Paulina Beats Fibromyalgia and Shares Her Story

Here is the excerpt and audio recording of Paulina’s interview with me from my Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia Teleconference

After Head ShotI’m 42 now so I’ve been dealing with this for 30 years. I have been to every type of doctor. The doctors would refer me to somebody else and nobody wanted to mess with it. They would try pain pills which didn’t do anything at all. I don’t have joint pain or muscle pain, I have a lot of nerve pain. Most of my nerve pain is in the back of my body; for some reason it just is, the bottom of my feet, the back of my legs, my back of course, and down the backs of my arms. Sitting is miserable, laying is miserable, standing is miserable …. It was very frustrating and finally March I think, I was supposed to take my son to Disney world for spring break and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed. I had been off work for 6 weeks and then I ended up being off work for about 4 months … that’s kind of how I would function. I would function until I just could not go anymore. I would be in bed with the pain, then I would get depressed and then it just a horrible cycle. I would barely keep my job. I would have to really depend on my parents to help me with my son. It was just no way to live.

I think the first time that I talked to you, at the end of the conversation I said I have a 10 year old son and I can’t live like this.

You said, “You don’t have to, I can help you.”

Join me each week for my FREE Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia Teleconference www.fibroexpert.com

(Listen to Paulina’s Audio Testimonial here, or read the transcript of her full testimonial below)

 

Hi good evening this is Dr Rodger Murphree, TheFibroDoctor.com, author of Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Thank you for joining me tonight for my weekly Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia teleconference. I look forward to your questions this evening. I’m a board certified nutritional specialist and board-certified chiropractic physician. I’ve been in private practice since 1990. For a number of years, I owned a very large integrative practice on the campus of Brooklyn hospital here in Birmingham, Alabama where I had a very large support staff and 5 medical doctors who worked with me. We used a very judicious use of prescription medication and a lot of natural protocols to treat patients with all sorts of chronic illnesses, but primarily the fibromyalgia. I’ve specialized in treating and beating for almost 20 years.

My practice is mostly phone consults, I get to work with patients all over the world.

95% of my practice is by phone, and I work with patients throughout North America as well as overseas. You don’t have to travel to Birmingham Alabama. It can ALL be done by phone, no matter where you live. www.fibroconsults.com

 

Paulina Spears from Indianapolis.

Paulina:

Hello.

Dr. M:

Hi Paulina, how are you?

Paulina:

Hi Dr Murphree. I thought it said meeting cancelled, I thought I’d done something bad here.

Dr. M:

Oh no, don’t mean to put you under any stress. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m not sure if you heard Pam share her story, but I want if you will, if you could just share your story … how you developed fibromyalgia, how it all started and what you were going through prior to us working together.

Paulina:              

I did hear everything Pam said. I was sitting here and just nodding my head, because it sounded … not the whole part of it, but lots of it sounded just like me. I have been dealing with this for, I really don’t ever remember not being exhausted, even when I was a kid. I had suffered extensive sexual abuse when I was a kid and I really believe the trauma from that started this up. Then when I was in junior and high school, I got mono and from then on, I remember just feeling worn out all the time and having so much pain. I’m 42 now so I’ve been dealing with this for 30 years. I have been to every type of doctor. The doctors would refer me to somebody else and nobody wanted to mess with it. They would try pain pills which didn’t do anything at all. I don’t have joint pain or muscle pain, I have a lot of nerve pain. Most of my nerve pain is in the back of my body; for some reason it just is, the bottom of my feet, the back of my legs, my back of course, and down the backs of my arms. Sitting is miserable, laying is miserable, standing is miserable … they would try to treat the pain with pain pills. Sometimes I would go into whichever doctor was unfortunate enough to see me that day and just be crying, so they would say you’re depressed. They would try to put me on antidepressants. We discussed I can’t take any of the classes of antidepressants, so I really was just at the end of my road. I have a 10 year old son so I don’t have the luxury of just stopping being … I had seen your videos several years ago, and I thought I don’t know. Some of the things that you said really struck a chord with me.

