Christine Beats Fibromyalgia and Shares Her Story

My Fibromyalgia Success Stories

Hi, I’m Dr. Rodger Murphree, author of Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I’ve specialized in treating fibromyalgia, for almost two decades. I know that finding a doctor, that one, believes in fibromyalgia, many still don’t, two that actually understands your fibromyalgia, and three that can provide any long-term success is rare-sad but true. After years of sometimes rude, sometimes well meaning, but incompetent doctors, all they can tell you is to “learn to live with it.” You may have become so beat down by the illness that you’ve lost hope or find it hard to believe you, or anyone with fibromyalgia, can ever really feel good again.

I understand. I know you’re skeptical, and you should be, of anyone who says they have answers for your fibromyalgia and poor health. I’d be skeptical to, especially if I’d tried so many things to feel better, only to get my hopes dashed again by another failed drug, doctor, fad supplement or diet. It’s not about taking drugs to cover symptoms. There is no magic pill, supplement(s) diet, or cure. But, after almost twenty years of trial, error, and hard work, I’ve found the missing link for helping my patients feel and stay feeling good again. All I ask is that you make time to explore the free resources on my site, free videos, protocols, audios, webinars, and weekly teleconferences.

My Fibromyalgia Success Stories: Each week I interview one, or more new patients on my weekly weekly Teleconference.

Here is one of a growing list of patients who have worked with me personally to find and fix their underlying causes of their fibromyalgia and have gotten healthy and feel good again. I share these success stories in hope that you will not give up, will not buy into you have to “learn to live with it.”


 

Christine From Massachusetts Working Personally With Dr. Murphree Beats Fibromyalgia

“The fatigue was all consuming. I felt like every day that I woke up, I had to make sure that I planned my day accordingly and did not overdo it – to something as simple as I have to run errands for my household today. I’d better make sure I don’t go to more than 2 stores, because that’s going to leave me out for a couple of days. Quite honestly, the guilt that I had with not being able to engage in a lot of activities with my family was terrible. I just couldn’t do it.

Recently maybe a month ago, we actually played a family game of basketball, which is pretty intense I found out. I would have never done that before. I said let me try it, and my son said afterwards, “I had so much fun but I just feel bad because I know how much pain you’re going to be in later.” I said, “You know what, there’s a chance that I won’t be” and I wasn’t. It was great exercise, we all had a great time and I told them afterwards, “You know what, it’s been 24 hours and guess what, I’m still not in any pain.” I had a great time and they just said “Wow, I can’t remember the last time that you did something like that.”

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Christine Beats Fibromyalgia and Shares Her Story

Dr. M:

Good evening this is Dr Rodger Murphree, www.YourFibroDoctor.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 chiropractic physician, board certified nutritional specialist. I’ve been in private practice for 26 years and I have specialized in treating fibromyalgia for the last 18 years. I’m the author of 3 books on the subject including Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, now in its 5th edition www.getfibrobooks.com . My practice is now 99% phone consults. I get to work with patient all over the world.

The medical community has come to the false conclusion that has now spread, and trickled down into the fibromyalgia community, that once you get the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, you just have to learn to live with it. They’ve come to that conclusion because the traditional medical approach of trying to drug every symptom rarely if ever leads to long-term success.

You can’t drug your way out of fibromyalgia! There are so many symptoms associated with it – diffuse achy muscle pain, sometimes debilitating pain, chronic fatigue, poor sleep, restless legs syndrome, irritable bowel, headaches, low moods, anxiety, interstitial cystitis … the list can go on and on. Because there are so many symptoms with fibromyalgia, before you know it you’re on half a dozen to a dozen different drugs.

In the short term they certainly can be helpful, but long-term traditional medicine and drugs, are a dead end for fibromyalgia. Doctors were led to believe that now we have a medication specific for fibromyalgia, and if you get your patient on Lyrica their symptoms of fibromyalgia are going to drastically improve. What the doctors found out was that was not true. Instead what they saw was that patients continued to come back every few months complaining of more and more symptoms of fibromyalgia, and the medications that they kept giving didn’t alleviate their symptoms.

