fibromyalgia

[telecom_goddess]

I know some of you suffer from this. How did you discover you had it? Did you suspect you had and got it confirmed or what? I know a lot of doctors don't even consider it a real physical disorder.

I just wonder cause I have days where I'm in constant pain everywhere and days where I'm doing ok...but it's happening more often than not. I brought it up to my dr who basically shoo'd the idea away and explained my pain on meds I was taking.

[Shangri-laschild]

Try looking at the symptom lists online. I had been noticing a weird bunch of symptoms and when I talked to my doctor about it, he suggested fibromyalgia. I had my doubts but once I looked at the symptom lists online, it sort of clicked in my head. It's more than just the pain (though that is a predominant part) and the other common symptoms might help you decide if it sounds like it is accurate to you.

[Mishi]

Well, I had various symptoms for 2 years, worsening over that time. Went from doctor to doctor and had numerous blood tests. Finally got a referral to a Paediatrician (I was 14), then sent to a hospital for a week for assessments by a Rhumatologist, a Paediatrician, an Occupational Therapist, a Physiotherapist, a short one with a Psychologist and an Immunologist. Many X-rays, Cat Scans and Doppler Imaging (to be sure I didn't have Marfans) later, I was finally diagnosed with Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome and Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome. Physio didn't work and I was told there was nothing more that they could do for me.

I got sick of being sick all the time and slowly started exercising to almost my limit x 1 day, a little bit less the next and taking a break on the third day, then starting over again. Cut out all foods that contained solanine, and let me tell you, potato flour seems to be in everything! Only OTC pain relief, which did nothing so I eventually gave up on that. Found out later that people with HMS (as it's now known) tend to be resistant to painkillers.

It wasn't until I was talking to Seshat that I found out that my second condition is also known as Fibromyalgia. Some days really suck, but as long as I stay on top of my exercise regime and don't overload on foods that have solanine in them, my pain levels are tolerable. I still feel like I have a bad case of the flu all day everyday, but I don't want to miss out on fun things just because I feel like crap.

[Cazzi]

Mishi, thanks for posting this and telecom_goddess for starting the thread :)
I also have HMS and from time to time have suffered bouts of "all over"pain which seemed to fit the bill of "chronic widespread pain disorder". The last 8-12 months though I've been getting those symptoms more & more often and feel like my energy is draining away along with my strength, which is odd as I go to the gym regularly but have been finding the cardio workouts harder & harder to do.

When I was first diagnosed with the HMS I was also examined for other things & at the time was told I had about half the markers that point to fibromyalgia, but that wasn't anything to worry about. I had been debating asking my GP next time I see her to refer me back to the specialist, now I think it may be a good idea, just to put my mind at rest!

Its interesting to learn about the potatoes, i do eat a lot of those, and use potato flour as one of a few substitutes for wheat as I also have coeliacs. I think I'll start taking notes on how I feel after eating them. ;) Thinking about it now though, a friend I don't see very often was diagnosed with fibromyalgia a couple of years ago & I remember her saying she felt bad after eating potatoes too.

Thanks, I love this forum & its helpful members :D

[Seshat]

Oddly, potatoes are one of my staple foods. However, each fibro patient is different, which is part of what drives the researchers crazy!

Twenty-odd years ago I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. I may or may not still have it - it's a diagnosis of exclusion, and if you have fibro, you can't definitively say that the CFS-like symptoms aren't the fibro.

Fibromyalgia, however, has a diagnostic test.

I seemed to recover from the CFS. YAY! But I was still depressed, and still in pain - just not the 'sick and tired' characteristic of CFS. Or at least, not as strongly and not as continuously.

I put it down to depression, and tried to find a treatment for that, that worked. Anna finally asked me "When you say 'you just want the pain to end', do you mean mental, physical or both?"

Then she asked me to describe the pain I was in, right at that specific instant. And convinced me she MEANT it, meant for me to be clear, and to say everything, even things I thought were insignificant.

Well, she stopped me partway, and told me we were going to the doctor the very next day. The only other people she knew in that much physical pain were people who'd run a marathon with insufficient training.

