December 14, 2009

Last night I made a new stew. Ingredients: 14 bean soup mix ( do not use the  flavoring packet), barley, rice, tomatoes with green chilies, and onion.  Bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer for two hours or until beans are cooked.  It was delicious. Even my husband , the previously consummate carnivore, loved it. Vegetarianism is wonderful!

December 13, 2009

This morning, I weighed 170. I began this journey to lose weight at 199. It was the middle of September of this year. 
It all began while my daughter-in-law was researching ways to get my husband off of the 14 medicines his doctors had prescribed for his various illnesses: High blood pressure, an enlarged heart, and diabetes.  She  was also on a quest for herself. She had diabetes, chronic liver problems and, high blood pressure.  I ,as you know if you have been following this blog, suffer from fibromyalgia and depression.
She started with Dr. Ornish's "Eat More, Weigh Less" and then "Reversing Heart Disease".  Before anybody knew what had happened, she, her husband and two sons were vegetarians.  Two weeks later, so was I. A month later, my husband, the carnivore, joined the rest of the family as a vegetarian.

Only a week ago, she visited her doctor to have full blood panels run. He was astounded. She had lost 38 pounds! Her high blood pressure was gone. Her diabetes was cured!  He asked her question after question and finally his doubt gave way to incredulity as he suggested that she write a book about her miraculous journey to health!  He was totally serious.

I have decided to tell you what we have done and give you a chance to cure yourself, lose weight and enjoy amazingly good health.   Today, I just wanted to let you know my intent to record here on these pages what we have done, why we have done it, and give you direction to resources that will help you create a plan for yourself to replicate our successes.

I wish you good health and hope you will read on as daily I share with you.
Good health and happiness,

Barb
Baby Boomer in Bloom

Haven't posted in a while

I've been looking up friends today. I found a lot of Houston Cellular friends and sent invites on Facebook.  When you don't get out much, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch.
I have also been using Facebook as a way to make new friends. I have a goal to have friends from every country.  So far, I have Finland, France, England, Canada, and the Philippines. I talk with my Finnish friend via Skype with video. He has shown me around his flat in Scotland where he currently lives and his friend's place in Finland where he recently went for a vacation.  I am hoping to find others to Skype with.
I have also found some sad news today. My old friend Marci Domec passed away in 2005 as did my high school buddy, Henry, just a few weeks ago.  I hope Rachael was there to welcome them to heaven and show them around.  I miss them all three.
I don't guess I have that much to say today...
The weather here in Houston is lovely and Sylvia and I are going to sort through our Christmas decorations as soon as she and Matt and the boys get home from seeing New Moon.  They stopped at Gardenridge to buy a revolving tree stand and should be home any minute.  Got to run!

I want JOY!

“But the fruit of the spirit is….joy….”Galatians 5:22

God’s Holy Spirit produces joy. Joy is a product of Christ-likeness. When we seek God through His Word and prayer, we will receive joy! Thank God that joy is something He wants us to have.

Okay, all that said, I am angry today.  I can't say that I have a real reason for my anger.  My focus today has been on the behavior of everyone else in my life: ...how my husband acts toward me...the tone of voice family members use when talking to me...the people who have disappointed me in my past...my son's recent layoff...the way I have been put into the position of 'child' in the family dynamics... my husband's bigotry and grumbling regarding current events. 

No wonder I am angry today. I am focused on the wrong things.  When your eyes are not properly focused, you do not see well.  When my mind is not focused correctly, I do not feel well.  So now is the time to put on the proper focus.  If I want joy, I need to be joyful.   

 I am not responsible for everything that happens to me, but I am responsible for how I react to what happens to me. I am always responsible for my attitude towards any situation in which I find myself.  My attitude is my reaction what life hands me. I can either have a more positive or more negative attitude. My reaction is under my control. My mood and attitude are under my control. With the right attitude I can be a resilient person. I can have JOY!

There is a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness springs from situations. Joy is a decision I make regardless of the situations. If I can't find reasons to be joyful, my perspective must change. God lets us have blessings every day. I will see them and thank God for them. Additionally, I will ask for God's blessings! Some think they should be blessed with joy automatically, but God's Word says "you have not because you do not ask". Ask for joy!

Stop complaining!

