fibromyalgia

[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...

[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...

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. 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. 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." 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. I'm not a nurse, I promise--I just REALLY liked how that avi looked when I made it on Gaia!

What are the things in your knees? -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." 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.

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

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... 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!