Eff fibro
Active member
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2014
- Messages
- 38
- Reason
- Undiagnosed
- Diagnosis
- 10/2014
- Country
- US
- State
- MA
Every time I call out of work I break down crying. It breaks my heart that 1, I cannot SAFELY do my job (as a home health nurse) due to fatigue and mental fog, 2, I cannot be reliable for families who depend on me, 3, I'm losing out of the rewards of caring for others, which is in and of itself depressing, and 4, its reflecting poorly on my work ethic at my new-ish job. It's not my ethic, though, I WANT to work... I just don't feel safe. And that makes me cry. And then I second guess myself and wonder if I'm feeding into the fibro and making it worse. Am I subconsciously not wanting to work and therefore I feel worse than I actually should?
I worked at a hospital for 2.5 years before my current job and I was miserable. I almost gave up nursing completely because I was so often feeling too fatigued or foggy to feel safe working. It was a very demanding job and wore me out. Then I made the move to private duty home health nursing, and love it. Most days I come home from work in a happy mood because I enjoyed working with my patient. The days I come home unhappy its usually due to pain. I KNOW at the hospital, I was mentally and physically overwhelmed and that made me miserable all around (even broke up with the love of my life for 5 months because I was in such a bad place, so angry). That made me dislike going to work. So now I wonder if that's led me to have a bad work ethic and is carrying over into my new job? But the first 8 months at this job I was doing so well... then the symptoms went from occasional fatigue and fogginess to having shooting and burning pains everywhere everyday, having a constantly achy back (for which I'm doing PT, feel stretched out by the end of the day, but every morning I wake up with my back aching), and most recently I'm starting to lose my balance more. I'm going for a second opinion for neuro...
So I was in the shower and closed my eyes and lost balance... which led me to doing some neuro tests on myself. I'm unable to maintain balance with my eyes closed (positive Romberg test) which, based on my other symptoms, indicates its likely a lesion somewhere in my nervous system which makes me question if something was missed on my brain MRI or if its not in my brain. After a weekend of intense allodynia (holy crap that symptom is no joke!) I had just accepted my fibro diagnosis, but now this balance thing has me wondering if there's more to it. I've rambled enough... thoughts? Opinions, advice?
I worked at a hospital for 2.5 years before my current job and I was miserable. I almost gave up nursing completely because I was so often feeling too fatigued or foggy to feel safe working. It was a very demanding job and wore me out. Then I made the move to private duty home health nursing, and love it. Most days I come home from work in a happy mood because I enjoyed working with my patient. The days I come home unhappy its usually due to pain. I KNOW at the hospital, I was mentally and physically overwhelmed and that made me miserable all around (even broke up with the love of my life for 5 months because I was in such a bad place, so angry). That made me dislike going to work. So now I wonder if that's led me to have a bad work ethic and is carrying over into my new job? But the first 8 months at this job I was doing so well... then the symptoms went from occasional fatigue and fogginess to having shooting and burning pains everywhere everyday, having a constantly achy back (for which I'm doing PT, feel stretched out by the end of the day, but every morning I wake up with my back aching), and most recently I'm starting to lose my balance more. I'm going for a second opinion for neuro...
So I was in the shower and closed my eyes and lost balance... which led me to doing some neuro tests on myself. I'm unable to maintain balance with my eyes closed (positive Romberg test) which, based on my other symptoms, indicates its likely a lesion somewhere in my nervous system which makes me question if something was missed on my brain MRI or if its not in my brain. After a weekend of intense allodynia (holy crap that symptom is no joke!) I had just accepted my fibro diagnosis, but now this balance thing has me wondering if there's more to it. I've rambled enough... thoughts? Opinions, advice?