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Pain and Depression - Help!

4 replies

lefroglet · 22/03/2010 10:26

As you can see from the title I am struggling. I have fibromyalgia and at the moment it is flaring up - basically the worst since I was first diagnosed. It can hit any time of the day, and I can't handle the randomness of it. I suffered from PND but was on Sertraline for 9/10 months and came out the other side - I then went onto amitriptyline for my fibro, but for some reason my periods stopped and now I am in a real state with my hormones all over the show (this happened before when on amitriptyline and took about 6 months to sort itself out after I came off of it) which doesn't help.

Every day I wake up in pain - stiff, tired, aching and I can't keep doing it. I have been to the doctor who wanted my to go onto Sertraline as I scored quite highly for depression. I think it is reactive due to the pain, the uncertainty I feel with regards to how I will be each day, and so I am reluctant to go onto anti depressants. I have a referral appointment for the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases - but am worried they won't be able to help me.

My DS is 16 months old and I have a lot of support from my DM and DH - I feel so pathetic and embarrassed as I have so much more help than some people. I just want the world to stop. My greatest fear is that one day I will start hurting and never stop - I just don't see the point in doing anything - I don't know why I posted - I think I am just hoping that someone can tell me it will get better. I can feel myself sliding into more depression even when my fibro isn't so bad as I know it will come back sooner or later.

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TheGeneGenie · 22/03/2010 11:13

It makes me feel so sad and frustrated for you to read your post, that with all in life you could look forward to be doing now, you have to live with the misery of fibromyalgia.

Because of the way our brains are connected and work, it's often the case the emotional and mental pain often manifest themselves as physical pain - days when you feel 'on top of the world' perhaps you feel that you have more energy, yet on days when you feel really down, everything hurts a while lot more and you feel powerless to do anything about it.

You are not alone and also what I am trying to say is that it would do you the world of good to find some help that will enable you to tackle the emotional and psychological aspects of FM. It will help, in many ways, from your living with the constant fear of never being free from the pain itself, to you finding your way to get to the root causes and triggers that started the FM in the first place.

Here's a thought for you and something for you to perhaps in your quieter moments think about. Do you want to be the kind of person who 'fights' this, or the kind of person who 'lets go' of FM altogether? There's a difference. If you fight all the time, it leaves you exhasuted, depressed and miserable, if you let go of it, you can start to move forwards in a different kind of way. You won't be 'giving in', you'll be working in a smarter way to overcome the condition and the effects it's having on your life.

There are many ways forward, but they all involve one change that you may already have made in your life, or if not you will need to make. And that change is this. It's to take back control of your life and your condition. YOU can change not only your relationship with FM, but also how it affects you. In a little time, you will master it. This is a fundamental change in belief that you need to make - it's the difference between being a 'victim' of FM and being the person in control of their own life. If you can do this one thing, you will start to make a huge difference to YOUR life. You will see changes, physically, emotionally and mentally. Your depression will ease, the physical symptoms over time will change as will your whole outlook on life.

There is help available, from CBT to talk therapy even traditional counselling. EFT can be profoundly helpful for helping you resolve the emotional aspects you are clearly struggling with. Take the first steps, take back control of your life. But how?.... Think less of he mechanics of how, think of the reasons why YOU want to master FM, be in control and make it stop. Be proactive, write them down, draw pictures of how your life IS today when you are free from the pain. Start to think of life 'in the now', not frame life as 'when i'm better I will be doing X, Y' instead 'I am better and I do X Y and Z' . Start to think 'I am'. It sends a very different message to your brain, the chemical signals you send out and the electrical responses it then generates.

.. and go seek the kind of help that will enable you to resolve your complex issues surrounding FM once and for all. There is plenty of help available, but it starts with one small real change in you; the difference between 'I am in control' and 'I am not in control and I never will be'.

I wish you the very best.

TheGeneGenie ...

willsurvivethis · 22/03/2010 11:30

Can you ask for a referral to a pain clinic or pain management clinic? Most hospitals should have one now and they can help you manage chronic pain.

MarshaMallow · 22/03/2010 14:54

I've had Fibro' knocking on 20 years now.

First off let me say please be a bit kinder to yourself looking after a 16 month old and having Fibro' is no easy task....I remember it well!

For me the old fashioned anti depressant Dosulepin is my life line...it deals with both my pain and thereby eases the depression during a flare up.

I take a low dose of 75mg built up over a few months starting at 25mg and really tend to self medicate after all this time. I don't take what the doc's class as a full dose for treating depression - I take roughly a half dose for pain management but I do take an AD....it's either the AD or Morphine tabs! I prefer the low dose AD's.

For now I am back on my pills due to a flare up....I will take them for about 9 months depending on how things go then gradually come off them....last time I was 5 years meds free before needing them again. This means for 5 years I had no more aches and pains than anyone else....well I presume that's what happened...I actually don't know how many aches and pains anyone else gets!

I'd rather do this than constantly be on the pills and I'm a bit scared that if I took them all the time when I really needed them they wouldn't work any more.

Fibro' is a nasty illness in so many ways but can be greatly helped by a change of attitude. I am MarshaMallow who happens to have Fibro'...not MarshaMallow the Fibro' sufferer...but I have had many years to adjust to my Fibro' status.

Good luck with finding something to ease your pain....it is a long journey but worth it when you find your 'thing' that works. x

lefroglet · 22/03/2010 20:35

Thankyou for all your replies...they have really helped. For a long time, before I had my son, I had a much more positive outlook - I think now though that I am a bit stuck in the mindset that I must always be completely functional for my DS and anything less is failure. This seems to have escalated to what MarshaMallow and TheGeneGenie have said about being a 'sufferer' rather than it being just something that i happen to have - I never used to be like that and actively went out of my way at work etc to prove that it wasn't that big of a deal. Hopefully I can go on from here, not being so hard on myself like you said MarshaMallow. Thankyou again!

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