A Great Doctor Is An Amazing Thing To Have

I am very fortunate to live in one of a limited number of cities that boast a Mayo Clinic. I saw an associate of my regular doctor today and she was amazing. Diagnosed the pain in my back with some complex name that I did not write down and can't remember, referred me to a physical therapist that has had much success in treating my condition, assessed that the anxiety was a result of the increased pain not only from the condition in my lower back but from the flare-up of Fibromyalgia pain caused by the lack of yoga, one of my more effective ways of managing the Fibromyalgia in the first place. She recommended I reduce the number of supplements I am taking, see my psychiatrist to increase Lexapro for the anxiety (short term), told me to stay on Tramadol and increased my dosage (bleh), added Flexeral, a muscle relaxer, and re-filled my Xanax prescription. She went extensively over yoga poses and how to adapt them from active poses to passive poses. I can bend forward, it is just twisting the low back that is giving me so much pain and in turn I am avoiding stretching all together. What an amazing doctor that took into consideration the total body/life experience as a way to manage illness!

This is what I have been looking for the entire time I have been sick! In the past I have been treated like a crazy person, a drug addict, a mental freak, depressed and sorrowful by choice. I have been dismissed and not taken seriously. I have been told that I needed to figure out how to get myself better and been accused of seeing too many doctors instead of just staying with one (the one that was doing jack-shit to improve my health?). I have gone to so many appointments with so much hope and optimism because I truly needed help, only to leave in tears and desperation, so despondent, so broken. The hardest part of this disease is there is no magic pill to make you better. No prescribed protocol for the doctor to set you up with and send you home, reassuring you that it will work, that you will indeed start to improve. Recovering from this illness requires a truly holistic approach, in my opinion, from my experience. Treating the body as a whole, not just parts of the sum.

So I came home and took Xanax and Tramadol and decided I finally needed to exercise so I did the trampoline and devised a stretching program that increases flexibility and avoids the painful twisting of my lower back. And I feel better. But so dulled out by the drugs. And I really need to go to the grocery store and pay the bills and fill my prescriptions and spend some major time studying so I will plot ahead and hope I can accomplish all my tasks...and get out of pain, too!

Thanks for joining,
Leah