Be Careful Who You Trust

 

 

     On Friday, October 17, 2014, the The Atlantic website had an article, "Doctors Tell All - And It's Bad:. by Meghan O'Rourke.  It is put together to appear to criticize treatment of patients by physicians, but it comes off more as an attempted exoneration.  We wrote the following comment and placed it in the blog.

 

 

Just about every excuse in the book is offered for doctors failing their patients.

The fact is, there is one and only one reason, the age old cause of betrayal, greed,

How many know that no more than half of all “medical” schools, anymore, administer the Hippocratic Oath? “First do no harm”, does not seem to mean anything to many, many “doctors” around now!

“Doctors”, hospitals, insurance companies, “drug” companies, lawyers, the courts, all a single massive swindle. And, as with so many swindles, which many if not most don't ever realize, a major tactic is to do only half the work and let the sucker, the pigeon, the mark carry out the crucial second half of stupidly convincing themselves that the liar is telling the truth. Even while the liar wears a huge sign saying “Liar!”

So many don't even realize, even as they are doing it, that, among other things, they are giving their business, over and over and over again to a “profession” that fails them each and every time!

The article itself begins with Meghan O'Rourke chronicling how she went for examination after examination, test after test, treatment after treatment, surgery after surgery. None of them doing any good, each leaving her worse off, yet, each time, she was willingly going back for more! If a brand of bread was that reliably bad, most would swear off after no more than three, maybe two, tries! It's a monopoly by the “doctors”, by the “healthcare” industry. A monopoly of trust! If someone had a monopoly of bread making and produced such poor product, they would be left outright. The “health” industry experiences an inexhaustible wellspring of reliance. They never have to produce to keep certain segments on the hook for decade after decade! Always waiting for when things go right!

The pigeons doing half the work, convincing themselves they aren't being lied to!

“Doctors”, “drug” companies, hospitals, corrupt insurance carriers, lawyers, the “courts”, an Iron Triangle geared against the welfare of the public.

“Drug” companies recycling petrochemical waste into “medications”, relying on the placebo effect and a hefty set of legal disclaimers, in fine print on the inserts that most if not all throw away, to protect them from litigation.

“Doctors” accepting the requirement, set down by the crooked insurers, that, if they want them pay for treatment, they must utilize the “most conservative” treatment first, even if it doesn't help, even if it delays application of the correct treatment beyond where it would be useful, even if it actually harms the patient more! How many people realize that just uttering the word “insurance” in a trial could be grounds for declaring a mistrial, because, presumably, everyone has had experience with insurance treating them like dirt?

“Doctors” accepting bribes, literally, ranging from office supplies to vacations camouflaged as “seminars” for misprescribing the newest toxins called “medications” where they aren't even necessarily proved to work!

The notorious process suspiciously self exonertingly named the “Independent Medical Examination” during which a “doctor” for the defense in an accident case “examines” the plaintiff, then declares that, if they didn't have a physical five minutes before the accident, it is not possible to conclude that the crushed legs they crawled away with weren't a “preexisting condition”!

Lawyers aiming clients injured in accidents to “pain management” outfits, that specialize just in “painkillers”; “epidurals” into the spinal column, which can transmit disease or even render the individual paralyzed; antidepressants and “physical therapy”. All of which are all but guaranteed not to work! The fact many if not most do not know is that the source of an extraordinary preponderence of pain is a herniated disc! All the nerves in the body travel through the spinal column. A herniated or bulging disc can put pressure on nerves which generates a sensation of discomfort or pain. A phantom pain. Orthopedists told about pain will inevitably only look at bones, not even muscles. Rheumatologists will blame muscles, not bulging discs. And, even if they see nothing on x-rays or MRI's are not necessarily kept from declaring something present! Rheumatoligists will say pain never shows up, so they wouldn't find it on an MRI, but it must be there because that's what the patient is feeling. An orthopedist would not be beyond pointing out even a flaw in the emulsion of an x-ray negative as “arthritis”! After all, so many are guaranteed to trust their “doctors” no matter how many mistakes they makes! It doesn't help that, which many also don't know, the brain not only senses conditions in the body, it can react! It can initiate fluid build up, inflammation in response to what it perceives as a genuine pain, not a phantom sensation! And, because many don't know this, when their body reacts, they “conclude” it must be due to a real condition! Chiropractic with an emphasis on spinal decompression and traction can solve the problem all but immediately. But it has a major drawback, it's not expensive! The plaintiff attorney stands to make a killing if they can get their client hooked onto a massive program of extremely costly procedures! Tests, examinations and that cash cow, spinal surgery! A surgeon can chop away at an individual's body going after something that isn't there, doing something hideously destructive, like a “spinal fusion”, connecting two vertebrae together, with a plate and screws leaving the individual's back so inflexible, they can't even clean themselves after going to the bathroom and need someone else to help them! And this won't help, because it's not necessarily intended to! The patient is in the same pain, if not more, then they get massive prescriptions of “pain killers” and “anti depressants”, for the rest of their lives, maybe more surgery! And, instead of a $15,000 settlement, aided by chiropractic, the patient has $1 million in their suit, including pain and suffering they never needed to have, and their lawyer walks away chuckling with more than a quarter million dollars as their fee! Lawyers don't have an oath that says, “First do no harm”!

