Jordan Rubin - Great Physicians Rx for Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue

C aryn Edens was born in Stockton, California, in the mid-1950s, the oldest of four children. Dad was a circulation manager for the Modesto Bee newspaper; Mom was a real estate agent.

Caryn came of age in the late 1960s, a turbulent time of unrest and rebellion, of antiwar demonstrations and hippie love-ins. Peace and Free Love was the anthem of the day. Like her peers, Caryn wore tattered blue jeans, peasant blouses, rainbow beads, and other groovy clothing such as tie-dye shirts and patchwork pants.

Im told by my parents that there was another cultural event happening at that timethe so-called Jesus Movement that arose on the West Coast in the late sixties and early seventies. The Holy Spirit swept through the hippie counterculture, bringing tens of thousands of those disenchanted with the status quo into Gods family. Their lively worship services are said to have paved the way for the development of contemporary Christian music, or CCM.

One of those persons swept up by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was Caryn Edens. I was a Jesus freak, she said, and we were downright unpopular. I was never a doper. I hung out with other Christians at school. I ate lunch with other Jesus freaks and attended a before-school Bible study in one of the teachers classrooms. I carried two Bibles around Downey High, a King James Version and a Living Bible. Looking back, they were awesome chastity belts.

After graduating, Caryn married her high school sweetheart a policemanand had two children, a boy and a girl. The marriage, however, could not survive the strain of a son with severe attention deficit disorder issues or the tension of living with a husband working in a high-profile, life-or-death profession. After thirteen years, the marriage was over.

And Caryns health problems were just beginning.

Raising a high-maintenance son with ADD and dealing with the difficulty of being a single-parent mom piled loads of stress on Caryns shoulders. In 1993, she was supporting the family by working for a cemetery, selling plots and headstones. She noticed that when she got up in the morning, she experienced dizziness or a sensation of whirling. Those feelings of seasickness continued throughout the day and were often accompanied by nausea and occasional vomiting. All she had to do was stand up and her world would start spinning. She saw several doctors who agreed that she had a classic case of vertigo, the spinning disorder thought to be caused by an inner ear imbalance.

Since that diagnosis nearly fifteen years ago, Caryn has had her hands full with a long list of ailments, including high blood pressure, numbness in the feet, back pains, bowel problems, and migraine headaches. Her health wasnt helped when her two prodigal children added a few bricks to the stressful load she was carrying on her shoulders. Her daughter stole her car at age thirteen, ran away, and came home pregnant at fourteen. Her son got shot in the back of the head with a pellet gun, overdosed on drugs, and survived a stabbing by a troubled Vietnam vet.

Several years ago, Caryn developed a tumor on her adrenal gland, which was removed, and her gallbladder failed. The surface of her eyes mysteriously dried up, so she had to constantly add eye drops to keep them lubricated. Her neck and spine developed scoliosis. But most of all, Caryn couldnt remember the last time she woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy. Instead, when she tried to get out of bed, every muscle in her body shouted out in pain. Caryn wondered who had unplugged her power supply.

She was in and out of doctors offices, seeking clues for why a variety of illnesses lay claim to her body. Then in 2001, one of her physicians believed he had the answer. I think you have fibromyalgia, he said, which is a widespread musculoskeletal disorder in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons and is closely associated with chronic fatigue syndrome. A second doctor confirmed the diagnosis.