Thank you all very much for the welcome.
I did read thru the welcome post, and yeah, lots of great ideas. I did cut gluten for a while (had bloating, gas, etc) but that did not seem to make any difference at all.
Not sure about giving up on the dairy, tho... I love cheese - nearly all varieties (cream, cottage, colby. cheddar and so on), ice cream, malts, sour cream, and so many other things, and I do live in the Dairy state, LOL - very hard to avoid the stuff.
I have also been in the memes thread as well.. lots of good ones in there! Thanks for those! Gotta at least try to laugh, or i would cry.
as for the Docs.. well... they are probably a bigger part of the long time to finally get that diagnoses, and the last couple of years have been really rough... Have had gobs and gobs of testing done... rheumatology & related, lyme (negative), thyroid function testing, you name it.. Have a whole bunch of diagnoses for other things now, in addition to finally getting the fibro diagnoses... The pain resulting from the fibro is nuts... my left knee is pretty bad right now.. all the tendons/ligaments are so painful it hurts to walk much. other areas hurt too, but the knee is really bad at this time..
Pretty much every joint in my body has some degree of osteoarthritis with my lumbar back and neck being the worst - have two subluxated vertebra as well - one in lumbar, one in neck... Hands are getting pretty bad with it... several joints have that lumpy look already
The lumbar region is so bad that I can not stand upright for more than maybe 10-15 minutes. Have had radio frequency ablation in that area once already (both sides of spine) back in October, and will be going in on Aug 4th to get the right side done again.
Also have carpal tunnel.. have had surgery on the right wrist for that and may be getting the left one done soon. I go tomorrow to see about that.
Have been battling a kidney stone for a couple of months - just had a procedure this morning (Wed 7/27) to remove it.. was told afterward they found FOUR stones.. Needless to say, i am feeling pretty poorly right now... thinking very hard about heading to bed soon.
sorry for the long winded whine... just one of those days, i guess...
Again, thank you all for the welcome... we can survive this, one day at a time!