Category: Spoonie fun

September is Chronic Pain Awareness Month

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Credit: Inktastic

Chronic Pain: is an unpleasant pain that persists for three months or longer. It is different from Acute Pain: which comes on suddenly and usually results from an injury and can be treated. Chronic Pain may be related to several different medical conditions and more often than not, cannot be cured- only managed.

The list that follows is not comprehensive by any means, but here are some medical conditions that can cause chronic pain.

Arthritis & joint problems (Rheumatoid arthritis, Psoriatic arthritis, Ankylosing spondylitis)

Migraine headaches

Back pain (spine & hip issues)

Fibromyalgia

Neuropathy and other nerve-related issues

Lyme Disease

IBD (including Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis)

Endometriosis

Cancer

Postsurgical pain

Multiple Sclerosis

Myofascial Pain Syndrome

Trigeminal Neuralgia

Diagnosing Chronic Pain

Credit: The Blue Diamond Gallery

To be diagnosed with chronic pain you may need one of the following:

CT(computer imaging topography) is a powerful X-ray that makes detailed pictures inside your body.

MRI or magnetic resonance imaging. It uses magnets and radio waves to make pictures of organs and structures inside you.

X-ray uses radiation in low doses to make images of structures in your body.

Sometimes, it takes several doctors to diagnose chronic pain and you may have to conduct one or more of these tests several times before you receive the right diagnosis and can move on to treatment.

Treatment

As for treatment, there are many ways that doctors can tackle chronic pain to make a person more comfortable.

They may use transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or a TENs unit, applies to the affected area.

Breathing and meditation techniques.

Biofeedback

Nerve blocks

Spinal cord stimulation

Pain meds like NSAIDs, muscle relaxers, anti-depressants, anti-seizure meds, and opioids.

Surgery to treat the conditions that caused the pain.

Life with Chronic Pain

Living with chronic pain may be the most challenging part after diagnosis. There may be feelings of loneliness; feelings like you are suffering alone and that there is no one out there who understands you or what you are going through. You may find that you aren’t able to keep up with chores like you once did and you either have to learn to let things go for when you are having a good pain day and can do it on your own or, you may have to enlist the help of some family members or even an outside source. Some of your friends may not understand when you have to cancel engagements because you are dealing with more pain than usual and you may end up finding who your true friends are. Work may become increasingly more difficult and you may have to consider going part-time or perhaps changing your profession, or maybe going back to school. Some days might be more painful than others; you may need a walking aid or a wheelchair and other days you may be able to go out and do your errands or gardening or even running. This does not make your pain fake or diminish it any way. Pain patients experience good days where their functional ability may fluctuate.

Life with chronic pain is difficult and you may have to adapt quite a bit during the course as things change in your life. You need to maintain hope even when things feel hopeless. There are still many things in this life to live for and many joys to be had, even while battling chronic pain. A support system is incredibly important and even though you may not be able to get out and be with people, the internet can be used for good and fill in that social gap. There are many communities across the internet, including Twitter and Instagram, where you can meet people who are in very similar situations and can understand what you are going through. Having these communities can boost your morale, give you something to live for and remind you that you aren’t alone in this world which can mean so much. Chronic pain can affect your mental health, so it is important to keep engaged and on to hope. If you find you are having difficulties and having suicidal thoughts, please contact someone you trust and let them know or reach out to National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Hours: Available 24 hours. Languages: English & Spanish.

800.273.8255

I Want My Old Brain Back

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Other Wistful-cisms…and Conclusions

 

I want my old brain back. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that could remember an entire grocery list on her own. The one that didn’t need to write everything on post-it notes or List-App’s on the phone or computer. The brain that made me a pretty successful mother of four small children, under the age of 5 and then when they got older: returned to school and later on, returned to work as well. There was a lot of juggling going on and I was managing alright. Looking back on it now, what I saw as overwhelming was stressful, but not as overwhelming as it would be for me now. It amazes me the volume of information I could store in my memory without needing to write it down. Entire lectures got banked up there with little need to study. I could remember my medication (for the few I took) without needing to write it down or needing an alarm on my phone. I stored in my brain at least five family and friend’s numbers and now I can only manage my husband, the rest are in contacts on my phone. Some of this can be attributed to getting older, and our lives stored on our phone, while others are truly a memory issue that is a direct result of my autoimmune disorders. Many of us are familiar with brain fog; this is like brain fog on steroids that can be positively alarming.

