I feel like I am missing something...

Four years ago, when I first got sick and had no medical insurance, I paid out my nose and even solicited donations from friends and family to see a doctor.  My first GP was an Osteopath.

"Osteopathic medical school curricula closely mirror those of Doctor of Medicine. However, osteopathic physicians also receive an additional 300 – 500 hours in the study of hands-on manual medicine and the body's musculoskeletal system" ~ wikipedia

Two years ago, I saw a Rheumatologist .  He looked at my documentation and took blood to look for arthritis antibodies.  He found none, and called my condition “consistent with fibromyalgia”

“A board-certified rheumatologist is a medical doctor (an internal medicine doctor or pediatrician) who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of arthritis and other rheumatic diseases....” ~ Oxford Journals, Rheumatoology

Last month after a session of moving boxes around, I went to the prompt care clinic and had them take an x-ray, hoping that at least there would be evidence of pinched nerves or something.  I wanted them to do the neck and hip, but they only did the hip.  They sent the data to my current GP, (who is awesome) and I learned the results yesterday.

sacrum

I have degenerative disc disease and arthritis in the lumbar and sacrum.  I need to take a look at the report myself because I believe it may be in the illium as well.  I asked for an xray of my neck to see if it’s there as well- it feels like it.  I definitely have sciatica, I believe I have cervical radiculopathy (cervical [neck] nerve pinch).

It occurs to me that the Osteopath would have easily recognized degenerative disc, and the rheumatologist would have easily recognized arthritis.  It stands to reason that either both doctors completely missed the diagnosis, or that the diseases have developed within the last 2-4 years, within the onset of the fibromyalgia.  In my opinion, the later makes more sense.  One reason for this conclusion is that it’s fairly unlikely that both doctors- from unrelated practices more than 100 miles away from each other and two years apart were colluding together to provide false test results.  Yeah, I’m not that much of a conspiracy nutter.

Cervical Radiculopathy Sciatica

It also makes sense to me because one of the results of not being able to recover from adrenal effects  is that the skeletal muscles are in a fairly constant state of contraction, while keeping the smooth muscles in a state of relaxation (muscle vessels are dilated).  So, it stands to reason that osteoarthritis- commonly referred to as “wear and tear” disease could have come out of the tightening of the skeletal muscles pulling all of the major joints towards each-other, creating the pressure necessary to restrict the discs between vertebrae and cause the bones to rub against one another ~ subsequently making an environment for arthritis to blossom.

Imagine that attached to every bone in your body are two rubber bands, one on either side of your spine...  going down the leg, up the spine, out the arm and up the neck.  Now imagine that the rubber bands are getting restrictive and shrinking.  All the bones are pulled closer and closer together.  Meanwhile, the large muscles such as in the thigh and upper arm are pooled with blood, vessels exhausted like a garden hose on full blast but the nozzle is closed at the end.  Every time the muscle is used, the sense of exhaustion is amplified, every step feels like twenty steps, every curl feels like 30.  Nerve endings are raw from the loss of myelin.  The nerve roots become pinched and send neuropathic pain messages to the brain.  The brain then amplifies the message, making the pain feel more painful than the injury should require.

Myelin

What Is a Demyelinating Disease?

"A demyelinating disease is a disease characterized by damage to the myelin sheaths which cover the nerves. Myelin acts as an electrical insulator, ensuring that impulses move quickly down the length of a nerve, and when a nerve becomes demyelinated, these impulses can slow or stop. In a sense, a demyelinating disease strips the body's wiring of its insulation, and just as a house's electrical systems would go haywire if all of the wiring was abruptly exposed, the body experiences a variety of problems as the nerves lose their protective layers of myelin." ~wiseGEEK

In my training as a nurse’s aide, we did extensive training on how to lift stuff so as not to cause injury to the back.  I know most people don’t practice the 5 “L’s” of lifting- but I have been really careful (for almost 20 years) to protect my body, thinking of the longevity of my back.  My biological father had years of chiropractic work and still struggles with back issues, so I feel like I have had some training in the area.  At the very least, I am not ignorant of it.

That’s a start.  There are also the migraines, insomnia, memory lapses, irritable bladder and bowel, lack of reward hormones (serotonin, dopamine, nor-epinephrine, etc), sudden total exhaustion and spontaneous napping...