Christine From Massachusetts Shares How Working With Dr. Murphree She Beat Fibromyalgia

Christine:            Hi Dr Murphree.

Dr. M:                   Hi Christine, thank you for joining me.

Christine:            How are you?

Dr. M:

I’m doing great. Can you share a little bit about your story, where you were before we met, how you got diagnosed with fibromyalgia and how it was affecting your life prior to us meeting?

Christine:

Sure. I think my symptoms started maybe 11 or 12 years ago after I had my kid. I slowly started having a lot of pain in my neck and shoulders, overall muscle fatigue … I thought at the time it was just having young kids and being tired from there. I really started having progressive problems sleeping, I was depressed, I started getting sensitive even to touch. If anybody would poke me, it would hurt.

My kids were afraid to hug me too hard. I started having more bad days than good, is what ended up happening. I approached my doctor about it, told her about my symptoms and she ended up sending me to a rheumatologist who gave me the diagnosis of fibromyalgia and kind of sent me on my way to figure it out. They gave my suggestions to try yoga, try massage therapy. I tried so many different single modalities, I lost count. I tried chiropractic, I tried sleep aids, I tried going on physical therapy, I tried yoga, I tried massage therapy … this is over the course of years. I finally ended up going to a spine specialist thinking that there’s got to be something wrong in my neck area. There has to be, what’s the other reason for this pain? Of course, the spine specialist after several tests, the MRI and everything else couldn’t find anything wrong. They told me that your symptoms are due to your fibromyalgia, so you’re going to have to just manage that. I can write you a prescription for muscle relaxers.

When your pain gets really bad, go ahead and take 2 of these even though I explained I didn’t want to do that, I really did not want to go on any medication. Basically I was told by everybody that my symptoms were my fibro and that I was going to have to learn how to live with that. Nothing was providing any long term relief that I tried, and I got tired of trying after a while. I had somebody tell me about you and your book. A part of that really spoke to me where you said getting healthy from the inside out, instead of treating all of the symptoms is what you have to do. That’s where I got started. It took me a while even to reach out to you because I was so discouraged with all of the other things I had tried. I had thought to myself in the beginning, who says this is going to work? I’m just so thankful that I did reach out to you. When I talked to you the first time, I didn’t even have any level of concentration anymore. I couldn’t focus, I thought I was going to have to leave my job. The pain was bad and I was having trouble even stringing sentences together.

Dr. M:

You had been battling this for almost a decade and somehow working. You have a high level job in software development and project management, it’s not like you’re just sitting around all day. That’s a pretty demanding job. Tell me what your progress was working together. What was your energy like? Obviously it was pretty low from what you’ve shared. Tell me a little bit about how the fibromyalgia was limiting what you were able to do in your life.

Christine:

For me, the fatigue was all consuming. I felt like every day that I woke up, I had to make sure that I planned my day accordingly and did not overdo it – to something as simple as I have to run errands for my household today. I’d better make sure I don’t go to more than 2 stores, because that’s going to leave me out for a couple of days. It got to that point where I was tired and then coupled with the pain, every day it really became my focal point. Every day, let me make sure I don’t do too much. Quite honestly, the guilt that I had with not being able to engage in a lot of activities with my family was terrible. I just couldn’t do it.

Dr. M:

Was your family understanding? Did they support you? What was that like?

Christine:

Yes, they were very understanding. I felt more badly about it probably than anything … even down to my kids being young at the time. They’re 13 and 11 now but this has been going for years. We would go to an amusement park for instance and I’d have to stop every hour, so that I could sit and rest. They were very understanding about it but I just didn’t want that to be the way their whole childhood was, that their mother was basically incapacitated. That’s what it felt like.

Dr. M:

Tell me what do they comment. They’ve seen changes with you over the last 6 months. What do they have to say about the change in you?