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The clarity is gone. The crystalline keenness in which I had been so accustomed to seeing things had now dissolved into feathered edges that forced me to squint. It makes me angry and frustrated and deeply sad because everything that I want to do well, like sitting down to write, which I love, is twice as hard. Words don’t just fire off the synapses like they once used to. It feels as though they are blanketed in a thick, low fog and I have to search for the words, sometimes using Google, or the Thesaurus like a fishing rod, several times to hook and reel the right words I am searching for. There are times I will slam the laptop shut, frustrated that this is how things have turned out. Frustrated that this is my calling and that the universe has seen fit to throw in another challenge as if life itself weren’t challenging enough. But I refuse to allow it to rob, what it is I love. If I just lay down and die, it wins. I’m sorry, but if there’s one thing that people with chronic illness have in reserve is strength.

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I want my health back. I’d settle for my health at my 30’s. I had migraines every few days but now, when I get a migraine on top of everything else that makes my body feel like someone’s punching bag, it makes me feel one hundred times worse. I want the freedom of being able to eat what I want and not have to worry about it making me sick to my stomach. You forget about how food makes you feel; you forget your vanity and about the calories because you’re losing weight from the terror waged every day in your digestive system and all you want to do is enjoy food for the sheer sake of pleasure because food has now become your Moriarty. Worse than that because you can thwart your nemesis, but you can’t thwart food. Food is life.

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I miss my old body and freedom of travel. I want the luxury of being able to travel whenever and wherever I want and not have to take into consideration my illnesses and how travel will impact my body or how the stress of everything will tire me out or be too painful for me. I want my 20’s and my 30’s when I could run and jump and climb and do yoga. I wake up in the morning and the first thing that greets me is pain. There are different levels of pain: some is throbbing and aching in my joints and muscles, while others radiate and spike down from my lower back down my leg. It’s not something I get used to and I have to breathe a little humour into it, thinking, “Well, if I ever wake up and not feel pain, I know I’m dead.” A little dark humour, but that isn’t anything new with me. People would probably find it surprising to hear that I would like to go out more. I am most comfortable in my house, given my anxieties, but there is still an explorer in me. However, because I feel fragile and I’m afraid of unknown terrain hurting me, I distrust going out. Hence, missing my old body and freedom of travel.

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I miss unfettered laughter, a quiet mind, a carefree spirit. Did I ever have these things? I’m 45 years old and when looking back on my life and grasping at memories of my childhood and teenage years and older I wonder if I ever did truly have these things. Was I shaped by a bipolar mind with anxiety? The PTSD is a condition that was developed, but surely, I was a clean slate at some point? But the truth is, I don’t think the slate was ever clean. And still, I would take it over some days now, because I can taste the levity on my tongue; the sweetness of it and recall the serenity and carefree spirit that allowed me to take chances I don’t think I could take now. Mental illness paints things a shade darker. Creates shadows where there aren’t any or ought not to be any.  I can briefly grasp at what was during manic episodes, but it’s never right. They’re either pale comparisons or too bright and too clean. Like I jumped into Wonderland. I wonder what it’s like to be in a normal head and experience emotions normally and not acutely because as I miss the unfettered laughter and quiet mind, I also miss the natural ability to arbitrate emotion. Instead, I feel with every atom of my being- every pore. I love with every ounce and feel with every tear, those losses that may be minuscule to someone else, are devastating to me every time, taking a bit of me with them.

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I want my old brain back, and my old body back and- but I always stop. Because whining about it and venting about it is different than actually getting it back. It’s necessary to do. After all, you have to grieve what you’ve lost, because in a very real way you have lost a part of yourself, but in another way you’ve gained a different part of yourself and that is the part, I’m not willing to let go of, as much as I might complain. Why?

