Star Wars Day!!!!!!

Today is the day I FINALLY get to see the final Star Wars movie. My husband won't go so I am taking the boy I watch in the morning for an hour before he goes to school, who wants to go really bad. So this will be a quick post until later this afternoon.
I will give a review but no spoilers!!!!!!
So I must go....see you in a few hours!!!!

The Morning After

I am feeling much better today. I am still in pain and I need a day in bed but I can move around much better than I have before since 6/6.
I am not saying I am ready to start working out yet, but I am getting around without holding furnature and walls.
Hopefully I can catch up on all my rest that I have missed because of pain and my normal sleep patterns as well as fighting the BIG MACHINE. So far I have gotten two emails saying I will be getting my money back within 3-21 days. That could mean anything as you all well know. So I will update you all on that as soon as I get the deposit in my account or a nice check in my hands.
Thanks for listening to the babble about it and supporting me in my frustration on it. I know that it wasn't an active support but being able to write it here helped.
Again thank you.
Now it is off to bed before my hips and back start to protest again!

What a little Soma will do ya!

Well, I got the Soma and what chore that was. I haven't taken it since March because I didn't think it was working for me. Well, it just seems I needed a break from taking so much of it.
The pain was so bad for me today it was going up my spine and giving me a headache and down through my hips. I was in the car with Todd (who you all know now is my husband) and I said I need to go to the pharmacy right now. I can't take the pain anymore. Each bump in the road was agony and ibuprofen wasn't cutting it anymore.
So at first I was all confident and talked to the Pharmacist and said I don't have my bottle but I would like to refill my Soma. Well, he pulls up an old rx(AKA for those not in CPland for perscription) for the med and said I had no more refills. I told him I am sure I did have at least 3 and he was incorrect. Being in pain and having someone argue with you when you know you are right doesn't exactly hit the right heart strings. . So I asked him to check again and print out my whole rx history. So when he did that, sure enough my new rx was sitting right there at the bottom of the page and I pointed it out to him because I told him that the last time I filled it was in March, which also proved to be correct.
He apologized profusely and said that he would get right on it and it would be done in 5-10 minutes. Well, he kept his promise and I went home will a new refill of my Soma. For those of you who don't know what Soma is, it is a powerful muscle relaxant and it knocks you silly too. Driving on this stuff is a big no-no.
Well, anyway, I am feeling much better but the pain is still there. At least I can bend to use the toilet now without too much pain.....sorry too much information.
With my new refill I am finally getting sleep...okay fine not at the moment.
Well, I am off to some restful sleep and a little less pain.
Again, thanks for the good karma for Todd and I hope that tomorrow brings less pain. I gotta see Star Wars Saturday and I am not gonna miss that! I know, I know a Star Wars geek like me seeing it weeks after the opening, but I promised a little boy that if he was good for his teachers and his mom, at the end of the school year, today in fact, I would bring him to see Star Wars on the following Saturday. So at 1PM Saturday I got a date with a hyper 8 year old, a big bag(or is it still a bowl) of popcorn and a Diet Coke to watch what everyone says is George Lucas' final masterpiece. Boy I am truly excited. Really. Todd won't see it with me so I found my own solution to see the spectacle on the big screen!
Okay everyone.....no spoilers!!!!!

At times posititve thinking does work

Thanks for all your good karma sent to Todd for his interview today. He got the job!!!!!!
He starts on Monday and just in time too.
It makes me feel better to know that money woes won't be weighing on us so much and we can get a better apartment and finally get back on our feet after the bankruptcy we went through earlier this year.
I just wanted to thank you all for thinking of us and sending good vibes to Todd. He truly appriciates them.
As for my pain, I still hurt. I broke down and refilled my Soma so that the muscles could relax finally and MAYBE get some sleep tonight that isn't too bad.
You know....sometimes life does make lemonade out of lemons. (okay its an orange but close enough)

When Positive Thinking Doesn't Work

I just got some not so good news. My Rheumy's office called about 30 minutes ago and one of my test results came back. I thought it was fast so I was all set to write them down. Well, she said only one came back...the SED rate. Well, ladies (and gents) it looks like my niggle was right something is going on. My SED rate is 50! The highest it has been before was 27. So his office immediately made an appointment for me in a week when all the test results from the Lupus panel will be back. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

The Day After

Well, today I am feeling better after a day of bed rest and ice on the places that needed it.
I have pain in my left trap muscle toward the middle of my back. Feels like a big lump right next to my spine but I know that the muscle is all knotted up. My sciatic nerve is a little better but if I move just wrong, I get that twinge, reminding me that I did something wrong.
Unfortunately I gotta go out and help Todd (my husband) find a new pair of dress shoes for a job interview tomorrow (cross your fingers everyone send good karma) so I will be walking around unfortunately. I am gonna deserve a McDonald's Diet Coke for this one! You see, one of my true vices is fountain soda Diet Coke. So, when we can afford it I like to get a big one. This time I deserve one for wandering around a store getting tired by the second. I won't complain but I will be a hurting unit. Oh yeah, I will probably be driving too. With the wet roads and my back hurting, it will definitely be an adventure since we will be going into the "big city". We live in a small rural town so the "big city" is really a medium size city. It's not Boston, but it feels that way now that we have lived out here for so long.
Well, I must go.....

