It’s a scary thing when patience is not my virtue, yet I had to wait to find out for three weeks the results of my MRIs, EMG, and blood work. My mind was becoming very negative and looking for the worse possible scenario. It did not help my symptoms of numbness, extreme fatigue, tightness across my back shoulder blades, stress-level, and high anxiety were exuberant.
I walked into my first Neurologist doctor’s office (yes I change neurologist later) and sat down literally wringing my hands, sweating, and started again thinking the worse case scenario and how my kids would cope without me. Being a single mom is difficult enough, I couldn’t imagine what parents go through struggling with an incurable disease with no support system.
Neurologist told me my blood work came back negative for any major diseases. I started to breathe a little more. She also still didn’t understand why my vitamin B6 was still extremely high. MRI showed no major issues. I was extremely fearful it was MS. As we all know googling symptoms is never a positive thing on the internet. I have a friend who has MS, she is a true MS warrior and I am honored to learn from her how to not let anything get us down. My niece and nephew have CF, you would never know it because they always have a smile on their faces, but they have taught me to appreciate every single day and that makes them Warriors in my eyes! What the doctor did find was I had a herniated disc and bulge on my left side of my neck, the one and two vertebrae’s, so that explained my daily headaches. She asked me to do another MRI to make sure my neck injury stayed the same and didn’t get worse. Ughhh not what I wanted to hear. EMG showed no nerve damage. Yes another positive!Neurologist also told me to go downstairs and make an appointment with their physical therapist to see if they could get muscles to loosen up. Yeah I wasn’t too keen on walking around with my shoulders to my ears either. The cold weather was not helping at all, it even made my bones shiver. Doctor also wanted more blood . Neurologist said it was probably Fibromyalgia, but wanted blood work to eliminate autoimmune disease, lupus, etc. She prescribed me 900 mg of Gabapentin (two pills at night and one in the morning). Neurologist stressed to me that I needed to slowly increase to the 900 mg and to never abruptly stop taking Gabapentin. You will find out once again I learned the hard way! She wanted me to make a follow-up appointment with my family doctor to see if he had any other recommendations for my symptoms. That was funny to me, because that’s the reason why my family doctor sent me to her in the first place. But I was happy to go see my family doctor because I knew he would help me find answers.
TIP 1: Try your hardest not to search for symptoms on the internet. It only makes stress and anxiety that much heightened especially when search results are always worse case scenario.
TIP 2: When your primary doctor, who you fully trust, suggests seeing a certain specialist, listen to their recommendations. I learned the hard way… I could have saved a lot of time and a lot of the unknowns.
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Fibromyalgia Warrior Woman 