64-year-old J. has been living with pain ever since she was a teenager. After decades of various pain medications and frequent hospital visits, J. hit rock-bottom when her mother-in-law opted for euthanasia and she realised she was jealous of her.
Fortunately, not much later she was introduced to Reducept, which finally led to a decrease in her pain. To J.'s greatest surprise, she was finally able to put her wheelchair in the attic, in the hopes that she will never need it again. Read J's story below.
My name is J., and I am nearly 65 years old. I have suffered from fibromyalgia since I was 17. It wasn’t called fibromyalgia then. I spent six weeks in hospital with pain just about everywhere and the specialist knew that it was some kind of rheumatism but had no idea how to treat it other than to give me steroids, which did little to help the pain. I was studying for my high school exams and it was a very worrying and difficult time. My parents were told it could be Lupus.
I managed to have a successful career as a bank manager, but the pain was always present, especially in the winter. When I was 29 I emigrated to the Netherlands from the UK and promptly spent four months in an allergy hospital after reacting to just about everything, then a year later four months in hospital with pregnancy complications. Luckily my twins were born healthy, although small, and life carried on. Due to my husband’s overseas work, the entire household and childcare was my responsibility and the pain, fortunately, faded to the background.
Fifteen years later I was director of my own company advising multinational companies on personnel matters. It was a challenging time but very rewarding. Unfortunately, largely due to being available to clients 24/7, I suffered a major burn-out and the fibromyalgia returned with a vengeance. For three years I was barely capable of running the household and was declared 100% unsuitable for work. It was around this time that I was confirmed as gluten intolerant. I had been lactose intolerant since my early teens. Also around this time, my two sisters were also confirmed coeliac and as having fibromyalgia and one sister also with severe psoriasis ( her daughter has it too, as arthritic psoriasis, she is just 29). For us, it is clear that genes do play a part, not just life events. However, the burnout was clearly a massive trigger to start the fibromyalgia flare-up that has continued since.
For years I have suffered such debilitating pain that sometimes I felt I couldn’t go on. It if was not for my wonderful family I would have stepped out years ago. I used Fentanyl patches for almost ten years but felt they were no longer helping. In the meantime my back was letting me down too, with herniated disks causing pressure on nerves, resulting in agonizing pain down my legs. Last year the turning point came when my mother in law chose euthanasia and I realised that I was envious of her. It came as an awful shock to me and I realised I had to do something.
Covid had been with us for nearly a year. Scared to go anywhere due to being medically vulnerable because of asthma, I had hardly left the house. I decided I had to start up the nerve-blocking injections in my back, which until now had not been successful. Luckily the first injection post-Covid lockdown really helped and encouraged by that I went in search of ways to help the fibromyalgia pain in the rest of my body.
Sometimes I curse Facebook for spying on me and sending me posts on everything vaguely related to anything I have ever Googled, but on one occasion I received a Reducept post and clicked on it immediately to read more. The thing about chronic pain is that sufferers will try anything in their desperate search for relief. There were times when I would have swapped a kidney for a good night’s sleep! Even now I have to be grateful for four or five hours of sleep. I have paid out thousands for various therapies, supplements and everything in between in a fruitless but desperate search for relief.
Having read about Reducept I went in search of a VR headset and managed to find a nearly new secondhand one. Within a few days, I was set up and was using Reducept a few times a day. I can’t remember exactly when I realised the pain was ebbing away. It was a gradual experience. Certainly, within a month, I was sure that the pain that I was expecting during a cold, wet weather period, had not materialized and I was determined to pay more attention to the pain level, something I had avoided being conscious of as much as possible previously.
I was finally able to increase my activity level and that too helped reduce the pain. I continued to use Reducept on a “top-up” basis, just every few days. I still use it occasionally if I have pain, but I don’t suffer the all-encompassing pain that I used to. I continue to keep my subscription to Reducept because I like to feel that it is available to me when needed. I have a wheelchair now stored in the attic and crutches in the cupboard. Just as Reducept, they are there “just in case”, but I hope never to need them again.
Interested in reading more success stories? Check out the inspiring blog series from Rozemarijn here.
Success story: The long search of a pain-free life