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Because my chronic illness, while being a pain in the ass 99% of the time has taught me three very important things: Being Compassionate toward others, Listening without Judgment, Living Life Despite The Pain. It’s pretty simple and while I could probably add more things, these are pretty much the foundations by which I try to live my life. It’s not always easy; I’m not a saint, but I try. Compassion is not something I find difficult, especially when encountering so many who find it difficult to be compassionate toward me. I’m already naturally empathetic. Listening is almost as easy, but listening without trying to interject opinions or thoughts and just listening to a person is more difficult. People often want to speak about how they relate to a person’s situation, or how they would deal with it, or how they feel about it. The keywords here being they/themselves. Listening and focusing on them, and not yourself is more difficult. It is something I work on every day- not making it about me. Living Life Despite Pain, of just Living my Best Life is strange, the most difficult. My life has been focused around my family- my husband and four kids and learning how to live life in a way where it also makes me happy- where I am doing things so that I thrive as well, feels selfish. But we need to make the most of every day we are living on this earth, so that is what I am working on.

 

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Mistakes Made When Traveling

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With Chronic Pain/Illness

 

We have friends who have a ranch about 5 hours from here, give or take with traffic. The drive, from my point of view, isn’t too bad on a mild pain day and we typically stop mid-way for snacks and just to get out for 2o minutes. The problem, however, is that even someone who writes about chronic pain/illness all the time is bound to make a mistake when traveling. Here are a few of mine from this past trip (I’m sure there are more).

 

  • Cover your bases: In effort to travel light I didn’t pack a sweater or jacket. Though I do better when the temperature starts dropping, I also seem to feel temperature changes more acutely, so when it drops below 70֯, I typically need a sweater. We left home at 90֯ and then arrived at the ranch bringing the rain with us and a drop-in temperature to about 60֯. I was freezing my butt off and miserable so that I couldn’t enjoy myself outside as much as I wanted to without shivering.
  • Don’t be a slave to fashion: I’ve been lamenting my jogger and legging wardrobe and wanting to wear my jeans again. I’ve never been stylish, but constantly in leggings and joggers has begun to wear me down a little and I do love jeans. I found two pairs in my closet that seemed to fit comfortably, but I only wore them for about 30 seconds. That didn’t stop me from bringing a pair along and instantly regretting it after the first 30 minutes. I was so very uncomfortable that I wanted to cry and realized how stupid I’d been to give into a sense of fashion when pain is involved. I have to take care of me and part of that is dressing in clothes that don’t make me want to cry.
  • IBS Doesn’t Go On Vacation Even When You Do: I had a good week in the IBS department so I was pretty optimistic for this little weekend excursion. But IBS doesn’t take a holiday and that second day, right after lunch, all hell broke loose. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a diarrhea flare up in someone else’s house. I did have medicine, which helped, but those damn jeans- ugh, I was so uncomfortable!
  • The Perils Of Eating On The Road: I’ve talked about before how stressful eating is when you are dealing with something chronic like IBS. My situation is like many others where it’s basically Russian roulette. I toggle between trying to be careful of every bite and not giving a damn because it doesn’t seem like there is any rhyme or reason to it. When you are traveling and maybe needing to eat on the road or perhaps like me, at a friend’s home whose cooking you are unfamiliar with, it can lead to issues. This experience has caused me to consider perhaps bringing some things in a cooler that I know don’t bother me so that I up the odds in my favor and maybe don’t have a flare.
  • Feeling High-Maintenance: I said no to bringing my heated blanket or an extra pillow or two. Seriously, WTF was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking: I’m so complicated. I’m so high-maintenance. I can’t just travel a weekend without bringing half my house. Slap-self-silly. I know it’s only a weekend, but it’s not something I can go without. I know I’ll hear that horrible term, high-maintenance, in my head, but if I’m going to travel I need to practice what I preach, right? I need to bring those self-care items with me or be left unnecessarily miserable the entire time.

 

I think the biggest issue is not wanting to inconvenience everyone. When I look at myself and these chronic issues I deal with life has very much become about things I can do to make my existence more comfortable. However, when I step outside that little box and I look at all the things I do from perhaps the perspective of someone who has no idea I deal with chronic issues, it appears that I am a spoiled brat, or high maintenance. Almost worse than that is the perception that I’m so sickly that I need all these things which can lead to being excluded from activities, or not thought about being included because surely, someone who needs all these extra things to be comfortable couldn’t do that. My husband is very active and has friends who are very active and I hate being seen as his wife whom he needs to take care of. There are a lot of things I can still do, I just have to think about how to do them. And sure, there are things I can’t do, but I want to make the decision myself. Thinking about how you might be inconveniencing other people diminishes your importance and also your enjoyment of the trip. The whole purpose of getting away, for a short period of time or long one, is being able to enjoy it. So bring the extra sweaters, bring the heated blanket, bring the cooler of snacks and drinks so that you can enjoy the time away.

