It's been almost 2 weeks since my appointment at the pain management center. First, let me say that the doctor did not impress me. He's arrogant and obnoxious, and talked down to me until my partner made it clear that she was a veterinarian. I.E., a medical professional that couldn't be bullshitted.
That being said, he definitely knows his stuff as far as fibro goes. He did the pressure test to confirm that I have it (no doubts there!), and then he started telling me about a new drug, Savella. Very few side effects, and those show up in a small minority of the people on the drug. He gave me a prescription and a coupon for a free titration pack to get started with. It took a few days to get started -- no one carries the titration pack in stock, and finding a pharmacy to take the coupon was tricky. Say what you like about Wal-Mart, they took the coupon!
So, today is day 10 on Savella. It's my third day at the full dose (5o mg twice a day), and yesterday I did something I haven't been able to do for a long time.
One of my big jobs around the house is cleaning ferret cages. It's physically demanding, and for the past two years it's been such a painful thing to do that I haven't done it any where near as regularly as I should, especially the part where I change the bedding, which frequently requires getting down on my hands and knees to clean the lower part of the cage. When I've done it, it's taken an hour and a half to do one average sized cage -- the bigger ones have been impossible! Yesterday, I cleaned an average cage in 45 minutes, including a full bedding change! I used a foam kneeling pad, where I've been using both that and strap-on knee pads. I was able to get up and down fairly easily. And while I'm more sore today than I was yesterday, I should still be able to clean another cage!
So, while the doctor is not a fun person to be around, he does know what he's talking about. And that's what I really care about!
Showing posts with label fibromyalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fibromyalgia. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Pain
I have fibromyalgia, for those of you who didn't know it, and that means that I am constantly, incessantly, in some degree of pain. I'm on a couple of pain meds, and they dull it, but they don't get rid of it. Today, for example, my lower back hurts and my upper legs are screaming. If you've never experienced chronic pain, count your blessings. It steals your energy, your willpower...well, really it steals your life. Everything you do becomes an evaluation of your pain level and how much you can really handle doing before it exhausts you. Every day is an exercise in what degree of tired you're feeling right now. And I am, as the saying goes, sick and tired of being sick and tired.
So today I took the first steps to, hopefully, get some actual function back and gain a bit of control over my life. I called the local pain management center. Apparently, it's not as easy as calling and getting an appointment. They wanted some of my records, so I called my primary doctor (who I love -- he spent two years testing me for everything under the sun before we got a diagnosis and never once told me it was all in my head!) to arrange for that, and set up an appointment for my regular checkup while I was at it. They'll fax the records to the doctor at the pain management place, he'll look at them, decide if he wants any other tests or things like x-rays, and then they'll call me to set the next step in place.
Fibro has also stolen my long term memory, which means I can't be trained for any job (we won't get into my opinion of Social Security and what they think disability is). I don't expect learning to manage my pain to bring that back. I've (mostly) come to terms with the fact that this is who I am these days. But having the energy to do more around the house would be a blessing, both for me and my partner. Sometimes, I think she has to be a saint to deal with my frequent uselessness. Then she get pissed at me and the illusion vanishes. :)
Anyway, I'm hoping that this is the first step to a better quality of life. I'll try to keep things updated here.
In knitting news, I've been working on chemo caps for my partner's cousin. I've finished 4 of them, and will be sending them out tomorrow. I've got 2-3 more I want to do, but she started chemo last week, so she needs them.
Added about half an hour later: Just got a call from the pain management center! I have an appointment July 21! That's a lot faster than I was expecting. They wanted to offer me a chance to come in tomorrow at 10 AM, but we've got a ferret having babies either today or tomorrow, and it looks like it will be tomorrow, so I had to wait. But there's a light in the distance....
So today I took the first steps to, hopefully, get some actual function back and gain a bit of control over my life. I called the local pain management center. Apparently, it's not as easy as calling and getting an appointment. They wanted some of my records, so I called my primary doctor (who I love -- he spent two years testing me for everything under the sun before we got a diagnosis and never once told me it was all in my head!) to arrange for that, and set up an appointment for my regular checkup while I was at it. They'll fax the records to the doctor at the pain management place, he'll look at them, decide if he wants any other tests or things like x-rays, and then they'll call me to set the next step in place.