The thing that I remember the most is that you had said nobody has an Ambien deficiency. It thought you know what, that’s right. Why do they keep giving us this synthetic junk for the symptoms that we have? Something has to be causing these symptoms, something is causing the pain, something is causing the exhaustion. I would go to my family doctor and I would say, instead of treating the depression, if I didn’t have pain I wouldn’t be depressed. If I wasn’t exhausted all the time, I wouldn’t be depressed. I would change family doctors because finally they started saying, “You probably have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue.” I said I don’t want those because you won’t do anything for me. If you tell me that that’s what I have, then you’re just going to set me on a shelf somewhere and I’m never going to be heard from again. I said I don’t want that, so I sought that diagnosis for probably 4-5 years. Finally a rheumatologist said, “Look, there’s nothing wrong with me. We’ve done all of the testing for real diseases.” He said I don’t have any choice but to say that you have fibromyalgia. I said, “Okay, what are you going to do?” He said “You have to go back to your family doctor. She can treat you just as well as I can.” I still have a fairly low opinion of the medical profession, but I don’t know that it’s their fault necessarily.

I think it’s just the way that they’re trained. They’re trained to treat symptoms. When you have people who have these symptoms all the time, if you’ve been through 12 years of medical school or something, you’d probably think this lady just wants attention. There’s something wrong with her. It was very frustrating and finally March I think, I was supposed to take my son to Disney world for spring break and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed. I had been off work for 6 weeks and then I ended up being off work for about 4 months … that’s kind of how I would function. I would function until I just could not go anymore. I would be in bed with the pain, then I would get depressed and then it just a horrible cycle. I would barely keep my job. I would have to really depend on my parents to help me with my son. It was just no way to live. I think the first time that I talked to you, at the end of the conversation I said I have a 10 year old son and I can’t live like this. You said, “You don’t have to, I can help you.” For some reason, I just believed you. We got started right away and the worst part of it was getting the sleep … my sleep was terrible. It took about 3 months, remember?

Dr. M:                   That was hard, I remember.

Paulina:               I thought you were going to have to come rock me to sleep some nights, because it was so terrible.

Dr. M:                   Or hit you with a [2 by 4] or something …

Paulina:              

I know. Nothing would have gotten any better at all if that hadn’t been set. You can’t do anything if you can’t sleep. I think so many times people say, all I need to take care of is the pain or this weight or I need to take care of whatever, but really if you’re not sleeping then your life is just a wreck. I had no idea, that was just how I slept for 25 years. I think the melatonin helped more than anything. Once we got me sleeping and then we started focusing on my digestive system, that started helping. Then I did all the food allergy testing and I remember I was allergic to everything, except water. That has been a real challenge. Like Pam said, if I stick with it I feel like a million bucks. The first time I think I’m going to have a regular bun with my hamburger or whatever, I will be miserable for 3 days and I think wow, you really need to learn a lesson. I think that when you’re eating that kind of stuff all the time and you feel junky all the time, that’s just what you know. When you’re sleeping junky all the time, that’s just what you know. When you really start sleeping well and then you get a bad night’s sleep, then you think wow I can’t believe that I functioned like this for so many years. When you’re completely staying away from the stuff that you’re supposed to stay away from and you sneak and cheat and you feel crummy for 3 days, you think wow there really is something to this. It really is all about what I do and how I treat myself, really is what it boils down to. I think that is daunting for a lot of people. I’ve met people who say “I would rather have a pill. I don’t want to have to do anything. I don’t want to have to walk every day, I don’t want to have to stay away from foods that I love. I just want a pill”. I say, how’s that pill working for you because the pills don’t always work.