Anyway, the doctor's reaction was similar to Anna's. He reached for his referral pad before I'd finished describing the pain, and sent me to a pain specialist.

The pain specialist listened. He did let me finished, asked some probing questions, asked about my other diagnoses and how they'd been reached. Then he had me lie on his examination table while he found very specific locations, and applied a very specific amount of pressure to each of them.

If you respond with pain to <however many> of those points, you have fibromyalgia. (If you don't, you still might. It's not a perfect test, unfortunately, but it's the best they had last time I checked.)

I responded to almost all. Now .. 'responded' is a very gentle word. The first time, I was unprepared for what he was doing - and he got a severe spasm, and a scream followed by sobbing. After that, I asked if I could hold Anna's hand. He got more controlled pain responses after that - so it didn't sound like he was torturing someone in there.

Well, in a sense he was. :rolleyes:


My current treatment regime.
Diet, dictated by PCOS/insulin resistance and GERD. Given both of those, my medical staff have just said 'try to eat nutritiously and pay attention to what foods make you feel worse'.

Exercise, but extremely careful and controlled exercise. On a bad day, my exercise is struggling to the mailbox and back using my walker. On a REALLY bad day, my exercise might be resistance movements in bed with Dancer or Anna providing a resistance for me to push against.

On a normal-to-good day, I walk the dog at least partway around the block. All the way around if I can do it without adding unduly to the pain.

(What is 'unduly'? Something only experience can tell you, unfortunately. If you have a 'pain crash' the next day, you did too much. Scale back about 20%. If you get through a week without a pain crash, try adding about 20% to next week's exercises.)

I try to get to a hydrotherapy pool once or twice a week, where I do a gentle set of hydrotherapy exercises. My set was prescribed for me, but it's simply a 'work each muscle group' set. Any book of exercises or any fitness instructor or physiotherapist can probably give you a suitable set of exercises. Just ignore the number of repetitions they recommend, and start with three of each.
If three of each causes a crash, drop to two of each, or one of each, or one of every other exercise. However slowly you need to start.

I also have a weight training set of exercises. Once again, it's a 'work each major muscle group' set, but with no situps, and the pushups start out as 'against a wall'. You then work the pushups against a high bench, then a low bench, before ever trying them on the ground.
Do them with no weights, using your own body as enough weight to make a resistance. Then use just the bars. Then start adding weights to the bars. Whenever you add a level of weight, drop the number of repetitions.

Continue increasing your exercise until one of two things happen:
- your body seems unable to continue increasing without a pain crash.
- you become capable of doing enough things that you want to do/your quality of life has improved to a level you're comfortable with.

Once either of those conditions has occurred, make a note of the exercises and repetitions and weights. That's your maintenance level. Stop increasing, don't decrease unless you have to. Keep it up, though. If you stop, your body will very quickly let you know - because everything that had become easy will become hard.

The reason for exercise as a treatment for fibromyalgia is this:
Pain leads to lack of movement.
Lack of movement leads to muscle atrophy.
Muscle atrophy leads to the Dark Side.

No, wait....

Muscle atrophy makes movements hurt more.
This means you have more pain.
Which means you move even less.
Which means your muscles atrophy even more.
Which means pain for even easier things....

The good bit is that the same spiral can be travelled upwards. Move more, and muscle builds, and activities become less painful, which means you can move more, which means....

But you MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST start VERY SLOWLY. Pain crashes will hurt you, both physically and psychologically. Every pain crash makes you less willing to exercise (or it does me), so take it gently.

[crazyofficeclerk]

I had a really bad case of bronchitis that sent me to the emergency room one night after work. When I went to see my GP the next day he prescribed me an antibiotic and cough medicine. Ten days later I was back back because I felt worse than I had when I started. Another round of antibiotics I was back again and saw the nurse practitioner who sent me for an x-ray. That x-ray led to a diagnosis of pleurisy. Two weeks later I was back in tears because I felt horrible, like I had been hit by a bus. She did the test for fibro. My left side was tolerable, but when she pushed on my right foot, I shrieked and came up off the table. Unfortunately, even thought they believe that I have fibro, they won't prescribe anything to me. Some days are better than others though.

