@flyingmartini1 Thanks for the update. I have been down this road before where spine surgeons don't know what what is wrong or what to do and they don't want to take a chance on a patient because they can't guarantee a good result. They don't make guarantees anyway, but they do not want a poor result and a patient complaining online about them. They are rated by insurance companies for statistics on the success rate for each procedure, and they do not want to jeopardize their careers with low grades. Be careful about giving them irrelevant information. The thing about a fibromyalgia diagnosis is that can be a catch all for when a doctor does not know what is causing pain. I'm not saying that it isn't real, but at one time, I was handed that nebulous judgement.

You may want to seek another opinion. A neurologist is a good detective for sources of pain, but they might diagnose fibromyalgia with no known cause. When you have one appointment and the surgeon doesn't know what's wrong, and says get a spine stimulator, he/she does not want to take you as a patient for decompression surgery. I got brushed off 5 times like that before I came to Mayo.

I had something they all missed called "funicular pain" which was being caused by spinal cord compression. Unfortunately, there is no diagnostic test for this, and the only way to prove it exists is when decompression of the spinal cord with surgery cures that pain. It is pain all over the body much like fibromyalgia is described. Early on, I could change the location of my pain by turning my head because it was a bone spur contacting my spinal cord that was doing it. That was proof that my cervical spine was causing that pain when I could turn it on and off, but surgeons didn't pay attention when I said that. Later, as the bone spurs grew and there was more compression, I could not turn it off, but it did change location based on my neck position. If you can come to Mayo, you will find surgeons who understand this kind of pain.

One thing that predicts the possibility of funicular pain is a spinal epidural injection that takes all the pain away. It is temporary, and when I had the injection, I had 5 days without pain, after which it slowly returned again all over my body. I charted that on body diagrams, and discussed with a surgeon, but it just scared him out of helping me because he did not understand that pain phenomena and was suggesting MS or an inflammatory condition instead. He stated he did not know if surgery would help. He was right about that, and ethically, they should not do surgery if they don't understand the problem.

Here is the literature that I found that changed the course of my spine care, and I sent this to a surgeon at Mayo when I requested an appointment with a letter explaining about the 5 surgeons who were dismissing me. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111492/

If you want to request an appointment at any of the Mayo campuses, you may use this link:
http://mayocl.in/1mtmR63

What would you think about taking this literature to your neurologist? If that doesn't get their attention, they may not understand this.