I am reading a book called "Complaint Free World" by Will Bowen.  He advocates changing your life by training yourself to stop complaining and recreate your life "by design". By wearing a a purple silicone bracelet and switching it from one wrist to the other every time you complain, he says you can teach yourself to stop complaining.  After 21 days of not having to move the bracelet, you've got it!
I just ordered a purple bracelet which is free from their website : www.complaintfreeworld.org . Just pay 1.00 shipping and handling. No tricks.
In the meantime, I started three days ago by using a rubber band.  My family loves it because they tease me and tell me when I have to move it but that's okay. I feel better already. I find myself catching myself before I say something and finding a more positive way of expressing it or just shutting up entirely which is even better.
I want to be known as a cheerful person. You only have power over yourself in this world and I realize that I teach people who I am by what I say and do.  Thus, I intend to stop complaining, criticizing and gossiping altogether. Those behaviors do not jibe with a cheerful person. So I am not known in the way I want to represent myself.
What about you? Are you being treated in a way you don't like because of the way you act? Have you taught your friends and family to treat you like that? If so, I encourage you to try this simple technique to reverse the trend.  Be who you want to be. Be known in the way you really want to be known.

Copy this into a word document and fill it out for yourself

"For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap." (Galatians 6:7b)

The choice remains mine; focusing on the creative and spiritual aspects of my life can alleviate my frustration.

Ways That I give up My Power/Authority over Myself.

How do I give until I give out?

What do I want people to say about me?

Ways I can prevent allowing FMS be my conversation. What other things can I talk about?

Looking for everyday awesomeness:

Examples:

It was raining and dreary, I found the beautiful colors of intense yellow, pearlescent white and multi-layered blues within the dark clouds.

I admired the glistening trees after the rain.

L'automne est un deuxième printemps où chaque feuille est une fleur. (Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.) -Albert Camus

I am not my disease.

I am happy to say that my story is out. Out of me, that is. It was important to tell the history. It was good to get it said and clean the slate for my new beginning.  
In the book Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, MD, one of the little mice keeps waiting for the cheese to come back while the other one searches for new cheese. Up until today, I have focused on the old cheese coming back.  I am done with that. I assert that I will either find new cheese or I will buy cows, harvest the milk, and make my own cheese!
I am done wishing for my old life and instead, I intend to embrace and create a satisfying new life.  I am going to paint and garden and restore old dolls. I am going to love my family with all my might. I am going to reconnect with old friends and make new friends.  I am going to reinvent myself.
Wanna watch?  You'll see!

Part Eight: The estate.