[Sapphire Silk]

I had a really bad case of bronchitis that sent me to the emergency room one night after work. When I went to see my GP the next day he prescribed me an antibiotic and cough medicine. Ten days later I was back back because I felt worse than I had when I started. Another round of antibiotics I was back again and saw the nurse practitioner who sent me for an x-ray. That x-ray led to a diagnosis of pleurisy. Two weeks later I was back in tears because I felt horrible, like I had been hit by a bus. She did the test for fibro. My left side was tolerable, but when she pushed on my right foot, I shrieked and came up off the table. Unfortunately, even thought they believe that I have fibro, they won't prescribe anything to me. Some days are better than others though.

Quite frankly, I'm skeptical of most prescription meds used for fibro. Narcotics are of limited value and addictive. NSAIDS help some people, not others. Ditto for Tylenol.

Some people are being placed on anticonvulsants like Lyrica or Cymbalta . . . but both of these meds have a lot of side effects and their long term safety is not well established. I've known people who ended up with permanent tardive dyskinesia from Lyrica.

Seshat has some good suggestions. Regular exercise, diet, avoiding triggers are all good strategies. My sister in law gets deep massage therapy; she swears by it.

But ultimately, each treatment plan is going to be different. Research meds and stick with a provider that takes your concerns seriously.

[Mishi]

One of my friends has a past diagnosis of CFS, with a lot of the same symptoms I have. She swears by acupunture, because it's the only thing that helps relieve some of the pain and pressure in her neck.

[1756GR2]

I had many tests from several doctors over a span of years, was told I had arthritis (tests ruled it out, and it wasn't pain in my joints), severe depression (not), or something that "will go away by itself." A new doctor took the time to listen and diagnose, and I felt SO much better about everything. Still in pain, but felt a lot better overall when I knew what it was.

There are bad days when I'm useless physically and when the fibro fog sets in, and there are good days when I can accomplish something. Those are the days when I overdo because I'm feeling better, and I end up with flares for a while. I don't sleep well so I'm never really rested.

I've been offered antidepressants and other drugs, but I don't see the point (for me) in taking something that at best will cover it up, and not help. (Thanks, Panacea, for mentioning the anti-convulsants. I see the side effects my son sometimes has to endure with his epilepsy meds and I would be extremely cautious about them.)

I'm pleased to see that it's getting better attention now than it had been getting. My understanding is that it's a syndrome, a collection of symptoms, so that there's often a good bit of testing for other things to rule them out before a diagnosis can be confirmed.

[Seshat]

I am on medications:

Regular meds:
Tramadol, as a pure pain reliever.
Epilim and Cymbalta to try to reduce the neurotransmitter effects. (The Cymbalta also helps relieve my depression.)

I'm also on Diabex for the PCOS, and Nexium for GERD, and I take an antihistamine.

Occasional meds:
For breakthrough pain I'm permitted Tramadol, Ibuprofin or paracetemol/aceteminophen (Panadol in Aussieland, Tylenol in USlandia).

I'm also allowed an occasional Valium for disabling anxiety & panic attack prevention.


I and my family have made a conscious choice to aim for quality of life, not quantity of life. Lifestyle changes alone weren't lifting me out of suicidal levels of pain and depression, so for us possible long-term body damage is an acceptable risk: without the drugs, we had a real risk that I would someday not be here at all.

[crazyofficeclerk]

I take an NSAID when the pain is so bad I can't stand it, but I know several people who have gone on a prescription and are very happy. Me, not so much. I take a swim class two days a week that is for arthritis and it works wonders. I also tend to over do on days that I feel good and then crash. Recently, I have had to work 45-50 hours a week at work and I was miserable. I still can't seem to feel better. I'm sure that I've done some damage but hopefully I can slow down now.

[Seshat]

I also tend to over do on days that I feel good and then crash.

That's a dangerous pattern.

Here's what I've learned to do: work out the maximum I can do without a crash on a 'normal' day. On a good day, do no more than that.

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm giving my body the extra 'cope' (resources, energy) that the good day allows, so that it can heal. Of course, there's nothing wrong with spending that extra 'cope' time in the garden, reading a good book, listening to birds and smelling flowers. Or something else pleasant but not stressful.

