Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Sunday, February 11, 2007
What It Feels Like To Be Me, On The Fatigue-Ridden Days
I woke up this afternoon at 3:45pm, after having gotten 12 hours of sleep. That’s pretty rare, but if my body wants to stay asleep twelve hours, it probably needs it. When I work up, I felt horrible. I could barely move, I was so sore. I took my meds - Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Neurontin, and Protonix. I started to feel okay after maybe 90 minutes. I felt pretty decent after about two hours. We sat down at around 7p to watched the taped Leafs game. I was doing a little work on the computer while the game was on. We had dinner at 11p. Right after dinner, I was totally exhausted. Like “I had the flu” exhausted. If like me, you’re fantastic at basic math (haha), you’ll know that that’s about eight hours of being up and around...and I’m ready for bed. Right now, I’m typing this with my head on my knee, with my eyes shut. My fingers are working, but the rest of me is too tired to sit up straight.
I went back to the pain management doctor on Friday for a checkup. He got the results of my bloodwork - I’m anemic and my bloodwork shows that I have inflammation somewhere. He ordered more bloodwork to get at the specifics. He said that it could be related to my bladder issue though. Also, I now officially have the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Since I already knew that on my own, I guess the good news is that the tests show that I don’t have Lupus or Rheumatoid Arthritis. I never thought I had RA because I don’t really have the symptoms, I don’t think. I’m relieved that I don’t have Lupus, although it remains to be seen if fibromyalgia is any better, practically speaking. In the long run, yes, it’s much better to have FMS. Right now, it seems similar to some of the Lupus symptoms...and now that I’ve read about them, I’m glad Lupus has been ruled out.
Okay, I’m too tired to post. There’s so much I want to rant about, but these days I’m having to save most of my ranting energy for either working...or getting up and going to the bathroom. I hope my appointment on Monday with the urologist takes care of the peeing issue for me. It’s been getting worse and it’s really stressing me out, man. If that gets fixed, hopefully some of the anxiety that goes along with it will disappear, which should help my fibromyalgia a lot.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately - when did I actually get fibromyalgia? This all seems fairly new. I’ve been in pain before; carpal tunnel, back pain, etc. But I’ve never had the overwhelming fatigue or the all over pain until fairly recently. I’ve been thinking that my surgery actually was the last straw that led to the fibromyalgia. It fits the criteria and it fits the timing. I think it’s pretty sucky to get surgery that fixes one thing and gives you another. I protest...tiredly. I know that my surgery was definitely successful in fixing the specific pain that I had from the herniated disc. There was no mistaking that pain. This pain is just an icky all over kind of pain. The only severe pain I have that has a specific location all the time is the pain in my left hip, which I usually get when we’re grocery shopping or out doing something. It’s all so weird. And asking for extra pain meds makes me feel like a drug addict, but honestly, I’d be a drug addict that got absolutely no joy or high from my meds, which kind of makes using them for that purpose moot. When I take the meds, I get three possible outcomes: one, my pain goes away; two, I feel nauseous; or three, nothing. The high...never there. I did get a little stoned from my Lyrica when I was taking it, which is one of the common side-effects. But, it definitely made me feel better in other ways too. It’s too bad it was so expensive and that my insurance doesn’t cover it. 90 pills - $199.99 (I was prescribed 2/day) and 270 pills - $599.89 (don’t you like that it’s only .89 versus the .99 in the smaller number?) It is interesting that no matter what the dosage, from 25mg pills to 300mg pills, the price is the same. That’s nice for people who have to have their dosage upped. Well, if I make a ton of money, I’ll tell the doctor to prescribe whatever he wants, although Lyrica makes people gain weight too. I like the weight loss that is the result of feeling crappy and stressed out.
I really should set up another blog, or blog on Leigh-Ann’s Tired Girls blog when I’m whining about feeling crappy. I’m sure I’ve been a big disappointment to the huge number of people who came here in the past few days looking for information about Anna Nicole’s mother. I wrote one “Idiot of the Day” entry about her mom’s appearance on Nancy Grace a few months ago. My traffic tripled on Friday because of Anna Nicole’s weird and sudden death. Poor Anna Nicole - what a sad strange life she had. And here, to get stuck in your head, the theme song to Anna Nicole’s reality show. It shouldn’t just be stuck in my head.
