Day 3 of "Cesamet Removal" Program

Here we are on day three of my self-established "fast but safe" get-off-the-Cesamet-NOW program.

I'm now taking 3.5mg per day (1.5mg in the morning; 2mg in the evening) and I can barely put one leg in front of the other after a mere half hour of very light activity!

Can you imagine what I'll be like when I next reduce the dosage?

That's scheduled to happen again on Monday -- down by a further .5mg so I will be taking 1.5mg both morning and evening for another four days.

Then on Friday of next week, I will again reduce by a further .5mg.  My plan is to continue that reduction schedule (.5mg/day every four days) until on March 17th I take my final .5mg capsule of the stuff.

As I've said earlier, I will be discussing this with my doctor when I see him on the 25th (Thursday) and I'm quite confident that once I show him the documented evidence of my "experiment" he will agree with me as to both my findings and the need for urgency to get off the poison.

Then we will have to deal with what else we can try to manage the pain of what we now know absolutely is bursitis.

As he said at my last visit, we're running out of rabbits to pull from the hat! 

I couldn't agree more, especially since none of the rabbits appear to work for me.

In the meantime, I'll continue doing what I've been doing for the past I-don't-know-how-long to manage both the pain of fibromyalgia and the added aggravation of having bursitis in both hips.

To that end, and notwithstanding all the home therapies that I have implemented over the years, my physiotherapist and massage therapist have become very important members of my health care team.

Weekly physiotherapy and bi-weekly massage sessions are crucial to my pain management regimen.  We don't try to pretend that we are going to cure anything.  We are simply doing what we can to manage what has been dealt to me.  (We are considering increasing the massage sessions to weekly because of the current changes to my medications and the resulting increase in pain.)

The physiotherapy treatment of choice has become acupuncture but that is only one modality available to me at the clinic. The physiotherapist's supervision of my exercise/stretching program and her ongoing advice are invaluable to my ability to conduct my at-home therapy sessions with the success that I enjoy. At each visit, she treats whatever pain is most acute that week and she is able to work in tandem with my massage therapist to “catch” any issues before they worsen.

My physiotherapy treatment pattern is thus:  I lie face down on the treatment table.  Ice packs are placed under my groin; heat packs on my back.  Acupuncture needles are placed from neck to ankle (or ankle to neck, we like to mix it up).

Above, the needles are being placed in (left) my calf which helps keep my cramping at bay, and (right) my thigh which is a "calming" point for hip and sciatic pain.  Needles will also be placed in strategic points in both hips.

You can see that the needles across my lower back are angled downward (as will be the ones that will be placed across my upper mid-back).  This is done to allow a heat pack to be carefully placed over top which helps enhance the effect of the treatment.

Here you can see that the needles are placed directly straight into the desired points across my neck and shoulders (the normal orientation for acupuncture needles).  You can also see the heat pack that has been placed over the angled needles.  At last count, I believe we were up to a count of 44 needles total (the call me the needle queen in that clinic).

Once all the needles are in place, I lie there for 25 minutes to a half hour and let the treatment take effect.  Invariably, just as the end of my time is approaching, I hit the "fall asleep" stage that I'm told most people get to at about the 15 minute mark.  Why oh why can't I be 'normal' at this like all my medical tests always show?

After the needles are removed, my therapist performs gentle traction on both legs before I get up from the table.  Throughout the placement/removal of needles time, we are usually discussing other ideas and options that I might try for even more pain relief.

There have been times, especially more recently since I've been reducing the Cesamet dosage, that I have arrived at the physiotherapist's office literally unable to put one leg in front of the other.  I leave there with almost a bounce in my step (OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift).  If only its effects would last for the week!