[Mishi]

Okay, I might be waaay out of line here, but despite the fact that most people with fibromyalgia respond differently to various inputs, the things that make a longterm difference to pain levels and quality of life are exercise and lifestyle changes.

Prescription narcotics are not the answer. Cymbalta helps with the 'brain fireworks', but can have all sorts of nasty side effects. There is no magic pill that will make it go away. I wish there was, but there isn't. If you take painkillers without any other changes, all that will happen is that you will build up a resistance to the drugs, will probably develop an addiction and the pain will come back.

Find a doctor that is willing to work with you, get referrals to various specialists and sort out a long term health plan that works for you. Painkillers should only be a very small part of the overall picture. It might take some time to figure it all out, but it's worth it in the long run.

I'm now at just over 11 years since the beginning of my symptoms. Even though I had to figure most of it out for myself, my pain levels are tolerable. I know to rest when I need to, I know the symptoms that show I'm about to experience a flare-up (My friends pick up on my body language even when I insist that I'm fine and don't need help), and I'm looking at returning to part time work when my girls are at school. I know that keeping my weight around 50-55kg helps with my pain levels, doctor has okay'd it even though it means I'm on the light side for my height (165cm). I missed out on so much because I was sick during my teenage years, I'm not willing to miss out on anything else if I can help it. I have it easier than most though, as I'm not (currently) depressed. Good luck!

[Seshat]

Mishi, you're not out of line at all. And I totally agree with you.

Yes, I use drugs as part of my management of my fibro, but only because diet and lifestyle alone didn't lift me out of suicidal. As things improve, we'll be dropping the drugs.

Until the researchers can identify what's going on to the point that they can say 'Oh! it's a deficiency in neurotransmitter X' or 'the receptors for Y are failing' or 'there's a change in brain structure Z', the use of drugs in fibro treatment is guesswork and symptom management.

[telecom_goddess]

Wow I didn't know this took off so well :) I think I need to start with finding the symptom list and then maybe a dr that is not going to shoo away the possibility that it might be fibromyalgia and actually explore the idea.

I'm already changing my diet due to diabetes, a lot less sugar and lower fat versions of everything, stuff like that. Plus I do like fresh veggies and am growing a garden so I have an abundence of them at least part of the year.

[ralerin]

Now, here's a related question since I do not know if I have fibromyalgia or simply a pinched nerve along with carpal tunnel. Would Seshat's suggestion of working through the pain and figuring out your level before you have a pain crash work for me, too? My pain is concentrated in my hands, shoulders and legs and makes bending, stretching, holding a mouse, typing holding an object, etc, extremely painful. Walking is fine. But using my hands and lifting objects is such a pain, literally. I'm on gabapentin and had no idea avout the tardive dyskensia, would that happen on gabapentin?

[42_42_42]

ralerin, if you have carpal tunnel syndrome, schedule yourself an appt with an orthopedic surgeon for a consult to have the release surgery done ASAP. The longer you go without having the surgery, the more cumulative damage is done and the less effective the surgery will be. When I was diagnosed a few years ago, my surgeon did the surgery immediately and I now have recovered full strength and dexterity in my hands. My mom put off surgery for years and she has only recovered about 75% even with physical therapy.

[JambaBamba]

My best friend was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia after 2 years of getting bounced around from doctor to specialist to doctor. One doctor even told her that her pain and physical exhaustion were all in her head and said that he needed to help "real patients". I had a sobbing best friend asking me if she was crazy because she kept feeling pain.

She is currently on medication (I think Cymbalta although they had to try several that didn't do anything but make her stoned) that is making the pain more bearable and is now exercising more (swimming seems to be the best exercise for her so far) and that in turn seems to help her pain levels.

[Eisa]

I keep wondering if I have fibro. I hurt almost everywhere. And not all of it can be chalked up to other things. For instance--I know my feet hurt because I have clubfeet and I also have arthritis in them. I know my ankles hurt because my bones are inappropriately fused. My hips are tilted, so that makes around them hurt. I get migraines, so that's probably why that hurts.