Just today, the Herald News in New Jersey had an article, Doctors arrested in kickback scheme” in which seven orthopedists and internal medicine practitioners were officially found to have received at least $30,000 on average a piece in kickbacks, and probably a great deal more, for unnecessarily steering individuals with likely minor herniated discs for massive and expensive “diagnostic procedures”!

Incidentally, which many also don't seem to know, once you've had a surgical procedure, a chiropractor won't touch you. They can't. Your body is no longer normal and so won't respond to chiropractic! None of them are warned, ahead of time, by their lawyers, to try spinal decompression, first. Because the lawyers know how likely chiropractic is to solve such problems, and bring in a measly fee for them!

The scam of the “minimally invasive procedure” for back pain. The incision may be small, but they don't address the wholesale Army Corps of Engineers restructuring they'll do to your spine once on the inside! That's why they advertise it as “minimally invasive”, to convince the dullards that they won't do anything big on the inside! How many are even encumbered by the size of a surgical scar on their back?

In the face of this, things like hospitals charging $10 for an aspirin tablet looks like chicken feed!

The fact of the matter is, any who choose to trust doctors, lawyers, insurers are endangering themselves in ways that can make them suffer forever!



Handling The Situation

      The first thing that I would recommend is to try to wean yourself off of medications, prescribed and over-the-counter. It could take a year for the effects of medications to dissipate, such as trigger points. Many don't realize how many side effects of medications are actually associated with or even mimic the effects of fibromyalgia.

      Exercise is critically important. You can start with 25 leg raises on each side while you're in bed, each day. Gradually, after a few months, you can build yourself up to a hundred a day on each side. Don't overly tax yourself.

      Walking outdoors, when the air quality is good, a half hour a day, is good for you, too, even if it's just a few days a week. It'll help you get the stale air out of your lungs, give you energy and invigorate you. My wife walks usually before she goes to bed and it usually helps her sleep much deeper. Always walk with a flashlight, so you don't twist your ankle or trip. And, if there's any kind of wetness outside, you have to be very careful. If there is snow or ice, I would avoid walking in the evening completely.

It's also extremely important to keep your electrolytes up, which regulate your heartbeat. These include potassium and salt. Most people don't realize that they need 2200 milligrams of salt per day. It is also important to keep well hydrated, but don't overdo this, since you can urinate out important nutrients, like water soluble vitamins and electrolytes. Sometimes, if my wife doesn't feel like doing anything, she will heat up some chicken broth and the salt in the broth gives her a lift. Or, sometimes, she'll eat a pickle and, ten minutes later, she'll feel more energized. It's good to know the sources of what you need for your system. Bananas are an excellent source of potassium. Potassium is also a mood elevator. Be aware of the way you feel is an authentic reaction to circumstances or the effect of wrong substances in your diet, or right substances missing from your diet.

      If certain foods cause you indigestion or gas, take a cup of milk before you eat.

Turmeric is very good for pain, but it only relieves pain for about an hour or two. It's not long lasting, but it's also not as unnatural a substance as many that they sell that you have to take only once, but run the risk of poisoning your systems with. Is it so much to take turmeric a couple of times if it means keeping your system clean? You can get tumeric capsules in the health food store.

My wife recently has been taking some ginseng capsules from the health food store. She isn't led by what the package says there, either. She doesn't take a full capsule as they are sold, she found that half a capsule works for her. She takes half a capsule every few days and it is a great mood elevator. It increases your motivation to do things. It's supposed to increase the dopamine in your brain, which is a big help.

      One of the most important dietary changes my wife had made, which she attributes all of her success to, is fresh killed chicken. The chicken in stores does not have the nutrients of fresh killed chicken. You should look on the internet for a live poultry vendor in your area. They exist, and there are apparently more than most suspect. The female chickens are more tender than the males, so try to get females. In choosing them, the females don't have a wattle under their chin, that's one way of judging them by sight. My wife puts the chicken in a Reynolds Brown In bag and cooks it for about an hour. No fancy rubs or marinades necessary, although my wife will use them, from time to time. And she saves the juice that's left over in the bag for the next day to add to store bought broths! She drains it into a cup and skims the fat off, the next day. Heating it up, she can add it to broths or she can add some ramen noodles to the juice and water. My wife usually takes it before she goes to bed several times a week. It's a perfect sleep aid. Chickens are close to turkeys, so they, too, have tryptophan, and that can put you into a deep REM sleep. Remember, REM sleep is the sleep you need, the sleep that, among other things, rejuvenates your muscles, and helps you wake up refreshed so necessary in conditions with fibromyalgia type symptoms. REM sleep known as rapid eye movement sleep, cause you to go into a deep form of sleep where you can work out your problems. It is necessary to feel refreshed. If you don't have REM sleep, your sleep doesn't really help you. A lot of people think they will take melatonin or some other sleep aid, and get the refreshment and rest that they need. They don't. Melatonin and other sleep aids do not provide you rem sleep, it just knocks you out and you wake up tired and unrefreshed. If you rub your eyes during the day, it could be a good sign that you have not experienced good REM sleep.

