Your story frustrates me. Delay, denial, negligence, stupidity, lack of knowledge, and lack of caring have added to your suffering. Unhappily it is the story of many fibro sufferers. I'll try to summarize the many advices I got from the docs that help on this list.
You are a chronic pain sufferer (fibro is one of many) and like all chronic pain sufferer you get pain from what should not be painful. What is supposed to be a caress or a tickle can give the most horrendous pain (many scientific names attached to that phenomenon: allodynia, hyperpathia, hypersensitivity etc..). This is due to 2 processes that happen in your central nervous system: recruitment (which means that instead of 5% of your neurons being involved in pain, 30% or so are recruited--involved) and a memory of pain (before your chronic pain you needed a really hard blow to give you pain but because the pains went on so long you only need a caress to get pain). Those 2 processes do not take 3 months to develop! They start after 30 minutes of continuous pain!! Genetic changes are detectable after that time in neurons and receptors involved with memory (and pain memory) are excited. Those receptors are called NMDA receptors. As a fibro you enter many vicious cycles: - poor sleep = poor production of endorphins (our natural morphine) and poor production of serotonin (so you feel depressed) - lack of exercise (because of pain) = poor production of endorphins and serotonin - narcotics (such as vicodin) = good for pain but indirect effect by exciting the NMDA receptors (that is why you need escalating doses of narcotics) - fibro = magnesium deficiency: magnesium is the one that stops the NMDA receptors from getting excited! So your NMDA receptors tend to get more excited (so more memory of pain so more pain) and narcotics bad effect on NMDA receptors is increased and so on...
So one of the requirements is to take magnesium supplement to quiet down the NMDA receptors and decrease the magnesium deficiency. Let's not talk about the magnesium deficiency measurement, that would need many pages! Let's just say that the best magnesium salt to get is magnesium chloride because it is well absorbed.
By taking magnesium you would cut down your deficiency and make your narcotics work better. Obviously, your doctors are in charge as to what narcotics and which amount they prescribe you.
Are you working? If not, we have helped a few people to get going and I would be prepared to see what we could do. Just contact me at AnneMasterson@fibromyalgia-information-relief.com if you wish.
