Log #19 (How does FM feel?)

Before I go into my topic for the evening I have to say... Did Jake choose the wrong woman last night or what??? If you watch The Bachelor on TV then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Now that I got that out of my system I can write about what's on my mind this evening...

Last week the Pain Management Doctor started me on some medication for fibromyalgia. He gave this starter pack that starts out with a very small dose and slowly goes up until it reaches a strong enough dose. I can't feel much of a change yet, but there is still time.

It's not enough to sit down and say, "I have pain". Pain can be so different from from person to person that the term "pain" is far too generic. So I have to find a way to describe MY pain in a way that everyone can identify with it. So with that in mind, I'd want to do my best to describe what fibromyalgia feels like to me.

Visualize for a moment that you've been working in the yard all day. You've used your arms and hands to pull weeds and rocks from the garden. You've used a hoe to turn the soil and furrow the ground. You've taken your shovel to fill the wheelbarrow with the rocks you pulled out of ground and you strain to haul that load to a place where you can dump them out. All of this under the hot sun and for as long as there was light to work by--sixteen long aching hours. When it's all done you go in the house and fall into the easy chair in total exhaustion. Your bones and muscles ache from hard and vigorous labor. You feel, "the burn." Then add to this the feeling of being hit in the head with a baseball bat.

Another way to describe it is like mountain biking or rowing a boat when you have a serious cold. The part before you get the runny nose and the cough when your body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Your sinuses start throbbing between your eyes and over the eyebrows. Everything in your body feels like it's been run over by a steam roller. You don't feel like you can stand up straight and when you finally get to bed you can't sleep.

That is what mine feels like when it flares up. I'm just glad that it isn't as constant as the pain that is associated with my low back. For me, it comes and goes randomly but lately it seems to come after times when I try to be a little more active. It also comes on when I'm feeling way too tired, but for some reason I have to try and stay awake. It usually comes on quickly and is intense for a few hours then slowly tapers away until its just a general discomfort all day.

I have kind of developed a theory that my fibromyalgia may have been brought on by the constant use of pain medications for the last year and a half. Pain pills dull the bodies pain receptors, but the body tries to compensate by developing other receptors. That is the basic concept behind tolerance. In order to dull the pain in the new receptors you need to take more medication and the cycle goes on--very slowly of course. This also illustrates the difference between addiction and tolerance. Addiction is more mental while tolerance is physical. Anyway, fibromyalgia is basically the body freaking out and sending pain signals to the brain when it shouldn't be. I think (Just my unschooled opinion) that my body has increased pain receptors because of the pain medication and now those receptors are firing off and sending signals when they shouldn't. It would be interesting to see how many people with chronic pain, taking narcotics to control the pain, develop fibromyalgia well after the onset of chronic pain.