Found this place today.

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Sirlaidlaw

New member
Joined
May 24, 2021
Messages
2
Reason
DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
02/2021
Country
CA
State
PE
I have only been diagnosed this past March. I went to my nurse practitioner and complained about the month of joint pain I had experienced. It was excruciating all the time; kept waking me up so I couldn't sleep; made me want to cry every waking moment. I can handle my pain, folks. 5 children - all natural childbirth, four without any medication. I was sick to my stomach with this pain and it was relentless. Anyway, she sent me for every blood test on the grid. Every one came back normal and she even said in the perfect range. Checked for PMR, RA, thyroid, B12, Osteoarhtritis, etc., so she said the next assumption with widespread pain was Fibromyalgia. She suggested trying Cymbalta as it had been successful treating it and asked if I would give it a go. I said I would and began taking it the next day. I had a follow-up appointment 3 weeks later and we decided I would continue it a while longer to see if it helped. I said I would continue it because the stabbing pain in my joints when moving and the general bruised feeling everywhere else was getting less pronounced.
It has been 4 weeks since then and still feeling achy most of the time. I am having a hard time accepting that this is how I am going to feel for the rest of my life. I have always been a very active physical worker - I lay floors and assemble cabinets for my living - now I tire after three or four hours of work. Not sleepy tired, although there is a bit of that also, body tired. This is not the me I am used to.
Thinking back over the past few years, I think this has been rearing it's ugly head and I just didn't see it coming, that is til it bit me outright. Studied up on it since it being diagnosed and some of the symptoms have been in my life for quite some time. Out of a list of 20, I have 14.
Spending time reading and learning and hoping you all have advice I can use. Read the big helpful pinned post and I'm on some of it already. Guess I still have some accepting to do yet, though.
Thanks in advance for all the stories, advice and support.
 
hello, and welcome to the forum. Not that you want to be here. :cool:

One thing I want to do is encourage you not to go around thinking that this is the way it's going to be for the rest of your life.

For one thing, you can't predict the future so you don't know. And thinking that way will increase your distress and your stress, which will be very likely to exacerbate your pain.

For another thing....even more importantly.....you are not a helpless victim in this, even though is certainly feels as if you are! There are many things you can do for yourself that will help. You can work with this and learn to manage it by taking a many-level response and doing what you can to find out what works for you. No one thing works for everyone, but I have made a post containing my best tried and true advice and it is pinned at the top of the General forum to help people to learn to manage fibro effectively.

I was much, much worse off a few years ago before I decided that the doctors were not really going to help, and I didn't want to be dependent on pain meds, and I started researching and trying out everything I could to see if I could help myself. it took time to learn what works for me, but the time would have gone by anyway....right?...and once I found what would do this or that to help, I was empowered to manage my own life again. And that is a great thing.

I still have fibro, still have a lot of pain-filled days, still cannot do what I used to be able to do.
But I am much more accepting of it because I have learned how to manage it well by learning the things I can do that help myself. You can too. Really.
And we are here to support you, to listen when you need to vent, and to share your journey.
 
Hi Sirlaidlaw,

I'm really sorry you're going through this. Your story sounds oh so very familiar, incredibly close to my own. Sunkacola is absolutely right that the rest of your life is by no means set in stone. She's also on the money when she says that, as much as you feel you've lost your power right now, you will gradually discover how to take it back.

While there may be no cure, there certainly seem to be any number of things that different people find incredibly helpful for fibro, adding up layer by layer towards better quality of life. Over the past couple of years, I've gone from a pain level that I can only describe as an agony that wouldn't quit - mostly stuck in bed - to something more manageable with the occasional flare. This was through stress management, supplements, and other lifestyle changes. I won't say that its easy, or that I feel great, but I do have my sense of self back - and I hope you will too. Please, don't feel doomed!

I really recommend starting with stress management, and self observation in terms of how you're responding to what you're feeling. Things really changed for me when a therapist helped me to see that the pain I was feeling wasn't a threat - it's insanely unpleasant, but contrary to our initial instincts, it isn't placing us in any danger. Stress is really triggering in fibromyalgia, and launching into a stress response to the pain tends to leave us stuck in a very mean loop.

In terms of being active, you may find that you need to slow down and find a new pace, or swap some of the things you do for lower impact activities. Doing too much tends to trigger flares, but staying active in moderation can really help in symptom management - finding that balance is a little tricky, but worth the effort. I really empathize, having been a crazy active sports nut before this thing chucked an epic spanner in the works!

I imagine that everything you're experiencing will be having a huge impact on your life - I hope you've got some support and understanding around you. Here in the virtual, there are some amazing people to ask questions and get ideas from. Welcome, and good luck.
 
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