I had my appointment with my rheumatologist this week. My blood work came back with a positive marker for lupus, which was a little scary for me. I have been having the most severe fatigue and a ton of joint and muscle pain lately so I went to the doctor thinking that my ferritin was getting low again. My ferritin is often low from having Celiac disease which sometines requires me to get iron infusions but that wasn't the problem this time. The rheumatologist was awesome and did a very thorough history and exam and all of my blood work is fine - meaning I do not have lupus or RA or any other autoimmune (yes!) but because of the length of time that I've had the joint pain and fatigue for so long and because I had tenderness in 12 out of 18 trigger points I left his office with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia (no!).
The upside is that fibromyalgia is not a fatal disease but it can be literally a pain to deal with and there aren't really any hard and fast treatments either. It's an extremely misunderstood condition that many health care providers don't fully understand or fully accept as being a real condition. It's really frustrating. I have been doing my best to try to minimize my stress levels this week and really focus on the amount of rest that I get. I have to get the fatigue under control. One day at a time right?
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