u/Immediate_Assist_256

Been struggling with fatigue and pain for 20 years. And I’m only in my late 30s!

Today I travelled over an hour and a half and had an initial consult with a specialist who diagnosed me with moderate fibromyalgia.

He also noted I have Raynauds, Costochondritis, and likely POTS or some form of dysautonomia.

I have carpal tunnel in one wrist and ulnar nerve issues on the other arm.

He also thinks I have possibly got Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

I have a plan for various follow up tests; more bloods to rule out autoimmune, adrenal fatigue and other things. Scans and things to figure out the extent of inflammation and the extent of nerve/tendon issues.

I have several medications to start with.

It has been so hard to find someone who will listen and look at the whole body experience and not just one single thing at a time, or blame it on obesity or anxiety etc.

Excited, overwhelmed and relieved.

So just over a week ago I had a visual flashback the reopened an old wound and provided more information on what I had down played as an incident while intoxicated.

I now know I was graped. And I believe I was likely drugged.

This was almost 20 years ago so not recent.

All my life I have had issues connecting my emotions/thoughts/feelings to physical sensations

I assumed it was due to emotional abuse from childhood and being late diagnosed autistic.

Last night I had a somatic flashback. I couldn’t remember the part of the night that I was talking about cognitively but my whole body reacted. It was a sudden flush of adrenaline, feeling total fear reaction.

It was awful and scary. I guess this is what I have to look forward to now with processing all this.

What do you all do when you have those physical kind of memories?

Unsure of the exact time but about 18-20 years ago when I was a student I had an incident that for many years I fobbed off as “just an assault”.

Over the years I have ignored that incident as something that happened when I was young and dumb.

I have got married, had a family and been thru hella other things over the years to the point where I’m finally in therapy for the last few years to treat CPTSD that stems from a number of things including back to childhood and shitty parents.

I have successfully reprogrammed a few of those things in EMdR.

Just this week I had an edible gummy and i had been enjoying these recently because they made me learn a lot of things about life and the universe.

This time I had a flashback. It was from that incident.

I wasn’t experiencing fear, pain or trauma in the flashback but rather I was kind of groggy and acknowledged the incident for what it was.

I wasn’t just assaulted I was actually graped.

It has messed with me all week.
Nightmares
Feeling on the edge of a panic attack
Feeling sick
Not being present in real life

I hate this.
Why does it have to come up now

I have suspected joint hypermobility for a while.

I have had a lot of randomly occurring injuries.

This time it is a sprain to my knee. From sitting cross legged and then straightening my leg.

That’s all I did.

And now I have medial ligament pain and it hurts to walk, it hurts to rest and it especially hurts getting in and out of the car.

Dr was like “that’s so weird”.

But nobody ever brings up hypermobility. And every time I bring it up they fob me off.

Seeing arthritis specialist for ? Fibromyalgia in May. Hopefully he’s a bit more interested