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[Mare37]

I had been diagnosed previously with polimyalgia rhumatica and fibromyalgia and my dr has me on prednisone and lyrica.  About a month ago, I started having pain in my right leg in the calf area, that  progressed through the week until it got to the point that something "snapped" from my calf to the front of my lower leg.  The pain was so bad that I couldnt walk on it and was on crutches for a week.  The ortho said my knee was sound and that a ligament snapped. Doppler showed no DVT.  As I was going through PT for my right leg, the same pain started in my left leg, and now it's progressed to the point where my right leg was just before the ligament snapped.  The ortho and my pcp is saying the pain is from the fibromyalgia, but I've never heard of it causing something like this happening in both legs to the point that it causes a snapped ligament.  Has anyone else experienced or heard of this happening?  I'm back on crutches now and dont know any more than I did a month ago.    

[Curls]

Lots of people have been treated with lycria.  There are several threads here about it.  I personally haven't tried it so I haven't been tracking the experiences, except to say they are very mixed.  I have seen no connect between lycria and a problem like this.  Aside from the hyperflex or general FM (well established) tendency to tenditis and joint troubles, I can't think of any connection to FM.  It's too bad your doctor is stuck on this.  Has the orthopedist explained it?  It's their domain, not pcp or rheumotogist.  

While I don't feel confident in the hyperflexiblity/resulting ligament weakness as the cause of such extreme results with distinctive onset, if you want to know more, it's a genetist who would be best at diagnosising it, of all doctors.  (Also a good CFS doctor, but where are they?)  It's the ligament weakness that would be the connection, not the hypermoblity symptom in general, and the ligament weakness is an established connection to the syndrome.

I wish I had an answer for you.  The best I can say, is you are right to be questioning their conclusion of FM, without looking for the more specific process that's going on.  Whether connected or not, how to you treat it without a clue what's happening.

[Mare37]

Thanks for your answer. I'm not sure that this is caused by hyperflexibility, I'm not really sure what caused the pain to start in my right leg in the first place. Or why it started in my left leg a few weeks after.  I think at this point my doctor is saying it's related because the tests that were done (xray and dopler) came back ok, and because I had already been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. But
I just dont buy it.  I'm not sure where to go at this point because he's written it off and is sending me back to my rheum dr. who just keeps increasing the lyrica dosage.  Have you heard of anyone else being treated with Lyrica for Fibro?  I noticed this started after I started the Lyrica but cant find anything that says there's a relationship.

[Curls]

I agree, I haven't heard of this.  FM can be related to hyperflexiblity where the ligaments are super stretchy and don't hold the joints in place.  Could that be the cause?  When like that as the joints wiggle, the muscles around them tighten to aid the job of the ligaments, so they don't appear as flexible after a while but instead as stiff.  Those tight muscles because a ball of pain will all know well.  That's why tendinitis is so common in FM.  Excess pain the body then triggers more pain and more sensitivity.  That's a the theory some fm/cfs doctors believe is a factor.  My doctor found almost everyone of his CFS/FM patients were hyperflexible even though most had no idea (he has a CFS subspeciality and is in contact with other CFS doctors in the country).  The hyperflexiblity includes hyper stretchy veins, which leads to the blood pooling and dsyautonomias that are tied to so many CFS/FM symptoms.  So, back to your question.  What you're describing is unusual, but as far as theories goes that could relate them, that's what comes to mind.  Hyperflexibity is under the diagnosis grouping of Elhers-Danos syndrome (which includes much more extreme conditions).   Why do your doctor's think it's related?