Still doesn't explain the constant headaches, the fact my back up to my neck is almost always a mass of pain, how random spots on my legs hurt, how random parts of my arms hurt, my wrists hurt a lot, my fingers throb sometimes, my face hurts a lot...I mean it's practically like pick a spot on my body. I bet it hurts.

Not to mention I'm exhausted all the time. Even doing something small like walking my aunt to the apartment office and back to check the mail makes me tired. Yet I don't sleep well, either.

Perhaps I should start examining the symptoms list myself... :p

[Seshat]

Now, here's a related question since I do not know if I have fibromyalgia or simply a pinched nerve along with carpal tunnel. Would Seshat's suggestion of working through the pain and figuring out your level before you have a pain crash work for me, too?

The basic pain management techniques work for many sorts of pain. The occupational therapy techniques (pacing, posture, positioning) and the pain cycle (pain->do less->muscle atrophy->more pain) apply to (almost?) every type of pain.

In my pain management course, we had people with arthritis, car accident damage, anatomical deformities ... we covered a wide variety of pain causes. What we had in common was that pain was limiting our lives.

As always: I am not a doctor, nurse, nurse practitioner, etc. Even if I were, I haven't examined your specific case.

[Sapphire Silk]

Now, here's a related question since I do not know if I have fibromyalgia or simply a pinched nerve along with carpal tunnel. Would Seshat's suggestion of working through the pain and figuring out your level before you have a pain crash work for me, too? My pain is concentrated in my hands, shoulders and legs and makes bending, stretching, holding a mouse, typing holding an object, etc, extremely painful. Walking is fine. But using my hands and lifting objects is such a pain, literally. I'm on gabapentin and had no idea avout the tardive dyskensia, would that happen on gabapentin?

Ralerin, I'm more inclined to think carpal tunnel than fibro. Fibro is usually diagnosed as excluding everything else, but key in the evaluation is pain when certain pressure points are touched.

The specific nature of your pain is more reminiscent of carpal tunnel, or a pinched nerve root in the spine.

Gabapentin is not usually associated with tardive dyskenisia. I've never heard of a case. It is very effective in treating neurological pain such as migraines, fibro, and peripheral neuropathy caused by diabetes and MS.

I keep wondering if I have fibro. I hurt almost everywhere. And not all of it can be chalked up to other things. For instance--I know my feet hurt because I have clubfeet and I also have arthritis in them. I know my ankles hurt because my bones are inappropriately fused. My hips are tilted, so that makes around them hurt. I get migraines, so that's probably why that hurts.

Still doesn't explain the constant headaches, the fact my back up to my neck is almost always a mass of pain, how random spots on my legs hurt, how random parts of my arms hurt, my wrists hurt a lot, my fingers throb sometimes, my face hurts a lot...I mean it's practically like pick a spot on my body. I bet it hurts.

Not to mention I'm exhausted all the time. Even doing something small like walking my aunt to the apartment office and back to check the mail makes me tired. Yet I don't sleep well, either.

Perhaps I should start examining the symptoms list myself... :p

Fibro is often a diagnosis of exclusion; they diagnosis it when they've ruled out everything else. And you certainly have a lot of reasons to be in pain.

I would not be surprised if the various musculoskeletal problems are creating tension headaches for you. It may be putting pressure on blood vessels in the neck causing migraines. Pain can make it difficult to sleep well.

Have you ever seen a pain management specialist?

What ever happened with the surgery you were hoping to get?

[Eisa]

Panacea: I have never seen a pain management specialist. To be honest, I'm not even sure if there ARE any here. :confused: Although I haven't really looked.

It fell through. :( My doctor blows. In many ways. Although I'm still working up the courage to basically tell him to fuck off. :lol: I need to soon, though. Now he wants the son who just got out of residency to do it. Hell. No.

[Seshat]

If you don't have a pain management specialist near you, try a rehabilitation specialist.

Doctors often get into pain management from either rehabilitation or anaesthesia: the ones who enter from rehab tend to try lifestyle changes, meditation, exercise sorts of techniques before relying on drugs, the anaesthesia docs tend to reach for the drug cabinet.

Now... as for the 'why everything hurts': have you heard of referred pain?

