Fibromyalgia and Exam stress

[Guest guest]

Hi,

I'm a brand new listmate with a daughter in high school who just got

diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Her grades started plummetting when her

" harder than honors " classes started pouring on the homework causing lots

of lost sleep. She got slower and slower in how long it took her to get

her work done, and it was obvious she could no longer memorize.

We delayed her exams to go the doctors and get her diagnosed and have

started some treatments, but she is still very stressed and still in pain

and I'm not sure how much of her mind she has gotten back, but she has to

complete her exams next week by order of the principal.

This past year, we looked at thyroid issues because her temperature has

always been subnormal and we wondered if it would respond to thyroid

medication even though her thyroid panels looked pretty normal. Synthroid

did nothing. Armour thyroid for only one day produced her first 98.6 but

then after that, no effect. We had her thyroid tested again, and after

armour thyroidm her reverse T3 was very elevated, so we did a trial of

cytomel (T3) instead. I believe she must have problems at the cellular

level that are not reflected in the blood tests, but the cytomel did help

her get down to a normal weight and she is very happy about that. Her

doctor was worried since her academic crash happened at the same time we

increased the dose, but I think it was more from the 2 1/2 to 4/12 hours of

sleep she got for about six weeks with the exception of weekends which is

the logical thing to have precipiated fibromyalgia She also wasn't getting

exercise.

Last year, she crashed after two back to back infections and started

sleeping 14 hours a day. She missed exams then, but got to functioning

pretty well in the spring semester until she got sick again. In the

meantime we took her to a sleep specialist and she was diagnosed with

breathing problems (not strictly apnea) which was treated with a CPAP

machine. That worked wonders in helping her to get to sleep, but she still

didn't have restorative sleep, which is still the case.

Anyway, all her life, when her body has been under stress (usually from

illness), her scores on tests have plummetted. Her standardized tests have

ranged from 99th percentile to 20th, and everything in between. This may

be test anxiety or just the footprint of fibromyalgia she's had her whole

life which wasn't diagnosed.

I did try some vitamin D and found it did raise her termperature. There

are people that theorized fibromyalgia is caused by vitamin D deficiency,

but we are waiting for a test to come back of her cholecalciferol and

calcitriol.

She has been tested eleven years ago low in vitamin D and low in

lithium. She does better in marching season when she is getting exercise

and sunlight...

I just want to know if anyone has some advice on how to help her get

through this next week of stress when her fibro is still acting up, because

we just started her on Lyrica and a pain medication called Ultram.

We are just pretty desperate to help her pass her classes...something that

I never thought I'd have to worry about in my high honors student!

Thanks for any wisdom,

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12:18 PM

[Guest guest]

susan

Was she on any psychiatric medication? If yes,please forget what i said about

adaptogens,holy basil,etc..I am not sure how these will interact with

psychiatric meds.

wish you the best.

Nil

Re: Fibromyalgia and Exam stress

you are wanting a quick fix for a LONG term problem. If you

" cheat " and give her HC before testing she may not be ABLE to get off it

to do that testing which is SO necessary. I would encourage her to ty

rto gget through these exams wiht some GOOD support meds such as Celtic

[Guest guest]

susan

Was she on any psychiatric medication? If yes,please forget what i said about

adaptogens,holy basil,etc..I am not sure how these will interact with

psychiatric meds.

wish you the best.

Nil

Re: Fibromyalgia and Exam stress

you are wanting a quick fix for a LONG term problem. If you

" cheat " and give her HC before testing she may not be ABLE to get off it

to do that testing which is SO necessary. I would encourage her to ty

rto gget through these exams wiht some GOOD support meds such as Celtic