The other thing that really helped me was the L-thionine, because I have just a lot of stress. I think most moms do. Also when I started taking that, then I noticed that my anxiety levels were just way down when I take it 3 times a day like I’m supposed to. I also take if I’m having a stressful time or whatever, and that really helps. If you’re stressed out, the very first thing that I want to do and probably the very first thing a lot of people want to do is eat junk … whatever you can find, carby, sugary and that makes you feel worse. Once you’re in that cycle, then the only thing you can do is just stay with the cycle and keep eating crummy food and keep feeling crummy. The 3 things that helped me the most were sleeping well, the melatonin and then the digestive enzymes helped get rid of all my acid reflux. It helped my bowel movements get a lot better, so that was hugely important. The L-thionine … I think that those 3 things were amazing changes in my life.

Like Pam said, when you do what you’re supposed to do you just feel like a totally different person. It’s so nice to have somebody who really cares. Every time I talk to you, you’re always like “Pam, you’re doing great” even if I know I’m not. You’re the best cheerleader in the world, you are. Sometimes I think I don’t even want to get on the phone with him, because I have to tell him that I fell off the wagon and I’m not doing great this week or whatever. You still are like “That’s okay, you’ve been doing great all this time.” You were really encouraging, and so many other people in the medical profession are like “Well, you’re just going to have to live with it.” You just can’t live with being in bed for 4 months ever year. That’s ridiculous.

Dr. M:                  

Sharing what you’ve shared, do you think changing your diet and doing what you’re doing is worth it?

Paulina:              

Absolutely. I think that from time to time, I get rebellious and I think I don’t want to eat like this anymore. I just want a big hamburger, I’ll go eat it and I am so sorry … I think you’re only hurting yourself. The other thing too is you can’t cheat yourself. You can’t sneak a Snickers because your body is going to feel crummy for the next few days. I think I’m going to hide this but who am I hiding it from? I’m not hiding it from myself, I feel horrible. It really is worth it. Remember when you first shared that list with me, I cried. I said, what am I going to eat? I just found different ways of making spaghetti squash seem delicious. That really is the way that it is … I’m not quite sure that I love it. I wouldn’t say I love to be like this, but I do love the fact that there is something that I can do to make myself feel better, when for 25 years nobody else could figure it out. I thought whatever caused you to focus on this and decide to help people who nobody else wanted to help, they just wanted to throw us on antidepressants and say go about your business … I just think it’s wonderful, I really do.

Dr. M:

What would you say to people who oftentimes reply, I’ve tried all that natural stuff but it hasn’t worked. What’s different about what we’ve done, compared to what other people do when they try a bunch of different supplements or they try to change their diet? What would you say that’s different?

Paulina:              

I think the big difference is that you actually do all the tests that you do … I don’t even know all the tests that you do but you do a lot of tests. I remember one weekend was spent sitting in a cup, pooping and peeing and doing all different kinds of yucky things. I thought oh my gosh, is it going to be worth it and it really was. Another thing too is people with fibromyalgia, everybody seems to have a professional opinion about what you should do when you have fibromyalgia. They all have an aunt who has it, and all she had to do was jump around the block twice backwards and she was cured. I think that so many people have these opinions of people with fibromyalgia, and I think a lot of times when people try supplements, it’s something that they’ve maybe seen on a website or somebody else had tried it … they’ll try it for 2-3 days and it doesn’t work. The thing with these things is it’s really slow going. It’s not like Cymbalta where 2 days later you feel great, but then the third day you feel like you want to kill yourself. It’s not fast moving at all, it’s a very, very slow process. By the time where we get to the point where we’re willing to try anything, we’re very impatient. The other thing too is I finally realized, I’m going to have to live until I die. This is not something that’s going to kill me. Whenever the lord calls me home, I’m going to be here on this earth until that minute.