Well, now it is time to tell you about the year 2004. My sister had died on October 30th of 2003. Her house in Garland near Dallas was a lovely three bedroom with a creek in the backyard that she and I had  shopped for only a few years before.  Now,I had inherited it, three cats, and two dogs.  The three cats were adopted by one of her dear friends and the dogs were left.  An email that was sent around Plano ISD where she had worked garnered a home for them.  They were quite unruly mixed breed dogs that were quite hard to place and which I did not want to keep.  I had promised her that they would go together because they were litter mates and had been together their whole lives.  That, thankfully, was accomplished.
Physically and emotionally both because of my loss and the disability, I was not ready or able to dispose of her house. Unfortunately, she did not have credit life on her loan so I had to pay the mortgage as well as my own until I could get myself in a place where I felt ready to let go of it.  At that time, I was still getting the disability from work so the finacial strain of my decision was not too bad.
My brother-in-law was working in Dallas for a few months at the time, so he stayed at her house rather than stay in a hotel while he was there. That relieved any worries I had about someone breaking in an empty house or the house having issues (like a water break or some other disaster) while I was not there to see it and catch it in time. I will always be grateful to him for staying there for me.  He is in the flooring business so he removed and replaced all her carpet and repaired tile in her bathroom that had lifted over the years.  Again, I am grateful to him for taking care of that for me.  It made the sale the house later an easier thing to do. With three cats living in the house, replacing the carpet was absolutely required.  Thank God for Berry, my brother-in-law.
There are any number of things that the surviving family (which consisted of ME) has to do to settle an estate. The mountain of paperwork and visits to insurance companies, the Texas State Teachers'  Association, her place of emplyment which was Plano ISD, and various other institutions, all ofwhich will drive a perfectly healthy person completely out of their minds. To say nothing of the funeral and all the decisions and expense involved in that.
Thankfully, Rachael had purchased a burial plan and nearly everything was taken care of financially. Even so, the plan did not include the actual coffin, vault, ceremony, headstone. or forms and fees. All that came to over $10,000.00! For those of you who have purchased such a plan and heartily believe that your family will not incur any expense when the time comes...think again. Reread and reevaluate your plan.  You may not have what you think you have.
Okay, let's talk "stress" and Fibromyalgia since that is what I am telling you all this for anyway.  I was a mess, to say the least.  All the symptoms of fibro are exacerbated by stress. The pain is worse, the IBS is worse, the incontinence is worse, the depression is worse, the sleep issues are worse.  Stress control is the name of the game when dealing with fibro.
I was seeing a cognitive behavioral psychologist weekly to help me with learning to deal with the stress so that I could hopefully get a handle on the pain of the fibro.  One day in session, I mentioned all the trouble I was having with resolving the estate, especially dealing with the Texas State Teachers' Association when he bolted upright in his chair and fairly blurted out, " YOU are trying to do all this yourself!" To which I mildly replied."yes" and wondered why he seemed so alarmed. He told me to immediately take all my paperwork and literally dump it in a big box and take it to an estate attorney to deal with. He told me to not try and organize it or figure it out or try to present it to the attourney in a pretty organized package. He said get it all in a box and get it to the attorney.  Do not do it myself.
That was good advice. I called an estate attorney and took my box to her. She had all the correct letters and forms filled out and in the mail within a week. She reduced the mountain of extraneous paperwork. It was  shredded and gone. She presented me with a tiny folder of understandable, organized, minimal, actually controllable information.  The BOX was gone. We went to court also within a very short time for probate and it was over.
OMG, don't ever try to do all that yourself even if you are the executer. It will send you to your grave with your beloved departed.
Rachael was a pack rat.  I am too, by the way, so I send a beware here to my husband and son for when the time comes for me to go.  But, for some reason unknown to me, Rachael and her friend(the one who took the cats) had cleaned and organized her whole house other than the garage, office and attic about six months before she became ill. I will never know what inspired them to do this but I am grateful. Not only did it provide Rachael with an uncluttered home for a goodly time but it made my job of clearing the house for sale easier.
Since the estate work was accomplished by the attourny, I  reluctantly turned my attention to disposing of the house.  You know, I didn't want to sell it.  I had helped her find it and went with her to buy it.  I loved the house, its layout, its location, its yard and creek as much as she had.  I would have packed it up and moved it to my property here in Alvin if such a thing were possible.  For that matter, had my family not been here in the Houston area rather than Dallas, I would have just moved into it.  I liked the house that much.  Even now, almost 6 years later, I lay in my bed some nights and imagine the beautiful crownwork of her bedroom ceiling and cry that I wasn't able to keep that house. In my mind, I walk around its rooms and putter in the lovely kitchen and well, you get the picture.
When we were spending weekends together, Rachael and I, going around with the real estate agent, we talked about how we would live there together like the Golden Girls when we were in our 70's and 80's and 90's.  We talked about how we would sit on the back patio and listen to the creek babbling away. How we would go to plays and take day trips and weekend trips and generally just enjoy our "golden" years.  Many times, even today, I shake my fist at the sky and yell, "We were supposed to be old ladies together!"
How did this happen? How could she have contracted this horrible thing called cancer and leave? Why am I here and she isn't? How? Why? Why? How? Questions that will not be answered in this life.

Part Five: My sister and caregiving

I brought my sister home to my house because I wanted to be the one who cared for her and because I cared.  At first, she was still feeling well enough to go to the store or putter around the house.  She required daily wound care and her insurance sent a nurse to the house three times a week.  The rest of the time, we were on our own.
But, unfortunately, I had to go back to work.  My fibromyalgia pain was more intense than ever.  My mind was continually on my sister.  Her pain was increasing. She was unable to keep any food down for more than a half hour.  
Her friends from Dallas and around the state were driving for hours to come here to visit with her. Some stayed for a few days, others a few hours.  My husband saw to her basic needs - get me this - get me that - while I was away.
After about three weeks of this, I went to my boss and told her, "What if she dies while I am teaching people to properly use their dayplanners? How will I feel about that?"  So, I took a second family leave. 
It is important here to tell you that my company considered these leaves as one  continuos period of time off. They used my sick time and vacation time to pay me.  They did not consider a sister as 'family' and therefore, family leave was actually, technically not offered.This is important because later if effected my actual disability leave.
Rachael's condition worsened and she no longer had any output into the colonoscopy bag and threw up bile everry hour or so.  We called hospice.  Finally, someone who knew what both she and I were going through.
They provided a wheelchair, a hospital bed, and stronger, more effective pain control.
One day, my sister woke from a two day sleep to say,"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."  Four laborious times, she repeated the words.  Then, she went back to sleep.  She never woke up again.  62 days from her date of diagnosis, she died.

