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.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Another Block

For weeks I've been suspecting that I'm blocking my medicine but couldn't figure out where. Then one morning I started the routine of triple checking everything (again) that comes in contact with my skin and that is when I caught the culprit, dish soap. I switched to a new bottle of the same brand (Palmolive) and even went online and checked the ingredients to make sure it would be ok, but I missed the small letters on the front that say "natural extracts", so for now 4 weeks I've been blocking the guai and building phosphates up in my system.  Because of dish soap. It seems like a silly thing, but since I'm a stay at home mom and use this soap not only for washing dishes but also washing my hands (which I probably do 20 times a day with 2 preschoolers) this is actually the product that touches my skin more than any other. Lesson learned, again. Unfortunately, I am now going through the initial reversal for a third time and this is extremely frustrating to me. It is much less painful than it was five months ago (I'm no longer up all night writhing in pain) but it is still incredibly painful and small things like walking up the stairs feel almost impossible. It took five days after throwing out the old dish soap to unblock and hit the true reverse cycle, and today is day two of that cycle.

On another note, I began taking malic acid and magnesium per a previous post to help with muscle pain a little while ago. One symptom of fibro for me has been horrendous periods each month, something which no doctor has been able to help me with. After only a week on the malic acid and magnesium combination I had a completely normal period-so I suspected it was from these vitamins. Shortly after, I stopped them in case they could be the salicylate culprit and the next month it was horrendous again, verifying that it was indeed the malic acid and magnesium that were helping with this symptom. I have called fibropharmacy to verify that all of their pills are sal-free (they are) and since figuring out the dish soap I have restarted this vitamin combination since it does appear to have big benefits for me. I have discontinued the vitamin E since I did not see an improvement.

Five months of treatment, 2 long term blockages and TONS of pain later--I have to remember that I have made a lot of progress, I will not give up!