Thank you to my dear blog followers. I am going to try my best to answer the questions sent by L.C. I cannot answer emails directly and please remember none of my advice replaces good medical care.
The one issue I’d like to start with is your age. I remember hitting premenopause like it was yesterday, not fourteen years ago. One minute I could sleep mid-way between good and night – and the next I could count myself lucky if I managed two hours of sleep a night.
Premenopause is – how shall I put this politely – a cow! No – I like cows, love them when I’m eating them. Premenopause is Dante’s inferno – almost. Hot and cold. No sleep. Ratty as hell. Stress with a capital S T R E S S on your body.
Hormonally your Flight Fright (Freeze) Fight Centre is lit up and every hormone is in an uproar. I often talk about load. Premenopause is a huge emotional – stress – load – on your body. It can be the thing that tips the balance of your health. I know it did mine. I developed such severe sinusitis that if snot were a commodity – I’d be rich. Too gross? Sorry – I’m a doc. What can I say?
So . . . 48 means stress and all the illnesses that go along with stress. Now add to that a huge surgery – and – make no mistake – just because we kick you out of hospital day two or three after surgery – doesn’t make the surgery small. In MY DAY – you’d have been in hospital for two weeks. So Premenopause + Huge surgery + possible inadequate pain relief – + going home and not being able to rest — all of that lights up your LIMBIC centre. https://painimprovement.com/1128-2/
Pain causes the bowels to “shut down”. Maybe you were given opioids which also cause constipation. Great that you’ve had a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy. Finding “nothing” just means that the kinds of changes you are having in your body are not changes we can pick up on Xray or ultrasound or blood work. Great that you had a mammogram and blood work as well. It sounds like you are really getting a good work up. It’s often harder to treat your kind of case because we can’t show you the problem on a piece of paper or X-ray.
So how does all of this tie up. Hmmmmm How much time do you have? Considering you’ve been suffering for 2 years, I’ll try and work it out – remember I can only guess. quit an edumicated one if i have to say so misef.
Stress lights up the limbic system. That’s the place where all the action is. Control of ALL your hormones, metabolism, emotions, pain. The hormones affect your whole body, including your gut, immune system, blood. But it affects different people in different ways. Adrenaline causes you to get hot and feel shaky as if you have low glucose, it can cause glucose to go up in diabetics, it can cause your blood pressure to drop OR go up (Go Figure) and can even cause people to faint; tingles, spiders crawling, electric shocks. Cortisol gets affected – which affects your immune system. I could go on and on. Trust me – I can. But . . .
Most health professionals now realize that fibromyalgia is not just pain. It is a widespread imbalance in your body. Some people only have pain and fatigue, others have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhoea, OR constipation OR both. Others have burning urination or itching and painful vulva – browse around on the site https://painimprovement.com/widespread-pain-fatigue-fibromyalgia-ibs/
and https://painimprovement.com/fibromyalgia/
Go have a look a few posts below – I have a regime I’ve worked out for stress and trauma to the body – you have that. Maybe you have something else, but you can certainly try those simple steps and do the breathing with a breathing “buddy” to make sure your chest is not moving. Do the 3 minute exercise in the morning and at night – choose one of the three 30 minute regimes below that.
Good luck. Please let me know how you are doing. I am sending you one of my special hugs across the universe. Judy