Anybody here with fibromylagia?

[hedgehog]

Is there a reason my daughter's rheumatologist hasn't suggested an SNRI such as Cymbalta?

[Warpy]

1. Expense? The stuff is still on patent

They usually go through the cheap stuff like NSAIDs first before they hit it with the heavier drugs.

Mine has responded very well to Ultram.

[mopinko]

2. is she taking lyrica?

they conflict.

[hedgehog]

3. I think she's taking something for the fibro, but not an SNRI.

She's had a diagnosis of fibromylagia for about 7 years, but it was only when she went to a new rheumatologist last summer that she got a script for anything! It might be Lyrica, I'm not sure.

She tells me about her problems, but is too shy to tell her doctor!


I was wondering if there are a lot of problems with SNRIs that might make doctors reluctant to prescribe them.

[DevonRex]

5. No problems taking them but Cymbalta is hell to get off of.

It began not working for depression so I wanted to switch. The pain came back like I was hit by a Mack truck. And that was just on the first decrease in dosage.

But when I got to switch to Elavil and Prozac I found that was a better combination all around.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. I had to go off of it when it broke me mentally. It was the reason I was

finally correctly diagnosed as bipolar. However, the withdrawal or whatever it was when I came off of it was awful. I was all right during the day, but for several nights in a row I just cried myself to sleep from the pain.

[DevonRex]

8. Yes. The pain at night was terrible.

It got worse as the evening wore on and by bedtime it was terrible. And left few choices for relief. OTC meds didn't work at normal human doses. If I took enough to work, my stomach felt like somebody was in there stabbing me with a fork trying to dig out.
Pain medicine keeps me awake. Sleep medication makes me depressed. So... You just live through it until it's over.

I'm glad you got the right diagnosis. Finally.

Can I run a thought by you to see what you think from your experience? We've all been there with being misdiagnosed. Or most of us, anyway.

It seems to me that our insurance system pushes quick diagnoses. Too quick for most of us. The company wants a label so they can say how many visits we get and which medications are approved for our condition.

But sometimes it takes us, as patients, a while to open up. Or maybe we don't know what's important to say so we leave things out. Or we're embarrassed. Or maybe we look perfectly "fine" until the 5th visit or even the 5th doctor, when finally the doc gets to witness a manic phase or extremely depressed phase.

But mostly we all struggle along with the wrong meds, trial and error, changing docs, until somebody asks the right questions. I think something has to be done about this. Give the doctors more time with us before he has to slap a label and a class of drugs down our throats. I think they try their best. But the system rushes them and then we wind up being dosed-up zombies. Or irritable cranky snits, like I was on Wellbutrin.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. I agree that there is a push to get people through, and also that

a) medicine is as much guesswork as science at times, and b) we as patients don't always know what to say. For the longest time I thought everybody's feet tingled, so I never mentioned it to the doc! LOL Now that is an important piece of info when added to my other symptoms, because it helps narrow down the possibilities of what might be going on.

Honestly, for all the warnings we get about self-diagnosing with internet medical sites, I think they can be helpful in telling us, "Hey, that thing you thought was normal? It's really not!"

[DevonRex]

4. Is she on amitriptyline at night? (generic elavil)

If she takes that at night and perhaps Zoloft or Prozac generics during the day it can give the same relief at much lower cost. Sometimes even better relief because the low dose elavil will help her sleep so no sleep med will need to be prescribed.

[hedgehog]

6. No _ I will suggest that to her.

[dcfibro]

10. as bad as ssri's

SNRI's have side effects as harmful as SSRI's such as changed mood and personality, abnormal behavior such as cutting, and suicidal thoughts as well as physical symptoms that in my experience most docs simply write off as long denied mental issues. And studies show they do not help the majority of patients with fibromyalgia. IMO the risk is not worth any perceived benefit.

[hedgehog]

11. As it happens, it seems to be working for her - but I think there may be more than

fibromyalgia involved.

Thanks for your comment, though! Welcome to the forum!