Hello and Welcome to Neurotalk - you will meet many great people here who I am sure will be more than happy to help you if they can!!

I am so sorry to hear that you have Fibro and I really hope you can get some much-needed answers and treatment real soon!! I also suffer from Fibro but I have another neurological chronic pain condition which I developed when I was 12 years old (now 13) and it makes it really difficult for my Doctor to diagnose me although he HAS said he is 99% certain that I have Fibro as the two conditions often go hand in hand unfortunately!

I have tried all sorts of pain medications and understand your frustration about getting atticted to them. I personally, chose to come off all of my meds as they just weren't helping me at all and I think they were making me worse as I was a LOT more drowsey on them and the side-effects often outweighed the benefits!! Everyone is different though and I would speak to your Doctor and see what he/she say's to do - as you said, it's a very vicious cycle and no two people are the same unfortunately!!

I have most of your symptoms and often feel very angry and frustrated. The main symptom that I suffer from and what is most debilitating is the fatigue - I often am not able to get out of bed as I am just so tired and it really affects my school attendance and other issues unfortunately!! I also have the pain in the trigger points near my back, nneck, shoulders etc which is really painful and VERY difficult to treat in my case ... I think it is harder as I have about 3 other conditions to try and treat as well as the Fibro!! In my case, I have noticed that my symptoms are somewhat worse when I am on my periods and the first few days before I am due to start. I started my periods when I was about 11 years old and never had any problems up until developing Fibro but it seems at that time of the month, everything is SO much worse and I am often unable to get out of bed for those 5 days!! I did speak to my doctor about it and he said that he believes Fibro could be an hormone inbalance and a lot of research is going into it at the moment!

Please do not give up hope!!! If you don't have hope, you don't have anything!! I too find it very hard at times trying to cope with this awful disease and I feel as though I can't go on at times and get VERY aggitated but then I realise that things could always be so much worse and I am lucky in many ways! When I am having a bad day, I think of the good things that I have in my life - my pets, my family etc etc and it DOES make a difference and makes me somewhat less agitated. I have also seen a Psychologist and she has helped me quite a lot with some of my problems. That doesn't mean that I am still not frustrated, of course I am and I think there would be something seriously wrong with me if I wasn't but I am able to calm myself down more now and don't take it out on my friends and family as much as I used to!!

If you have any questions, please let me know as I DO understand some of what you are going through and know how frustrating it is when friends and family often don't understand how bad the pain is!!

Take care and sending you many pain-free hugs!!
Alison.