      When you have a serious case of fibromyalgia, you need chicken or the juice at least three times a week to restore your health. It could take a few months to a year before you feel the full effects of the chicken. If you can eat the chicken liver when it's cold, the next day, try to, because that can be very good for you, too. We put the chicken liver in the Brown In bag with the chicken and it adds a lot of flavor to the juices.

      If you have a lot of very sore muscles, my wife strongly recommends a Homedics professional model massager. The small ones are good for only minor non chronic issues. For fibromyalgia type symptoms, get the heaviest model with many settings in speed. Be careful not to overdo it with the massager, since you can make your muscles sore with overuse.

      If you have a very sore muscle, a very sore joint or a swollen joint, it's usually due to fluid buildup from inflammation. My wife gets frozen turkey legs from the Shop Rite and keeps them frozen and then she wraps them in a plastic bag, ties it in a knot, then she gets a pair of her cotton underpants, wraps them around the meat, ties it in a knot and places it over the area that's bothering her, like her knee or her neck. She keeps them in the freezer for compresses. It works much better than ice, it will always work much better than ice. Crucial here is stabilizing the temperature between the inflamed tissue and what's supposed to cool it. And that depends on thermodynamic properties. The thermodynamic properties of ice are far different than those of flesh! The turkey leg has a closer set of properties and so cools better! The turkey leg is better because it has a bone inside which freezes and keeps the leg colder longer. But don't put it directly on your skin or you can get a freezer burn. My wife uses underpants because they are effective in shielding from the cold, but they also are thin enough to let the cold work. After about an hour, you're going to urinate, removing the fluid that you worked out of the inflamed area. You'll feel better and you'll notice the swelling has gone down significantly.

      Another good thing to have is Jell-O. What many don't realize is that it's made from substances from cow joints. This makes it go directly to your joints to help with what they need to get better.

Another important aspect to the illness is avoiding, if at all possible, people who stress you out or agitate you, because that will tense all your muscles up and make you experience all the much more pain. You don't have to avoid them completely, but you can learn to deal with them better so they don't hurt you. If you can learn biofeedback, that is an excellent source of relaxation.

      And you have to learn that it's not just your mind and body, that there is a spiritual component. There is a direct connection between spirit, mind and body and you need it to get full help with this. My wife is Catholic and she tries to receive the Sacraments frequently.

      Inform yourself well of the nature of what you are taking into your body. Many people love soy products or claim to. In fact, among other things, soy contains substances which inhibits the body's absorption of crucial nutrients! Phytates, common in many soy products, prevent the body's intake of elements like zinc. Soy can be poisonous in amounts deceptively small compared to other substances. Soy milk, which so many swear by, or claim to, is synthetic estrogen and that can be very dangerous to ingest regularly. Many people use canola oil, thinking it comes from a plant called the canola! It doesn't! “Canola” is short for “Canada oil”! They claim the name was chosen to avoid connotations from the fact that it supposedly is derived from rapeseed, but there are other natural names also associated with rapeseed that could have been used. It should be mentioned that canola oil is in wide use in manufacturing biodiesel fuel, too.

      But also be careful of more natural things, in terms of overdoing. My wife took fish oil supplements every day for awhile and ended up with a severe urinary tract infection. Evidently her kidneys had trouble processing that amount of fish oil. This might not happen to everyone but be aware that it could happen. She knew it was from the fish oil since her urine spelled like fish. Many post-menopausal women suffer from urinary tract infections, known as “interstitial cystitis”. We have learned that these infections come about from not completely emptying the bladder. These infections can easily be eliminated by making sure to completely empty the bladder. Also, be careful of herbal supplements, even the more natural unprocessed ones. They sound safe because they're from plants, but not all plants are safe. Some can be very potent or toxic. Pharmaceutical companies use them in their medications. Be careful in using them, be wise but don't be afraid. My wife always takes half of what is recommended to see how she feels the next day. You could be allergic to an herbal supplement.

      A lot of people unwisely take vitamins every day. Many take massive doses, thinking that will help. There is a dangerous misapprehension that vitamins are “nourishment”, that people only need vitamins to stay healthy, so they could eat poor diets but, if they take supplements, they will be fit. But vitamins are not nourishment! Vitamins are catalysts, metabolizers, chemical go betweens. They need something to work on! Fats, proteins, enzymes, sugars. By themselves, vitamins are powerful, reactive chemicals, vitamins alone are strong poisons! They need nutrients to act on! Vitamins do not substitute for eating well! You need to supply what the vitamins in your system need to work on, or the vitamins will start taking you apart so they have something to act on! Taking vitamins on an already good diet can result in your body having more vitamins than it knows what to do with. There is no substitute for a good diet.

      I am not a physician, but Hippocrates wasn't a physician before he started collecting cures and methodologies, but these are things my wife uses to keep the fibromyalgia and other deleterious conditions away. We hope some of these tips will help you and encourage you.

Pain And Herniated Disks

      So often, when someone is swindled, it's a collaborative effort. A cooperation between the swindler, carrying out the scam, and, frankly, the “pigeon” doing their level best not to protect themselves from being scammed. It's tragic, often, to think about how vulnerable so many people leave themselves to being taken. Trusting anyone who has a diploma, as if that automatically makes them truthful, or if they just claim to have a diploma, or if they wear a white lab coat. Having no better than a tangential familiarity with understanding of the world. Failing regularly to assess claims made to see if they make sense or have any connection with reality.