I can either continue struggling like I have, or I can buckle down and give this a real try. I think that a lot of people will try something for a week or 2 weeks, it doesn’t work and they’re discouraged, and rightfully so. You were there every week to tell me that I was going to be fine. I think it’s really hard for people who have been to 50-60 doctors to trust somebody, but I just knew I could trust you. I had seen the videos and I had heard other of your patients who had talked about it, and I thought if he can fix that person then he can fix me too. It’s true, I’m fine. If you can fix me, you can fix anybody because I was a wreck. I was a mess physically and emotionally and mentally. I had no energy, I just wanted to stop existing and that’s no way to live. I really am so thankful that I was able to become your patient, that I was able to stick with it long enough to see that it really does work … you’re a joy to work with. Even when I messed up big time, you were like “You can do it, you’re doing great.” That’s something that we don’t hear a lot. What we hear is “You’ve got it, you have to deal with it and make the best of it.” It was really encouraging, really nice to hear that.

Dr. M:                  

What would you share with those that are listening or maybe listening to the replay, what would be your advice after working together? What’s your advice for those who are maybe sitting on the fence, or just not sure what to do?

Paulina:              

After having lived with this for like I said as long as I can remember, I have tried everything. I have been to dozens of doctors. I think the point that I finally came to was, you know what, I have to live anyway and I might as well live a good life. I might as well be able to do things with my son, so that he has good memories of his childhood. I’m grateful that the lord blessed me so that I could afford it. I would encourage anybody who can to do it, and even if you don’t think you can, even if you don’t think you can afford it or even if you don’t think you can stick with the eating restrictions … whatever your excuse is, if you really want to feel better Dr Murphree will help you. That’s what it eally boils down to, is you have to want to feel better. I think so many times in our life we say, “I wish I could feel better” but then something will come up or we can’t afford this, we can’t do this or do that. But I’m telling you, like an addict I had just hit rock bottom. I think that anybody who is in that situation, if they feel hopeless I’m telling you Dr Murphree can help you, he really can. He cares about you and that’s the biggest difference to me was, that I really felt every time we were on the phone, I felt like you really wanted me better. That was encouraging and at the same time, I also felt like you knew you could fix me. If I would just listen to you and I would just do what you told me to do, then I knew that you could do it … and you did. It’s amazing, it really is.

Dr. M:

You’re a wonderful person and you’ve worked really hard, you deserve to feel good. You’ve had a lot of challenges in your life, and this is just a wonderful time for you now and you deserve it. You’ve worked hard and now you’re part of the family. At the clinic, everybody loves you and they say great things about you. We feel really glad you’re part of our lives too. I really want to thank you for joining me and sharing your story, it’s a great story.

Paulina:              

I am glad to do it and I love Gina and Juno. They’re both very, very helpful and I’m just thrilled with that. I really do encourage anybody who is at the end of your rope, or even if you’re just at the start of your rope, don’t even go through 25 years like I did. Just do it because I know you can help. I know you can and you did, and I really appreciate it. I really do.

Dr. M:

I know we’ll be talking soon but I want to tell you as well Merry Christmas. I look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks.

Paulina:               Yeah, next week. Have a good night.

Dr. M:                   You too, thank you.

 

ARE YOU SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED?

You have a choice you can accept you have fibromyalgia and you’ll just have to live with it or you can be proactive and learn more about the protocols that helped my patients beat fibromyalgia, get healthy and feel good again. Watch the free videos and or read my book www.getfibrobooks.com If after reading the book or watching the free videos you realize you need help, then set up a phone consult. You don’t have to travel to Birmingham Alabama, I work with patients all over the world by phone. Everything can be done by phone. Learn more about new patient phone consults at www.fibroconsults.com 205-879-2383

 


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3 replies
  1. Kathleen Orne
    Kathleen Orne says:

    I have suffered with this illness for over 25 years, your true life story ,I understand Paulina, I understand the pain the depression all of it ,how it takes over your life. I would love answers I am on cymbalta but it only takes the edge off ,I have started to eat healthier and exercise as much as I can but any and all activities cause more chronic pain .I lost my cleaning business after 17 years of hard work my niece took over ,not able to live a normal life ,I’m only 56 ,have so much left that I want to accomplish in this life.

    Reply

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