I’ve spent the last few months moving in with my son.  I lost my home to forclosure.  I just couldn’t do anything anymore.  I was bed ridden off and on for months.  I had to let it go.  Then a few months later I totaled my car.  I remember the wreck, the bumbs and stuff, but I still don’t remember where I was going.  weird.  I guess it’s common, but it does’t feel common.  When the bag opened, I could no longer see where I was going and couldn’t reach the brakes.  I reached for a tissue, hit a curb and ran up on the curb, broke a power line in half, hit a huge tree, then took out the street sign and then the next tree stopped me.  Thank God.  I couldn’t see, couldn’t stop.  I was terrified.  What if a child was on the sidewalk.  Whoever invented those bags should be sued by every person hurt by them or had a family member killed because of them.  I’ve been afraid to drive.  I’ll drive 2 blocks to the store but that’s it.  I’ll get over it.  My arms hurt pretty bad so I don’t feel bad for not driving….  Has anyone discovered a great doctor that knows how to treat chronic pain???  Please let me know.  I am in Alhambra, south of Pasadena, bordering San Marino and South Pasadena.

I am not sure I can describe this pain so that a doctor could get a mental visual or any kind of diagnostic. It started with a common (for me) migraine, then I laid down to try to sleep. If you’ve ever had walking pneumonia, that is the best way the describe how it started. There’s not much pain at first until start to cough or move a lot.
If you were able to see the spine and the sinew, the strength along the spine, then you could understand what part of me what in pain. That strip of strong muscle along in front and toward the right arm of the spine that seems to feel like it holds the whole thing together. However, if it was all the strength of the area what a mess we’d be in.
Along my esophagus hurt, so that when I swallowed the pain was deep and even a breath panged me as the meds were wearing off. Strange, as if I slept wrong on my neck, but that didn’t happen.
I drove myself to the store at 2 AM for some ice cream. It felt so good on my neck. There was no one on the street. It was kinda errie, but pain pills were not completed relieving and rather than take more I thought cold would help. So right now at 4 AM my body is feeling srange for sure. I ate too much ice cream. The pain moves across my chest to the right arm and down my arm to my hand. I think I am quiting for today. God bless you all.

This will be short. My arms are throbbing. They really hurt, my fingers too, not the joints, the long part of the bones. At least that’s what it feels like. I used to type for hours and hours and hours. I probably ruined my hands and arms. But, I guess being self employed, a person is going to do one of two things, either never take a break, working day and night, or take too many breaks just because they can. Who thinks about later in years the possibility of your hands and arms being unuseable?!?! That would be a rare thing to think about, when you are trying to get something done, and you are young and in a hurry to meet a deadline for a client. Anyway, it’s easy to blame oneself for all the pain instead of the disease, the surgeries, the accident, the attack, the post traumatic disorder, or whatever.
I keep thinking everday, ‘it can’t be for the rest of my life’. Pain can’t be a constant. It’s not forever! I used to get temporary reprieves from the pain, but not the last couple of years. But better will come. It has to. When I lay here crying and waiting for relief, I just keep thinking that bad days go by as fast as good ones and soon there will be more good ones and maybe one day, suddenly there will be no more pain. It could happen. Actually, it could happen today. I’d like to see my grand daughter grow up. She’s the cutest thing I have ever seen (well, since my children were babies).
That was longer than I thought it was going to be. Tell me, ‘how can the tips of a person’s fingers hurt?’ I’ve never even heard of that one before, have you?

