high (for my recent pain), told him that I don't like tylenol-3 and tramadol doesn't help. He then tells me that he doesn't recommend his fibro patients to take pain killers because this is an incurable life long illness that doesn't go away and pain killers cause addiction. Um..... ok??
He then tells me that he has been hearing about all the rumors about FM being an auto immune problem and says he will try me on 10 days of a steroid. Has anyone heard of using steroids to treat fibro or fibro pain? I've never heard of this. The medication is methylprednisolone.
Followed up with my rheumatologist today. I've been seeing him probably for about 5 yrs. He is one of the best I could find on this island. I generally see him about 2x / yr.
Anyway.... told him I recently moved.... and since the move I've had more pain and my sleep isn't so good. A lot of the disturbances has to do with the environment (bedroom is all windows, next to the pool, they tend to leave the pool lights on all night, shines into the bedroom, hubby likes to bring cats into bed, hubby gets up at night a lot, etc). We are still figuring out how to make it more dark.
So I asked the doc if there was a pain killer he could recommend that I could take when my pain shoots up high (for my recent pain), told him that I don't like tylenol-3 and tramadol doesn't help. He then tells me that he doesn't recommend his fibro patients to take pain killers because this is an incurable life long illness that doesn't go away and pain killers cause addiction. Um..... ok??
He then tells me that he has been hearing about all the rumors about FM being an auto immune problem and says he will try me on 10 days of a steroid. Has anyone heard of using steroids to treat fibro or fibro pain? I've never heard of this. The medication is methylprednisolone.
In my case, during the initial diagnosis period, I had a very high ANA but that's non-specific. All other markers were normal, no RA, sed rate normal. But my rheum had been on the Johns Hopkins team that did the initial tender points as diagnosis for fibro thing and she insisted that what I had was some nonspecific auto-immune thing.
She put me on Plaquenil, which did nothing for me. Then she tried to get me to take methotrexate, which I refused. For me specifically, I did not buy into her theory.
So, many people with auto-immune diseases have fibro but many people with fibro do not have auto-immune disease.
Good luck and I hope we hear about your particular mystery or is it misery.....
I really think the doc's just do not know what to do with this illness.. since its all inside the body...
Our muscles hurt because they do not deflate.. Everytime we move our muscles inflate.. then upon rest they are suppose to deflate... that is why our muscles are always in pain.... !!!!!
My own thought process about prednisone is that if my pain is a 10+ over a two week period and I'm not sleeping well and have problems moving about, a short-term duration (6 to 7 days) once in a long (2+ years) time is okay. It breaks that pain cycle for me.