FM isn’t really a disease, but a symptom pattern caused by some underlying problem, one that usually can be mitigated or cured if one could find a doctor knowledgeable enough and caring enough to pursue the lengthy and complex clinical and laboratory diagnosis necessary to find the problem.
Some of the diseases that have FM as a symptom are:
1. Hypothyroidism (needs more than just TSH to diagnose properly; needs full thyroid and thyroid autoimmune panels plus clinical diagnosis).
2. Lupus. (no definitive test, requires clinical diagnosis)
3. Lyme Disease. (need Lyme specialist to diagnose properly)
4. Pernicious Anemia (or other B-12 malabsorption syndrome, needs more than just serum B-12 level to diagnose properly, should be easy to diagnose but most doctors are ignorant of this relatively common disease.)
5. Sleep Apnea and other sleep disorders.
6. Rheumatoid Arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.
7. Sjogren’s Syndrome (requires clinical diagnosis)
8. And no doubt many others.
Any doctor who diagnoses fibromyalgia and leaves it at that is either lazy, ignorant or both, because that’s pretty much the same thing as if a doctor diagnosed you as “sick” or “has a fever”. I highly recommend that you keep going from doctor to doctor until you find a good one who can figure out what is really wrong with you.
‘I highly recommend that you keep going from doctor to doctor until you find a good one who can figure out what is really wrong with you.’
We tried that, after two years and thousands of dollars we gave up on medical doctors. All they want to do is prescribe a pill to mask the symptoms.
Had all those tests before fibro diagnosis. Am still tested ever so often. The meeds I am on, help.
I would venture to guess that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis could be added to the list as well. Thanks so much for this thread and ya'lls input. I've tried just about everything under the sun to get rid of my fatigue and pain but will definitely be trying TheWriterTX's suggestion.