      How many, going to a doctor, or “doctor”, with a rhinovirus, prescribed an antibiotic, were still sick a week later? Not all antibiotics are the same, and a rule of thumb is that the right antibiotic should provide measurable if not significant improvement within only a few hours! Sometimes, it can be as short as half an hour to an hour and a half. Four hours is the average. If you aren't feeling a great deal better by the next day, it's not the right antibiotic. But, tell the truth and shame The Evil One, how many had their “doctors” inform them of that? How many saw no sign of concern from their “doctor” when their antibiotic regimen lasted a week or more with no improvement? How many have gone a couple of weeks on antibiotics and felt no relief and ended up “justifying” that to themselves saying a cold will necessarily take a week to leave? How many have gone for weeks without improvement from their antibiotic yet failed to put two and two together to realize that that means it's not the right medication? How many have gone for weeks without their rhinovirus clearing up without realizing that that could lead to pneumonia and, at the very least, scar their lungs if not kill them? How many take the straightforward step of demanding their “doctor” actually provide some kind of service rather than just assume they must be doing good even though their patient is dying?

      How many know that antibiotics don't have targets of what to affect, they kill everything, all free-living organisms, even bacteria in the gut. And how many know that the bacteria in the gut play a crucial role both in digestion and protecting the gut during digestion? Even moderately long use of antibiotics can result in damage to the GI tract. How many “doctors” letting someone go a week or more with a wrong antibiotic warn them about that?

      But, then, how many ”pigeons” even think to put their “doctors” on the spot? Tell the truth and shame The Evil One, how many had their “doctor's” treatment fail, but didn't blame the “doctor”? How many said, “Well, they're a doctor so they must know everything! It can't be their fault?” How many blamed themselves for their “doctor's” treatment regimen failing?

      How many got a flu shot and promptly developed serious symptoms, such as pneumonia or sinusitis for six weeks? How many of their “doctors” warned them ahead of time that many vaccines are cultured in eggs, and, if you have an egg allergy, such a shot can affect you adversely? How many people don't even know they're allergic to eggs?

      How many know that, in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which, among other things, acknowledges the real, measurable likelihood that vaccines declared “safe” and “necessary” can do anything from cause brain damage in a child to kill them and the Act frees them from any and all liability whatsoever? There is a federally funded compensation fund supposedly available, but to the extent that most vaccines are ordered as mandatory by the “government” and it's a rule of law that you can't sue the “government”, it's not surprising that two-thirds of all claims apparently get nothing, and, of those that do, most only get token payments. “Doctors” are required to provide parents with Vaccine Information Statements before every vaccination, but they apparently aren't required to tell parents how important it is to read the Statement, the monstrous truths about the vaccine the Statements will provide. And, no matter how horrible the effects the Statement describes, if the vaccine is mandated, you still have to let your child receive it!

      In dealing with “doctors”, among other things, it's crucial to remind yourself just how high a failure rate “medicine” does have, but doesn't advertise! In the end, as with car mechanics who may fix a problem but then damage something else that was in good shape so you have to come back and software engineers who deliberately insert holes in software and systems to allow infiltration and compromise your computer, if you aren't going to make yourself an expert so the others are merely consultants to your opinion, then at least remember to beware them all! Make them earn your trust, make them keep having to earn your trust.

      In being conned by the fibromyalgia swindle, a large part comes from people not knowing how things works. They look for superficial “answers”, even if it's two things acting simultaneously but having no connection. Then, frighteningly, many actually have the ability to self-hypnotize themselves into thinking that that connection always exists and only that connection exists, so if something else is more effectively demonstrated to have a connection, they won't believe, they can't believe it!

      They take a drug and get one or two symptoms of fibromyalgia, then “conclude” that that drug is the cause of fibromyalgia. Someone gets a temporary illness then shows signs of fibromyalgia and they “decide” that that illness brought it about. Then they talk to others and convince them and, finally, between illnesses, drugs, accidents, they don't know what to think causes fibromyalgia! Eventually, in the anti-reasoning tack so many seem to find so easy to fall into, it becomes not a matter of trying to find out what the cause is, merely to catalog all the different situations that others who are deluding themselves think gave them fibromyalgia, even when they only got one or two symptoms! Look to any forum or blog on fibromyalgia and see all the many, many, many different “explanations” for fibromyalgia from allergies to Legionnaire's Disease to malnutrition to radiation treatments to leukemia to misuse of steroids. Each comment can claim one, two, maybe even three distinct symptoms of fibromyalgia and so they declare that that is the cause. And so it never gets solved.

      A first step to getting an answer can involve simple common sense. Fibromyalgia has twenty or more recognized symptoms, from trigger point irritation to GI problems to muscle weakness to neuralgia to “fibro fog”.

      In the name of all that makes sense, what can attack all those many different areas simultaneously?

Not to say that something can't, but what and how? Will a single chemical, geared to one system of the body hit all of those separate systems? Can a germ that lodges in one part of the body, like the sinuses, possibly cause such distinct effects everywhere throughout the body?

      If there is one cause for fibromyalgia, it has to be something that has a connection with every part of the body.

      And there is one.

      The spine.

