Probably a Winter Thing...

Greetings,

Sorry, it has been so long since I have posted. More to the point, sorry it has been so long since I have had any real inspirations about fibromyalgia (FM). This one just came to me as I was off to the chemist again today.

Now this is probably a winter thing, but I have noticed that every winter my medication for takes a jump up. I am not just talking pain-killers, be they short-term or regularly taken, I am talking the whole lot of them. Seems that the cold and the general changeable weather really gets to me, so every winter at the beginning, off I go to the doctor and we increase the level of medications to my "toleration" point.

I could feasibly take more, but that would impinge on my research and other activities which I like, so instead I take enough to take the edge off so I can function reasonably. This is a discussion the doctor and I had and have had many times. Yes, more medication would make me have less pain but I would have less control of my functions and that would annoy me, which would be worse than the pain in my books, so the negotiations continue.

The other thing that I have noticed, and this is one that I am very wary of, that is that the medications only increase, they never decrease. This means at some stage the body gets to used to them and thus requires more. In essence it means that certain drugs become less and less useful. We all need to be careful of this one. No one wants to get to a stage where nothing works, or the medications required to do anything are so extreme that they are excessively hard to get. Thus I only increase my medications when I have to. Of course being a stubborn sod, sometimes that hint needs to come from others.

Anyway, I suppose the point here is that we all should keep and eye on how much of what we are putting in and just how effective it really is. Like I said it is probably only because it is winter here in Australia and I am noticing it more, does not mean that it is less important.

Cheers,

Henry.