Part Seven: The end of corporate leadership training for me

I went back to work a week after Rachel died and tried to resume my work.  I ached all the time.  The fibro fog made teaching difficult as I struggled for words that would not come to me.  I consulted my doctor and found out that the stress from the caregiving and Rachael's death in combination with the physical trama from the rollover accident had made my fibromyalgia a full blown fact.
I talked to my boss and told her I was considering quitting because I was unable to do all the traveling and shlepping books, etc. that had previously been trying were now nearly impossible. It was then that she said the only knid thing I had ever heard from her in over 3 years.  She suggested I go to my doctor and get him to fill out disability paperwork.
The doctor agreed that I should go on full-time disability.  I was astonded.  I asked him if I could work until the end of the month. He said no, you start NOW.  So, he filled out the paperwork and I called my boss. The next day I cleared out my office and that was that.
The disability insurance from work required me to file for social security disability so I did that too.
The social security disability was denied. Not surprised, I hired a lawyer and about three months later the social security disability went into effect.
So, I was getting a check from the disability insurance from work and one from social security.  Things were not to bad financially.  The pain and symptoms from the fibromyalgia were the same.  They were bad.
Let me say here that the social security attorney wrote it up as fibromyalgia AND depression. Depression is one of the symptoms of fibromyalgia.  The social security board rarely approves fibromyalgia so my attorney added the depression to get the approval.  I am bipolar B and I have suffered with depression and been on medication for that for a very long time.  The FMS just had made it worse.
Two and a half years later, the work disability sent me a letter stating that they only paid on "menta;" conditions for 2 and half years so my benefits were stopped from them.  Two appeals later they still said that the FMS would not stand alone as disability and the payments stopped for good from them, cutting my income by more than half.
The appeals process is through only their doctors and their panel.  My primary care doctor had noted my records that I did a lot of gardening when I had been in to see him about a cut that was infected on my finger after potting a six pack of zinnias.  The disability insurance company said that if I could garden, I could work.  I had to take it on the chin, as they say, because I had no recourse otherwise. That was 2005.
So now I live on the social security check only.  My son and daughter-in-law  and their kids moved in with me in 2008 because I had used all my savings and could not keep up the mortgage, lights, etc.
I totally believe that the disability insurance company used a loop hole to cheat me out of my money.  I had paid extra while I worked to have that insurance and should have recieved a check every month until I was 65.  They just flat out stole from me.

Part Six: My sister's death

I brought my sister home to my house because I wanted to be the one who cared for her and because I cared. At first, she was still feeling welel enough to go to the store or putter around the house. She required daily wound care and her insurance sent a nurse to the house three times a week.  The rest of the time, we were on our own.

Unfortunately, I had to go back to work.  my fibromyalgia pain was more intense than ever.  My mind was continually on my sister.  Her pain was increasing.  She was unable to keep any food down for more than half an hour.

Her friends from Dallas and around the state were driving for hours to come here to visit with her. Some stayed for a few days, others a few hours. My husband saw to her basic needs - get me this - get me that - while I was away.

 After, about three weeks of this, I went to my boss and told her, "what if she dies while I am teaching people to prperly use their daily planers or some other mundane thing?  How will i feel about that?"  So, I took a second family leave.

It is important here to tell you that my company considered these leaves as one continuous period of time off. They used my sick time and vacation time to pay me.  They did not consider a sister as 'family' and therefore, family leave was actually, technically not offered. This is important because later it effected my actual disability leave.

Rachael's condition worsened and she no longer had any output into the colonoscopy bag and vomited up bile every hour or so.  We called hospice. finally, we had found someone who knew what both she and I were going through! They provided a wheelchair, a hospital bed, and stronger, more effective pain control.

One day, my sister woke from a two day sleep to say, “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."  Four laborious times, she repeated the words.  Then, she went back to sleep.  She never woke up again.  62 days from her date of diagnosis, she died.

Part Four:Stress exacerbates FMS

In July of 2003, I received a phone call early in the morning from my sister. She was scheduled for a routine exploratory surgery to determine the cause of stomach pain from which she had been suffering for about 4 months.  When I hung up, wishing her well, I began to pray.  I was overwhelmed with the sense that I needed to be there when she woke up from the surgery. I needed to be with her when she heard the outcome.  It was 7:00 am.  I called my boss and left am message on her answering machine that I was making an emergency trip to Dallas to attend to my sister.  I hastened to pack, jumped in my car, and drove to Dallas arriving just as the doctor finished his surgery.  