      Nerves from every part of the body enter the spine and travel along it to get to the brain. There is not a single part of the body that does not send information to the brain along nerve connections that go up the vertebrae. And the brain reads all these signals.

      But what if those signals were spurious? What if an illegitimate signal entered the brain? The brain has no way to know if a signal is true or false, only the sensation that it represents. Erroneous signals can produce sensations of heat, cold, electricity, even pain without there being an actual cause present.

      A defining quality of fibromyalgia, sensation without obvious cause!

And, in fact, there is a condition which can give rise to this situation. Vertebrae do not sit on top of each other, they have discs of gelatinous material between them to allow them to flex. The nerve fibers go through both the centers of the vertebrae and the centers of the discs.

      In the case of a certain class of injury, though, vertebrae can be forcibly dislodged, causing the disc between them to extrude. This is known as a “herniated” or “bulging” disk. Vertebrae tend to remain physically stable over a wide range of interactions that can cause discs to dislodge, but, when the discs herniate, they change their shape, they change their position.

      And, more often than not, they end up pressing on the nerves going through them!

      And this pressure gives rise to the phantom signals that cause the many, many sensations associated with fibromyalgia and for which no cause is known!

      Since different nerves tend to enter the spine at different points, you could almost determine where an injury is based on the phantom signals received. The spine is broken into three parts, the lumbar being the lowest, near the hips; the thoracic lying toward the middle of the trunk; and the cervical being the collection of vertebrae just below the entrance to the skull. Nerves from the lower limbs tend all to enter at the lumbar area, nerves from the trunk share space with nerves from the lower limbs while traveling through the thoracic spine, and the nerves highest on the trunk enter in the cervical area.

      As a result, all the nerves from every part of the body travel through the cervical spine!

      As a result, an injury to the cervical spine, a dislocating of the discs between any of the vertebrae, can produce phantom signals of pain from everywhere on the body.

      A single source for sensations from legs to mid-back to the GI tract!

      And something else many do not realize, but which answers many questions.

      The brain is not solely passive. It can react! When the brain senses a situation in a part of the body, even if that is a phantom sensation, it can respond. Fluid buildup, inflammation, raising blood pressure and body temperature. An entire panoply of real, actual conditions, stimulated by a number of nonexistent ones!

      When you are dealing with a large number of disparate symptoms like these, over many widely ranging parts of the body, all occurring from individual to individual to individual, it seems that an issue of cervical disc compression is the only answer.

      And, an old tenet, “If something does not solve a situation, it's not a solution for the situation”. Note the sheer, staggering multiplicity of “treatments” and “methodologies” for “handling fibromyalgia” that have not worked! Changing medication, back surgery, TENS treatment, painkillers, anti-depressants, epidural injections, acupuncture, pain management, physical therapy, changing diet. Many don't realize that things like antidepressants and painkillers can destroy your life as well as your health, since they tend to eliminate all caring that leads to solving all the other situations that can arise socially, financially, and so on. People need to be vigilant about all that is going on about them, at all times. But, in the area of “conventional 'medicine'”, alternative after alternative after alternative is tried and brushed aside! But at no time is legitimate chiropractic treatment for cervical disc compression ever mentioned! Yet the “experts” automatically demand that the gullible believe that it can't be the solution and so shouldn't even be discussed.

      And the unfortunates who, among other things, aggressively act the role of the “pigeon”, not only accepting what the liars say but literally incorporating it within their being! Tossing aside any criticism of the lie when they hear it; driving any thoughts that disprove the lie from their own head if they think of them; making a career of intruding in conversations to pontificate the lie; insinuating the essentials of the lie into their overall worldview philosophy; and, vice versa, seeing everything they know or learn as contributing to the “proof” that the lie they were told is valid. Eventually, it comes almost as a physical kick to them to hear anyone even question the lie; they cannot abide actual proof the lie is a lie; they continue their devotion to the lie even after the swindler admits that they were a crook.

      And, even among the less drastically self delusional, the principle remains true, no one holds “doctors” to a responsibility to perform, much less succeed, and, even if the “doctor” fails entirely, no one admits they failed.

      We all must work to recognize that we have to be able to think for ourselves, decide for ourselves, act for ourselves, promote our welfare over that of those charging us for “services”, be our own best advocates. We must discern for ourselves our best options in dealing with disc problems.

      Disc decompression can take a number of steps. Chiropractic, traction, specialized decompressive therapy. It can also take a while finally to have tangible results, but it's better than no results no matter how long you wait. In general, you should feel some significant improvement almost immediately, but it can take up to a year for most symptoms to dissipate. And it is a matter of maintenance. You have to be prepared to answer any changes with treatment, you have to keep up a regimen of common sense actions. You must guard your health, eat right, exercise and be well rested.

      In the next article, we will help you with some suggestions on relieving some of the symptoms.

My Wife's Experience With Fibromyalgia

      For my wife and me, experience with an understanding of the nature of fibromyalgia and the many facets that surround it began with an accident my wife sustained in 1994 at the apartment house where we lived. Just dealing with the issues that attend finding healing from fibromyalgia or a way to handle it subjects an individual to a minefield of misrepresentation, misinformation, abuse and betrayal from many sources. When you add the involvement of legal proceedings, you find yourself beset with hordes of enemies. A nutshell version of my wife's experiences would be bigger than an orchard.

