Today started off the same as yesterday. Same sleep, same start to the day. Spine pain has been really bad though. Really hard to control. Ice packs in general haven’t been working well for me lately, but even less today. None of my medications are controlling the pain. This is how most of the recent flare ups started. Fibro was at its lowest, spine pain was at its highest. I have been going from feeling pretty decent, to feeling pure horror. Today is 5 days back on the guaifenesin, which is exactly when things tipped the last time I tried it. I’m on a higher dose now. Things have felt a bit more level this time around. Before there were dramatic ups and downs. As nice as the good days were, I’ll take stable and level over ups and downs.
I haven’t had any motivation to do anything today. I can probably feel the decent days slipping away. My subconscious feels the flare ups before I do. My head isn’t foggy yet, though I’m certainly not sharp. I’ve lose whatever confidence I had. No headache. The fibro can trigger the spine pain at first. Then the fibro totally takes over and it just feels like my whole body is on fire and it’s hard to feel the localized spine pain. Today is day 5 on the meds, but only 4 days since the last flare up, which is the usual max amount of days I go without a flare. I’m trying not to let the anxiety get to me and trying to control the pain so it doesn’t become a self fulfilling prophecy.
It’s getting slightly worse as the day goes. Instead of the pain coming on, I actually feel like I’m missing caffeine or something. I feel like I’m missing something. It’s kind of like those caffeine withdrawals coming on when you didn’t have any over the weekend. Spine pain is really bad. I’m sure it will be hard to sleep tonight. I’m starting to grunt from the pain. Even if the fibro isn’t ramping up, the spine pain is taking over in a similar way that the fibro does. But I think this is it. Back to the flare up routine. Now when I first took gauifenesin, I had some good streaks of decent days and the flare ups I had were on the mild side. I took more of it partly because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do, and partly because I was feeling a bit desperate and I hoped extra would carry me through. It ended up making things worse in the end though. Right now I can see how I fell into that trap. I feel like I’m not taking enough. That caffeine withdrawal feels like I don’t have enough guaifenesin in my system. Or like the fibro is overpowering the guaifenesin. I feel like if I take more, it will build back up and flush out the fibro and get me back on track. Desperation makes you do a lot of things, and usually it’s not good.
Too little of the medication caused the similar issues. After too much hurt me, I went for smaller and smaller doses and had problems that way too. I don’t know what the Goldilocks dose is. It’s different for everyone, and this is all pseudo-science anyway. I’ll have to see just how bad the flare up gets. If it’s mild, then I might stick it out where I’m at. I can increase, but I don’t want to risk a worsening of the flare ups. If I make it a month or two worth of decent days, then I’ll play around with the dose a little bit. Right now I’m just desperate for a few non-horrifying days, so I can’t think that far ahead.
Went into stasis mode for the evening. Trying to not do anything that might aggravate the fibro or the spine pain. Just put on some magnesium oil. I haven’t been using that all that much. The welts on my back from when the ice packs gave me frost bite or whatever that was caused too much pain. It got a lot better, but there are now several other small welts that started a few days ago. I guess I wasn’t careful enough. I think the small ones will go away. They are still deep, so the mag oil doesn’t bother them. I can’t use Icy Hot because of the medication protocol. All I can do now is hope this doesn’t get out of control. Ideally the way this protocol works is that your symptoms get worse for a short period, then clear, then you cycle again, but the symptoms start getting less worse as you go. Because I spend 4 -5 days a week at full symptom severity, it’s hard for me to endure that. When I first start the medication, the symptoms get better. I don’t feel good by any means, but the fibro is generally better. If this is just a small flare up, or worsening of the symptoms that doesn’t last long and isn’t severe, then that’s fine. Instead of increasing like last time, I’ll stay where I’m at. Get some decent days under my belt, and worry about changing the dose later.