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Fibromyalgia and me
Wednesday, March 07, 2001
I am a 45-year-old male.
I was born with asthma, and always had problems with complex allergies,
aches and pains, sleeping problems and chronic
fatigue all through my growing up years.
In spite of all the health problems, I was in really good shape.
I found I had to work twice as hard as my brothers and peers to keep up, as we worked side-by-side on the farm we grew up on. I could keep up with my brother's work pace, but was completely exhausted at the end of the day. My normal energy level was always low, and my parents took me to the doctor for a checkup. The test results came back 'normal', which reflected badly on me. I was branded as being 'lazy'.
When I graduated from high school, I stood 5 foot 8 inches tall, and weighed
110 pounds, 40-50 pounds under weight. In spite of the asthma and the skinny
scrawny build, I could carry two 100 pound bags of grain, one on each
shoulder, and run the 100 yards through the barnyard to the barn before the
horses could catch me. The horses could smell the grain, and would act like
they hadn't been fed in months, hoping to get some grain to eat. Even at 110 pounds, I could easily lift more than 3 times my weight!
As an adult, everything seems to have been normal. The asthma never really
bothered me after high school, but I was always short-winded. I would huff
and puff as I breathed during exercising as
if I had just run a couple of miles, but have only run 100 yards or so.
I would also have spells where I would have migraine headaches, and severe and painful backaches. My joints would ache and would seem stiff. All blood tests would come back normal. The uric acid level was near the high tolerance, but still considered normal.
I worked as a machinist, and stood on my feet in front of the equipment I
operated, for 8 to 10 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. I had the special
industrial shoes that helped some, and I didn't
really have any problems for years. After relocating from New England to California, I had a new job and had been working at it for almost a year. My feet would start burning every day, almost as if I had been
walking through fire. My ankles would feel like they were sprained, and the calves of my legs would start aching, almost as if an ace bandage were wrapped too tightly around them. The pain would radiate up my legs
and into my back. This process would repeat itself over and over for weeks. I went to a doctor who after reading the blood test results told me I was perfectly healthy!
I told him that I was
disappointed with his results, and that I was more worried now than ever, because he hadn't found the cause of my misery.
After more inquiries about my lifestyle and job, he blamed the chemicals in the work environment for my problems.
I quit the job, started a workman's comp case, and went on disability.
The workman's comp doctors never really found anything wrong with me. They sent me to a shrink, which was a total waste of time. Of course I was stressed out, who wouldn't be in my situation! Workman's Comp finally gave me some money to just go away! After being on disability for a year, I felt well enough to go to school, to learn a new skill. I could exercise, but could never spend a lot of time on my feet. They would ache really badly after awhile. I almost needed a wheelchair to go shopping with my wife, or to even spend time at the
Disneyland Park. I would tire easily, and when I pushed myself too hard, it
would take days, sometimes weeks to recover.
I finally went back to work, and started my new career. As long as I paced
myself, I was able to lead a normal life. Five or six years went by where life seemed almost normal. The career was successful, I was involved with friends racing sailboats every weekend, and was happy.
All of a sudden, I had a migraine that lasted for a whole week. When the
headache left, my back went into a spasm that had me totally crippled up for
a month. Once the back spasm ended, I had a few days where I felt well
enough to go sailing, but before the day ended, my left foot hurt so bad, I
though I broke it. After several days of staying off it, and
soaking it, I went to a doctor who x-rayed it and said that it was not broken. He thought my problem was gout. The foot was so swollen that it was more than twice the normal size, and it was beat red.
His nurse tried to draw a blood sample, but she screwed it up so bad, that she got blood everywhere except in the vile. She wanted to try it again, but I wouldn't let her touch me, so I got up and walked out, never to return.
The swelling finally went down and the pain stopped. A whole month had passed since the first pain in my foot, until it stopped. The migraine started the first week of July, and the foot stopped
hurting the first week of September. Strange?
Everything seemed fine again until the first week of July, the following year. The migraine, the backache, the swollen foot (other foot this time), crippled
up for the whole summer for the second year in a row. I'm just getting more and more fatigued as time goes on. I sleep less and less, and my whole body just seems to ache all the time. The aches are not
severe, but feel like an ace-bandage that is a little too tight. My muscles are a little stiff, and my joints are feeling stiff too.
My ankles always feel like they have a slight sprain. Exercise is impossible. Walking any more than what is absolutely necessary is impossible. I'm getting more and more irritable. Life is miserable. I refuse to miss a single day of work, regardless of how much pain I'm in, or if I'm on crutches or if I have to crawl!
This cycle repeated itself a third year, right on schedule.
Finally, one doctor said that I have Fibromyalgia, and that there is nothing that can be done for it. I would just have to learn to
live with it is what he told me!!
During the good part of the next year, I put myself on a sugar free, low calorie diet. I was disgusted with myself for putting on so much weight these last few years. I thought
that losing weight would at least help me feel somewhat better. I didn't have a flare up that summer, or the summer after that! I didn't lose a whole lot of weight, but felt better nonetheless.
I finally found Dr. St. Amand's site at www.guaidoc.com/ . He has a therapy that has helped many people. I went to see him, and started his program of the guaifenesen therapy in October 1999. I learned from his book that the diet I had put myself on, was the best thing I could have done! His book taught me many things about my condition. I also met many people on the internet who also suffer from this malady, and struggle just like me. I learned to consider myself fortunate, because many people are totally disabled with this disease, and can't even take care of themselves.
After several return visits to Dr. St. Amand, we could see that the lumps in my muscles (trigger points) were shrinking at a fantastic rate! Some of the lumps have disappeared completely!
Once I started the guaifenesen therapy, my chronic fatigue increased to the
point where I considered going on disability again. Working a full time job was becoming increasingly difficult.
One day, about 5 months later, I woke up early in the morning and noticed something different, I didn't feel the 100 pound weight on my chest, and practically floated out of bed! It's now been 10 months later, and the severe chronic fatigue hasn't returned!
Physical exercise is once again possible! I can run, and workout in the gym
once again, and can do many activities that I once thought were impossible
for me to do again. Working full time is no longer a problem, and I look
forward once again to living life to the fullest!
I feel that the chemicals I had been exposed to on the job many years ago
may have triggered the onset of severe Fibromyalgia symptoms. I may have
ended up struggling with FMS eventually anyway. I just find it strange that
there are so many doctors in my case that were
completely stumped. Now that I know about the FMS, I find that there are still so many different opinions
from doctors; some that still think it is a mental/emotional problem, rather
than physical.
I hope that someday, somebody will read this and learn that people can
really recover from this malady, and that they themselves can recover too!
It takes a lot of work and effort to do battle with FMS and
CFS, but with the right education and attitude, it can be beaten.
Sincerely,
Tom Burgess
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