July 8, 2008
Marlene Gundlach - July 8, 2008
Finally some answers
It is now about 1996 and I had been dealing with the pain and sleeplessness for about 5 years. At some point along the line, I’m not sure with which doctor, I brought in an article on fibromyalgia. I got an immediate “No, this is not what you suffer from.” It was so new then, and I did not meet the criteria at that point, mainly the tender points. I did not have pain in 11 of the 18 tender points. Oh well, it was worth a shot!
I finally made an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic with another rheumatologist, I think my third. I was grasping at straws at this point. I learned that Dr. Wilke had written an article or two on fibromyalgia. He ran some tests and concluded that I did have fibromyalgia. He was willing to make the diagnosis even though I was not a textbook case. Having ruled out every other possible cause of the pain, and with some of my history, he decided to go with that diagnosis. His main focus was sleep. The less I was sleeping, the fewer endorphins (natural pain killers) my body was producing. Fewer endorphins meant more pain, which equals less sleep. A nasty cycle ensued.
It was also a theory of his that a traumatic event often triggers the sleeplessness. I was in a car accident my senior year in high school and my parent’s divorced when I was a sophomore in college. One of those two events could have been the beginning of cycle. No way to know of course, just a theory.
He began by prescribing antidepressants, which I took for awhile. They made me gain weight, didn’t help much, and I wanted to become pregnant soon and decided that I should stop taking them. Basically, I have been self-treating/managing ever since.