The downside of Chiropractic and Rheumatology

Well I went to the Rheumy yesterday and I told you all about what happened, well a nasty side effect has occurred. All of that moving and twisting of my leg to figure out of if the pain was in my hip or out of my hip has thrown my sciatica into a tailspin!!!
I went to the chiro today as well and told him about the appointment yesterday and how I was twisted about. As he did my adjustment he said that the rheumy really did a number on me. Well, I am in pain and icing it off and on. In other words, I hurt!
Hopefully I will get some sleep tonight.......here's wishing for a comfortable position to sleep in.

Explanation of the change in title

Since Fibromyalgia is my major diagnosis and a major effect of this illness is what is called "fibrofog", the tendency for those with FM to forget the simplest things or they simply just float in a fog of their own just walking through life. It is similar to that feeling when you are on too much cold medicine (medicinehead). So, I thought that I would give the "FOG" its due by putting it in the title of my Blog.
Just thought I would just share my thoughts.

A Post of Interest for those with FM

Patients may benefit from cough remedy
Source: NewsRx.com
Dextromethorphan, an over-the-counter medication that silences coughs, may help fibromyalgia patients quiet over-reacting nerves that amplify ordinary touches into agony. A University of Florida (UF) study documents, for the first time, that dextromethorphan temporarily reduces the intensity of fibromyalgia "wind-up", a snowballing pain response to minor, repetitive physical contact. The discovery, described in the May 2005 issue of The Journal of Pain, also enables researchers to rule out one suspected cause of the phenomenon. Fibromyalgia is an incurable illness that causes widespread muscle aches, stiffness, fatigue, and sleep disturbances, according to the National Fibromyalgia Association in the U.S. An estimated 10 million Americans suffer from the condition, most of them women. Current treatment strategies include pain medication, exercise, stretching, sleep management, and psychological support. Though the UF study did not establish guidelines for using dextromethorphan clinically, it suggests the drug may eventually be an option for treating fibromyalgia and other conditions involving heightened pain sensitivity, said rheumatology expert Roland Staud, MD, a UF associate professor of medicine and the study's principal author. "I think it's one piece of the mosaic," Staud said. "We currently have no single therapy in chronic pain that has a big effect. So what this really means for chronic pain patients is that they need to use a whole host of different interventions to decrease the pain they have. And in this, dextromethorphan may have a role in the future." Dextromethorphan is popular in cold remedies because it elevates the threshold for the coughing reflex but does not cause physical addiction, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "But fibromyalgia patients should not resort to self-medicating by taking cough syrups for pain," Staud cautioned. "Like every medication, dextromethorphan has side effects. At high doses, patients can have problems related to memory and confusion." The underlying cause of fibromyalgia remains unknown, but in the past 25 years substantial progress has been made toward understanding the mechanisms behind specific features of fibromyalgia, Staud said. One is central sensitization, a feature of many chronic pain conditions in which the central nervous system - the brain and spinal cord - somehow magnifies pain signals to abnormally high levels. Central sensitization is associated with wind-up, a phenomenon in which repeated touches - even handshakes or pats on the back - generate lingering pain that increases with each new contact, he said. A normal form of achy, lingering pain known as secondary pain affects anyone who suffers an injury. The UF researchers - Staud, neuroscientist Charles Vierck, PhD, psychologist Michael Robinson, PhD, and Donald Price, PhD - were surprised to learn that dextromethorphan eased fibromyalgia patients' wind-up pain to the same degree it soothed secondary pain induced in healthy volunteers, Staud said. The results indicate a long-suspected cause of wind-up may not exist. Previous studies at other institutions had shown that dextromethorphan blocks the action of a chemical messenger called N-methyl-D-aspartate, or NMDA, which relays pain impulses in the spinal cord. Many fibromyalgia researchers have theorized that wind-up is caused by abnormalities in the spinal-cord structures that process NMDA. The UF results suggest those structures function normally but that pain impulses are more amplified in fibromyalgia than in healthy participants, Staud said. "This has refocused much of our research now," he said. Future UF studies will attempt to pinpoint where the pain impulses are originating. In the current study, researchers worked with 14 women with fibromyalgia and 10 women who did not have the disease, using mechanical devices that tapped the participants' hands repeatedly. One part of the study involved contact with a heated probe, the other used a small rubber-tipped peg. The intensity of the heat or pressure of the stimulation was individually adjusted so that all participants reported feeling the same degree of pain. Researchers then gave each participant a capsule containing 60 mg of dextromethorphan, 90 mg of dextromethorphan or a placebo containing none of the drug, and asked them to rate the amount of pain they experienced when the stimulation was repeated. With the heat stimulus, 90 mg of dextromethorphan reduced wind-up pain, but 60 mg was no more effective than the placebo. With the pressure stimulus, 90-mg and 60-mg doses were equally effective, reducing wind-up pain. The UF study indicates the need for further research on dextromethorphan, said fibromyalgia expert Laurence Bradley, PhD, a professor of medicine with the University of Alabama at Birmingham's division of clinical rheumatology and immunology. "This is a topic that's actually received very little attention so far in the literature," Bradley said. "It would be a disservice to start to recommend that either patients or physicians begin experimenting right away with dextromethorphan, because I think there are some important questions about how to minimize the side effects with this agent." This article was prepared by Women's Health Weekly editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2005, Women's Health Weekly via NewsRx.com. ---- To see more of the NewsRx.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.newsrx.com.

