thanks emma!
it does sound like the same thing. mine only last til i lower the pain, thankfully i can do that with an icepack. soon as the ice hits it, the body starts to calm down.
i do have a BP monitor and that was the first thing i tested, but my BP always stays low. thought it was just a pounding heart, but the heartrate tonight while just laying on the bed after taking a shower, nice and calm but feeling pain since i was laying down without any ice and my pulse was 88, then 83, so high. then i did some deep breathing and was able to get my pulse down too, even though the heart still pounds. i'd hate to add yet another drug like beta blockers if i didn't have to, i feel like i'm already on so many drugs. and when i get the pain to die down, all the other symptoms go away, so i've been focused on treating what is causing the pain, trying to get at the source of the problem. though if i could use my mind to do it, well, i'd like to try that too.
valium? i could ask about that. thanks. like you, i'd only use it in an emergency situation. especially since i take a muscle relaxant at night. certainly wouldn't be mixing those drugs. i wanted my physiatrist to write me a prescription for a pain med, even tramadol, just for emergencies, when my SI tweaks to the point of making me scream, but she said i'd have to come in like that, she'd have to see me like that, i told her i wouldn't do that to myself, but got the rheumy to prescribe the tramadol for emergencies, then went on LDN and it became a moot point. don't know why so many doctors let us suffer in pain when there are things that can help us. i know addiction is a scary thing, but so is severe pain. anyway, that's in the past.
you're right, i hate to use the word panic attacks as then people think its a scared, nervous, fear thing. and its not. not even a little bit. its a pain thing. maybe the brain is involved, but its a response to pain. and not even an emotional response to pain. even when it happens, i don't feel worried or scared or anything like that. that's why i say its almost like an out of body experience.
i do think i will start trying to talk to my doctors about this. surely one of them will be familiar with it, you would think? maybe a psychiatrist that deals with chronic pain patients? i just don't know? but somebody must be familiar with it.
and yes, the GI tract. last year the pain was so bad, that my GI tract was screwed up enough that my body stopped digesting food properly and i dropped almost 10 lbs as i watched food go in one end and out the other (no, not a pretty sight!). the gastritis was the worst in the morning. i've had almost 20 years experience managing my gastritis so during the day i could feed it, give it ginger and mint and psyllium, but at night when it would get empty, that was the worst. mylanta right before sleep was the only thing that truly saved it from getting any worse than it did. but it was a rough month. and surprised the doctors didin't understand the pain - GI connection for you; its one of the major problems with burn victims, its a well known connection. interestingly, my doctors thought that maybe the GI symptoms came first (IBD) and then the musculoskeletal pain second. i let them test me for IBD, figured it was about time for another colonoscopy anyway, and i do have gastritis which then leads to IBS anyway. and it was a good thing that i had the colonoscopy as they removed a few polyps and saw some ulcers in the small intestine, common for people with spondyloarthropathies, and figure that data will help me with a dx. but now that i'm going through a milder version of last fall, i can see its pain first, followed by GI upset. interestingly, at the start of this flare i had the worst case of constipation, all the fiber and water and exercise in the world wasn't making a dent, the only thing that was saving me was psyllium. now with all this pain, now my bowels are showing that my body is once again not digesting food all that well, not as bad as last fall, but still, not great. so yeh, i know exactly that which you describe.