Christine:

They’re just so thrilled. They say things like “Wow, I can’t believe you just did all of that. You’re not even holding your neck.”  That was the big thing that I would do was hold my neck … “I’m glad you could come out with us.” Sometimes I would just stay home. Recently maybe a month ago, we actually played a family game of basketball which is pretty intense I found out. I would have never done that before. I said let me try it, and my son said afterwards, “I had so much fun but I just feel bad because I know how much pain you’re going to be in later.” I said, “You know what, there’s a chance that I won’t be” and I wasn’t. It was great exercise, we all had a great time and I told them afterwards, “You know what, it’s been 24 hours and guess what, I’m still not in any pain.” I had a great time and they just said “Wow, I can’t remember the last time that you did something like that and you weren’t in pain.” It was really a big moment, a big accomplishment.

Dr. M:

Yeah, it’s definitely something to celebrate. People who don’t have fibromyalgia, they may not understand that but those who do have fibromyalgia understand it all so well. You don’t do things like that because you’re so worried about how you’re going to feel the next 2-3 days after you do that.

Christine:

I said I’m working and I have a family. I can’t afford to be down or out for a couple of days. That’s why I would constantly try to manage it.

Dr. M:

I mentioned earlier before you came online about how hard you worked, and it was work. We found so many different combinations and so many things with your sleep … you were a real challenge. Your sleep was really terrible but now it’s doing well; that was a big turnaround for you. What was it like working with me on a weekly basis, just trying to figure it out … for a period of time, it was really all focused on your sleep right?

Christine:

Right, it was. There was significant improvement. I would actually feel bad when we would meet, and I would say to my husband I have to tell him again that I’m still not sleeping. You just stuck with me and we tried several different things, but I’m sleeping well now. I can’t believe that I’m actually sleeping well. I couldn’t tell you the last time that I was sleeping well. I’m so grateful to you … not only did we meet for our regular appointments, but you were calling me to check again. I could email you and we would try different things, even if it was off cycle of our appointment. At that time, I needed that because everybody knows when you’re not sleeping well, everything else is bad.

Dr. M:

Yeah, that’s the key to everything right there. You’re like a lot of my patients, there are certain things you just couldn’t take. I think it’s unfortunate that most doctors are just not willing to put that time in. I have the luxury because when we worked together, you worked me in a get healthy program as all my patients do, and I do it that way because I know it’s going to take time. I certainly want my patients to feel good as quick as possible; that’s the number one goal right out of the gate. Long term, the most important thing is to get my patients healthy and stay that way. I teach them how to do that and that takes time. We certainly had a lot of times together on the phone when we were making some changes. One of the things that you really were disturbed about is your weight. That really bothered you and you’re a real petite person … You said that really bothered you and my first thought was that shouldn’t be a concern, but for you it really was. It turned out as you lost that weight, your metabolism went up and you felt better.

Christine:

Yeah, I was also moving easier. I didn’t have an extra 50 pounds on me, I knew that but at the same time it was impeding my movement. It felt like it was. Coupled with the muscle fatigue that I had at the beginning when we were working together, I could even feel the difference having to step up on to the curb. I was so uncomfortable with that.

Dr. M:

Changing your diet … it is a change. Patients are different so I may use different diets for different people, but it is a change. It’s a very healthy, anti-inflammatory diet but it’s work. I think most people would not do it but if you’re working with me, you’ve already had in your mind that you’re going to do what it’s going to take and those are the people I accept anyway. Was it worth it to find out which foods you needed to be on, and stay away from the foods that give you trouble?

Christine:

Absolutely, it was an amazing learning process and continues to be quite honestly. Moving away did feel great. It always feels good, but really more importantly what kept me going in addition to your support was seeing this enormous change in my energy and even my mental clarity. It had to be within the first 2 weeks of going on that diet. My energy I felt like I rebounded, I jumped up out of bed and had all of this energy. It was definitely a lot of work. However the things that I’ve learned, they’re really tools for life. It really is a change in your lifestyle. Your encouragement was extremely helpful. I know there were times when I did want to give up … I don’t think I’m going to get to that goal weight, and you would just encourage me. When you go on that diet and then you start integrating back in some of those foods, for me that was the biggest a-ha moment … to identify this food group or it’s sugar. For me, I have an immediate correlation with sugar and my pain. It’s so easy for me to see now. Now I feel like I can understand if I’m not feeling well. I will look back on what I’ve eaten and I can understand that that could be part of the culprit of why I don’t feel well. At the beginning when you’re not feeling well, it’s this hopeless feeling … I don’t know what I need to change. Going on that diet was really a big eye opener for me.

