Question:
I'm a 40yo otherwise healthy female. For the past several months, I
have increasingly had the following symptoms:
The worst fatigue of my life (chewing makes me tired)
Aching joints
Muscle tightness and cramps
Dry eyes, frequent blinking and blurry vision
Poor sleep Reduced appetite
Constipation
Constant cold hands and fingers
Numbness and tingling in feet and hands
Sore spots on my body that are sometimes consistent with fibro
"points" (I have about 6 that match but about 20 that don't)
I have no fever and all the test results (mono, CBC, urinalysis,
thyroid, CT scan of abdomen and head, etc.) are normal. Now my doc
says it's stress and depression (I don't think I was depressed before
I got sick but I'm beginning to feel that way now!). She doesn't want
to check for anything else but give me 6 months to see if it changes.
My blood pressure has risen from my lifetime normal 120/80 to 154/98
(and I lost 40 pounds last year! Why is it HIGHER?) She says that's
all due to stress (or maybe *anger* at not knowing what's going on?)
She put me on antidepressants a month ago and I still feel horrible.
A friend suggested that I may have fibromyalgia and I'm wondering if
she might be onto something.
My question is, can all this be just stress and/or depression? Is
this consistent with fibro and how does one get a diagnosis? If it is
fibro, what can I do? I have two small kids that I need to care for
and don't have the energy to even cook lunch.
Answer:
Could be depression, could be stress, could be Fibro, could be a number of
other things.
Although for FMS its the muscles that ache not the joints, and there are
only 18 tender points in the diagnostic criteria for fibro (AFAIK) and I
don't know of any others, which would make the last point unrealistic. And
depending on how old you are 154/98 isn't too high for BP. Higher than your
normal maybe, but not overly high.
Perhaps a different doc might be a good thing here.
