Doctors that treat fibromyalgia

[Resa79]

I have been treated by my family doctor for years for fibromyalgia. What other types of doctors will treat fibromyalgia and what are the success rates of them?

 

[Creola17]

NONE. Sad but true. The only way you'll get treatment is if you find alternative medicine. Or a doctor who has fibro. Your best bet is to do your own research. Find foods that do not cause inflamation and move. I find when I'm more active I feel better.There are some helpful supplements as well. Regular doctors, if they treat you will give you pills and then you have to deal with side affects. There are also devices, luke a tens unit to deal with the pain. Different things work for different people but you can't depend on the medical community for help with what they don't understand. At least that's been my reality.
Good luck and gentle hugs!

 

[Resa79]

Thank you for your response and advice.

 

[JayCS]

I've got ~25 types of specialist on the case (40+ docs up to now). The only(?) thing I haven't needed yet is checking lungs - despite my shortness of breath when I overdo things. You can never be sure if a symptom is fibro or not, if a symptom can be alleviated, even if it is fibro and if you have things besides the fibro, which also may be aggravating the fibro, i.e. other symptoms, or an older symptom being aggravated by the fibro.
- While neurologists 'only' found a growth in my spinal chord, my psychologist supported me mentally getting my muscle tonus down.
- My sleep lab neurologists/psychiatrists didn't find much helpful for my sleep, but pointed to breathing difficulties due to nose problems, which I could get operated, says my ENS, but I've found quite a few remedies for that. They also did things like a spinal tap, to be sure, not finding anything. But they are now very supportive of the fibro-dx, I think they've checked up on it too, and are supporting me thinking about single symptoms, even stuff like pain before urinating, and how to best start working again and setting up the plan for reintegration.
- My 2nd rheum after being the 1st to dx the fibro didn't help much, but prescribed rheum. clinic without ado, the clinic itself showed mainly how many pt-treatments I can't tolerate, made a few talks with live fibro-patients possible which then made me look for forums, so here I am.
- My pain docs found that their meds didn't help, apart from amitriptyline for sleep, but then my neurologist pointed to that for increased seizures, so I'm off again, but better for getting better sleep conditions in the meantime.
- My GI didn't find anything in my gut, but his nutritional consulting pointed me to psyllium with little water for diarrhea, which definitely helps.
- My allergologist didn't find allergies, but recommended again psyllium plus probiotic E. coli, which I'm trying now.
- My primary/GP hasn't helped that much, but recommended a centre for rare/unknown illnesses, which has dxed Hashimoto (which my previous endocrinologist did not find) and suggested Sjögren's, which has for starters turned attention to my dry mouth and more dental care, much more dental chewing gum (xylite) than before and is going to be further tested on.
- he also thought of controlling my blood pressure, because of the pain, which had always been OK. Suddenly it wasn't, which meant cardio and vascular docs finding very high blood fats, meaning 5 cardiovascular meds and explaining orange spots on my lower legs.
- one orthopedist had various ideas, and tried acupuncture and hyaluronic acid injections which didn't help my back or fibro or anything, tho.
- another one prescribed pain clinic, where I found fibro-understanding docs in the pre-examinations, too, one of them osteopath.
- my dentist found jaw ache on both sides, which I thought was trigeminus or fibro, to be 2 root inflammations - now treated.

So I don't regret any of these (altho the 1st orthopedist very much aggravated the fibro with her ideas), will probably consult most of them again. And by trying so many different specialists and looking for my own ideas for my symptoms inside of only a single year, I've managed to get most of my pains down to zero. My remaining treatment for them apart from exercises was osteopathy (old idea by previous docs, found a new more fitting osteopath by accident, having just been prescribed "PT" - which doesn't help) and is "acupunct-massage".
What still remains fairly strongly is the fibro-ache, tiredness and stiffness. What helps there, whole body cryo, wasn't directly initiated by docs, but if I hadn't found it myself, I'd have got on to it via the rheum. clinic I was at.

So Resa: all of my docs helped ME, whether fibro or not, directly or indirectly.
I was gonna say that orthopedists helped least, but even that is just not true.
Plus: A dead-end street is always just a way of continuing going forward, and the way back is very different to the way in.
And often enough it just seems dead-end, just has some bushes over its opening. That's why I have in most cases been to 2 or more specialists of a sort, successfully.
Success rates? I don't care how big or small a problem a doc helped with. Each contributed as best they could. But none could have contributed if I didn't think, analyze, try things out, be persistent, take no for an answer, were satisfied, implemented things.
And this condition is an enormous heap of "small" problems, which seem to get on top of us. Each baby-step contributes to getting it down and manageable. But to get 'over' this heap, it needs facing and deeply accepting it first, and again and again, not "fighting" hostilely, but with self-loving understanding (ah, I'm developing, ay? ;-)