Anne Pritchard started feeling tired but her problems continued after she got her diagnosis
Anne Pritchard started feeling tired but her problems continued after she got her diagnosis
A woman who put her tiredness down to having a busy work life later became addicted to prescribed drugs after being diagnosed with an often misunderstood health condition.
Around 20 years ago, Anne Pritchard, from West Derby, started suffering from pain in her neck, shoulders and hands and constantly felt extremely tired. At the time she had a busy work life and would find herself driving across the country and working late night, so ultimately, put the fatigue down to work.
That was until she started suffering from flu like symptoms every couple of weeks and decided she needed to seek an opinion from the doctor.
The 75-year-old told the ECHO: “The pain in the back of my neck and shoulders was getting worse so I started googling symptoms and came across fibromyalgia.
“I’d gone to the doctors and I explained this condition to them because they had never heard of it either. At first they thought I had arthritis but all the tests came back negative and that is when they came to the conclusion that I have fibromyalgia.”
Anne says the pain from fibromyalgia is “unbearable,” she said: “It’s awful. You get pain all over the body, for me my back and shoulders are the worst and along with the pain is the fatigue, it’s beyond a normal feeling of tiredness, it’s such a heavy fatigue.
“Then you get sleeplessness too, you never get a really good sleep, it’s never fully restful because of the pains. Your sensitivity is heightened and you get all sorts of problems.”
Anne has had fibromyalgia for more than 20 years now and has been prescribed “everything” from codeine to morphine in “very strong doses” to cope with the pain. However, around five years ago she realised she was addicted to prescribed drugs and feared for the future.
She said: “I was taking everything from paracetamol to codeine and morphine. I was taking tablets in stronger and stronger doses to mask the pain. I was addicted to them and it was a fear that I was reliant on them.
“I realised that all these drugs were not doing the pain any help at all, my body became so used to them to the point the morphine wasn’t doing anything. I was waking up and I was taking them because my body craved it.
“I have this thing called restless leg syndrome, which feels like ants crawling under your skin which makes your legs move all the time, and I took tramadol at night for that and the side effects were just awful. But my body was craving it.
“When you’re taking all these medicines you don’t know where you are, you forget things, can’t remember things and say things that come out of nowhere. You can’t concentrate. And eventually, around five years ago I decided I needed to wean myself off them and so I did.”
Anne slowly withdrew from taking all her medication and says it was the “best thing” she has ever done. She has now set up a support group to help others suffering from the condition, which can sometimes be dangerous when strong prescribed drugs are involved. She said: “I founded Fibromates North West Fibromyalgia Support Group around five years ago because I quickly realised there isn’t much support for people out there with fibromyalgia.“
She added: “Many sufferers don’t receive the necessary support and care that they need. They are often handed repeat prescriptions for painkillers and anti-depressives without the proper attention.”
“Painkillers such as paracetamol, anti-inflammatory painkillers such as ibuprofen or stronger painkillers such as codeine are often tried to reduce pain. However, they often do not work very well in fibromyalgia.
“The strongest painkiller a doctor can prescribe is generally strong opioids, like morphine or fentanyl and these medications are used for severe pain, often after surgery, injuries or for chronic pain management, like cancer.“
However, she warns this can often be dangerous when it’s taken to medicate fibromyalgia. She said: “Unfortunately people become dependent on opioids for fibromyalgia, convincing themselves that they can’t function without them and the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia are debilitating, plus the unrestful sleep which goes with it is draining and this can cause people to self-medicate and take more of their medication than what has been prescribed.”
For more information about fibromyalgia visit the NHS website here.