Fibro has also stolen my long term memory, which means I can't be trained for any job (we won't get into my opinion of Social Security and what they think disability is). I don't expect learning to manage my pain to bring that back. I've (mostly) come to terms with the fact that this is who I am these days. But having the energy to do more around the house would be a blessing, both for me and my partner. Sometimes, I think she has to be a saint to deal with my frequent uselessness. Then she get pissed at me and the illusion vanishes. :)
Anyway, I'm hoping that this is the first step to a better quality of life. I'll try to keep things updated here.
In knitting news, I've been working on chemo caps for my partner's cousin. I've finished 4 of them, and will be sending them out tomorrow. I've got 2-3 more I want to do, but she started chemo last week, so she needs them.
Added about half an hour later: Just got a call from the pain management center! I have an appointment July 21! That's a lot faster than I was expecting. They wanted to offer me a chance to come in tomorrow at 10 AM, but we've got a ferret having babies either today or tomorrow, and it looks like it will be tomorrow, so I had to wait. But there's a light in the distance....
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Etsy Update and More
Well, it's been a while. Things have been crazy around here. There's a flu bug running through the ferrets, and that means I have to feed several of them (all the sick ones) 4 times a day, as well as do my usual things around the house. Saying I'm exhausted doesn't really cover it. And one of the sick ones (a six-month old from one of this year's litters) bit me last week while I was feeding him, so now my right index finger is infected. I'm on antibiotics, and the finger has a wet/dry wrap to help it drain, but it really slows me down, since I'm right-handed.
Etsy update -- Needle Bling, my Etsy shop, has had 4 sales! Yea!!!!!!!!!! I've got lots of stitch markers on sale, and I've recently added gift certificates, so you've got no excuse not to give stitch markers as a gift! (grin)And this weekend (Thanksgiving weekend) I'm having a sale. 15% off everything in the shop except gift certificates. It ends Tuesday, December 2, so don't wait!
I've been getting questions about my fibromyalgia, so here's the background story on me. I was diagnosed about 12-13 years ago. I was working in a bank at the time, and one night after I got home my left knee blew up to about twice it's normal size. I figured I had twisted it or something, started favoring the leg and went to work the next day. After a few days of working during the day and babying the knee at night, nothing had changed so I went to see my doctor. He had no idea what had caused it, told me to keep doing what I was doing, and come back in a week if nothing had changed. That continued for about three weeks. At that point, the doctor told me to take two weeks off work. He wanted me to start the next day, but I had things on my desk that needed to be taken care of, so I worked the next day and told the bank manager what was going on. He wasn't happy, but what could he do?
So I took the next two weeks off, except for one mandatory meeting that had been scheduled before I started having problems. I stayed off my feet and the swelling went down some, but the knee was still painful. The day before I was supposed to go back, Ruth and I both came down with stomach flu -- high fever, vomiting, the whole nine yards. I called in and left a message explaining what was wrong and that I wouldn't be coming in the next day. That continued for three days. By Thursday that week, I felt well enough to work, so I took my doctor's note and went in. I worked Thursday and Friday, and when I went in on Monday I was called into the bank president's office. I was told that I 'wasn't a team player and they couldn't have non-team players on their team', and that I was no longer employed there.
I got my COBRA insurance set up and continued looking for a reason for the way my knee was acting. About a month later, my doctor (wonderful man, never told me it was all in my head -- this was the culmination of a two year hunt for answers about why I was so painful) sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. He looked at two years of blood tests for all kinds of illnesses and the MRI of my knee that we'd had done, tossed the file in a corner, said 'Well, that was a waste,' and proceeded to poke me in multiple places. I think I tested positive in 12 of the 18 pressure points. When he said 'You have fibromyalgia', my first thought was 'OMG! I have a diagnosis!" It was a huge relief, even though I had friends with fibro and had an idea of what it meant.
In the ensuing years, I've gotten progressively more painful, and my once-dependable memory has slowly become quite unreliable. When the memory first began to go, I was afraid it was early-onset Alzheimer's, but tests proved that it wasn't. Now I'm lucky if I can remember a conversation for 2 days, much less the 6 months or more that I used to be able to count on. I can't work because I don't retain the training, but I can't get disability because the lovely state of Pennsylvania doesn't think I'm disabled enough. grrrrrrrrrrr
Anyway, that's my fibro story. Nothing you all haven't heard/experienced before!
