Bit of Humor to begin: Sometimes, I wish Dr. House could diagnose my medical issues...
You know. Without being super-mean about it. (I love this cartoon.)
Just like that.
Just like that, everything changed.
About six weeks ago, the pain began. I remember it, the moment something began to feel off. It was an ordinary morning. I woke up, and my back hurt a whole lot. It was a deep ache across my shoulders and most of my lower back. It hurt to move, too. This had never happened. I thought I had slept funny and, in essence, shrugged it off. But a couple days later, it was worse; extending into my low back and right side. Even laying down hurt--the pressure on these strange sore spots made it impossible to get comfortable. I could barely sleep. I knew something was wrong.
I got a quick doctor's appointment for the next day. Unfortunately, not with my regular doctor. The woman that examined me clearly did not know what the issue was, and told me it was most likely sciatica. Sciatica. Obviously, I didn't believe that for a minute. Frustrated, I called back the next day and told them things were getting serious--worse. I was in tears. I wanted them to actually look at the urinalysis the nurse took. Maybe it was a kidney thing, I didn't know. All I knew is that this was not sciatica, and not normal. The nurse told me over the phone that there was a trace of blood in my urine, so my real doctor wanted to start me on an antibiotic and come back in to give another urine sample, so they could perform a complete culture. I did.
The next day... Oh, the pain. I barely slept at all the previous night. I couldn't lay down. I felt like I was in a total trance. And the pain was the worst I'd ever felt. I went to the emergency room. They did blood tests and performed a CT scan looking for a kidney stone. I still had blood in my urine, so the doc really felt that's what it was. The CT scan didn't show anything, but after giving me two full bags of fluid through an IV, he assured me it had most likely been flushed out. He gave me some "Vicodin lite" for the "spasming" I was most likely still experiencing and sent me out the door. Thing is, I just got the feeling this wasn't a kidney stone.
I think we all have a sixth sense--one that knows when something is off. Especially when it comes to our own bodies. I had that. And when the toradol started to wear off from the hospital, I was in worse pain than when I went in. This time, the pain was in the pelvic area. It was crippling, and I was literally in a ball on my bed. It burned and twisted and stabbed. I finally passed out, exhausted. The pain eased up for a few days.
I wrote a post about three weeks ago during this period, explaining my absence from blogging, about the kidney stone. But I never posted it. Call it that sixth sense, I just didn't think that the post would end up being the end of my story. It wasn't.
Five days later, I was back in the ER with the worst leg pain of my life. It ran from my ankles to my groins, a constant, steady ache with stabs that would randomly fire off through my muscles. They gave me another IV, and morphine this time, while taking more tests. The doctor wanted to check for aortic aneurysm and dissection; another CT scan. It came back normal. They sent me on my way... again.
When I got back at home, I laid down to go to sleep. This is where things began to spiral out of control. I was exhausted from the pain, and from spending the previous night in the hospital. I hadn't slept in well over 24 hours. I still couldn't do it. Laying down was pure agony. The pain now extended from my ankles to my lower back, just under my ribcage. It was spreading up my body.
Two hours later, I was back in the ER.
I was pretty beside myself at this point. I saw several doctors, and they assured me that I was not going to die that day (it really felt like I might), despite the obvious pain and emotionally unstable state I was in. They said they've ruled out everything that might be immediately serious, and they were going to admit me to the hospital for the night to keep running tests. From there, it was just a fog of tests, oxycodone and eventually, in bursts, after over 48 hours, sleep.
They released me from the hospital scratching their heads the next morning, after running a gamut of blood tests, ultrasounds, scans. Inadvertently, you find things along the way. Like 1) I am borderline anemic and will probably need iron supplements soon and 2) I have a cyst in my sinuses. But they found nothing that could have caused the pain. They were stumped.
From that point, I would go back to the ER two more times for chest pain, have another CT scan, two more MRIs and an EMG. But I already knew what I had. Ironically, I was basically self-diagnosed.
My dad decided to type in some of my symptoms on WebMD's Symptom Checker after my third trip to emergency, and like the miracle from heaven that it was, fibromyalgia came up. (Although I was thankful, so thankful, my tests were coming up normal, I just needed to know what I was fighting--the not-knowing was the worst.) I read through the major symptoms; there were about 15. I had 14. I started doing more research, and it just sounded exactly like me, what I was feeling, things that I didn't even know where part of the problem. And as it turns out, this has probably been a long time coming.
I had to go through the entire spectrum of testing, but nurses and people I talked to kept saying the same thing from that point on: Fibromyalgia. I started to let it sink in, accept it.
There is no cure, only treatment to control the symptoms. I will probably have flare-ups. I will probably have bad days where I just want to lay in bed. I will probably have better days where the pain is mostly background noise. But there's one thing I know: I don't want this syndrome to define me. I don't want it to stop my life. I won't let it.
I've decided that God has a plan for everything, and I strongly feel that this is His plan for me. Something good is going to come of this. So many people, doctors even, dismiss these symptoms, because there is no life-threatening cause. But, really, there is. Many fibromyalgia victims simply stop living because the pain is so debilitating. So, in essence, this syndrome needs to start being treated like a life-threatening disease. It stops life in its tracks, and I feel so sad about that. I mourn. So, I've decided maybe I can be a voice for chronic pain... for women. Somehow.
Did you know that nine out of 10 fibromyalgia sufferers are women? Women are four times more likely to be diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Women are three times more likely to have migraines, many of them chronic? We women feel more pain. But I don't want pain to stop our lives.
Will you do me a favor? Will you say a prayer for all the women, and simply people, who suffer from chronic pain? Please? Pray for strength, for freedom, for life.
