Thanks everyone. She woke up and we tried icing her neck since she was in the worst pain she's been in in the last 1.5 years and was crying in pain from whatever the chiro doctor did when he just did a quick feel of her neck to evaluate her and the icing helped a lot. Her neck was burning and hurting and the icing got rid of the burning. Sounds like inflammation to me (since I deal with burning pains with my Crohn's inflammation). But icing on and off got her stable and we talked and she calmed down and got rational. Then after it had been 6+ hours since she took the OTC stuff, she finally had a bite to eat, took some of her vicodin and was able to fall asleep around 4-6am and she still sleeping. In her sleep she's constantly rolling around and sounding like she's in pain in her breathing because her body is looking for a non-painful position to sleep in.
It could be fibromyalgia. It's very possible that her tender spots in her back and neck are from that. But her physical therapist said her neck muscles had shortened and were very stiff/tight and stuff like icing working makes it seem like there's still an injury.
When we went to this Chiropractor who was recommended by a family friend who had been in terrible chronic pain from an injury for 2 years and no doctors could figure it out and this guy identified it as Internal Disc Disruption, he was rough in his evaluation (bad) but we did get one thing out of it possibly: She previously had X-rays and MRIs done of her back and neck last year. But this guy looked and said "she's missing her neck X-ray; there's a neck/back MRI and a back X-ray, but no neck X-ray" and we realized he was right. We just assumed the X-rays (which said nothing was wrong) were the back+neck. So she went and got x-rays done yesterday and they were supposed to be 5 x-rays, but she thinks the x-ray technician saw something and asked her to do a couple more on top of that. We'll get the report on Monday or Tuesday and I have the cd images but my home computer's cd drive is busted and I have no way to read cds :\
To answer Lennedsay, she has a psychiatrist. He's prescribing her Ambian to help her sleep but she hasn't picked up the prescription from him yet and was going to get it on monday. Also this last week we tried alternative medicine guy whose a friend of my dads. He's a cool guy and she likes him and he gave a lot of advice but like here's what he suggested:
-Eat healthy (no sugars, stick to organic meats, lots of vegetables) - Sounds good, she can do this.
-Eat lots of green/blue algea & sea salts - Uh, ok, can try this.
-Take lots of fish oil, Vitamin B, Vitamin D - She already takes fish oil and Vit D, she can't take Vitamin B because it's a serotonin booster and it mixes with her high dosage of SSRIs (Prozac) and causes scary side effects.
-Take OTC sleeping aids - the ones he named are serotonin and she can't take them
-Exercise, try to do walks a little more each day until you're doing 1.5 hours - Great advice and we take walks and she needs to get more into this
-Probiotics - Ok, I take probiotics personally but that's cause I have Crohns and I thought probiotics are mainly for the digestive system health. She can try this though.
-Medical Marijuna - We haven't tried this yet, might help, maybe.
-EFT Therapy - Ok, here's the big one. He wants her to do this Emotional Freedom Technique therapy by a Dr. Mercola to wish away her problems. Now the problem is my fiance is A) very very intelligent (she has a crazy high IQ; like genius level), B) a Psych major and C) very skeptical. So she remembered Mercola's name from her psych classes where they talked crap on him and explained how all his psuedo-science was not real and only placebo and it only worked on people because they "believed" in it. She also did research on Mercola and saw he was one of the original anti-vaccination crazies among other things so she's like "lol, no way I'm touching this with a 10 foot pool"
Basically he wants her to live a healthy lifestyle, smoke weed and use the EFT technique for 3 months and he thinks it'll get her feeling a lot better and then as a chiropractor as well he'll start doing minor adjustments to help her feel better. But none of this stuff is going to be immediate benefits and I think that's one of the bigger problems is she's in so much pain when she sees new doctors she wants something that will help the pain decreases right away from the very first appointment and gets depressed when there's nothing that does that.
I think the plan is:
1) When she wakes up, will go to my office and look at her neck X-ray images just to see if anything really pops out when compared to healthy neck x-ray images. When I tore my knee last summer, I looked at the X-rays before getting the x-ray report and even I could see there was something there. Would be nice if there was SOMETHING shown since the fact that the other X-rays/MRIs haven't shown anything much is a big reason I think doctors are more iffy with her. Most doctors only go with physical evidence that they can see. If there's some crack or lesion or something visible it'd really help on figuring out a way to get it better.
2) Will keep icing her wound and get her some of her med MJ and see if it helps the pain level. If she's up to it, take a walk, eat healthy (she hadn't eaten in 2 days because her aunt called her "chubby" [she weighs 107 pounds] and it re-affirmed her body image problems she has where she always thinks she's fat, so after hearing that she stopped eating entirely on Thursday and has only been taking cinnamon pills & drinking water [though she might have had a snack to eat before taking her vicodin this morning, I fell asleep so don't know]).
3) She's seeing her pain and rehabilitation doctor on Monday. Going to ask her doc for 1) A blood test (because she hasn't had one in these 1.5 years despite being on all these meds and overdosing on OTC) and 2) test for fibromyalgia. Also give her the X-ray images if she doesn't have the report by then have that doc take a look.
4) Get her ambian prescription and see if it helps her sleep.
5) She needs to start eating again. Sleep + Eat = she can manage. Take away either and she gets edgy and frustrated and can't live with the pain.
6) Get the x-ray report on Mon/Tues and see what it says.
7) After this can see if there's an ideas or if a psych ward would be the answer. She changed her mind and she really doesn't want to go to a psych ward. She either wants to get away from everything and be institutionalized for 6 months to a year and have her pain sedated or she wants to deal with it by living with OTC stuff and alternative medicine and no more doctors or prescriptions besides what her psychiatrist gives her. At least if the x-ray or fibromyalgia tests show something definitive, she'd probably be willing to go the route of seeing 1 doctor to treat with it + her psychiatrist.
Since she won't voluntarily go into anything, I need to find a way to work with her to get a working plan going or call 911 and have them pick her up and evaluate her. Not a good situation to be in :\
