Sandy Beats Fibromylagia

Sandy Beats Fibromyalgia & Shares Her Story

“I would go to my normal doctor or even the rheumatologist, and I felt as if they never gave me the time of day. They didn’t really listen to me. They would go “Uh-huh, uh-huh” and then say “Well, we’ll just prescribe you this.” When I talked to you, you repeated things back to me. “Let me hear to see if I get this right” and then you’d repeat back to me what I had just said. You listened to me, you heard me and then not only that but you understood. You acknowledged to me what I was going through, and then you would go an extra step and explain things to me. You would explain “You’re not sleeping well and this is due to blah, blah, blah. This is what we’re going to do.” You had a plan. You answered all my questions, so it was very different working with you. I appreciated, I loved that we talked every 2 weeks. Sometimes it only needed to be 5 minutes, sometimes it was 15 but every once in a while as need may be, it was longer … 30-45 minutes. You gave me as much time as I needed, each time that we talked and I found that to be extremely encouraging. There were a few times when I might have been at a plateau or I was feeling some extra pain, or going through a stressful time. You talked me through those times and gave me helpful hints. I took notes, so now I feel like I’m equipped to carry on and know for sure that I can contact you at any time, or even your staff and get answers to questions I may have in the future.” — Sandy D.

Listen & Read The Interview Below:

Sandy Beats Fibromyalgia & Shares Her Story

Dr. M: I’m joined by Sandy from Virginia. Sandy has been working with me for, I guess about 6 months now we’ve been working together and she’s a real delight. Sandy, I’d like to ask you how long have you had fibromyalgia?

Sandy: I would say about 7-8 years.

Dr. M: What was the first thing that you noticed when you started getting the fibromyalgia?

Sandy:  It was kind of many different things all at the same time. I noticed that I was having pain. I thought it was joint pain. I went to doctors to find out if I had arthritis. It was bad enough that in my hands, I couldn’t open jars and things like that. About the same time, I noticed the fatigue. I was so tired all the time. I really started to not be able to do different things that I wanted to do. Then as it progressed, I started not being able to remember things; started waking up and feeling as if I hadn’t been sleeping, and started having sleeping problems. Then I started noticing that I was having digestive issues all the time – indigestion, heartburn, upset stomach. The not being able to remember things started turning into foggy mind, confusion … I would wake up in the morning and feel disoriented, and have no energy. The sleeping issues, sometimes it would take me 2-3 hours to fall asleep at night and then shortly after that, I would only sleep for a couple of hours. I would wake up and be wide awake and have trouble going back to sleep. It just sort of snowballed.

Dr. M:  You had had some health issues prior to getting the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. How long had it been since you felt good?

Sandy:  Oh gracious. It’s been 10-12 years, something like that.

Dr. M:

To complicate things, what people that may be listening to this replay don’t realize is you’re a teacher, a reading specialist. So trying to do your job when you have that fibro fog and you’re so run down, that had to be really stressful.

Sandy:

Yes, because here I am working with students who are having some learning issues going on, not being able to read and I’m having trouble making my mind stay clear. Yes it became a really difficult situation to go to work, to work with these students and feel as if I was giving them an adequate amount of help.

Dr. M:                  

Sure. With all these health issues that you had and there were quite a number of them, how did that affect you day to day in life? Did it affect your home life, your social life, your work? How did it affect you?

Sandy:                 

Absolutely, it changed me so much. I used to be an extremely active person; not so much jogging or running or doing that kind of activity, but working out with a workout tape, walking a couple of miles and then walking the dog beside, getting together with friends for coffee and going to work. Then on the weekends, all in one day I could do the groceries, clean the whole house and do 6 loads of laundry. I was a very, very active person and this fibromyalgia over the course of about 3 years, just brought me to almost a halt in everything. I could only do the things I needed to do. I would get up in the morning, drag myself out of bed, force myself to take a shower and get dressed, ask my husband to take care of our 10 year old daughter to get her ready to go to school and get to school, and make it through the day seeing all my different students that I worked with, come home and collapse on the couch, and not be able to even make dinner. If I did make dinner, it was like a frozen dinner thrown in the microwave or the oven. I used to love to cook and bake and do things like that, so it really brought me almost to a halt.

