David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Everyday hassles of fibromyalgia
by adiemusfree, HealthSkills Blog
July 3, 2017
This post has been on my mind for a while now. I live with fibromyalgia (FM) and want to share some of the everyday hassles I face. This isn?t a ?oh woe is me? kind of post, it?s more of a ?if you?re a clinician working with someone who has fibromyalgia, these are some things to ponder?.
Diagnosis
I worked in chronic pain management for almost 20 years before I recognised that the pains I?d been experiencing most of my adult life actually added up to ??a syndrome of diffuse body pain with associations of fatigue, sleep disturbance, cognitive changes, mood disturbance, and other variable somatic symptoms?(Fitzcharles, Ste-Marie, Goldenberg et al, 2012). I?d hurt my back in my early 20?s, thankfully been seen by Dr Mike Butler and given the Melzack & Wall book ?The Challenge of Chronic Pain? to read, so I wasn?t afraid of my pain and just accepted it as part of life. What I hadn?t really recognised was that not only was the pain in my lower back part of the picture, so too was the pain in my neck, shoulders, arms, hips, legs, feet, and the irritable bowel, and the gastro discomfort, and the migraines and the dysmenorrhoea. Not to mention the fatigue, rotten sleep, foggy thoughts, and low mood.
Diagnosis for people living with fibromyalgia is often delayed. People with fibromyalgia may resist going to the GP for what seem to be short-term but painful bouts in various parts of the body. There for a couple of weeks, then shifting to another part of the body. As one person said to me ?You feel a fool going to see a Dr about a pain that?s not consistent to say ?Oh Doctor and I have pain here, and here and here and last week I had one here?especially when it might be gone next week, and that other one has already gone.'?. This experience is echoed in qualitative research where, for example in a study by Undeland and Malterud (2007) people said that although having a label was reassuring (it?s not something that will kill you!), the label itself was often difficult to obtain (doctors not being keen to label something so nebulous as FM), and even with a label health professionals and the general public ?pay no attention to the name, or blatantly regard them as too cheerful or healthy looking? (Undeland & Malterud, 2007).
Treatment
One of the problems with getting the diagnosis is that very few people get relief from medication. Those that do may find their pain settles almost completely, but many others have no effective analgesia despite trying numerous combinations. I?m one of them. What this means is that ?self management? is the order of the day ? yet in many places this is not even considered, let alone having services to help people develop such skills.
I?ve learned that my body feels best when I maintain a consistent level of activity irrespective of the day of the week. I enjoy stretching, walking, cycling and dancing, but I also love gardening, fishing, walking the dog ? and I guess I can add in doing the housework and working as part of the mix. New activities are bound to give me aches and pains that last for weeks, while stopping my usual routine also brings me aches and pains that last for weeks. So boring consistency is the name of the game. And as I?ve previously blogged that means I look for a variety of different movement options in my repertoire.
Everyday hassles
The one thing that makes my life difficult is when I develop a new pain in a part of my body that doesn?t usually feel uncomfortable. Like most people living with persistent pain, I?ve developed an awareness of ?my normal? (see this study by Strong & Large, 1995, for a nice description of this aspect of living with pain, one that is not often discussed). I know the usual pattern of my pains ? bellyache, low back pain, neck and upper back pain, wrists and fingers, and often, knees, headaches and facial pain. These are my normal ? but when should I seek help for a new pain? After all, it could be simply a manifestation of my fibromyalgia (ie there is nothing medically to be found, and no real change in management). At the same time, these are new pains ? one in my shoulder that feels like an impingement (painful arc), and one that?s possibly an adductor tendon thing that?s very localised and hasn?t moved for over 7 months.
The question that keeps coming back to me is whether I?m overlooking something that can be treated, or whether it?ll just settle down like most of my pains do. Essentially I?ve just kept doing what I do and ignoring it.
The difference between my situation and those of people who are not painiacs, who don?t know that their pain is largely unrelated to the state of the tissues, is that I?m immersed in pain research all day, every day. I?m not overly bothered by these new pains. I?m continuing to exercise as normal and these pains aren?t interfering with what I need and want to do in daily life (well, perhaps a little?).