He came to the waiting room and inquired if Rachael Gray's family was there. I stepped forward to hear the news.  Rachael had stage 4 colon cancer.  He gave her anywhere from a week to a year to live.

  

Rachael and I looked very much alike. We were often mistaken for twins even though there was six years difference in our ages with her being the eldest.  We were close as twins.  We talked on the phone every day.  We shared everything.  She was unmarried and worked as an English teacher for the Plano ISD.  

She was still in recovery when her doctor showed me the pictures that he had taken during the endoscopic surgery.  Most of the pictures resembled reddish flesh and organs that looked as if a crazed painter had splattered buckets and buckets of white paint all over her.  The doctor explained that the white was cancer.  There was more white than anything.  It was terrifying.

When she woke, we (the doctor and I) explained that he had found cancer and that he would have to do another surgery, not endoscopic this time, to see if he could remove the masses.  This required a clean out such as they do for a colonoscopy.  She drank two gallons of that foul liquid over a 24 hour period.  Nothing happened.  She had no bowel activity.  After two days, he went ahead and took her into surgery anyway.

Several hours later, he came to me in the waiting room.  He said that he was unable to remove any of it.  It was like foam and disintegrated and spread when he tried to remove it.  It was wrapped around the main arteries to her legs and she would bleed to death on the table if he tried to cut it away.  He said her situation was bleak. The cancer was way too far advanced to treat.  He shortened his prognosis to a week to two months.  

Then he did something unusual for a doctor.  He prayed with me.  Afterward he sat with me for a long time while I cried and tried to digest the information he had given me.  

"Do we tell her", he asked.

"Yes", I replied, "she would want us to be truthful and give her the facts."

She didn't react well to the anesthesia.  It gave her nightmares and hallucinations.  She had to be tied down. Once when they hadn't restrained her, she found the scissors a negligent nurse who had dressed her surgical wound had left on her nightstand. She tried to attack the night nurse and escape.  They disarmed her, gave her a sedative, and restrained her again.  

That was the night I had left the hospital for the first time in a week to try and get some sleep at her house.  Just as I fell asleep, the phone rang.  

"You need to come down here and sit with her.  She is screaming in her sleep and the whole floor is disrupted. We are hoping you can calm her and stop the screaming,” the nurse told me on the phone.

So, I went back to the hospital.  No amount of shushing, crooning, singing, hand-holding, or anything else would stop her screaming.  Finally, I resorted to holding my hand loosely over her mouth to muffle the sound when she screamed.  Nightmares, she later told me, about being tortured by Hitler.

She remained in the hospital for nearly two weeks.  During that time, I was on my cell phone most of the day trying to pacify my main boss and run my office, rearrange schedules for classes, and break in a new mid level boss from the hospital.

Finally, I requested and received a family leave but still talked daily to the office because only I knew the ins and outs of the Leadership end of training. 

By that time, Rachael had been released but required constant care.  I brought her to my home in Alvin and began her full time care.  I learned how to clean and dress her surgical wound.  I learned to clean, replace and empty the colonoscopy bag they had attached during the second surgery.  I learned to ignore the horrible pain of my fibromyalgia.  It was getting progressively worse but I wasn't dying. My dear sister was.

Part Three: What I found out about FMS in the early days

At this point in time, in the year 2000, there was little on the internet that defined the condition.  My doctor tried a weight loss consultant. He cost me over $800.00 and gave me a hair sample test and blood test that only showed that I had a mild allergy to chicken eggs.  He then prescribed a regime of colonics and vitamins for an additional fee.  They had no effect.  Finally, I went back to the doctor and told him that his referral was to a quack medicine man who was hawking expense, untested, ineffective crap that served no one but himself and emptied m y pockets.  The doctor ran more blood tests, did a complete $900.00 physical and diagnosis, you got it, fibromyalgia.  No cure, no treatment.  Duh!

So, I began to list my symptoms and research the library for more information.  One book recommended guifisin (Mucinex) in large quanties would help.  It didn't.  One researcher suggested treating each symptom as a separate entity.  That is when I was on 12 or so different medicines:  Serazone for depression, Darvacet for pain, something else for migraines, muscle relaxers for muscle cramps, klonipin for restless leg syndrome, omeprozole for irritable bowel syndrome, Imodium for diarrhea, something for incontinence, and various others as well.  All these prescriptions and OTC were given to me by a medical doctor.  I rattled when I walked; I was so full of pills.  And yet, I still hurt, I was still exhausted, and my job had become a holy hell.

