Monday, January 31, 2011
A study published in the January 2011 issue of Arthritis Care & Research found that although fibromyalgia patients are not at increased risk for mortality, they do have a greater risk of dying by suicide or accident. Researchers compared 8,186 patients who had been seen for fibromyalgia in ...
I am not surprised....I have thought about it a few times just because the pain is just too much and no relief. I can not get pain meds and not saying its the only option but some days the pain is too much and I can't handle it. Along with fibro I have mitochondrial; double whammy.
Thanks again Karen for always posting such thought provoking articles.
After having my pain managed fairly well for the mid half of my life with Fibro, and other overlapping chronic pain conditions I had forgotten really what desperation felt like. And despair.
I have been in a chronic flare since October, was trying my best to cope with it since taking myself down to a minimal doseage of pain meds. Through the help of my doc and two new drugs approved for FMS I was, along with my doc happily reducing my opiate pain meds.
I was my doc's "poster child" for how the two new meds that worked for me, and that coming from 180 mg a day to just 5mg in the morning was something I was proud of.
I have been on opiate meds for 26 yrs.
Now zoom to today. Having a major flareup starting in Oct. 2010 after a road trip my flare has continued to worsen and when asked for more meds to get over the hump I was denied an opiate increase but given another muscle relaxer. Which ironically had no benifit to me and caused my pharmacy to not want to fill the muscle relaxer I've been taking for 25 yrs. Double therapy? Oh my~
Improvement failed and now by the new year I am back to almost where I started 26 yrs ago. Not being able to cope anymore on my own with the pain. I honestly tried everything else. For 3 months I had tried everything else, went through the holidays in more pain than I should have and curtailed many events because of it.
Saw my doc two weeks ago (again) and had a complete meltdown in front of her. I told her how much the lack of increased doseage had caused a spirailing out of control pain level, had now started to effect me emotionally because again my life was JUST PAIN.
I told her I was not going to make it if there was not something she could do. Suicide is such a dirty word. But I am not living in this world and life in pain. Not when I know there are medications I can be given safely that will allow me to be able to function. It's a gross case of negelct.
I am not going to do this without and told her if I had to leave yet again today without an increase for help me to get over this hump I didn't know what other alternative I had. This was not a life with quality.
I'm done doing it in pain that wipes out every other feeling and emotion. I'm also done with doctors dictating what is and isn't good for me. How can they look at us in pain for days, months and years and stand on ground that they are watching out for our best intrest?
This damn scared straight stuff that I see doctors adopting due to the celebrity news of people dying from overdoses etc.. are never about chronic pain.
Unhappily it took this degree of emotion from being in such pain daily/nightly to get through to my doc. I have no clue where her motivation and intent were. Nor do I care.
I pay damn good money to have her as part of my health team. I'm the boss, not the other way around.
My points were taken, things stared getting done thta should have been done in October. Pain med increase, some pictures of my neck and mid back, then because I cannot get my shoulders relaxed enough to see the bottom of a neck fusion done in 2000 an MRI was ordered. (no results yet)
On top of this I discover through massive blood testing looking for Lupus & RA among others that I have contracted Hepitis C. From where in anyone giess because I am not in any high risk category. Only clue is blood transfusion in 1986.
Now my question, is this new dx going to have some new impact on my pain tx?
Hi tj,
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you but I wanted to look into the hepatitis C part a little more... then I got the flu and have been sick for almost three weeks now. Finally starting to feel a little better.
It really hurts me to hear all you've had to go through since Oct. I'm glad your doctor is finally listening and working with you but it's terrible that you had to get so bad before she would help.
I'm not an expert on hepatitis C, but do have two good friends who have it. One was perfectly healthy before the hep C and the other has ME/CFS in addition to the hep C.
The current standard treatment for hep C is a combination of pegylated interferon alfa (PEG-IFN-alpha ) plus ribavirin. The problem is, that treatment only seems to help fewer than half the people who use it and has some unpleasant side effects, which are described as "flu-like symptoms" (all-over body pain and extreme fatigue).
Neither of my friends chose to go that route. The first has tried a special combination of supplements along with a very strict organic diet and exercise. He feels much better and has had a dramatic decrease in his viral load that has amazed his doctors. But he does find it hard to stick to the diet and says he can really tell the difference when he strays and eats something he shouldn't.
My other friend just told me about a new type of interferon treatment that has had a great success rate in clinical trials. It's called pegylated interferon-Lambda (PEG-IFN-Lambda) and is supposed to be much more effective than the other interferon with very few side effects. The hope is that it will be approved later this year and he plans to try it as soon as the FDA gives it the go ahead.
I also found two other hep C treatments on the horizon that are in clinical trials – TMC435 and CTS-1027 – both of which I believe are hepatitis C protease inhibitors.
What I don't know is how any of these treatments might work in conjunction with your current medications. The only treatment you can really check in the Drug Interactions Checker is the current standard hep C treatment because the others haven't been approved yet. If you want to check that, click on the link above and enter the medications you are now taking as well as interferon alfa-2b/ribavirin. That should give you some idea of whether there could be potential interactions. Of course, ultimately, you'll need to discuss all your options with your doctor and decide what is best for you.
You'll be in my prayers. Please keep me posted on how you're doing. – Karen