      The accident involved my wife slipping on some dry snow, during a winter day at least 5 degrees below zero, trying to make her way down a stairway that hadn't been swept clean by maintenance for a day. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building which had an exposed series of wood terraces in the back, connected by a wood stairway. The rear of the building is where the cars were parked. There was "dry snow" on every step of the staircase; the steps themselves were pressure treated wood, so they had little traction; and there was no handrail, just a foot wide plank of wood there more for decoration and convincing any untrained "inspector" they sent by to examine the place. My wife slid down a twenty step flight, landing at the bottom and falling forward, landing on her hand and hitting her chin. After a full series of x-rays at the local hospital, it was announced that she had, officially, sustained a “comminuted fracture of the left distal radius”, in other words, the forearm bone, of her left arm. Nothing else was acknowledged.

      The immediate concern at the hospital was the fracture. No other conditions were described.

      It was at that moment, in that situation, that we learned one of the rules of insurance they don't acknowledge widely. That medical insurance will not pay unless “the most conservative” method of treatment is tried first. “The most conservative” method involved setting my wife's arm bones and placing them in a cast like “splint”.

      She remained in the splint for a month. Then the day came to remove it. She went to the orthopedist who applied it, he cut the splint, and the bone immediately refractured.

      The pain and shock was so bad, she got nauseous and passed out.

      With the “most conservative” methodology having failed, she was rushed to the hospital for more aggressive treatment, application of an external fixator.

      The fixator took a couple of months to do its work. Obviously, there was discomfort still for my wife. In fact, she began to experience aches and pains in many parts of her body. There particularly were severe pains in her legs, knees and low back. She consulted her doctor, what general opinion led her to believe was the only one she needed for a doctor, the orthopedist who prescribed her the splint that allowed her arm to refracture.

      The orthopedist never said anything different, the pains will “clear up eventually”. My wife was prescribed Relafen.

      The fixator was finally removed, but the pains continued. And the orthopedist continued to say that they would “clear up eventually”. My wife tried to address the excruciating pains in her legs and the orthopedist showed her some x-rays of perfectly normal knees and said nothing was wrong. The orthopedist prescribed treatment for my wife which consisted of ultrasonic waves applied to her arm through a water bath.

      Meanwhile, we tried to look into filing suit for the injury.

      Our first attorney almost let the statute of limitations lapse on the suit without doing a single thing.   There were only a couple of days left to the statute when we checked in and found that precisely nothing had been done.

      Our second attorney deposed only the wife of one of the lesser owners of the apartment building. She didn't know anything because she never had any involvement with the building. He didn't depose the maintenance man who was charged with cleaning off the stairs to find out why they hadn't been cleaned.

      No sooner was one of the lesser owners of the building deposed than the major owner sold the building. The new owners sent us a letter announcing the change in the rent three days before the change was scheduled to take effect. We didn't even know there was a change until we received the letter. As a result, we didn't pay the new rent when it was due. They ordered us evicted.

      We moved to another county.

      We dismissed our second attorney and tried a third.

      The third attorney introduced us to the term “fibromyalgia” to describe my wife's discomfort. He described fibvromyalgia as being associated with accidents, that many people suffer from it, but that no cause was known. He recommended that my wife get a rheumatologist. The rheumatologist confirmed the diagnosis of fibromyalgia and he prescribed elavil and Daypro, the elavil to go to sleep at night and the Daypro to get up in the morning. There were a number of painkillers and muscle relaxers prescribed, as well, including Flexoril and Percocet, on an “as needed” basis.

      The excruciating leg pains continued, though. It was at the deposition the third attorney conducted, with pictures of the stairway, that she remembered how she had gone down the steps, essentially skipping steps, remaining upright, but landing foot first on each step, until, finally, she crashed at the bottom.

      At that point, my wife went back to the orthopedist and asked to have her ankles x-rayed. The orthopedist set up an appointment, but, the night before the x-ray, he called up, recommending that my wife not come to his office the next day, saying that the x-rays would not help, literally begging her not to go through with getting an x-ray of her ankles and practically crying as he said it. As a result, my wife decided not to have the x-ray. As a “substitute” for the x-ray, the orthopedist sent my wife for an EMG. We were told it indicated a “lumbar radiculopathy”, but no one explained to us even what that meant, how if was associated with the pains my wife was feeling or how to handle them.

      We went to a different doctor, this time, a different orthopedist, for x-rays and MRI's. He said they couldn't find anything wrong with my wife's legs. On the day of a scheduled appointment, it should be mentioned, the doctor's office doors were locked. There was no answer when we knocked, but there were voices and shadows moving hurriedly back and forth that could be seen through the door jamb.

      All this time, my wife could barely walk or stand for more than a minute or two.

      My wife went to another doctor, at least for pain management of the legs, since no one else was doing anything about it. This doctor was an acupuncturist. He administered acupuncture treatments and prescribed pain killers, physical therapy and a TENS unit. They helped slightly, but only modestly.

When, finally, it came time to settle the case, we decided to simply let it be dismissed. No one had answered or even addressed the issue of the leg pains, not even our attorney, and my wife did not want to settle for an amount that would be too small for whatever problem she had with her legs.