NOTE: the below explains POSSIBILITIES, not certainties. I'm providing educated guesswork here, and I, obviously, am not a doctor, nor have I given you a thorough personal examination.

Because of your clubfeet and tilted hips, your back muscles and corset muscles are doing an enormous amount of work, constantly, to keep you upright. Thus why they hurt.

Because your back muscles are working so hard, trapezius hurts. It's one of the back muscles, and the top of it is connected to the back of your neck. It could easily be pulling on the back of your neck to try to keep you balanced, which causes those muscles to hurt.

Connected to the same bones as the back-of-the-neck muscles is the start of the sheath of skull muscles... thus tension headaches.

Now for your face.

Your ribcage is connected to your back. Your ribcage muscles are connected to your back. Your collarbone muscles are as well, as is your breastbone.
Feel your neck muscles - front of the neck. Follow them down from your jaw. Feel how they connect to the sternum (sorry, breastbone) where it joins the collarbones? All your neck muscles connect to the top bones of the back, or bones which are connected directly to those.

And since your whole back is trying to compensate for your feet and hips... well, even they are doing extra work.

Now feel your cheek muscles. Where do they connect? Cheekbone to lower jaw, or around the TMJ (temperomandibular joint, aka where your jaw connects to your skull). Since your front-of-the-neck muscles connect to your lower jaw, and your lower jaw is connected to bits of you that are misaligned or doing too much work to stay aligned....

Yeah.

Arms....

Your shoulder is really only held in place by muscles, not much more. And these muscles connect to your spine, to the shoulder blade (which is only held onto the skeleton by muscles, which connect to your spine and ribcage), and to the collarbones and ribcage.

By now you understand why that means your upper arms, especially the shoulders, might hurt.



What can you do about all this?

Hydrotherapy in a warm pool.
Relaxation, preferably someplace warm.
Massage.
The assistance of a podiatrist.
The assistance of a physiotherapist.
The surgery you've been wanting, perhaps.
The assistance of a massage specialist who knows how to detect "trigger points" and perform "trigger point massage". You want someone caring and gentle for that, as trigger point massage can be very, very painful. SOOOOOO worth it, but painful at the time.

Also, see my earlier posts about pain management.



Now, this is NOT to say that these ARE the reasons. These are POSSIBLE reasons. Possible explanations. But knowing them may help you.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Esia, not much help I know, but in OurState CapitalCity, there are many pain specialists, some of whom my father is seeing. There are at least a few in ClosestBigCity to you... you live "out east" right? >_> I checked IF and P-town, both yes on google.

[Eisa]

teh: yes, I do. I love it being called "p-town." :lol: And thankies. I've have to do a more concentrated search and see who's the closest.

Seshat: All of that makes a ton of sense. O_o Thank you. Even if it's not that, it certainly sounds like that all ain't helping and is making it all worse.

[Seshat]

Exactly. Bad feet are a nightmare for the whole body - as soon as I heard your 'feet' story, I was sympathetic because of thinking of all that.

Heck, I bought myself a wobble board just to develop better ankle and foot muscles, to reduce my overall pain!
(Note: I don't know if it'd be helpful for you, I'd recommend checking with a podiatrist or specialist in your particular problems. Given what little I know of your problems, I can visualise ways wobble or rocker boards could make it better - and ways they could make it worse.)
(Note to everyone else: if your feet/ankles/legs are basically anatomically normal, a wobble or rocker board is likely to help prevent the sort of chained problems I described to Eisa a few posts back.)


BTW Eisa: My apologies, I forgot you were a nurse; and thus would know 'sternum', 'clavicle', 'trapezius' et al; be familiar with the weaknesses of the shoulder joint, and so on.
However, by translating into non-jargon, at least our non-medicos will have understood my post. :)

Odd thought: between the club feet and the tilted hips, I'm surprised you've not yet hooked one of the meniscuses (menisci?) in your knees! I recommend strengthening the whole set of knee-joint-support muscles (unless your personal medicos say not to). If your knees are tracking properly, it's got to be a miracle! (Or excellent supportive muscles)

[Eisa]

Oh dear, I have got to change my avi. :lol: I'm not a nurse, I promise--I just REALLY liked how that avi looked when I made it on Gaia! :o

What are the things in your knees? :confused: -more proof that i am not a nurse- I probably have done something to them, they don't like me a lot of the time. I've never heard of a wobble board--I wonder if it might help, but definitely that would need to be under a doc's guidance!