Rheumy day is over...the good news and the bad news!

Well, I am happy to say that my hip is not a bone issue but a muscle/ligament issue. Yah? I am not really sure how to feel about it yet. It hasn't sunk in.
Okay here is the bad news, I told the doctor that I still didn't feel right, that a part of me was telling me that there is something else going on. Again, the guy read my mind and he asked me if I was thinking of Lupus. I said yes. I told him since we found by chance that I have the Parvo B19 anti-virus, maybe we would find something else that has been missed all this time. So, he ordered the normal CBC panel as well as the Lupus panel of bloodwork to be done.
I don't know how long it takes for the results to come back, but I am already edgy about them. Part of me wants to have a negative reading and I don't have Lupus. But there is a small part of me that wants an answer and if that answer if Lupus then that is the answer. I am tired of having all this physical stuff happening to me and doctor's just chalking it up to the Fibromyalgia, when inside I know it must be something more.
A long time ago, someone told me to listen to that little voice inside me if you felt like something wasn't quite right and that is what I feel. I hear that little voice saying there is more to this than just the Fibromyalgia, they just haven't run the right test or asked the right questions yet. I have trusted this voice many times in my life and that is how I found the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and my husband to boot! So now I am listening again and Lupus seems to keep knawing at my insides and won't let go. That little niggle, I call it, keeps tickling my insides and not letting me rest until I find the absolutes of all this. I may never find the final answer to all my problems, but I trust my instincts on this one. I have to.....I have no one else to trust when it comes to stuff like this. My husband will say I worry too much and no one else around me understands. Only you out there in cyber world understands what it means to have that unfinished feeling.
Well, that is the update for today. I hope I didn't depress to many of you.

Finally my Rheumy Day!!!

Tah-dah! Its my day to finally see the Rheumy. I just hope his office doesn't cancel two hours before I see him again! Wish me luck everyone!
Well, it was a rough night for sleeping. The AC just wasn't cool enough for me, I wanted it igloo style, but Todd is not an eskimo so I gotta keep it at a reasonable level.
Let me see if I can create a vision for you all who aren't familiar with just standing and sweating. I hope that gives you an idea what it feels like around here.
Well that is all for now, I will update you all as soon as I can later.

Yup I ate....

a whole quart of Brigham's Chocolate Chip Ice Cream.
Just thought I would share the update with you.

Yet another Fibro kind of day!

Well, I am still feeling crappy. Yesterday, while looking in the fridge trying to figure out what I wanted for lunch, I started crying for no reason. Just out of frustration as to what I wanted to eat. Todd (my husband) just looked at me and asked what was wrong. When I told him, he said it was okay and just gave me a hug. Talk about MOODY!!! I was in bed for the rest of the day and slept off and on. I did the same thing through the night and I still feel crappy today. The weather is really setting off my Fibro and I feel just ducky . Something tells me after lunch, I will be back in bed again trying to fight this melancholy, if I can call it that of the Fibro. On top of that EVERYTHING is irritating the daylights out of me. For those who read Dr. Devin Starlanyl's books, I've got "Irritable Everthing Syndrome" right now. Clothes bug me, people bug me, TV bugs me, life bugs me, the idea I am female bugs me. If I could take off my own skin to feel better I would. Probably the only thing that would make me feel better is a big old quart (because they don't make them in pints) of Brigham's Chocolate Chip ice cream.
My hip is still bothering me but there is nothing I can do until tomorrow, when I see my Rheumy. As I said before, I want him to take a good look at it and I want some bloodwork done because I think something else is wrong with me. Well, besides the obvious.
Well, I guess that is it for me today. I hope I feel better soon, this moodiness is driving me crazy along with this hot, sticky yuck weather we are having here.