Since there was nobody who would directly address the pains in my wife's legs, we decided to try to handle it ourselves. I would manually rotate her ankles every night, trying to deal with the strong urge my wife felt to have her ankles twisted.

      Then, about a year-and-a-half after we had the case dismissed, my wife tripped over my boots in the living room and said she heard a loud crack. We were afraid that something even worse had happened, but, when she tried to stand up, she found that the excruciating right leg pain had disappeared. She still had severe pain in the left leg, so I continued to rotate that ankle each night. Then, about a month after the first incident, my wife stepped in a pothole and heard a loud crack in the other ankle. Promptly, her pain in the left leg was now gone. She still had weakness in the legs and difficulty walking or standing for short periods, but they felt much better than they had for a long time.

      Her ankles had been subluxated and the displacement had caused pain throughout all the rest of the muscles in her legs. But nobody looked, nobody diagnosed what the situation was , they knew what it was, but they weren't going to do anything about it.

      Problems like trigger point pain all over her body continued, though, along with muscle stiffness, muscle aches everywhere, lethargy, trouble sleeping, some of the effect they often call “fibro fog”, chronic fatigue, never feeling rested, low back pain, pain in the knees, some gastrointestinal problems, blood pressure being extremely high, neuralgia, stiff necks, headaches, and, still, some pains and weakness in her legs, although they were a lot better after the ankles were fixed into place.

      When we consulted initially the rheumatologist, he could only agree that it was fibromyalgia, but not offer any kind of cure. He described it as “mostly a woman's disease”, saying “mostly women get it”.

      At about this same time, we found that my wife could have filed for disability after the accident, but not even our attorneys told us about it.

      My wife was praying to St. Bernadette for an answer, watching “Song of Bernadette” every night on the VCR, when, ten years after the accident, she saw an ad in the newspaper that said “Fibromyalgia?” and gave an offer for a free consultation. It was a chiropractor. My wife decided she had nothing to lose so she visited him.

      The thermal scan indicated that the temperature of her muscles about her neck, in the area of C5-6, was at maximum that the machine could register. The chiropractor then took an x-ray of her neck and informed her that she had a cervical disk compression at C5-6.

      My wife began treatment immediately. He cracked her neck and it made a giant pop that even I could hear from across the room. It was like a giant explosion of gas buildup. My wife said she immediately felt 80% better, like someone had “let her out of her captivity”. After that first treatment, my wife could move her head freely, axially and sagitally, left and right and up and down. My wife also told him about the back pain and knee pain and he said that would disappear after several months of traction.

      The chiropractor utilized the neck cracking a few more times in subsequent treatments, but we soon found that that didn't need repeating. My wife was helped more by adjustments and decompression traction in the doctor's office. At this point, my wife had stopped taking medication. He said it would take a year for the trigger point pains to go away, but many of the other symptoms of fibromyalgia were already diminishing.

      With the cause of her symptoms finally revealed, and the potential finally available to get a valid and workable estimate of the impact on her system and what it would cost, we tried to get the case reinstated. We had simply dismissed it because we were not in a position to mount a sufficient case, but it could be begun again. But, although we contacted a dozen attorneys with the information about the cause of my wife's pains, every single last one of them refused to take our case.

      Then our chiropractor announced he was moving away.

      My wife knew what her problem was and how to help it, but, now, she was left without someone to treat her.

      My wife went to another chiropractor, but he never took any x-rays, he only threw her around on the table and asked her, “Who dropped you on your head?”. Not all chiropractors are good, you do have to be careful screening them. But she was determined to find a good one. Finally, my wife decided to screen chiropractors before she went to them, to find out, for example, if they took x-rays and administered spinal decompression. After speaking to a few on the phone, she made an appointment for a consultation with another chiropractor. This chiropractor provided everything she needed and more. He would not administer any treatment until he took a full x-ray of the complete spine. He said, from the x-rays he took, that her disk was “sitting right on her spinal column” and he frankly didn't know how she could have walked into his office.

      He x-rayed her entire spine, consulted with her for an hour, showed her the x-rays, and explained his treatment plan. He performed cranial adjustment, other adjustments and spinal decompression. Evidently, your head is supposed to sit on your shoulders in a very precise manner, and if it's out of position even one centimeter, it can cause stiff neck and stiff shoulders and limitation in your range of motion. Also, the back of your neck is supposed to have an “S” curve. If that curve is missing and your neck is straight, because of atrophy, it can cause a serious problem, what's called “forward head position”, which can cause further disk degeneration. He provided a home traction device, comprised of a roll to put behind her neck, a chin strap and a three pound weight, to hang over the side of the bed for eight minutes every night. This kept her disks decompressed. He explained that, when you have a disk problem, it's a matter of constant maintenance to keep the symptoms from progressing and alleviating symptoms.

      This was in 2005, 11 years after the accident, when we finally found out about the disk problem. Finally, everything made sense, everyone working to keep the information on my wife's neck from us. They had the x-rays, they knew, but they wouldn't admit it. They constantly said it was something else; they refused to look where asked; they prescribed treatments that had nothing to do with the actual problem, since a treatment that worked would point out what the real problem was; and they provided medication to try to mask the symptoms, to keep my wife from following up and trying to get an answer!

