My husband is quite sick and the health care system here is terrible. I'm just trying to figure out what is wrong with him so he can get some quality of life back. Here are his symptoms:
31 years old, 310 lbs, current known conditions are sleep apnea (uses a CPAP which works well) and GERD (on Nexium which eliminates the symptoms), carpal tunnel
His carpal tunnel started getting very bad on one wrist, then his elbow, about 6 - 8 months ago. He bought a new ergonomic keyboard and chair for his office which helped a lot.
But the bouts of pain continued, then becoming more generalized to his neck, shoulders, back, legs, etc. This was a different pain, not the typical carpal tunnel type pain localized to one area.
For about the past three months, he has been occasionally unable to handle any exertion (i.e. cooking a turkey dinner sends him into a several day period of constant pain). Once for a period of about four days he was completely bedridden. Some days he is ok, and others unable to function due to the pain.
For about the past month, he has started getting pronounced swelling of his neck (and possibly other areas). His neck actually increases in circumference by 3 - 4 inches at times. Often he wakes up in the night feeling like he's being strangled (this is not the sleep apnea). He can't lie down for any length of time without getting an uncomfortable sensation in his neck/chest.
The doctor ran kidney, liver, lupus, rheumatoid factor, B12, thyroid, and some other stuff. All apparently was fine (except for blood and protein in the urine which apparently they thought weren't significant). The only result they got was that ANA was "positive".
At this point the doctor is saying, basically, he is fine. He is trying self-medicating 1000mg of naproxen sodium/day to see if that helps at all with the pain to try to get some quality of life back.
Could this be fibromyalgia and if so what treatment could he try, to deal with it? Any ideas?