[sevendaysky]

Not the person you were speaking to before, but popping in to answer the meniscus question. The meniscus is basically a sort of "c" shaped bit of cartilage in your knee that acts as a cushion between the tibia and femur. Problems with this will make your knee hurt like... well, you know. It can tear, rupture, etc, - there are two for each knee. With your balance issues, the knee itself has a fair chance of injuring the meniscus.. es... menesci... THOSE THINGS. It's hard to say whether a meniscus tear/injury would be why your knees hurt, what with the other things you have going on. Just keep a close eye on them and if they look a bit odd, start behaving unusually, perhaps feel like they're grinding bone on bone - go get them checked too.

As far as referred pain - my neck vertebrae are slightly out of alignment and have been for a while. I started having severe carpal-tunnel like pain in my right hand - couldn't type, knit, use a mouse, whatever. Went to have it checked, and there was nothing visible to indicate that kind of damage. She started messing with my neck. There was a sudden pop and away goes the pain. She said that the muscles connected to my neck were overcompensating a bit due to, ahem, chest size, and thus pulling slightly out of alignment and pinching a nerve in my neck. Any pain down the arms, she says, she looks at neck first to see if there's problems there. She taught me some exercises to do to help keep them in alignment and while I still have "bad days" occasionally, they are far fewer and less debilitating than they used to, because I know how to "watch" the signs. My point for this entire long paragraph - you should try to find a pain management clinic, yes, but you might also consider talking to a physical therapist. They may be able to help you keep things more in line and reduce some pain.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

teh: yes, I do. I love it being called "p-town." :lol: And thankies. I've have to do a more concentrated search and see who's the closest.

Seshat: All of that makes a ton of sense. O_o Thank you. Even if it's not that, it certainly sounds like that all ain't helping and is making it all worse.

:roll: so do I! 'Swhy I called it that. :3 That, and I had heard some natives call the towns IF and P-town. :angel:

Re Seshat's explanation: oh, yeah! One thing gets hurt, your body tries to compensate, and clench-- getting everything out of whack. Legs are the worst at this...
Sevendaysky... :eek: that was AWESOME! I love it when things are an awesome quick-fix like that. :3 Glad it's doing better.

[iradney]

Please stop with the online diagnoses. This is not what this forum is for!

[LewisLegion]

I have fibro. Took me ten years to get a diagnosis. It's probably worse than it should be because I refuse to take narcotic or opiods. Even though I take nothing worse than muscle relaxers on rare occassions, I still get accused of drug seeking sometimes. Some doctors just don't listen.

[Shangri-laschild]

Definitely have to reiterate the go see a doctor thing. One who will really listen. I had thought my doctor was awesome for finally listening to all my symptom issues. I forgot about my previous struggle getting him to believe me about the ADD (that I had been medicated for all through school and only lapsed on because of insurance). I should have remembered he tends to make snap decisions. Now I'm beginning to think (with the help of my therapist) that maybe it's not Fibro that I have but Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The symptoms are very similar. I don't know yet but the point is that with Fibro, there are a crap ton of overlapping things that all have very similar symptoms. You won't know till you go see a doctor and get them to really look into your problems.

[Difdi]

I've always been interested in medicinal effects of herbs, and I actually have a fair number of over the counter medications replaced with herbal extracts, capsules and tinctures in my medicine cabinet at home.

My mother has fibromyalgia, which led me to look up the symptoms, and something leapt out at me about them. The full list of fibromyalgia symptoms matches, almost perfectly, the medicinal effects of the kava-kava (piper methysticum) root, like a hand matches a glove. My mother is highly skeptical of herbal remedies, so I've never gotten her to try it, but I've often wondered if anyone else knows anything about whether it helps with fibromyalgia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava

[Seshat]

I've not tried kava root, but the wikipedia page doesn't make it sound like a good match for my symptom set: may I ask what makes you think it matches well?