      I should mention that, between about 1999 and 2013, my wife had to go to the oral surgeon twice to have an abscess on her lower jaw surgically treated, the spot that she had hit landing at the bottom of the stairs. She complained early on about her feeling numbness in her tongue, and each time, the doctor said it was nothing, just nerves.

      People every day sustain whiplash type injuries, from an auto accident or a fall down accident, and they have no idea what it means. They don't understand what's causing their neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain. If they are told they have a herniated disk, they don't have it explained to them what it is, how it can affect them, and how it can be treated.

      Fibromyalgia is not a disease, it's not an illness, it's not a life sentence. It's a syndrome, a collection of symptoms that come from some cause. The fibromyalgia that my wife experienced came from her disk problem. In fact, this seems to be the sole cause of all fibromyalgia. There are those who try to blame other diseases and even medication. And, yes, few years ago, despite feeling better from the chiropractic treatments, my wife decided to take an elavil one night, just for some deep sleep. When she woke up, she found she had the same trigger point ailments that had been gone after treating with her new chiropractor back. It took her a year to get rid of them again! And some pain medications like Motrin will cause you GI problems and difficulty sleeping. Don't expect that medications will necessarily make you feel better at all. And some diseases, like diabetes, will give you some symptoms of fibrolmyalgia. But fibrolmyalgia itself is an entire collection of specific symptoms! If you don't have a majority of them, you don't have fibromyalgia! And if you have a majority of the symptoms, you have it! In a very rare number of cases, you might have several independent conditions simultaneously whose symptoms add up to fibromyalgia, but is it worth the gamble that you might not get well and might even end up harming yourself! Remember, many treatments or medications taken for diseases you don't have have damage you or poison you! And treating yourself for anything other than fibromyalgia will not cure the fibromyalgia.

      And especially since dealing with a compressed disk through a chiropractor is the most modest method of treatment there is, completely non-invasive, it makes sense to look at this first before deciding to take powerful poisons, have your blood flushed out or have spinal fusion surgery which can leave your back with so little flexibility you can't even clean yourself after going to the bathroom and someone has to do it for you!

      After three months of treatment with her chiropractor, my wife felt 70% better than when she arrived. He blood pressure dropped from 180 to about normal. Depending on how long your symptoms are allowed to exist, it could take years to get rid of every symptom. It was only a few years ago, after Hurricane Sandy, that my wife got rid of one of her worst symptoms, the night leg pains. She had to massage her legs with a Homedics massager for the last twelve years just to be able to get to sleep. This is why early treatment is so critical, so your symptoms do not exacerbate to the point where you're completely incapacitated. People must understand that a herniated disk is not a death sentence, but it does take a lifetime of maintenance to have a good quality of life. My wife has seen this chiropractor since 2005 and she receives maintenance as needed. She tries to get maintenance every week, to keep her symptoms at a minimum. There are some weeks where she doesn't have to go at all, because she's feeling pretty normal. My wife takes no medication, is working full time and sleeps well through the night.

      The prevalent symptoms you can experience if you let yourself go, as my wife did for up to ten years, are

pain behind the eye;

eye twitching;

tingling above the upper lip, the kind that travels very rapidly and lasts for just a second;

      frequent choking on saliva or food, tightness of the throat;

muscles spasms and stiffness throughout the body, charley horses in the legs and feet

when stretching upon waking;

numbness in the low back and extremities after sitting a short period;

neuralgia, shooting pains in head, ears or face;

chronic migraine headaches;

pins and needles in extremities;

sensation of glass or bee stings in your extremities;

sciatica, pain down the back of the legs;

carpal tunnel syndrome;

overall aches and pains throughout the body;

GI symptoms, irritable bowel, gas, bloating, diarrhea, nausea, severe stomach cramping,

      acid reflux, severe urgency to get to the bathroom, frequent urination sensation;

low back pain, especially while sleeping, turning over in bed, reclining on your back,

      bending;

severe knee pain, sitting in a chair, bending, climbing stairs or walking up or down an

      incline;

ankle, knee, joint and leg pain, swelling and tightness, pressure on your feet, if you have

      your shoes on for long periods;

chronic fatigue;

leg weakness, one of the most serious, causing limitation on the amount of time you can

      stand up or walk around;

severe leg pains upon retiring in bed at night;

high blood pressure;

lethargy;

depression;

anxiety, sleeplessness;

sensitivity to light, noise, temperature changes and extremes;

very tight knots in the trapezius muscles, the upper back, shoulder blades;

      pain causing stiff neck and shoulders;

limitation of motion in neck and shoulders, inability to look sideways and up and down;

diminishment of eyesight, can affect the optic nerve;

hand/eye coordination diminished, dropping things, balance and coordination problems,

      diminshment of cognitive abilities, ability to concentrate and focus;

weakness of the voice after extreme fatigue;

tightness of scalp, feeling the scalp being stretched over the skull;

leg shortening.

      My wife believes that Advil, Motrin and Aleve can cause a lot of indigestion, other GI symptoms and nervousness. It is much better to try to do without.

      When my wife weaned herself off the anti-depressants, it took about a year for all the anxiety and jumpiness to finally dissipate.

      This is a nutshell of my wife's experiences with fibromyalgia.

      In the future, we will provide information about how a herniated disk can cause all the symptoms of fibromyalgia and how to deal with it.