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hi people who use this forum. for years my sister has complained of pain. everywhere. she has problems eating white breads, pastries, pasta etc, her legs get so restless she's kicked items off the table and done damage, she can't lose weight, has problems with lack of sleep and has always just put it down to menopause symptoms until recently. she did her back in 9/10 weeks back and has discovered 4 discs are collapsing in to each other. continually stressed out she feels she's being weak. is this sounding like fibro to you because we don't know. what can she do to cope with the pain? can she continue her job of being headteacher? where does she look for help once she's diagnosed?
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sophies77 sam18386
Posted
hi sam, if she has facebook tell her to look for a group on facebook called Fibromyalgia UK, they will be very supportive and she can ask as many questions as she wants and she'll find out alot from other posts too.. I too have widespread pain daily, my chest is my most concerning however multiple tests have said it's not my heart yet I cant help be scared. they think it's either chronic anxiety or fibromyalgia. its hard to deal with either way x
Mrs_Hobbles sam18386
Edited
Hi Sam, pain is well known as a feature of Fibromylgia and unfortunately it's the one symptom we struggle to get under control the most, so giving you a quick fix for it is really not possible. When being tested for Fibromylgia, there are 18 points on the body that when pressed on will be very painful, with the pain deepening and radiating, something that doesn't happen with people without Fibro, that's really the biggest teller of Fibro, plus months of fatigue.
Fibromylgia is made up of a number if symptoms, and stress really does kick off any or all of them and then its an struggle to bring them all under control. IBS is another symptom, so that might account for the bread, pastries etc, so really the obvious thing would be for your sister to stay away from them and then maybe slowly reintroduce them to see if she can to tolerate them. I think everyone with Fibromylgia has put the problems associated with it down to something else initially, till you gather them all together and come up with this illness. You say she feels weakness also, another big feature of Fibro is fatigue, unrelenting tiredness, muscle weakness, very difficult to deal with especially if you've to work and your sister is in a very stressful job.
Her discs unfortunately are a whole other problem and she may be able to get an epidural injection into her back which is very successful in dealing with that pain.
She really needs to be referred to a rhumathologist by her doctor, who will try to deal with the aspects that affect her most, but unfortunately there are not alot of medications that will look after the different aspects of Fibro. Alot of sufferers are on Lyrica and Cymbalta, both can help for a period of time but the withdrawal effects when getting off them can be horrendous for alot of people and can be worse than what they were trying to help, so your sister should do careful research before taking those meds on, but then alot of people will swear by them. It's a call she'll have to make herself! She may also benefit from acupuncture, reflexology etc. but I guess a diagnosis is the first step and hopefully she'll be one of the lucky ones who responds well to treatment.
Wishing your sister all the best, come back and let us know how she gets on!
sam18386
Posted
thank you so much to the kind people who responded, it might put my sister's mind at ease! she's struggling and to know she has support will help her i hope.