I'm 27, been suffering from fms for 2 years and frustrated as ever

by Jenny
(Saratoga, Wy US)

I lived in Michigan and I had to complain about my symptoms for a year before I was tested for fms. One day I woke up and the pain was worse than ever. I couldn’t move my head, bend over, and even my steps were painful. I had to make an emergency appt. with my doctor, who wasn’t in that day so lucky for me. I got a doctor who tested me right away and we found I was suffering from fms. My doctor who I'd been seeing for over a decade didn’t believe my symptoms and thought I might just be trying to get narcotics for recreational purpose. My mother had the same doctor and she has fms might I add and my doc still didn’t think to test me. Might I add that she didn’t believe in prescribing narcotics. After I tried everything they could give me and nothing helped, I was lucky enough to get a doc who cared enough to test me for the illness and prescribe narcotics. After I was tested and my regular doc seen the proof and that narcotics was the only thing that could give me relief, it was no problem getting the help I needed. Even physical therapy twice over didn’t help. Then as we all know, Michigan’s economy went sour and I moved to the state of Wyoming where it is easier to schedule open heart surgery than to find a doc to help with your fms. I found a doc

who would prescribe me narcotics but only for six months. Now that’s long past and the small town I live in that’s about 45 min from the doc I just mentioned, these docs in town won’t do anything. They give me very mild pain relievers that don’t help unless I take more than I'm supposed to and even doing that just makes the pain a little more dull but it still bothers me. So on top of the fms, I get severe stomach aches from having to take more than the recommended dose. Then I have to suffer with nothing for a couple of weeks because I can’t get a refill because my month supply isn’t supposed to be gone until the next month on the same date I got them. I've told them over and over about this vicious cycle and considering I've been through all the trials I can stand from 24-27, I know what works and yet they won’t help. They think I'm trying to get high on vicodin. I don’t even do drugs, I hate the feeling of being high, and I have one drink, two at the most, a month. I'm broke and the pain doctor is 200 miles away and they want 600 up front. I'm frustrated, I can’t enjoy my life to the fullest. I'm supposed to be cleaning my house right now and I can barely move. I can’t stand the frustration, I'm 27, I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my life for my fms.

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by: Anne Masterson

Hi Jenny

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.

Big hugs

Anne

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