Dr. M: Tell me about your pain prior to working with me. Where was your pain and could you describe a little bit about how it affected you, just the pain?

Sandy:

The pain started to get really bad. It seemed to go to joints, or at least that’s where I felt it. It seemed to be in my hands, in my knees and then it went to my hips, my shoulders and sometimes it would be in all of those locations all at the same time. Sometimes it would even end up in my neck and in my back. It was hard to stand for any length of time. It was hard to chop things up when I was cooking, or even stir. Stirring something as simple as soup was very difficult to do, because the motion of stirring would send me over the edge. I started going to my regular doctor, who finally after about 2 years sent me to a rheumatologist. I was taking things like Tylenol around the clock, Advil and Motrin as needed, pretty much around the clock. The rheumatologist put me on something called Cymbalta for the pain. Every time I went back to the rheumatologist, there was no improvement so he just kept increasing the amount that I was taking until finally he said “I can’t give you any more Cymbalta but I can give you Naproxen.” I was taking Tylenol, Motrin, Cymbalta and Naproxen and the list just goes on. It was not good.

Dr. M:  What are you able to do now after us working together over the last 6 months, which you couldn’t do even 8 months ago?

Sandy:

I’m pretty much able to do everything I used to do before the fibromyalgia came on. In fact, to the point that for these past 6-7 months that I’ve been working with you, I’ve not needed to take Tylenol, Motrin or Advil. You and I worked together to get off my Cymbalta; I don’t take any more Naproxen. I am on no pain medication and I’m pretty much pain-free.

Dr. M:  That’s amazing. You’ve worked so hard and done so well. Tell me about your 10 year old. What does she say to you about the changes that she sees?

Sandy:  She thinks it’s wonderful. She’ll give me a hug and say “I’m so happy to have my mommy back again.”

Dr. M:  That’s wonderful, that’s great.

Sandy:

I’m a grandmother besides, my daughter is out in Colorado Springs. The one comment she said is “It’s so great mom that you can get down on the floor and play with the grandkids … you’re lively.” That’s the words she used.

Dr. M:                  

Isn’t that great? Unfortunately what we hear and I’m sure you encountered this, is that most doctors at least in the conventional healthcare system, they tell you that you just have to learn to live with it. Who wants to live with the pain, the fatigue and everything that goes with it? That’s not living. Now, we’ve worked together and you’ve got your life back. It’s so exciting.

Sandy:

Yes, I am so thankful. So often I just call out to the lord in prayers of gratitude and thankfulness, because of all the different changes. The pain alone, if that was the only thing that had changed, would be plenty.

Dr. M:                  

My whole philosophy doing this 20 years is you’ve got to get healthy, which is exactly what you did. You had been on some steroids in the past and that had caused you to gain some weight. We were able to get that weight off. Tell me how much weight were you able to lose working with me?

Sandy:                 

I’ve been able to lose 50 pounds, so it’s a huge difference.

Dr. M:

Yeah amazing, it’s an amazing difference. The weight loss is great, but it’s a means to the end; the end is to get as healthy as you can. When you’re carrying around that extra weight, it zaps your energy. It obviously increases your pain level, it can cause problems with your cholesterol and your triglycerides … all the things that go with carrying around some extra weight. Losing the weight is wonderful, but the end result is now you have the energy that you didn’t have and your pain is drastically reduced to the point that you can do what you want to do.

Sandy:

Yes. Something that I so appreciated about the way this program worked, when you and I interviewed I said to you “Yes, I would love to lose weight but I’ve tried everything out there that there is for losing weight, and nothing has worked for me.” Nothing at all has ever worked for me. Nutrasystem, Medifast, all kinds of different diets that I tried, even an eating clean diet that I went on, nothing worked. Nothing even budged. What I loved about the program that you and I worked through these past 6-7 months is that you got me healthy. You got me sleeping, you got me my insides and my digestive system working right, my adrenal glands working right. You took the time to do all of that before we even started talking about losing the weight. I was feeling good and nervous to start losing the weight, but by that time I trusted you. Then I went ahead and went through with the diet plan and I was amazed along the way, that boom, it was just falling off of me and coming off because you got me healthy.

