I attended my first pain management appointment yesterday. The doctor was amazing at describing this condition to me. When he asked me what is fibromyalgia?
my response was simply that is a chronic condition that causes wide spread pain. He shook his head and asked me, but what is it? A person who has arthritis could be told it’s widespread pain but that doesn’t explain what it is. He explained that if someone was to slap their arm they usually wouldn’t react as it isn’t painful, so why do I find it so painful?
He then asked me, if he was to do blood test, biopsy, X-ray, urine samples would they show fibromyalgia? I sighed at this point as I responded with no, I believed this doctor was going to tell me it’s fake. The doctor asked me if I was to do a list of things I had to do, how long would it take me to pick which one to choose, and how long would it take me to do said task, if I’d move on half way or not complete it at all. He explained that I have chronic fatigue syndrome, poor task management, and poor decision making which is part of “fibro fog”. He then proceeded to go into depth by drawing two circles on piece of paper, one suppose to show a “normal” brain and the other “fibro” brain. He showed me how oxygen travels through brain in comparison to those with fibromyalgia. He explained to me that fibromyalgia is a brain processing problem, so things that shouldn’t really hurt, hurts. The brain causes pain magnification, so my brain is sending wrong signals through nervous system basically saying that everything hurts warning of danger when there isn’t any danger.
We then moved onto medication, and I was baffled to learn that our body does in fact produce its own morphine. When we exercise our body releases endorphins which leaves us feeling good, endorphins are our morphine that our bodies produces by itself. Things like codine makes our liver work harder as it converts condine to morphine, so tablets like MST will be processed faster as liver already produces morphine.The medication my gp been giving me are highly addictive as they only give short relief, so they are being swapped with long relief medication. I’m needing to learn to pace myself better, as I saw a good day where I’m doing everything I can. The doctor explained how that isn’t a good day if I end up in bed for few days after, he explained that a duvet day you lose 1% muscle that takes 21 days to build back up. He advised if I were to carry on the way I was going and not pacing myself, within next few years I’ll be in a wheelchair due to muscle loss. My task is to start off doing something for 5-10 minutes then rest for an hour, if within that hour I’m not feeling any better then it means I’ve over done it so need to reduce my task time. It eventually will build up each week once I’ve found that balance.
I have probably not explained this as well as the doctor did, however I found this fascinating and has helped me understand more about fibromyalgia and how to take medication correctly. I also need to accept that nothing will take the pain away just ease it enough to enable me to move more.