Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Monday, March 16, 2009
If Anyone Wants to Learn More About Fibromyalgia
This book is a collaboration between a Fibromyalgia specialist and a Fibromyalgia patient. It tells people what to expect, what they might be capable of, not how to buy multi-level marketing vitamins from a “Fibromyalgia Center”, known for requiring patients to buy certain proprietary supplements in order to remain patients. Those centers are well-known for not helping their patients do anything except empty their bank accounts. Here’s a cheap way to get an education - The Fibromyalgia Network. You can sit down and read until your hearts and minds are content. There is no shortage of articles explaining what it is, what the symptoms are, what makes it worse (ahem, STRESS!), what may (not everyone responds to the same treatment) make it better, and why, and how all patients are different. In fact, Leigh-Ann and I have completely different symptoms other than the pain & fatigue. By the way, when I was in high school, I was writing bad poetry about things I knew nothing about, but it made me sound experienced and worldly (I thought), and I even have a song writing credit in ASCAP. Quoting the Dali Lama doesn’t make someone insightful & deep, it makes someone a computer user. When I was in high school, I had no idea what real pain and overwhelming fatigue were. I would get a good night’s sleep and I would be all better by morning. When you have Fibromyalgia, you can’t get a good night’s sleep, because one of the problems of FMS is non-restorative sleep.
If you don’t like that site, then the Wikipedia entry on
might be the thing you’re looking for, as it comes from a wide variety of material and links out to many different sites. None of these sites are trying to sell you anything, I might add.Or, there’s always a documentary for just about everything, and FMS is no exception.
”One Woman’s Story” from CNN: “Nancy’s condition progressed from mild aches and general tiredness to the point where she had trouble walking from room to room. “It was December of 1989,” recalls Nancy, now 49. “I tried to stand up and felt excruciating pain in my arms, legs and neck. I couldn’t even make it out of the room.” The name is not the only similarity. Although fibromyalgia is chronic, the symptoms may cycle through various stages of severity. Nancy says she slips in and out of “remission” often. “Today is a good day,” she says, “but I never know what will happen next. At any given moment, I might experience pain that impairs me to the point of debilitation. I just have to take each day as it comes.” And, in fact, it’s a complete mystery what each day will bring. I’ve cancelled clinical study appointments at the last minute, although they’re used to that, after working with FMS patients on a study. When our clinical study meds were taken from us by Pfizer, more than one patient called in, unable to make it to the office for an appointment. Because we get paid for those visits, I doubt anyone was cancelling just for the hell of it. I know that when we cancelled, we consulted with each other and decided that, yeah, there was no way that we could get up, shower, and drive across town for the appointment that day. And, our doctor completely understood.
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