Reply to Is Fibromyalgia Reall a Thing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have no idea if it's real, but according to one of my friends who's a physician and works in the Emergency Department, the following signs are almost always present in people who suffer from it:

- Minimum 40-50 lbs overweight
- At least one Axis II psych disorder
- Stated allergies to OTC pain relievers such as Advil, Tylenol, Aleve, etc.  Can somehow tolerate opiates with no trouble, though! Funny how that works.
- When asked to rate their pain on the 1-10 scale, answer will always be somewhere in the 8-10 range, even if the patient is sleeping or resting comfortably when the doctor comes in the room (hint: if you're able to do either, you are not in the 8-10 range)

Apparently emergency rooms are a hotspot for fibro sufferers. A lot of rheumatologists, neurologists and immunologists aren't willing to prescribe opiates to deal with the pain and recommend dietary changes, PT and NSAIDs instead.  That doesn't always go over well, so the people who don't want to hear it head to the ED.  Nice.[/quote]

How does your friend account for people who are absent all of those signs, but have the complaint of chronic pain?

I trust my doctor that I don't have it (thank God). However, my doctor was the one brought up the possibility of fibro and then, decided to screen for it although I don't fit your friend's criteria at all (only 5 lbs overweight, no psych disorders, no allergies to any OTCs and won't take opiates except when I've been hospitalized, worst pain was a 7 the day I was injured, but it has lingered at a 3 or 4 for weeks). [/quote]

Well, did you go to the ED complaining of pain, asking for narcotics/opiates after other doctors brushed you off?  No.  So you're not the group that PP's doctor friend sees in the ED.  (Being a doctor seems to make you incredibly cynical, it seems.  It certainly has made my brother very cynical and suspicious of people who complain of pain and then ask for painkillers at the ED.)

As someone noted upthread, some people have fibro, others may have something else that may eventually be diagnosed, and others simply want painkillers.[/quote]

I can't help but think though that at some point people who have been diagnosed with fibro come into the ER [b]for other things than pain mgmt[/b] (food poisoning? a strange rash?) and that's in their self-stated medical history but perhaps some of them don't fit the friend's profile. Does he figure that they don't really have fibro either? If so, what does he think they have instead?[/quote]

ER for pain management = drug seeking[/quote]

Please read carefully before you respond.

I'll try to restate for your convenience: If Patient A doesn't fit your friend's profile (normal weight, good mental health, no drug allergies, etc.) and comes into the ER for a complaint other than pain (vomiting and dehydration during flu season, for example) but her medical history included fibro, what would your friend think?[/quote]

You're responding to more than one poster. I wrote 23:35 but not the initial quoted post, or the additional post.

I have no idea what the initial quoted post's doctor friend thinks about people who show up at the ED for food poisoning and also have fibro.[/quote]

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