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ChinaCat

Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2017
Messages
20
Reason
DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
05/2017
Country
US
State
IL
I’m having a flare in my left side upper back/neck. It’s like a burning pain and I can’t get comfortable. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I feel panicky and hopeless and i don’t know how to resolve it.
I’ve used dry heat and moist heat. I’ve taken Valium and tramadol (not at the same time). I’ve tried ibuprofen. I take Cymbalta daily. I take medical marijuana. But I work, so I can’t take meds that’ll alter my state of being at work. All I can do is ibuprofen, tramadol and a heating pad at work.
I’ll have to wait days, if not weeks to see my rheumatologist. And even if I do, I feel hopeless that she can do anything to help except prescribe meds and give me a cortisone shot.

What strategies do you guys use to cope? Should I try to get a massage? Dry needling (that worked once in the past before diagnosis).
This pain is all I can see right now. It even hurts to breathe.
 
this is the type of pain i have most commonly. I would advise staying away from heating gels or pads...as this in my experience enhances the burn. I tend to just strip to nothing towhere the pain is I.e. taking trousers off if Pain is in my legs and breathing through the pain... find a position you are comfortable in and stay in it.

I hope you find a better answer than that but I await eagerly to hear any news
 
Massage helps **IF** the person understands fibromyalgia. If they don't you will end up sore for 3 or 4 days. If they are touching you too hard be sure to say so immediately. Also massage with oil (not lotion) seems to help more.

My back has been on fire for 3 days. Not a muscle pain, but the whole back. I have used heat and it helped, as did essential oils. My massage therapist has moved and I don't want to drive that far, so I need to find a new one. But it seems too difficult to get the phone and deal with it. LOL

I hope you get some relief.
 
Not only is every individual different, but I find that for myself each day can be different, and each kind of pain. So the same things don't always work the same.

For instance, my latest pain is a deep crushing pain in one of my thighs.
The first day I tried to massage it to see if that would help, but any pressure at all was incredibly painful. the next 2 days, massaging the thigh didn't hurt at all. didn't help the deep pain, but didn't hurt. So go figure.

I find that a heating pad often helps, at least somewhat. But it depends on where the pain is and what kind it is. I get revisited by the same cocktail of pains in the same areas over and over and know whether a heating pad helps with that one or not. Then, I get brand new ones that come along and I have to experiment to see what, if anything helps.

Sometimes walking around helps. sometimes stretching helps.....hurts while doing it but seems to ease the pain slightly when I am done. Sometimes. Sometimes not. sometimes I have to try hard to distract myself from it with something, like dancing whether or not I feel like it or forcing myself to take the dogs for a walk and just concentrating on how much they appreciate that.....thinking only about them and not allowing myself to think about me.
sometimes I will make myself a cup of coffee and tell myself that it will make me feel better. It doesn't, really, but occasionally I can sort of fool myself into believing that it does.

sometimes nothing helps at all, and there is no way to get comfortable at all, and the pain meds either don't last long enough or don't work well enough and so I spend a few hours not being able to do much of anything but more or less lie there and writhe in pain.

I know that there are pain meds that, while hard to get, would knock out that pain and pretty much knock me out as well. But I don't even want them. What good would it do, really? I don't want to spend part of my life being out of it mentally. I don't want to be in pain, either, but at least I am fully cognizant and thinking. Even if, as you say, China Cat, the pain is all I can see or think about.
 
Ugh yes i hate the burning pain...i live with burning pain everyday and like you say Alex it also penetrates the whole area....it doesn't feel like just muscles....i get a vibrating sensation like a mobile phone only stronger on vibrate and then comes the burn which also seizes up my joints and restricts range of movement or ability to put weight through my knees and feet....

joys of fibro!

Pain at such high levels long term mess up my ability to think straight too as nothing distracts and i get worn down mentally.

I have yet to find any medication that helps and like sunkacola says what next.....drugged up on morphine or stronger.....and out of it..then tolerance builds anyway so we would need more and more...and all that harm to our bodies.

I hope by now things have eased Chinacat.

Big hugs to all you warriors.
 
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