Fibromyalgia relief

When she dives into the water, any body of water, Janis Nimori is in her element. And if she can come up with a muddy gun, all the better.

Hot springs are heaven in winter, lakes are luxurious in summer, and irrigation canals — well, there may be another murder weapon lodged down there in the sludge.

She's already found her first one.

As president of the Box Elder County Search and Rescue scuba team, Nimori says she's never yet had to pull a body from the water, but she's both willing and able — something those suffering with fibromyalgia may consider impossible for a woman in chronic pain.

But Nimori regularly pulls on a wet suit and oxygen tank to train fellow divers after finding help with her own fibromyalgia pain in the form of a new drug she takes as part of an open clinical trial.

Savella, a selective serotonin and norepinephrine dual reuptake inhibitor, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for managing the disease, which is a chronic condition involving widespread body pain and decreased physical functioning.

Scheduled to be available in pharmacies beginning this month, Savella has been used by Nimori and more than 2,000 fibromyalgia patients as part of two phase-three clinical trials. Though she had to give up running and cut back on some activities she was able to do before her symptoms began in mid-2007, she's found the pain is manageable with 200 mg of Savella per day.

"On a scale of one to 10, my pain went from a seven or an eight every day to about a three," she said.

A mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, Nimori has been able to keep her job and has begun reclaiming activities she had to give up when an anesthesiologist who suffers from the disease recognized her undiagnosed pain as he was performing one of countless medical tests she had endured trying to find a cause.

The disease had dogged her for nearly a year before he told her about his own condition. The next day, Nimori heard about a clinical trial for those with the disease on the radio and picked up the phone.

"It was a relief to have someone tell you you're not losing your mind," she said.

As with many fibro patients, Nimori had been to multiple doctors, undergone multiple tests with no definitive answer, and reached the point where she started to doubt her own sanity.

"To have them say, 'That's normal; it's part of your disease,' was a huge relief."

Dr. Lucinda Bateman is overseeing the clinical trial and specializes in treating fibro patients.

"It's a multi-system illness that doesn't have a defined medical specialty, so doctors are slow to identify it objectively," Bateman said.

Some physicians are reluctant to diagnose something they can't measure or find on an X-ray, she said.