POTS

Back pain update

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

The back pain I had last week was awful. I would wake up thinking I was ok and then within minutes know I was in for another day of unrelenting pain. No position was comfortable. lying hurt, walking hurt, sitting hurt . I had to stop what I was doing and just spend time alternating between resting and keeping mobile so my back didn’t get worse by seizing up.  I hate it when my back pain gets that bad because either I am in too much pain to be able to concentrate on anything or I physically can’t manage to do the things that bring me joy, like my sewing, embroidery and now crochet. It also means projects that I had planned had to be paused. 

I really don’t like pausing projects as the slightest thing will stress me out these days. I am very easy to stress out when it comes to be crafting. Usually my crafting projects are presents. I like to have them made well ahead of schedule, by not being able to do anything means the deadlines are racing towards me. That then makes me stressed and tense, which isn’t great when your back is bad. 

So without typing it or saying it out loud as I have known from previous experiences this tends to jinx me, lets just say things are much better. I am being careful, not twisting in only an EDS body can contort, moving more slowly and just being aware of staying in one position for too long. Last week seemed to whizz by in a drug induced haze, this week I feel present and able to do what I want to do. 

Unfortunately due to pain I can’t stand in one spot for longer than about 30 seconds without the pain in my back becoming unbearable. The only way I can describe it is if my back is collapsing down on itself. The pain is right at the base of my spine. Years ago when standing wasn’t a problem due to PoTS, I would have to hop from foot to foot as standing in one place would trigger back pain. I am working on my core muscles again now that the pain has settled. For crafting we have what we term the “camping table” even though we don’t go camping, if I need extra space then that table is brought out and it means I can sit comfortably and get any jobs that would normally require me to stand done safely sat down.

I am still limited presently with the amount of time I can spend doing things as due to the car accident back in August, I am left with crippling neck pain and headaches, whenever I am working with my head tilted down. It is the same with computer screens, mobile (cell) phones, books, magazine and working on my crochet. Anything that has my head tilted down has to be carefully managed so that I don’t cripple myself with pain later. This has been the most frustrating thing since the accident as I had managed to massively improve the amount of time I could work at my crafting ( embroidery / sewing / crochet) without causing myself pain.Now I am back to the bad old days of 15 minute bursts and having to ensure I stretch my shoulders and neck and move away from what I am doing. 

I am not receiving any treatment for the injury I sustained, I got told just after Christmas that my MRI scan was clear so orthopaedics don’t have any suggestions other than it will take up to two years for the situation to get better. In the meantime I still have a left arm that has pins and needles in it every day and a massive flare up of occipital neuralgia that I haven’t had since 2016 and I thought was behind me.

It is very easy to slip down the rabbit hole and get depressed about it all. I love sewing, embroidery and crochet. They are my creative outlet, they are the things that make me feel alive. From 2008 until 2017 I barely existed, suddenly when I found sewing I felt alive. I was incredibly lucky that when my Gran passed away I was left a small inheritance which allowed me to buy the things I wanted to be able to lean how to sew, make quilts, machine embroidery etc. Now with sustaining the injury in the car crash it can sometimes feel like all those things are slipping away from me. 

The Covid situation certainly hasn’t helped things, I have had to contact my doctors so many times over the last 12 months about various issues that I haven’t been able to manage myself. I have also managed to develop psoriasis ( well I think I have actually had it years it has just got much worse this year) my immune system is taking a battering. The last month or so I have had a really angry bit of skin just below my bottom lip on the right side. I presumed it was eczema, I get that when stressed. For the last month I have been treating it, last week I decided to try a different direction and ordered some cold sore cream. Let me just state here and now, it didn’t tingle, hurt, blister etc etc however after 48 hours of religiously applying the cream it has almost gone. Whatever the hell it was, it certainly didn’t resemble a cold sore has almost disappeared. It was about 2cm long and 1cm wide. So not small and very noticeable, I have been very grateful for the fact we are still wearing masks in public places! 

Whilst I am off in tangent land I will let you know that my blood tests have come back all ok so I have now been referred to Neurology- you know my favourite department for my possible focal dystonia. They were trying to tell me it was the mestinon causing my foot problems and then it was an electrolyte imbalance. I got sent a small novel by the local hospital. It was quite ridiculous as basically the letter tells me that they will either a) send my gp a treatment plan to follow or b) they will see me for either an appointment or tests or both. I then received a small woodlands worth of paper all about Covid, wearing a mask in hospital etc. Which is bloody wasteful and totally inappropriate for the letter I received. I also got travel directions – for a letter that just says they are assessing my referral. Now they look after a large region, how much money, paper and time have they wasted by sending out these small forests to people who it doesn’t actually apply to? Ok rant over.

