Women and Fibromyalgia

” The world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it”, Helen Keller

A condition called paresthesia results in numbness, tingling and pins and needles in the limbs, due to disturbances in the nerve pathways. For me it is much worse at night and in my arms, rather than the legs. However, I also have many twitiching new sensations in my legs as well, but the arms right now are worse. The result  is that I wake up several times during the night when an arm is ‘asleep’, numb with cold and actually hurting. When I am up for awhile moving about the feeling comes back in my arm and I fall back asleep on the other side only to wake up an hour or two later with it on the other side. My sleep is very disturbed by this relatively new symptom. But, then I have developed pains in the knees this summer, another new symptom. Just as I think I have had them all, something new crops up. How discouraging. Like other sufferers of pain I live in fear that this new symptom will not disappear. While I am a great fan of Harriet Lerner it is this particular book which helps me the most.

I am very sleep deprived of late yet I dread going to bed knowing that a few hours later I will awaken with hurting arms. I do all the suggested right things: I take cal/mag supplements, a B12 supplement  under my tongue, and rub my arms with a camphor cream. I take an epsom salts bath before going to bed and apply heat and/or cold to my neck during the day. I put a small pillow under my neck to support the area that is not on a pillow and I have the right pillow for my  upper body. I try to discipline myself to meditate each day and I also do some gentle movements of my arms often during the day. One particular stretch which does help somewhat is standing against the wall with my arms outstretched against the wall and my head against the surface with gaze forward but not jutting my chin outward, for one minute. I try not to struggle against the pain. QiGong is supposed to be good for this condition. Yet, in spite of all my good intentions the demon usually persists. It isn’t often I write a blog with such whining but to-day after very little sleep and cold, wet, snowy weather (gasp! it isn’t even officially winter yet!), I feel entitled. Forgive me folks! The women in my book speak often about feeling guilty about complaining, but since our symptoms are so diverse and frequent, it isn’t easy to ignore them. So this is a blog about my newest struggle!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Epsom salts, QiGong, camphor, cold packs, disturbed sleep, harriet lerner, numbness in arms at night, paresthesia, pins and needles, sleep disturbances, sore knees, stretch, tingling in limbs, twitching legs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.