Next entry: Ack, Ptooey, It's Cystoscopy Day Previous entry: Idiots of the Day - The Breast Cancer Society of Canada
-
Damn Flip - fibromyalgia sounds like an awful infliction - I have a friend at univ who has it and I always feel so bad for her. I hope there are treatments that can help get you feeling better.
PS - I’d never seen that Anna Nicole thing before! Maybe they didn’t carry her show here in NB.
Lisa W. on 02/11 at 10:23 AM -
Hi Flippy,
I found your blog while searching for info on herniated discs. I’m scheduled to have surgery tomorrow on mine (was hoping to have conservative treatment but the surgeon seems to think I need surgery). I’m pretty scared about it.
It helped me to be able to read all that you went through with your back problems. I’m glad you had a successful surgery.
I’m enjoying following your blog in general, and not just for the disc stuff.
Hope you have some answers and solutions soon for your current health challenges.
Leigh
on 02/11 at 10:34 AM -
Leigh, I wish you’d written sooner. Then I could’ve told you to see if you could get a couple of Valium or Ativan for the days before the surgery, to calm your nerves. I think the night before was the scariest, even scarier than the day of the surgery. Once I got to the hospital, they kept me busy doing little things like peeing in a cup, putting on the anti-embolism stockings, and watching people walk back & forth in front of me at the nurses’ station. They gave me a Valium pretty quickly after they decided I was going into surgery (there was some doubt about it because of the results of my urine test taken two weeks earlier - why they didn’t check it then, who knows?!), so it was mostly just hanging out and waiting for everything to start. The anesthesiologist came over and introduced himself, the nurses introduced themselves, and my surgeon’s PA said a quick hello. Then, I got my IV put in and minutes later I was out. Zzzzzz. The next thing I knew, it was over and I was in recovery waiting for the nurse to bring me a muffin to eat with the two Percocets she gave me. I wrote out everything I could remember in an email to someone else who is having surgery next week. I’ll copy & paste some stuff and hopefully it’ll get to you before you leave in the morning for the hospital or surgery center.
I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed the rest of my blog too, even though you’ve had to read through all of my whining lately.
Good luck with your surgery and let me know how you’re doing in the next couple of days. The first day or two you’ll be exhausted when you try to sit at the computer, so I’ll let you off the hook.
on 02/11 at 09:35 PM -
Hang in there N! Poor you! Sending good thoughts.
Susie on 02/15 at 04:01 PM -
It all started about 15 years ago, when I was 17, I came down with something (doctor never found anything then) I could barely get up from bed to go to the bathroom, this lasted for a couple of weeks and then after that my life hasn’t been the same, I’m always tired, everything hurts, there are days I can barely get up. I have two young kids and work full time (office job) but it is not easy.
I also have bladder problems but the doctors couln’t find anything wrong, last time I went I was told I had an overactive bladder, another time was Intertitial Cysitis, I was given Enablex samples and they were like god sent, for once in my lifetime I wasn’t aware of my bladdder.
I also had my physical and told my doctor about my symptoms and he sent me for a whole bunch of tests, he tested me for arthritis, lupus, lyme disease, anemia and other ones I can’t remember.
I tested negative for all, the only thing he found was my cholesterol was a little high.
I told him that I knew that something was wrong with me and he said he thought maybe I should see a rheumatologist, I might have Fibromalgya.
I have read about my symptoms for years and I always thought I had it.
Even though I tested negative for lupus, I’m very concerned, about a month of so my hair has started to fall (a lot) and that is a symptom of lupus but not of fibromalgya, also I’ve read that many people with lupus also have fibromalgya and that 1 in 10 people test negative for lupus when they actually have it, really scary..
Changing the lupus subject, I noticed that when I took the enablex for my bladder, my muscles, especially in my upper back werent stiff anymore, I felt better than ever, that is really weird.on 10/07 at 09:27 AM