Dr. M:

It was a joint effort. You were a great student, that’s for sure. You were very coachable. What was it like working with me? Obviously we worked by phone. You’re in Virginia, I’m in Birmingham Alabama. What was that process like?

Sandy:                 

Well, I loved it. It was very different than working with other doctors. I would go to my normal doctor or even the rheumatologist, and I felt as if they never gave me the time of day. They didn’t really listen to me. They would go “Uh-huh, uh-huh” and then say “Well, we’ll just prescribe you this.” When I talked to you, you repeated things back to me. “Let me hear to see if I get this right” and then you’d repeat back to me what I had just said. You listened to me, you heard me and then not only that but you understood. You acknowledged to me what I was going through, and then you would go an extra step and explain things to me. You would explain “You’re not sleeping well and this is due to blah, blah, blah. This is what we’re going to do.” You had a plan. You answered all my questions, so it was very different working with you. I appreciated, I loved that we talked every 2 weeks. Sometimes it only needed to be 5 minutes, sometimes it was 15 but every once in a while as need may be, it was longer … 30-45 minutes. You gave me as much time as I needed, each time that we talked and I found that to be extremely encouraging. There were a few times when I might have been at a plateau or I was feeling some extra pain, or going through a stressful time. You talked me through those times and gave me helpful hints. I took notes, so now I feel like I’m equipped to carry on and know for sure that I can contact you at any time, or even your staff and get answers to questions I may have in the future.

Dr. M:

What would you say to those that may listen to this replay or read the transcript, and say that they’ve tried everything that we’ve mentioned here today? They’ve changed their diet, they’ve taken supplements, they’ve done these things but they never feel good. What’s different about my program, what I did in my protocols, what you did than what someone maybe has tried on their own or maybe even been working with another doctor that didn’t work?

Sandy:                 

Sure. It’s interesting that you say that because I was one of those people. I remember even our first conference call … I was one of those people who didn’t trust you right away, because I had been out there trying several different doctors, several different programs, all kinds of supplements, eating clean, but the difference is you worked on my insides. All of those other programs work on the symptoms and the exterior, and you worked on my insides before to get me to feel better. I started feeling better in 2 weeks, where on those other programs I was just being disciplined and working on those programs, hoping and hoping and never seeing results, never feeling good, continuing to feel tired. I’ve had trouble with sleep. I’ve had an awful lot of trouble with sleep, and within 2 weeks I was sleeping through the night. I don’t think that’s happened in 10 years. It was the result as well as the program itself. I love the fact that I had a book to read. A lot of times when I talk to somebody, I can take notes but I’ll forget some of what they said. I could go back to your book to look something up, read about it and remember what I needed to remember. I’ll have that book with me for the rest of my life.

Dr. M:

Is there anything you’d like to share in our closing of this interview, to others out there who were in a similar situation you were in just a short 7-8 months ago?

Sandy:                 

I would say it gave me hope and that hope was not disappointed, it was realized. Now I want to encourage those folks out there, believe in this and get hope, because I‘m sure that their hope has been crushed and that they’re thinking “There is no hope out there for me.” But there is hope, there’s tremendous hope. Don’t give up. Go ahead and try it out.

Dr. M:

Great. Sandy, thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate you doing this. It’s going to help a lot of people out there, just open their minds that maybe there is another option, that drugs and more drugs aren’t the only option. You can at least have the opportunity to feel good again, and there’s a way you can do that that doesn’t involve doing the same old thing that they’ve tried year after year and it’s not getting them anywhere. I look forward talking with you soon. I’m so proud of you and again, thanks for joining me. Look forward to talking to you soon.

Sandy:                 

All righty, my pleasure. Thank you Dr Murphree. Bye-bye.

These patients and hundreds of others who’ve worked personally with me have in fact beaten their fibromyalgia. You can read or listen to their stories by clicking the link below:

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