One Day At A Time

Normally people use their first post to introduce themselves, but I will get to that later. For now, I will give you this...my name is Sandra, I am a Mom of 2 wonderful kiddos, I have an awesome hubby, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 3 years ago, and am now on Day 6 of detoxing from Opiate use to deal with the Fibro pain. I know many Fibromyalgia patients use opiates (primarily Vicodin or Percocet) to deal with the constant and daily pain along with a variety of other meds to try to get a hold on this crazy chronic pain disease. I don't know about the rest of you, but I always feel like I am at least 2 steps behind in catching up to controlling my pain. Over the last 3+ years I have radically changed my diet, taken all sorts of holistic supplements and herbs, changed my activity level backwards and forwards, and when I finally feel like things are "normal" again, my Fibro takes me for a HUGE downward spiral leaving me totally physically and mentally drained. Then it's back to the drawing board again to see what can be changed or eliminated and what triggered the massive pain this time. And each time, it's a totally new trigger. SO FRICKING FRUSTRATING! And that's an understatement! The latest issue is that the Vicodin that normally worked for my pain for last 3 years has become pretty ineffective. I used to take 1-2 pills at night about 3 times a week for severe pain. The rest of the time I could bear it through the day as I didn't want to take them while caring for my 6 and 4 year old munchkins because it made me loopy. Then about 3 weeks ago, I would get really nauseated whenever I took a Vicodin. So I tried some Percocet that I had in my medicine cabinet left over from one of my 8 surgeries. The first week it was 1 pill a day. The second week it increased to me needing 2 pills a day to control my pain. The third week it dramatically increased to 2 pills 2 to 3 times a day just to function! Then I met with my Integrative Specialist (a trained MD also trained in Holistic Medicine) because things were soooooo bad. She ran some tests and it came back that my liver enzymes were slightly elevated so she told me to get off the Percocet. That was last Friday. Saturday morning I got up at 1am in severe pain. I am not a wuss when it comes to pain and I can say this ranked about 3rd in my severest of pains ever. The first was my bowel obstruction 7 days after I delivered my daughter by c-section (I totally thought I was going to die that time cuz I was in so much pain). They gave me 5 cc's of Morphine every 10 minutes in the hospital and after 5 minutes I was screaming uncontrollably in pain that's how bad it was. The second was the severe cramping/hemorraging pain I was in for about a week when I was miscarrying our first son at 14 weeks gestation. My WF (Wonderful Hubby) said "We are going to the ER". So to the ER we went. They gave me a shot of Dilaudid that took the edge off and some Zofran for my nausea and sent me home with a prescription for Tramadol (non-narcotic and non-acetaminophen pain med), Zofran for nausea, and Percocet (just in case the Tramadol didn't work for me). They also explained what the narcotics detox will look like...it didn't sound like a fun weekend for me :(. Saturday was the last time I took any form of narcotics. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were kind of a blur. Good thing WF was able to stay home and take care of the kiddos while I wasted the days away in bed in pain. The Tramadol helped, but after a few days I noticed I felt very weird while taking it. Increased heartbeat and my brain felt like someone was taking a needle and poking me from the inside of my brain. I stopped taking Tramadol on Wednesday. The symptoms went away to make way for a new one.... Thursday I spent all day in a bad depression and uncontrollable crying. WF was at work and I had my 6 yo home with me. The good news is that I had very little pain, except low back pain from my recent muscle pull about 6months ago. Probably from all my lying around, slouching, and couch laying the last week. But man, I could feel my body craving for the Percocet! It was all I could do to NOT take one! In my brain I felt like a total junkie and it scared me. Thankfully when I was totally at my breaking point, WH came home from work and talked me down from the ledge so to speak. Also forgot to mention that all week my WF has been making me eat a vegetarian diet because in January we did a 28 day mostly veggie diet with the first week being all veggie and nothing else. For that entire week I had very little pain and didn't have to take any pain meds. So all week it's been veggies and a serving or two of meat or fish, all home cooked. Well, okay, yesterday in my moment of weakness I somehow drove my 6yo down the street to Carls Jr and got a small coke, a chicken salad and 2 plain hamburger patties (so still somewhat healthy, right?). It's also been over a week since I have had any caffeine in my system, not that I am a big caffeine addict or anything. I maybe drink a total of 1 full 16 oz bottle of Coke a week and have an Icee Coke from Burger King once a week (man, those are my faves especially on a hot day..actually on any day). So my brain LOVED having that little bit of caffeine in it! That's what helped me get through the rest of the day until I caffeine crashed at 4pm and started with the uncontrollable crying again. Guess my brain was using that little bit of caffeine to replace the opiates. Last night was pretty rough for me. My body was craving the Percocet again. I spent another 1 hr or so crying uncontrollably. WH sat with me and rubbed my back the whole time. I was trying not to take a sleeping pill (been taking them all week so I could sleep). But at 1230am, I took one. It's now 1050am on Friday morning. Hopefully today will be better. Sandra