Good news though that my CA125 is obviously ok, I was told any issues they would contact me. Plus the fact that I have the letter from the hospital saying that they are looking at my referral meant there wasn’t an easy fix for the gp. 

So for the moment back wise ( and we are talking the whole of my spine ) I am being very careful not to upset it and end up back where I was last week, where I was close to tears on numerous occasions.

Dystonia…again

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

Around 10 months ago I wrote about Dystonia, I had been having terrible muscle spasms in my feet . You can find the original post  https://wp.me/s4zBAs-dystonia . I said at the time I was waiting for the Covid situation to die down before I would speak to my doctor about it. I have had so much contact with my doctors surgery over the last 12 months it is getting embarrassing. I have had so many health issues that have all needed in put that when my feet really badly flared up for days on end, leaving me unable to walk until the spasms stopped. I knew that I could no longer ignore the issue. When your toes are curling under and making it impossible to walk it has got to the point where you can no longer ignore the situation.

Until last week my feet were intermittently causing me issues. I knew they would be bad if I had been on my feet for too long or had got over tired or stressed. I would probably have at least one to two episodes a week. Some were quite spectacular so I videoed my toes going in and out of spasm. I had a few comments on the video’s from people who suffer focal dystonia who agreed that the movements of my toes were exactly the same as theirs. Which was comforting, as when I have posted about my feet elsewhere, I have been told to take more vitamin B12 to stop the spasms despite the fact I do self inject vitamin B12 on a regular basis as the NHS doesn’t allow me to have injections on a regular enough basis, around every 2 to 4 weeks depending on my level of stress / antibiotic load / alcohol consumed. So for me B12 deficiency isn’t an issue it is something I am on top of ( I think ). I certainly no longer have the issues I was having when I was deficient which was numb hands and feet, with burning pain in my left leg. I would love for the issue to be B12, when it was first suggested that it was a sign of B12 deficiency last year I upped my B12 injections to every other day for 2 weeks and then went to once a week. It made no difference to my feet. 

The issue with my feet has increased now to the bottom of my feet when not in spasm are very sore, they ache deep inside the muscles of my feet. It is a pain that nothing relieves. This is usually the pain I will get before I get a spasm. So it is very strange that I am now getting that pain on a regular basis with or without a spasm.

So at the end of last week, when things got really bad with my feet, it always seems to be the left one that is the worst, I took some photographs and then filled out an econsult form.

Two of the photos were taken last week and the bottom one was taken in May last year. It can be either foot that spasms but it tends to be my left foot that is the worst. I am always worried with the photos that you can’t see that anything is wrong with my feet.


On Tuesday the doctor from the practice rang me, I had seen him recently with regards to my neck and he was ok. He went through what triggers the spasms, which can be something as stupid as my foot catching the duvet cover whilst I am in bed, to just being sat down and the spasm will sat. There isn’t any rhyme or reason but I do know that being over tired or stressed will cause more spasms to happen and for them to be stronger and more painful. If I am wearing shoes when the spasms happen I have to get my shoes off to try and relieve the pressure but it doesn’t always help and sometimes my feet are in such a weird position I can’t get my shoes off. 


The doctor went through my long list of medications and tried to tell me that pyridostigmine / mestinon can cause muscle spasms. As I have been on and off this medication since 2007 I was able to point out that the life of this medication was 4 hours in the body and that my taking a tablet and when the spasms happen rarely coincides. He wanted to know what would happen if I didn’t take them so I explained I would faint a lot more, I would lose the sight out of my right eye and the right side of my face would drop like I have had a stroke. Needless to say he was a little surprised that this one pill would have such a huge impact on my life.
We have come up with a plan that as I haven’t had any bloods taken for over 18 months that he wants them done, as neurology will ask for them to be done if they aren’t. He wants to see if it is something like an electrolyte imbalance that is causing the muscle spasms. If they find something in the blood work then he maybe able to do something to correct it. After the bloods are done and if they don’t show anything he will refer me to neurology however he will also ask them to suggest medication to help in the meantime. This is all good to me as with Covid impacting every aspect of the health service I will take anything that they are willing to do. 


Obviously at the back of my mind there are concerns, dystonia can be a symptom of other issues rather than just dystonia. I think it is pure and simple dystonia and keep telling myself that. I have had so many tests for other issues over the the years that I just refuse to freak out at the possibility and what ifs. I can’t live like that, I refuse to live like that.


So when I know anymore, you will know more.

A photo of my gorgeous boy to end on a happy note.