I can understand why someone might ask for help for a new pain. There are no rules saying that just because you have a persistent pain disorder you?re immune from acute musculoskeletal disorders. And sometimes by treating a new pain as an acute pain, it will vanish. Though, it must be said that outcomes for people with more than 3 or 4 persistent areas of pain with low back pain are not as good as those who only have one or two (Nordstoga, Nilsen, Vasseljen et al, 2017), nor of recovery and benefit from total hip and knee replacement (Wylde, Sayers, Odutola, Gooberman-Hill et al, 2017).
Points to ponder
So how do we as clinicians help people who must live with persistent pain?
I don?t have researched answers to these questions. I have my experience. And I?ve been working in this field a long time ? yet somehow the voices of people living successfully with this pain are rarely heard.
References
by adiemusfree, HealthSkills Blog
July 3, 2017
This post has been on my mind for a while now. I live with fibromyalgia (FM) and want to share some of the everyday hassles I face. This isn?t a ?oh woe is me? kind of post, it?s more of a ?if you?re a clinician working with someone who has fibromyalgia, these are some things to ponder?.
Diagnosis
I worked in chronic pain management for almost 20 years before I recognised that the pains I?d been experiencing most of my adult life actually added up to ??a syndrome of diffuse body pain with associations of fatigue, sleep disturbance, cognitive changes, mood disturbance, and other variable somatic symptoms?(Fitzcharles, Ste-Marie, Goldenberg et al, 2012). I?d hurt my back in my early 20?s, thankfully been seen by Dr Mike Butler and given the Melzack & Wall book ?The Challenge of Chronic Pain? to read, so I wasn?t afraid of my pain and just accepted it as part of life. What I hadn?t really recognised was that not only was the pain in my lower back part of the picture, so too was the pain in my neck, shoulders, arms, hips, legs, feet, and the irritable bowel, and the gastro discomfort, and the migraines and the dysmenorrhoea. Not to mention the fatigue, rotten sleep, foggy thoughts, and low mood.
Diagnosis for people living with fibromyalgia is often delayed. People with fibromyalgia may resist going to the GP for what seem to be short-term but painful bouts in various parts of the body. There for a couple of weeks, then shifting to another part of the body. As one person said to me ?You feel a fool going to see a Dr about a pain that?s not consistent to say ?Oh Doctor and I have pain here, and here and here and last week I had one here?especially when it might be gone next week, and that other one has already gone.'?. This experience is echoed in qualitative research where, for example in a study by Undeland and Malterud (2007) people said that although having a label was reassuring (it?s not something that will kill you!), the label itself was often difficult to obtain (doctors not being keen to label something so nebulous as FM), and even with a label health professionals and the general public ?pay no attention to the name, or blatantly regard them as too cheerful or healthy looking? (Undeland & Malterud, 2007).
Treatment
One of the problems with getting the diagnosis is that very few people get relief from medication. Those that do may find their pain settles almost completely, but many others have no effective analgesia despite trying numerous combinations. I?m one of them. What this means is that ?self management? is the order of the day ? yet in many places this is not even considered, let alone having services to help people develop such skills.
I?ve learned that my body feels best when I maintain a consistent level of activity irrespective of the day of the week. I enjoy stretching, walking, cycling and dancing, but I also love gardening, fishing, walking the dog ? and I guess I can add in doing the housework and working as part of the mix. New activities are bound to give me aches and pains that last for weeks, while stopping my usual routine also brings me aches and pains that last for weeks. So boring consistency is the name of the game. And as I?ve previously blogged that means I look for a variety of different movement options in my repertoire.
