Hi everyone,
For the last couple of months I have had severe pain in my arms, neck and across my upper chest. and in my shoulders. There are several points that are excruciating to touch. In bed it is very difficult to turn over and when I go to sit up I cannot support my body weight because of the pain in my arms. I can just be sitting sometimes and I get intense pain say in my upper arm or I lean back and it feels like I have a pointed stake in my shoulder. To shower is like entering a torture chamber and inevitably I exit a sobbing mess, exhausted. Cleaning my teeth hurts. It has got progressively worse and is really getting me down. As with other symptoms it’s always worse at night. I thought that may be it wasn’t MS pain so had a blood test for polymyalgia rheumatica which came back clear.
I am taking gabapentin 500mg per day currently and so far it hasn’t really been effective. I know it’s a low dose so am persevering with upping the dose as advised.
I’m desperate to know if others experience this kind of pain and what they do about it.
What a moan, sorry. I’d appreciate any feedback.
Dear KC,
Thank you for your response. I’m upping the dose gradually as you say there’s been about a week between each rise. I don’t bath as it just makes me feel ill. I take tepid showers, it’s the actual washing myself, etc that is so painful and exhausting. I’ve just trapped my hand in the back of my trousers trying to hoist up my pants which had slipped! Agony and had to yell for my husband to help. I couldn’t move my arm myself. This type of pain which has been going on a couple of months now is new on my symptoms list.
I guess I just need to be patient, stick with the medication and hope I reach a level soon where it is effective.
Thanks again for your advice and kindness
I’ve had pain in shoulder and travels to my neck for years now. Had a xray and nothing showed up, I got sent to physio
where they said posture is out left shoulder higher than the right.
I was told what exercises to do and use to help bu my MS messes with my left side of body arm, leg etc and I find its
a bit of a losing battle.
In my mirror it looks like both shoulders are same height but the pain is back on and off so I pop a few pills when it gets to
bad.
It seams to come in waves and last for weeks then fades before I took the pills, I noticed that it clicks also.
Naproxen and or Gapa helped me.
Anyway you comment about cleaning teeth, I could not move arm up or grab seat belt in car without severe burning
felt like bone on bone rubbing and my arm would tire after few secs or the pain would wake me up at night.
I suspect I need to see physio bod again.
I hope you see a GP and get a physio referal so they can check posture properly as you never know.
why not try to see a neuro physio i suffer with pain in my shoulder and she thinks it could be down to my posture i dont know if this will help but worth a try eh!
Thank you, I guess physio is where I’ll end up eventually.
I saw a neurologist recently (eight weeks ago) hence the gabapentin. He advised waiting until the pain has subsided before going for physio. Eight weeks on rather than subside it has got worse, I guess that’s what’s really getting to me. I feel pathetic and know there are many who live with far worse things so what am I moaning about.
Appreciate your responses thank you.