hello, i am a 43 year old woman who is in remission of chronic lyme disease, however my pain is getting worse the past year. i was diagnosed w/ lyme in Feb. 2001, did many courses of abx and even did intravenous abx daily for 9 months back in 2002. Since then i have been up and down with symptoms of pain and have been in pain management. I had a year or so that I was stabalized, but the past year has been getting worse for me.
The pain consists of hand numbness upon waking, a stiff , extremely painful spine which can not bend upon waking, neck, back, arm, torso and leg burning pain.
My current pain management doctor is not very helpful, keeps his visits w/ me about 7 minutes long, and does not offer any other options other than to give me the pain medication (oxycontin, 40 mg, twice daily). I go to him because he is the only doc nearby who takes my health insurance. I don't have many options and I am unable to function w/o the medication.
My lyme doc has stated that i am in remission of the lyme and that the pain must be coming from my thalamus area, the mid-brain, but he says the inflammation would be too microscopic to see on an MRI of the brain, which i just had(normal). The main problem is that now i have no diagnosis. I went to see another neurologist, the one who gave me the MRI of my brain, along w/ some other tests, and ruled out Lupus, MS and rheumatoid arthritis. He said that whatever is wrong w/ me is "out of his realm of knowledge".
Some people bring up fibromyalgia as a possiblility, but I never really believed that as a diagnosis. What is the cause? That is my question? If i only knew what was causing this. My blood work doesn't show anything weird, yet I can barely get out of bed in the morning.
Does anyone have any similar experience?
Thanks for reading this.
Tara