I've been trying to come up with a good introduction. I've been in a lot of pain. Always have to blame the pain, I suppose. I've been taking a lot of painkillers over the past 2 weeks, a lot of vicodin to kill the pain, and it's not really helping. I am 33 years old, female, and have an official diagnosis of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, but I have not been diagnosed yet with lyme, altho I do have many, many symptoms, and understand it's very linked with fibro/cfs. I have been tested, and received a "neg" on the CD57, which I understand is not supposed to yield pos/neg results! LOL--sorta.

I have been seeing a rheumatologist for several months now, and feel very dismissed. I don't feel she really knows enough about lyme to be helpful to me, and I'm having side effects from Lyrica that are undesirable. She refuses to prescribe vicodin, which right now, altho not killing the pain at least gives me some amount of relief. I can only take NSAID's so long before they upset my ulcers, even with taking stuff to coat my stomach. When I first started seeing her, I was severely deficient in iron and B12, so have been supplementing. My B12 is back up to normal, iron not so much. So she's increase the iron supplements, and I'm worried that the iron supplements are causing problems, at least long-term use will, as I'm now taking them twice a day. I have a nagging feeling that it's a problem, and I feel the need to deal with it now rather than later.

At the moment, where things stand is I'm having them fax my records over (which has turned into a fiasco as well, of course!) to my PCP for review, and I've got an appointment set up with him this week to see about the pain, consider a pain clinic, and then a referral to an LLMD, if he knows of one. If anyone here knows of one in the Newnan/Palmetto/Fairburn/Fayetteville/Peachtree City area, I'd greatly appreciate some help in locating one, and would love to hear from you in a PM, or you can e-mail me, however that works here in this forum. Obviously, I'm new, so I'm still getting accustomed to the rules, but I suspect we don't want it posted publicly!

I'm very thankful to have found this group, and I really look forward to learning more about lyme, everything I can. I've bookmarked a ton of pages, so I can't wait to read more, everything y'all have to say about lyme. Any resources anyone wants to send my way, please feel free to do so!

Thanks,

fluffyluggage

I love your screen name. What's the story behind it? I am so happy you are in the Atlanta area because I have a great clinic for you. I will PM you the info. I live in Lawrencville and have been going to this clinic for about three months and I'm almost sypmtom free. I wasn't as sick as you sound but my quality of life was terrible to me. I'm glad you found us. If I had not found this forum I would still be sick without answers.

Good luck and take care,

Denise

That's a question I get asked ALL the time. It comes from a game my husband and I play on our PS2. It's an RPG-type game called Champions of Norrath 2: Return to Norrath. In it, I play a big, tough-looking, berserker fighter tiger creature. Because he looks so tough, I thought, well, ya know (and you have to know me and my sense of humor, along with my hubby's!), gotta have something ironic that will make people be like, oh, yeah, right, sure, HE's gonna hurt ME? And then see him coming and go, uh, oops! Well, so of course, I picked Fluffy.

So, my hubby Ed, he's playing a cleric-mage-type character who is embodied in this very pale, very weak-looking lizard-type of creature. You can probably figure out where this is going, yes? Well, he decides what else is this guy gonna be but (you guessed it) Luggage when it's all said and done, right? So Luggage it was.

We talked about making it a screenname for our shared e-mail, but we just never got around to changing things, figured it would end up being more difficult than anything to change it all. So, I took it cuz I needed a screenname for some other things I was doing, and it's taken very well to me! I've ended up using it for so many things, and when we go to conventions and stuff, I'm Fluffy, and he's Luggage!

Anyway, I'd greatly appreciate the info. I do have an update, I think since this is a little long, I'll post that later, I'm a little tired, as it's a little late, and I've had a long day...scary that 10 hours (not all of it as activity, of course, just of being awake!) is a long day, isn't it? But, nonetheless, I'm a bit sleepy and can't really think very well. I think it best I wait till I can really think well to recount all the details. But, I will probably post that first thing tomorrow.

Thanks so much, tho, Denise, I really appreciate it!

Jen