Everyday hassles
The one thing that makes my life difficult is when I develop a new pain in a part of my body that doesn?t usually feel uncomfortable. Like most people living with persistent pain, I?ve developed an awareness of ?my normal? (see this study by Strong & Large, 1995, for a nice description of this aspect of living with pain, one that is not often discussed). I know the usual pattern of my pains ? bellyache, low back pain, neck and upper back pain, wrists and fingers, and often, knees, headaches and facial pain. These are my normal ? but when should I seek help for a new pain? After all, it could be simply a manifestation of my fibromyalgia (ie there is nothing medically to be found, and no real change in management). At the same time, these are new pains ? one in my shoulder that feels like an impingement (painful arc), and one that?s possibly an adductor tendon thing that?s very localised and hasn?t moved for over 7 months.
The question that keeps coming back to me is whether I?m overlooking something that can be treated, or whether it?ll just settle down like most of my pains do. Essentially I?ve just kept doing what I do and ignoring it.
The difference between my situation and those of people who are not painiacs, who don?t know that their pain is largely unrelated to the state of the tissues, is that I?m immersed in pain research all day, every day. I?m not overly bothered by these new pains. I?m continuing to exercise as normal and these pains aren?t interfering with what I need and want to do in daily life (well, perhaps a little?).
I can understand why someone might ask for help for a new pain. There are no rules saying that just because you have a persistent pain disorder you?re immune from acute musculoskeletal disorders. And sometimes by treating a new pain as an acute pain, it will vanish. Though, it must be said that outcomes for people with more than 3 or 4 persistent areas of pain with low back pain are not as good as those who only have one or two (Nordstoga, Nilsen, Vasseljen et al, 2017), nor of recovery and benefit from total hip and knee replacement (Wylde, Sayers, Odutola, Gooberman-Hill et al, 2017).
Points to ponder
So how do we as clinicians help people who must live with persistent pain?
- Do we consider the meaning of the labels we give? And do we read around the experiences of those who have been given the diagnosis? Or do we, instead, rely on our own beliefs and biases when thinking about the way we handle diagnosis?
- Do we give people an explanation for their pain that they can understand, or do we rely on currently favoured language and models without really considering what this means to the person? And do we ever check out how they?ve interpreted our explanations?
- Do we ever discuss how to self-manage pain? Do we think about the practical implications of needing to learn to modify every aspect of life in the face of pain that will not just go away? When I compare the tasks of living well with persistent pain against those needed to cope with other disorders, pain can interfere with everything ? do we talk about the impact on sex? on relaxation? on having a holiday?
- Do we talk about what to do when a new pain turns up? Do we think about how someone can decide whether their pain is worth seeing someone about, or one they can handle? And do we even talk about the effect of having a persistent pain problem and then going on to have surgery? Do we teach people to recognise their ?normal? pain, or are we afraid to teach people this because it might focus their attention on their pain?
I don?t have researched answers to these questions. I have my experience. And I?ve been working in this field a long time ? yet somehow the voices of people living successfully with this pain are rarely heard.
References
- Fitzcharles, M.-A., Ste-Marie, P. A., Goldenberg, D. L., Pereira, J. X., Abbey, S., Choini?re, M., . . . Proulx, J. 2012 Canadian guidelines for the diagnosis and management of fibromyalgia syndrome. http://fmguidelines.ca/
- Nordstoga, A. L., Nilsen, T. I. L., Vasseljen, O., Unsgaard-T?ndel, M., & Mork, P. J. (2017). The influence of multisite pain and psychological comorbidity on prognosis of chronic low back pain: Longitudinal data from the Norwegian hunt study. BMJ open, 7(5). doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015312
- Strong, J., & Large, R. (1995). Coping with chronic low back pain: An idiographic exploration through focus groups. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 25(4), 371-387. doi:10.2190/H4P9-U5NB-2KJU-4TBN
- Undeland, M., & Malterud, K. (2007). The fibromyalgia diagnosis ? hardly helpful for the patients? Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, 25(4), 250-255. doi:10.1080/02813430701706568
- Wylde, V., Sayers, A., Odutola, A., Gooberman‐Hill, R., Dieppe, P., & Blom, A. (2017). Central sensitization as a determinant of patients? benefit from total hip and knee replacement. European Journal of Pain, 21(2), 357-365.
