Considering fibromyalga is not supposed to be progressive, If I work a bit harder than usual
Thanks to
@cookiebaker (and
@sunkacola) I'm also now re-reading this.
The way it's worded sounds as if overdoing it shouldn't make the pain worse since "fibromyalgia isn't progressive". That'd however be a big misunderstanding of progressive.
If you have fibro and you overdo it then your pain will increase
considerably. If I overdo it for let's say one hour, a base pain of "1" can flare to "3", which will often last for 1 to 3 hours, while a base pain of "2" can flare to a "5" or "6" and that can take several days to calm back down to 2 or 3. So if you say "work a bit harder than usual" and you mean a bit harder for 6 or more hours, then I'd be in such a flare that it could take weeks or a month to calm down again or crash big time for several months (my first crash ended in 10 months of sick leave). If that's the case, no wonder ice packs and gel can't help, they haven't the least chance.
"Progressive" means something completely different - progressive illnesses are ones that will generally get worse and worse by themselves (co-morbidities, aging etc. counted out) and praps end in a wheelchair or death. Not that your pain won't get worse if you do more.
The consequence of your work would need to be to
either get your work load / type / conditions
adapted to your needs (e.g. I can only do a bit of home office now as long as they'll let me)
or switch like you say to another job if that isn't possible. Best before you crash completely.
And like sunkacola says: pushing thru the pain to keep your strength up is very likely going to do the opposite very soon, esp. in addition to your job. Once you've rested and got all flares down again, that's the time to work on your strength. If you've been doing a lot up to now, I wouldn't be too afraid that they'll lose their strength. For some it does, agreed, but for me it doesn't, maybe because I keep doing light stretches and exercises all day, plus light sports.
Now if as
@cookiebaker has pointed out your orthopedists don't think they can help you with your orthopedic problems, then that's a very common case, something I've often experienced. One possibility is the second or third
opinion of a better orthopedist. But I'm supposing they are arguing that the scans don't explain your pain enough. Also it's just if they can't "see" enough, they just can't do anything. So the right people with your musculoskeletal symptoms are
good PTs. Good orthopedists will refer you to some, praps suggesting what kind might be best. I've even known an orthopedist to also be an osteopath, which is very rare. But actually that's something we have to look for ourselves, via word of mouth, trial and error, reviews or functional docs.
And in the meantime: Every local pain etc. I look up on youtube and am always (always!) successful in finding something. In your case I put in what you wrote, and up came more than enough stuff for pinched nerve & neck pain by youtube PTs I thoroughly recommend, like Doctor Jo or Bob and Brad or Alan Mandell. Exercises, stretches, acupressure. (Acupressure also for unexpected things like short breath, heartburn and itching.) Since I do this I've got stuff down even my brilliant acupressurist couldn't manage, plus anything new that comes up.
So in that sense I agree: forget your orthopedist and look for these: an expert and self-treatment.
As it's your neck that you're concerned about most:
My neck is something that I've just been working on once again. I'd originally tried some neck & back classes (of which I could only manage 20%, otherwise I was overdoing it so much that I had to cry from the pain, i.e. 7. I "never" cry). My osteopath worked on it for half a year, my acupressurist for another year. Theory of these sort of PTs is that the neck is the bottleneck for the whole body, so they often start with it and focus on it. They got the problems down to praps 50%, not particularly sustainably. Once I stopped going there, when I realized they weren't getting any further, I started going into self-application mode. Doing more and more better stretches gently when necessary throughout the day for several days at at time. I got to be able to turn my head 90° and more in both directions. But at the beginning of this week I felt that there were some "blockages" in a set of neck muscles that I would never have been able to explain to a PT. I started focusing on stretches that I could feel targeted exactly that. Then I suddenly had the idea, as I've been hinting in my profile posts the last few days (linked to in my "signature" below each of my posts), to use my massage gadget gently on the twist-stretched neck. Done that before in my left groin which I completely got down with that, possibly "healed" for quite a time. So I knew from then that it would probably hurt a bit more directly after, but would be partly resolved the next day. And so it was, I got that block down totally inside of 2 days. I'm still not quite satisfied, but might give it a rest for it to settle on its own a bit. Interesting was one situation similar to my answer to @Oberon's "tender" point question on their "touch" thread - the neck pain from stretching was radiating right into my back. Again something you'd have to try to describe a good PT, but as I felt it, I applied the massage gadget gently to where my back was hurting as well, moving carefully up and down along the "route". Pretty sure it's these sort of connections and sensing into our bodies that can fairly thoroughly tackle many (not all) of our local pains.