Fibromyalgia: Anatomy of a Flare-up

So I find myself back on prescription meds—Celebrex (an anti-inflammatory) and Flexeril (a muscle relaxant)—for the first time in quite a while. What happened was this: my husband was scheduled for surgery for last Friday. He needed to have his tonsils out. I had been told that tonsillectomy recovery in an adult is extremely painful and really not much fun, so I was quite worried for him. More than that, though, I had a deep-seated fear that he would die on the table or during the recovery. I know that sounds ridiculous: an entire generation of kids had their tonsils out and survived, and, as my husband said, “The doctor spends every Friday doing this and so far hasn’t offed anyone.” So I knew my fears were irrational and I tried to ignore them. However I must say that I come by these fears honestly: my sister almost died after what was supposed to be a routine surgery. She also had a terrible experience during another routine procedure where the anesthetic didn’t work; she was immobilized but could feel everything (this apparently happens more frequently than people think, as was reported here last year.) I also have a history of catastrophic thinking: even though I think of myself as a fairly positive person, deep down I expect the worst to happen. And of course the prospect, no matter how unfounded and irrational, of losing my husband brought up all sorts of other worries and fears around loss and grief and dependence and so on. In addition to worries about my husband and the surgery, I was dealing with my older son who has hit adolescence full force, an experience that I also find very stressful.

All that to say that in the weeks leading up to the surgery I became more and more stressed, anxious, angry, and worried, without being completely aware that I was slipping into a predominantly negative mental/emotional state. I knew I was stressed, but I didn’t realize to what extent, because a lot of my fears and worries were subconscious, and not readily acknowledged by my rational mind. Over a period of several weeks I became more and more lethargic, tired, and “foggy,” my pain kept increasing, I started feeling new symptoms in new places (muscle spasms near the bottom of my rib cage, for example), I could no longer do my exercises due to the new symptoms, and without my exercises I felt like I had no control over my situation, no way to keep working on getting better. Meanwhile my sleep really deteriorated (in part thanks to my son who goes to bed later than I do), I found it hard to keep up with the stress management techniques I’ve learned, like meditation and walking, and all in all I got started on a downward spiral.

Once my husband was in the hospital, all of a sudden the burden of stress lifted. I’m not sure why, but even before he went through the procedure I felt better, mentally. After the operation, when I realized that everything was OK, I felt even better. The first couple of nights, however, I couldn’t sleep because I was tending to his pain meds and so on, so physically I continued to get worse. On the third night he was well enough that I could sleep in a separate room. Strangely, that night I could not fall asleep, even though, or maybe because, I was beyond exhausted, not having had a good night’s sleep in many weeks. I just lay there, hyper-vigilant, hyper-aware of every sound, still worried that my husband might need me, or that something would happen in the night and I wouldn’t know about it. The next day the pain was worse than ever; I could hardly walk around the block without setting off spasms. That’s when I decided to go back on the meds.

It was the best decision I could have made, as the meds helped to cut the pain-worry-anxiety-stress cycle. I felt I was not able to end the cycle myself; I was in it too deep. But the meds alleviated some (not all) of the pain, and allowed me to get a couple of good nights. Sleep is so important for restoration and rejuvenation.

I feel like now I am back on an upward spiral. Today I’ll visit the osteopath to make sure that everything is how it should be, and gradually I’ll get back into walking and physiotherapy. I would like to know if there was any way I could have prevented getting on such a serious downward spiral. I’m sure there are many stressful events ahead of me in my life, and I don’t want this to happen every time. If you have any suggestions you’d like to share, please post them in the comments—my readers and I would appreciate any tips!