update: Long

[KnottedYet]

Glad you got the celiac possibility out of the way!

All my odd symptoms are on one side of my body, too. Even the bald patches I get on my tongue after I encounter gluten or during a celiac swing, they are only on the one side. It's a pain, cuz when I'm having a bad spell I'm always dropping things out of that hand or colliding with doorways on that side, or tripping over that foot. (or feeling like bugs are crawling on me on that side... ewww!)

Yes, PT's do work with fibro patients. I used to work in a clinic that had a fibro program designed by one of the rheumatologists at the hospital. It was pretty good, we had some neat results. You could probably find a fibro PT program or PT clinic with a specialty through your doc. Or just start calling clinics and asking.

[salsabike]

Yup, the forced reevaluation of physical activity is hard. Ballet for me wasn't just something I did, it was part of who I was. When I got fibromyalgia, I was taking 12 ballet classes a week and in the best shape of my life. It took me a long time to find something else. Because fibromyalgia behaves differently in each person, there's no easy way to sort through it. The twisting of body parts and the hard pushing of one set of muscles against another set that is part of ballet created major muscle pain for me that spiraled out of control and stayed there. I did try going back to class several times when I felt better, and each time, it re-started the pain, so I learned I could not do that anymore. It was pretty hard for me to give up and I was very angry about it for a long time. You would think that cycling might not work because of the upper-middle back and arm use, but it has, as long as I am careful not to place too much weight on my arms for a very long period of time--so bike fit is important for me.

I guess I am saying: DON'T give up the athlete part of you. Just know it'll take some aggressive analysis on your part to figure out how being an athlete can be reconfigured for you so that you can still do it well and not have it make you feel sick.

And, by the way, my fibromyalgia started with constant headaches and weird visual symptoms. It's a REALLY annoying syndrome.

I think many of these are probably related underneath--fibromyalgia, celiac, rheumatoid arthritis, other autoimmune-type reactions.

[margo49]

What DebW said.
Thinking of you.