I actually did real good today, but I’m sitting her crying again, waiting.  I went 6 plus hours between pain meds, got to eat dinner with a friend and watch some TV with her.  When she left I came upstairs and sat down on my bed tired and my back was starting to hurt.  I took some meds and sat against a heating pad and proceeded to check my email.  Suddenly my left side has shooting pains down the side, from my neck and shoulder to what feels like the side? of my spine?  I grabbed my brace and wrapped up tight and took more medication.  What the heck is that?  I don’t know what to do now.  I need  some definite diagnosis’ to apply for SSI don’t I?  I’m so scared.  It hurts with sharp stabbing pains when I breathe, kinda like the pain of pluricy, if you’ve ever had that.  When I was about 23 I got double pneumonia with pleurisy.  What a nightmare!  It was cough, scream, cough scream.  It was horrible.  I lost 15 lbs in less than 3 days.  Thank You God in Heaven that I am not coughing now!!
So it appears I may have fibromyalgia, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, Carpel Tunnel, Migraines and the mystery merge!  One tries to overpower the other sydrome, fighting for top billing.  I just don’t understand.  My body is in atrophy, I can’t sleep,  I feel really lucky sometimes when the pain meds actually work for a little while.   
The website at: http://www.rsdhope.org/Showpage.asp?PAGE_ID=162&PGCT_ID=4300 says that some people have both fibromyalgia and CRPS and I agree with them.
I realize now that I can not do anything for any length of time, stand, sit, type, read, anything.  Being self employed, that inability stuff will not do. I have to find out how to fight for SSI.

The last two weeks have been so creepy.  Feels like I have lost my whole life and don’t know what to do.  I thought for a long time that because I was self employed, I couldn’t get SSI, so my income dropped as my hand functions decreased. And, like I said, I can’t really get SSI because I have no solid diagnosis… but I am in bed most of the time attempting to control pain.  When I go out side in the beautiful So. California weather, it’s like Heaven on earth, but I know I better not walk very far away because I have to come back!  I have no one to take care of me, pick me up, take me home and like that.  I was reading a lot of websites and found mentioned a couple of places in the Kaiser system that may have special places to go for RSD and fibromyalgia, but when I looked them up on the Kaiser website they weren’t there. I know I have fibromyalgia, just probably not the normal kind.  It’s like when I had shingles.  I didn’t get shingles around the nerves on my waist, I got shingle sores along the nerve from my left eye up over my head on that nerve.  So doctor’s were disagreeing and finally after 4 doctors and an emergency room visit, a doctor familiar with that version of shingles finally gave me the right medication so I could begin the healing process.  I went back a couple of months later and they were still disagreeing. It took so long to heal. I was sick for a long time. It’s kinda like that now, only I am so much older and I may not live through this one, at least that is the way I feel today.

Today was a day where my muscles and nerves ‘ached’ from the top of my head to the souls of my feet, crying, the whole mess. Days like today send my thoughts back to the fibromiagia theory. I cried but fought wanting to die. I made myself get up and function. Of course my back hurt then as well, but I was lucky, it didn’t hurt too bad. I know better days are coming. I have to know it. I have to.
Today it felt like the aching was a surging, if that makes sense…. you know, like the pain moved like waves through my muscles with every heart beat. Or maybe it’s a better analogy to use electricity and how it suddenly sweeps through an object increasing in voltage, inflaming every molecule in it’s path, but not quite to the point of burning anything.
What the heck kind of disease is that!?

I had plans for today. “I am in pain, but controllable”, I thought. Got up and went to the bathroom, like we all do upon rising. By the time I got back to my bed, I was gasping with pain in my lower back. What, I can’t even go to the bathroom without a re-injury!! I seriously hate my life today. Usually, I can find something good, but it’s 7 PM and I am just now thinking I might be little hungry. I read all of the links people sent me about crps. I probably do along with fibro, carpel, etc, etc. It’s just that crps and the ‘fibro’ diseases have such a hazy line of diagnosis. Each one of those states a bunch of symptoms and then they say “but, not all will have the same symptoms.” I get really confused and on days like today, not to mention I get really scared. The phone was ringing while I was waiting for some kind of relief to happen, the edge to even semi-off. That probably doesn’t make sense. But those of you who suffer, you know what I mean. Anyway, but I couldn’t answer it. People want to know what’s wrong and then they are like “sorry you are going through that”. I hate that and want to say, “leave me alone right now!” But, you know? I love my family and friends, so it’s better just not to answer the phone at certain moments.
So, I was laying there, with my electric blanket turned on to high and bunched up against my back, and the main thing I was thinking was, “I need to change how I think about hope.” See, faith is the evidence of things ‘hoped’ for. “What exactly am I hoping for?”, I thought, other than straight up healing. For hours I lay there pondering that question. I know some of you must know what I mean. “I must hold myself together”, I thought frantically. I kept telling myself to stop it! I am not going to cry! Even though, tears are rolling onto my pillow. I sure can’t ask my doctor for anything stronger, or that will work faster, if he doesn’t even know what the heck is wrong with me, right? I’m always afraid doctors are going to be mad at me anyway. I used to make friends with my doctors, but when I moved to LA, I found doctors to be so different, distant, and mechanical, even. Not my family doctor. He’s nice. But most of the specialists I’ve seen so far … well, I am just afraid of them now …

