Very glad to see you here again! Wondering where you have been. I agree with Seenie, not off topic at all. I get what you say I have same pains that come and go but wrist braces at night help me alot as my hands fall asleep badly if I don’t wear them. I have even woken up from a dead sleep spanking myself to get them to feel normal again. My husband finds this hilarious of course!
Hi Seenie, yes fibro is also very real for me. Sometimes I think it actually causes more discomfort and pain then the arthritis itself. Though once again I asked this young ortho that I went to, who seemed very nice and very eager to answer any question how to differantiate between fibro pain and arthritis pain (especially in my lower back), and he laughed and said "Well, you can't! Even we doctors can't so how could you?!" And when I told him that I kept taking Indomethacin for my back pain everytime, and was worried that I was using an NSAID for nothing if the pain was in fact caused by fibro, he said "no, Indomethacin would still help, because all the tension and pain caused by fibro would send signals that once again starts the inflammation process". And that was an interesting piece of information! :) He also prescribed me Omega 3 tablets and told me that they helped him tremendously too :D He was a really nice person :)
Hİ Rachael, nice to see you too :) Well, I had been away for various reasons. First, as I began feeling better I didn't want to log in to a forum every day that made me remember that I was chronically ill, sounds really selfish, I know, after complaining and complaining for months and then disappearing... Also, I had been really really busy, by the time I finished work all the energy I had left was to lie around watching anime with my brother and then falling asleep at 11 pm! (I used to stay up until 6 am :D ) And that's funny about your husband finding it hilarious, I pictured it and it made me laugh too :D I just hope this doesn't become more serious or painful, or doesn't trigger an actual arthritic inflammatory process. Because the doc also said although he doesn't think this is the case here, there are incidents where inflammation can happen without the swelling and redness, especially in the early stages...
Hello LL! I don't think it's selfish to do a disappearing act as and when you want to .... it's healthy. And it's great to see you back again too!
Glad you got to the bottom of the wrist pain and tremor. I reckon doctors should be very, very wary of treating fibro like a symptom dustbin alongside that other enormous trash can for tricky problems, the menopause.
At the moment I'm finding that one thing is triggering another is triggering another .... or at least what the doctors think. So I was interested in what your doc said about the pain & tension of fibro triggering the inflammatory process. My daughter-in-law (good as, anyway) who has fibro thinks it can work the other way i.e. that the pain of inflammatory arthritis can lead to fibro. Which I suppose is a no-brainer given how many people with PsA, RA etc. also have fibro.
Never feel guilty, good for you! After all what is life, if it’s not worth living? I have to ask did you finish your thesis?
Hi Sybil, it's so nice to see you again :)) I think your daughter in law might be right too. That thought had also crossed my mind. It's like a giant snowball, only it's made up of your tears instead of pretty little snowflakes :P Like you said, one thing triggers another and then that triggers another then they all come together and make you depressed which in turn causes more pain thanks to your now very low serotonin levels etc etc... I liked this new ortho though... Even though he did mention fibro regarding some of my complaints, he was very careful about not using it as an answer for everything and trying to explain everything to me and hey, unlike my rheumy, he actually bothered to ask for some x-rays! So he's my new favorite doc for now :)
Rachael, oh my god I'm still not finished with my thesis but - fingers crossed- I'm planning on finishing it by June... Did you know that PhD stands for "Permanent Head Damage"? I laughed so hard when I first came across that on the Internet :D I can't wait for it to be over so maybe I can get rid of some this anxiety... Grad school ruined me for life!