Ive been meaning to introduce myself for some time, but I live in a very rural area and the only Internet connection I have is on my iPhone. Typing anything substantial on this tiny scream with my big fingers is difficult to say the least.
I am 36 (this July, that is), am very happily married to my wife of 14 years, and have 8 magnificent children ranging from 1 yr old to 12. I am a certified journeyman carpenter, a finishing carpenter and cabinetmaker by trade.
I have been suffering from chronic pain in most of my joints, especially my knees, hands and wrists for many years. Just about 14 years ago, not long after my wife and I went on our honeymoon in Grand Forks, BC, is when it started.
I was working hard as an apprentice at a circular stair-building company in Calgary, Alberta when I stated getting pain in one of my knees. It got so bad I had to start taking Ibuprofen every day to manage it. Over the course of a couple months it started in both my knees, and was bad enough I went to the doc.
The doc said it was nothing to worry about, probably repetitive strain injury, take it easy and use ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation. About 6years later I had my own cabinet business and we owned a beautiful little acreage just outside of Calgary.
By this time I had seen probably 5 or 6 different doctors about the chronic pain in both my knees, as well as arthritic type pain in my hands and fingers, and easily exacerbated "tennis elbow" in both elbows. I was downing a bottle of 250 Ibuprofen capsules about every 10 days or so.
The pain was getting pretty bad and I had baby number five on the way, and was getting seriously disgusted with docs who just kept saying there's nothing really wrong with me, just keep taking ibuprofen and if that stops being effective they'll prescribe something stronger.
We thought maybe it was all the long hours and stress of self employment, and after months of prayer and thought we decided to move out to BC like we had always wanted (both my wife and I are very active outdoors-people) and I would just go to work for someone else for eight hours a day and come home and be a real daddy and husband for once.
So we sold the acreage, used all our equity to pay off debt and pay for our move and we moved to Chilliwack, BC where I also had an opportunity to take seminary training through a church we had gotten intouch with to perhaps one day become a pastor.
A couple months after we arrived I actually hiked up Mount Cheam. It seems like an impossible dream to me now. I had bad pain but I just lived with it hoping one day to find an answer.
It got worse. I went to a doc again, only to have him almost mock me as though I was imagining it all. After several visits he prescribed orthotics as a solution and said my hand pain was due to having "lax ligaments".
He eventually sent me to a rheumatologist for my knees, who looked at my knees, moved them around and said theres nothing really wrong with them except some premature cartilage wear and resulting crepitus likely from my trade as a woodworker.
Years went by and the pain got worse and worse. Weakness in my knees got worse too. Now it's all I can do to climb a set of stairs, let alone any added weight of a tool apron or a cabinet to install. I now can only work a few hours a day at best before I am practically crippled.
I mostly avoid NSAIDs now because a naturopathic dr told me that the ibuprofen of all those years has likely added to the degradation of my cartilage, and with acetaminophen being the leading cause of liver failure, and aspirin does nothing for me, and because I'd have to take large quantities for anything to really help the pain, so I just live in constant pain all over my body now with little hope of relief.
I also now have serious memory and concentration problems I never thought could be connected to my pain condition until recently a friend who is a nurse at the Hope, BC hospital and who works with drs from the Murikami clinic, asked if I had ever been tested for Lyme disease, especially knowing I'm both a woodworker and an avid outdoorsman.
I started researching Lyme, and after years of discouraging and fruitless searches for answers through docs and online I finally came across the Canlyme symptoms page and found I suffer from at least 45 of the 76 possible symptoms listed.
I went to my new doc (not Dr. Murikami--unfortunately hes now retired) who actually works at the Murikami clinic (we moved to the Boston Bar, BC area last August) armed with this new info, and with what I learned of dr Murkami, hoping for some new hope. He sent me for the Elisa test a few weeks ago, set up an appt for a nerve conduction test I went to yesterday (for my hand pain) and I go for a CT scan on the 30th.
I was very surprised at his skeptical attitude about Lyme, and though I told him about how I counted 45 symptoms out of 76 listed on the Canlyme page that I suffer from regularly he never asked me what symptoms.
My Elisa came back negative (no big surprise there) and he discussed things with me more a few days ago. He said it could be MS, though unlikely, or could likely be fibromyalgia and that if I want to order the kit from igenex he'd sign the papers for me but he's skeptical of the likelihood of this being Lyme.
In fact he suggested I consider using antidepressants to manage the pain. I just thought, you've gotta be kidding.
My nerve test yesterday showed I have severe carpel tunnel syndrome in bot hands, strangely it is worse in my left hand than my right despite me being right handed. The doc at the nerve test clinic suggested I see a rheumatologist and said I need to wear wrist splints, but that he'd fill out a report and send it to my doc within 10 days and hell discuss it all with me.
He asked me about my pain in my hands and I told him actually the pain is all over my body in my joints as well as my tendons and ligaments. He said it sounds like fibromyalgia too.
So that's where I'm at now. I cannot afford the test from igenex. I am no longer working due to my inability to put in full days, except the odd small private job. My van broke down twice yesterday both to and from the nerve test clinic 3 hour drive away in Coquitlam, and I cannot afford to fix it.
I and my family are living with an elderly friend on his acreage to help him out around here in exchange for free rent. We buy groceries and gas and pay the few bills we have from our family allowance we get each month and I hate being forced to live this way.
My boss told me he's got work for the next year for me if I could just buckle down and do it. He doesn't understand. Very few people do. I want to make money and buy a piece of land and raise a big garden and live well with my family. The more I reach for that goal the more it is just outside of my grasp.
I feel like a shadow of the man I once was, and I long to be well again and take my sons hunting and hike mountains with my family.
But don't worry, I haven't given up. My Lord Jesus has given me grace and strength to face this and to march forward, no matter how hard the battle. But as the proverb says in the Bible, Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and I have had much deferring of hope lately.
God bless you all.
Post edited by: pILLgrim, at: 06/08/2012 12:15 PM
Post edited by: pILLgrim, at: 06/08/2012 01:43 PM
