Purpose:

The purpose of this blog is to keep track of my illness and progress. If someone else can benefit in any way from my rambling, even better.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Unblocked

Fortunately, it took less than 24 hours for the guai to start working again and to confirm that the iron pills were in fact blocking it from working. I had forgotten that in my attempt to figure things out I've been taking a double dose each time, so last night was quite rough.

Even better news, I can finally put into words the difference between fibro pain and guai reversal pain. For typical fibro pain resting and laying down will bring relief, or at least not add to your pain level. For reversal pain you will still feel an increase (sometimes significantly) a few hours after taking your pill whether you are laying down or not--resting will not bring relief. Obviously the pain is usually much worse as well, but this is at least a somewhat easy test to see whether or not I'm having a cycle or just experiencing normal fibro pain (and maybe blocking).

I think it will only take a few days of cycling to get me back to where I was prior to the switch in meds, since 41 days of pills (and blocking) is equal to approximately 2-3 days of reversal according to Dr. St. Amand.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Crash and Burn

I was feeling pretty good, and so I let a few things slide. I ate more sugar (a lot more), didn't get as much sleep, missed a few days on my medicine (due to having issues with my prescriptions renewing), missed a few chiropractor appointments and picked a lot of strawberries without using gloves-I did not realize this is a big guai blocker. The result was a complete crash for two days that felt like before I had started this treatment. By the third day my efforts at getting back on track were rewarded as I slowly started feeling better, but it took a good 8 days to feel like I had recovered from my little bender.

At this point I'm pretty sure I'm blocking the medicine somehow since I still feel pretty bad and I'm not noticing a change after I take the guai like I used to. Even small amounts of activity are leaving me in extreme pain and difficulty moving. My theory is that I started blocking about a month ago, so I started asking myself: what has changed since then? Here is what I've come up with.

1. I started using sunscreen on my kids as the weather has been nicer.

2. With the humidity kicking up I've gone from straightening my hair to leaving it curly, and using a specific product to keep it under control. I've checked the ingredients at least 3 times, but maybe I'm missing something.

3. My iron pills changed from plain iron to iron plus (includes vitamins and minerals).

My goal this week will be to determine what is causing me to block and eliminating it. One thing I've learned from experience is that I cannot change all three of the above things at the same time, otherwise if I get better I will have no idea which one was causing me to block. So my plan is to start with the iron pills, I'm going to stop taking the prescription pills and take some pure iron over the counter ones. That's my plan for this week, will update next week on whether or not it worked and if I need to try something else.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Response From Dr. St. Amand

I emailed the authors of the book "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Fibromyalgia" last week and was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply over the weekend. Here is what I learned:

1. You must wear gloves when gardening.

2. Touching soil will not cause you to block like touching plants will.

3. You can still wear sandals in the grass (I thought I had read otherwise but I guess it's ok).

4. You can mow the lawn but you shouldn't walk on it barefoot the same day or you will block for that one day.

Good news for a flip-flop wearer like myself. Not good news for a gardener though. I might start doing my gardening earlier in the day so I don't have to deal with hot gloves in 85 degree weather. If you're interested in emailing Ms. Marek and Dr. St. Amand, their email address is claudiacmarek@aol.com