Some days, I would fall flat on my face in front of a class because I got up too fast and my muscles didn’t react as fast as I expected. They'd freeze and down I'd go.  I began to have trouble with coming up with the right word.  i know now that it was what is known as fibro fog. Then, I who am so proud of my vocabulary and communication skills, I thought I was just plain going nuts!

Just as I thought things couldn't get worse....they did.

Part Two: More background about the beginnings

I began to consider retiring at the beginning of 2003.  Everyday had become a lesson in torture as I showered and made myself presentable to meet a new day.  My manager told me I looked disheveled to which I took offense since I was unsure that she knew the meaning of the word and I hurt so badly getting ready that she was probably right.  I would plan my itinerary to arrive in the city where I was teaching or taking a class myself on the evening prior to the class. I would check in at the hotel and go straight to bed when I arrived knowing that unless I rested and controlled the physical stress, I would be unable to teach the next day.  I was doing my best to arrange my schedule so that I could cope. But then the company decided to tighten the purse strings and eliminated that option. They required us to fly the earliest flight on the morning of the class, rent a car, rush through rush hour traffic in an unfamiliar city, set up the class, and teach starting at 8:30 until 5:00. At lunch, I checked out of the hotel, bringing my bags back to the training site. After the class, we were required to clear up the room, wipe down all the tables, sharpen all the pencils and return them to the tables, pack, and go back to the airport. Rushing to return the rental car, ride the shuttle to the airport and catch the flight was excruciatingly painful.  Often times, when going to California or Washington, I had to transfer planes in Dallas.  Inevitably, the connecting flight was on the opposite side of the airport. Running with bags to catch my flight to Houston was exhausting. Dallas is notorious for delays, so even after all that rushing, sometimes I would find myself sitting for hours in those hard plastic chairs waiting for my flight which should have left already.  By the time I arrived in Houston, rode the shuttle to my parking garage, got in my car and drove 30 minutes home...well, let's just say the fibromyalgia pain was at its peak.

Even so, the next morning I was at my desk or at a training site by 7:30 trying to drag myself through another day. Being there by that time required I get up at 5:00 ( I need at least an hour before my muscles will allow me to shower and get ready they are so stiff and painful.) and leave my house by 6:45.  If my class was in northwest Houston, I had to get up at 3:30 or 4:00. Traffic is a bear in Houston.

I simply plodded through the pain and prayed for the weekends.

Part One:The beginning or first signs

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (FMS)in 1998. Back then it was not considered a disease or even a syndrome. My doctor handed me a pamphlet about the pressure points and symptoms and told me there was no treatment. He said for me to make an appointment for 3 months later. Now why would I want to do that if there was no treatment and an office visit cost me over $100.00? That sure was one expensive pamphlet!

At that time, my main complaint was that my hands hurt all the time.  Just hanging there at the end of my arms and hurting.  Like a toothache that NEVER went away.  I had consulted a hand specialist who ruled out carpal tunnel, arthritis, and rheumatism Then he gave me this really painful needle-in-the-joints-test that revealed nothing as well. Finally, in desperation (and perhaps to milk more money out of me) he fashioned two wrist braces that held my wrists at a 45 degree angle and told me to wear them at night.  They provided no relief and made it nearly impossible to pee in the middle of the night!  I could not undress without taking them off.  Nearly didn't make it to the toilet after all that taking off of wrist braces while nearly asleep.
Then, for a while, my symptoms were not so severe.  Oh, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome and depression and went into therapy but no one else said FMS to me for a long while.
In 2002, I had a rollover accident when a woman ran a red light downtown and T-boned my Blazer.  I walked away with just a tiny scratch where some windshield glass cut me on my finger.  I took two days off work and resumed my normal life.
But normal life wasn't normal anymore.  The symptoms of hurting hands and the inability to get up off the floor once I was down there, and an aching right knee began to become intense.  So, I trouped myself back to a doctor. 

 FIBROMYALGIA! No treatment. At least now it was recognized by the AMA as a disease!
Work became a tremendous strain. I was responsible for the Leadership training for 350 managers and supervisors all around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. I took classes for myself in Washington State, Florida, Dallas, and California. I also had between 4 and 12 assistant manager trainees whose branches all over Houston had to visited at least once a month.  The travel, schlepping training materials,climbing stairs, airports, driving.... all that HURT!