This morning I had plans to get up as early as possible and go run some errands and get a prescription. But, of course when I woke, it was early all right, but all I could do is chop up some pills and lay back down and cry. I cry alot until the edge is off of the pain. Sometimes I take ativan if I can’t stop crying. I really don’t know what to do, but I pray alot too and I am confident that He has a plan to help me. Today the pain was all over, not just my arms and then there was the headache which is a whole other story. Sometimes, I think the painpills have too much tylenol in them and that gives me a headache. But that’s all I have right now. I don’t know what else to ask for that will actually work. There’s a lot of stuff out there, but it doesn’t work very good and some of it makes a person even more non-functional, but doesn’t help the pain any more, really. My doctor is on vacation. I’ll ask him about it when he gets back.
I cry about the foreclosure, too, but something good will happen. Someone will help somehow. Wouldn’t it be horrible if I didn’t think those thoughts on occasion.
Anyway, I had to go back to bed 3 times today. Very mysterious. I don’t think I qualify for SSI. I was self employed… Everyone tells me to see if I can get it anyway…

I’m thinking not happy thoughts tonight. I had a good day. Did some computer work. Then it hit, pain in the right arm. I like to dream of Paradise at moments like this. If I can’t go up, at least maybe to Hawaii. I can dream. Sitting here crying again. I get so incredibly embarrassed when people see me in pain. I try to stay isolated. It’s better that way.
I got an offer from my second mortgage bank. They sent me an agreement to sign. They will lower my interest rate by 3 points and forget all back mortgage payments. All I have to do is send in 389.00 as a down payment. I cried for 3 days because I knew I couldn’t do it. It was strange. I thought not just of myself, but I thought of all the other people in foreclosure who didn’t even get such offers, but if they did get such an offer they couldn’t pay them either. It was like I was crying for all of us. My pain has robbed me of my home it appears. Oh well. I have a few more weeks and then, I don’t know…. where is Dr. Kevorkian when you need him.

It’s Saturday night and my hands hurt. What am I suppose to do with my hands hurting so bad?  And yes, I’m thankful that I have hands, but that doesn’t make them stop hurting.  I’m mad at my hands.  There is not any good reason to be hurting! Everything I love to do I do with my hands.  Sometimes, it feels like all the nerve endings are buzzing and paining at the same time.  I cry because I don’t know what else to do while waiting for the pain meds to work and they don’t always work like I’d like them to.  It’s been 45 minutes and no change.  If I take more pain medication, then I’ll feel icky.
     I’d like to type without making an error, play the piano, play the guitar or learn to play the ukelele I purchased the last time I went to Hawaii.  Poor me, huh.
    The good side of tonight is that my friend and I went to see Kenny Logins sing.  I sat there for several hours and I seem ok.  I wish he would have played more of the oldies than he did, but it was good.  That’s probably why I was thinking of all the things I can’t do with my hands, watching him play that guitar like my brother used to and the way I would try to occationally.  My brother is playing his guitar in Heaven now…  wish I was too…