Etsy update -- Needle Bling, my Etsy shop, has had 4 sales! Yea!!!!!!!!!! I've got lots of stitch markers on sale, and I've recently added gift certificates, so you've got no excuse not to give stitch markers as a gift! (grin)
I've been getting questions about my fibromyalgia, so here's the background story on me. I was diagnosed about 12-13 years ago. I was working in a bank at the time, and one night after I got home my left knee blew up to about twice it's normal size. I figured I had twisted it or something, started favoring the leg and went to work the next day. After a few days of working during the day and babying the knee at night, nothing had changed so I went to see my doctor. He had no idea what had caused it, told me to keep doing what I was doing, and come back in a week if nothing had changed. That continued for about three weeks. At that point, the doctor told me to take two weeks off work. He wanted me to start the next day, but I had things on my desk that needed to be taken care of, so I worked the next day and told the bank manager what was going on. He wasn't happy, but what could he do?
So I took the next two weeks off, except for one mandatory meeting that had been scheduled before I started having problems. I stayed off my feet and the swelling went down some, but the knee was still painful. The day before I was supposed to go back, Ruth and I both came down with stomach flu -- high fever, vomiting, the whole nine yards. I called in and left a message explaining what was wrong and that I wouldn't be coming in the next day. That continued for three days. By Thursday that week, I felt well enough to work, so I took my doctor's note and went in. I worked Thursday and Friday, and when I went in on Monday I was called into the bank president's office. I was told that I 'wasn't a team player and they couldn't have non-team players on their team', and that I was no longer employed there.
I got my COBRA insurance set up and continued looking for a reason for the way my knee was acting. About a month later, my doctor (wonderful man, never told me it was all in my head -- this was the culmination of a two year hunt for answers about why I was so painful) sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. He looked at two years of blood tests for all kinds of illnesses and the MRI of my knee that we'd had done, tossed the file in a corner, said 'Well, that was a waste,' and proceeded to poke me in multiple places. I think I tested positive in 12 of the 18 pressure points. When he said 'You have fibromyalgia', my first thought was 'OMG! I have a diagnosis!" It was a huge relief, even though I had friends with fibro and had an idea of what it meant.
In the ensuing years, I've gotten progressively more painful, and my once-dependable memory has slowly become quite unreliable. When the memory first began to go, I was afraid it was early-onset Alzheimer's, but tests proved that it wasn't. Now I'm lucky if I can remember a conversation for 2 days, much less the 6 months or more that I used to be able to count on. I can't work because I don't retain the training, but I can't get disability because the lovely state of Pennsylvania doesn't think I'm disabled enough. grrrrrrrrrrr
Anyway, that's my fibro story. Nothing you all haven't heard/experienced before!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Beginnings
Well, I can't promise how often I'll post here -- I'm new to this. But I thought I'd celebrate 11 months of knitting by trying something new.
So, things I'm working on -- a pair of fingerless mitts for a friend, an afghan for my mother, washcloths for a charity I'm starting up. Nothing huge or exciting, but then I like doing small things. Suits the quick gratification need that I've got!
On Ravelry, I'm Beth123B. I'm in about 21 groups, including one I started, called Peace Work. It's a charity knitting/crocheting group for people who are interested in creating a bit of peace through their fiber creations.
In real life, I'm a stay-at-home fibromyalgic, who takes care of our animals. My partner is a veterinarian, so needless to say, we have a menagerie. The largest part of the menagerie is the ferrets -- we're hobby breeders. Check out our website -- Ravensnest Ferrets. We've also got 3 cats and 5 dogs -- 4 Great Danes and a Papillion.
That's the bare facts about me -- if I remember to post more, I'm sure you'll learn more.
So, things I'm working on -- a pair of fingerless mitts for a friend, an afghan for my mother, washcloths for a charity I'm starting up. Nothing huge or exciting, but then I like doing small things. Suits the quick gratification need that I've got!
On Ravelry, I'm Beth123B. I'm in about 21 groups, including one I started, called Peace Work. It's a charity knitting/crocheting group for people who are interested in creating a bit of peace through their fiber creations.
In real life, I'm a stay-at-home fibromyalgic, who takes care of our animals. My partner is a veterinarian, so needless to say, we have a menagerie. The largest part of the menagerie is the ferrets -- we're hobby breeders. Check out our website -- Ravensnest Ferrets. We've also got 3 cats and 5 dogs -- 4 Great Danes and a Papillion.
That's the bare facts about me -- if I remember to post more, I'm sure you'll learn more.
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