Dr. M:

I think the diet is a game changer for most of my patients for several reasons. One that you just identified is you realize after you’ve been on it for  while and then you start to add back foods that maybe you were having on a daily basis, you realize pretty quickly that some of those foods were actually causing you to have pain and mental fog issues. Once you take them back out of your diet, you get that a-ha moment and you say “I’m feeling good again.”

Christine:

It was interesting to me too because I had more than one person say to me, “Your face, the expression on your face is just more at ease.” I think I was holding so much pain in everything, I kind of wore it all on my face and I didn’t even know. A few people said that to me and I said really? They said you just look happier and you look more at ease. You’re just not in so much pain. All of those intangible things were invaluable too.

Dr. M:

I think it’s true for most of my patients as well that you look at a before picture and an after picture … sometimes the weight change stands out obviously but you look at their eyes, you look at how healthy they are now compared to where they were. I’m sure people have commented to you about your complexion and everything. It’s really about getting healthy and that’s the key. That’s the proof that it’s all about getting healthy. What was it like working with me? Obviously you did it by phone. You live in Massachusetts and I’m here in Birmingham, Alabama. What was it like working with me by phone? What was that process like?

Christine:

It was great. Quite honestly, it’s probably more convenient than having to get to the doctor’s office. You were extremely responsive. I could call the office, the girls are great and I had a very positive experience working over the phone. We never seemed to have any trouble scheduling a call and like I said, oftentimes you made time to give me a call outside of our regular schedule. I had a very positive experience.

Dr. M:

Great. In closing, what would you recommend to those who have been told that you just have to learn to live with it, or those who are on the fence? They’re just not sure about working with me or someone who’s offering the functional medicine approach that I’m offering.

Christine:

First and foremost, I would say you can feel good again. You may be hopeless but you can feel good again. It takes patience … patience on my part and even on your part, I’m sure. We are not easy patients to deal with. It takes a lot of work. I would oftentimes call into these teleconferences myself before I reached out to you. I would hear people say or you say, “You worked really hard” and I never really understood that. I would say to myself, I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t understand, what is the hard work? Now with the anti-inflammatory diet and just being patient enough to allow you to peel back the layers of the onion, so that you could say okay we’ve worked on this but understand that there might be something underneath that too … to just have some patience for that process because it works. You look at the body as a whole and not just one symptom. I believe that you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who would do that. I just want people to know that you will be their biggest advocate and you won’t give up on them. I’m very grateful for having met you.

Dr. M:

I’m grateful for having met you and I’m glad that your family has got you back. I think you’re a wonderful person and they deserve to have their mom and their life back. I really appreciate you joining me tonight and I look forward to talking to you real soon.

Christine:  Thank you so much for being my partner in this journey for me. It’s been wonderful.

Dr. M:  You’re so welcome Christine, have a good night.

Christine:  You too, bye.

 


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2 replies
  1. Haseena abrahim
    Haseena abrahim says:

    Hi I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about 10 years ago or even longer than that I think I have the fiboat I don’t remember much I was in several car accident I’m always in pain including my leg my lower back my mid back my neck my right shoulder I have burning tingling numbness in my toes and feet I’m not sure what is going on with me I was on Erica for a while that then did not help I’m always in pain can’t sleep I’m not working I’m home it’s been 6 years not workin I was working in the medical field I was working in the emergency room in a psychiatric unit between the fibo and working in the emergency room it’s a good toll on my body I can’t even begin to express what I was going through and what I’m going through now for the past year and a half I’ve been taking Cymbalta 60 mg it did help but within those couple of months it’s no relief I don’t know what else to be taking I don’t like taking drugs because it upsets my stomach so please I would really appreciate any information that you can share with me thank you

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