Suggest Treatment For Stress, Anxiety, Depression And An Excited Feeling

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia between 10 to 15 years ago by a rheumatologist. We first thought because of sudden onset of weakness and pain in my hands bilaterally at the very exact time and severity. I am a court reporter and depend on my hands, so, trust me, a moment I will never forget. Many years of trial and error, a brief time of remission, symptoms returning along with many other symptoms affecting basically my entire body. Rheumatologist, after that, diagnosed the fibromyalgia and recommended a pain management specialist. He give me one recommendation, one that was not feasible for me, and I had basically been seeing my internist and treating each symptom and the regimen we had found that worked was working great. At the time I had no insurance and couldn t just start all over with pain management, so, because my internist retired, I luckily found a new one who was compassionate and I was comfortable with. He had my records, so new my history, and I just wanted to continue to satisfactorily treat my symptoms at that time. Being a very active, successful court stenographer my entire life, that was the priority for me, to be able to continue my profession that I loved and had spent many, many years earning the respect of the legal community. If you re not aware, that profession is a very high stress, very mental and physical job. It is a job, as an officer of the Court, it is my duty to be dependable, accurate, and capable to do my job. I was also moderately physically active and socially active. I was about 30 at the time. All of a sudden, I found my whole life turned upside down, and I felt like I was at least holding on to my job by a string. I had to decrease my workload significantly. My plan, maybe not realistic but the only option in my mind, was to hang on, address some issues that I felt may be at the source of all others (stress, anxiety, general happiness, and feeling excited about something, etc.) keep just treating the symptom so I could continue to function and eventually at least be able to manage my pain, fatigue, anxiety quietly while continuing to succeed at my profession and keep some, although reduced, social life. My specialty in my job was medical malpractice type cases for about 15 years, so I have quite a bit of familiarity with medicine. I am well-aware sometimes a little bit of knowledge can be more detrimental than good, so I still need a compassionate, caring physician that I trust. I am just able to understand a little bit more than just a layperson the technicality of words and their meanings. My physician, also knowing my medical background, I believe kinda just assumes I know what I need to know and how to take medicine, and he basically just rewrites my prescriptions and monitors that part of it. Lately, I ve had some major opportunities with work and my emotional state has been very up, and I ve been excited for the future and thought finally things were working out. Today I had some very unacceptable, irresponsible things happen that could affect my work drastically, just when I thought it was starting to turn around. Because of some other situations today, I realized I ve been having quite a bit of more cognitive signs lately, starting a conversation and in the middle of the conversation forgetting what I was talking about, forgetting where I just put things, forgetting important appointments I had scheduled altogether, etc. As you may imagine, as a court stenographer, my job being to take down the court record verbatim and secure its availability, it s very worrisome to me that I am not going to be able to continue to keep my job. I can t take down verbatim a proceeding with lawyers and judges when I can t remember my thinking in the middle of a sentence. Today I had an important deposition schedule at 1:00, and I never woke up once until 3:00. Ironic since sleeping a few hours a night is a good night. I basically had a small panic attack. That opened my eyes to the reality that this thing is not just going to go away, and I may have to do what s right to the profession and just give it up completely. I would never even want to hear any suggestion about disability. That was unacceptable and not an option for me. I am struggling with these cognitive symptoms, and I don t know where to go next. I am a 50 year old, very independent woman, never been married, no children, but my only means of support, financially and emotionally, is myself. I thought that was a very good thing. Now I m very afraid of that. I don t really know what my question is. I guess I don t really have a specific one, and I m very sorry for taking your time as an outlet for my very frustrating, scary situation. I guess my question is am I overreacting. Should I just keep on the course I ve taken and consider it a bad day, or is it time to face reality and start to head into the specialty of pain management and start looking into the possibility of disability? I ve actually tried for quite some time to find a different job maybe not so stressful or demanding but one that could at least be challenging enough to feel useful, and I could not even get any serious responses. I am very good at my job, but I guess it is a profession with a very specific skillset and not a profession you are able to just go out and find another to take its place. I am in a very confusing situation and don t know where to go from here. I don t even know that disability is a viable option for me, but I just cannot go from being an officer of the Court to a clerk at a convenience store. My other symptoms beside the newly notice cognitive ones are actually pretty severe. I have severe pain, aching and arthritic pain, every single second. It s manageable with medicine, but it s still there. The fatigue is probably the worse symptom for me. I just get exhausted doing the smallest things and have to at least be able to set down everywhere I go. Fighting the fatigue to even get up in the morning and get myself dressed is immeasurable. I make sure I drive myself everywhere I go so I can leave when I need to. Any kind of nighttime events are very limited and very short term. I do not sleep. I have severe arthritis pain in my feet, hands, hips, elbows, wrists, knees. Prednisone is the only thing that will take that away, but, knowing the dangerous affects of prednisone, I only use that in a very small dose as a last resort and very briefly. The other thing that is pretty major but has actually gotten better is anxiety. I ve been to the hospital for several panic attacks in the past to get those at a manageable level. I ve developed a social anxiety just because I can t have the social life I once did. Now, a lot of people of anxiety, but this is off the scale. Just having to rush to something, I will starting breathing irregularly, almost hyperventilate, and the sweat is just pouring off of me even if I turn the air up to 60 degrees. My body temperature has generally been embarrassingly extremely high. I will just break out sweating out of the blue and am constantly wiping my face and fanning myself. I am just so tired, exhausted from pushing and trying to keep this whole condition as secret as I can and try to get my life back. I don t want anyone to think I m not capable to accomplish something. Now I cant finish a thought it seems. Please tell me where to go from here. I ve never really been under the care or specialist, except the rheumatologist in the diagnosis phase. I ve basically been reading, researching, analyzing, and trying to manage this whole mess myself, including the emotional state. I just don t think I can continue doing much longer the career I have mastered, enjoyed, earned deserved respect, and actually get a lot of satisfaction from. Where do I begin to maybe investigate the disability avenue? I am so sorry for this very long, wordy story, but maybe it s because I ve had a devastating day, an eye-opener, have never really had any serious medical help, and have just reached my comfort level medically on any new ideas. Please forgive me.