 

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The Trouble with Spoonies and Fun

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Prepping for a Concert and the Flare to follow

Every Spoonie out there understands the consequences of doing too much. I think most of us try to balance work and home and any fun we do so it won’t stress out our body and we won’t have a flare. But sometimes flares are unavoidable. There are things in life we have to do, even fun things that we want to do and we weigh the options and go for it despite the likelihood of a flare. For instance, a recent early Anniversary gift from my hubby that I have known about for months: Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling tickets. The concert was this past Saturday and I’m still recovering. It was well worth it the seats were amazing and I enjoyed every minute of it, but the venue was difficult for me though it is a beautiful place. It is outdoors, the grounds are sprawling and unfortunately, I found their accessibility lacking. Handicap parking was first-come-first-serve and even our very early arrival, several hours before the first set, we still found nothing. The venue is out-doors and from the drop-off point to the actual pavilion where the concert takes place was quite a walk for me with my cane. It is also August, in Texas, which means it feels like you are just a few inches from the surface of the sun and I fall into a category of people whose body is not agreeable to the warm temperatures. I am not sure if I am in the minority, especially when you are talking about the heat here in Texas, which I think could offend even the most tropical of people but, I seem to fare better in cooler weather. I think I must have sweat about a gallon, no joke, even after 8pm when it was dark, it was still around 85 ̊. Even after living here almost 23 years, the heat just takes your breath away. You don’t get used to it, you just tolerate it and are grateful that most of the time you are in a/c. After the concert there was some difficulty in picking me up because I had wandered too far in migrating with the throngs of people leaving and I ended up having to walk around quite a bit in meeting up with the hubby, who ended up having to park in BFE. This post is a combination of two things that occurred to me afterwards: Things you can do to ease a flare the day after and, how you can prepare for an event (like a concert) better than I did.  I don’t go out much, in truth, so I suppose that is why I’m pretty shoddy at preparing. But where I fail, you, my friend will reap the benefit of hindsight!

5 Ways to Prep Before a Concert

1.)   The Venue: Do your homework! You can’t determine where a concert will be held but you can recon the venue so when you show up it’s not all a big -inconvenient- surprise.

2.)   Parking: Make sure you know where the disability parking is if you are able to use it. If you don’t have a placard or plates, try to find the most convenient place to park that day.

3.)   Call the venue: This one is the most challenging for me. I don’t like feeling like some prima-donna who needs special treatment. Don’t be like me. I mean it. I may have suffered quite needlessly all because of my own stubbornness something that may have had a solution had I called. Having a disability and needing special accommodations doesn’t make you spoiled. You are just wanting the same, reasonable access as everyone else. So, call the venue and see if they offer any services that can assist you in getting around better.

4.)   Clothing: Make sure you are comfortable for the event and season of the event, if it is outdoors. I must have changed four times before I settled on something that I felt would keep me the coolest and I am grateful I did. The black leggings that was my first choice, while comfy, would have been the death of me in the heat department. You want to enjoy yourself so don’t sacrifice comfort for style.

5.)   Ear Protection: This is huge. Typically, we always bring ear protection with us but this time we forgot and by the end of it I was not alone in my ear pain. Not to mention it triggering a migraine that luckily, I had brought meds for just in case. We use the squishy ones for the shooting range and they do not impair your hearing of the concert, just your ears. Even two days later, I am still experiencing ear pain.

I’m sure there are more ways to prep before a concert that I haven’t addressed. Please, feel free to share them with me.

5 Ways to Self-Care the Day After

1.)   Rest: This is the biggest and most important thing you can do for yourself. There is absolutely no shame in it and your body will recover faster if you take the time out for it instead of just trying to jump back into life.

2.)   Crock-Pot-Rescue: When you plan your meals for that week of, make sure to include a crock-pot dinner, or something equally easy, for the day after the concert. This is part of self-care and resting.

3.)   Netflix and Cuddle: Or Hulu, or Amazon or Crunchy Roll! It doesn’t matter, just grab your favorite cuddle bug, sprawl out and indulge in your favorite movie snack and relax. It’s amazing what cuddling can do in combination with relaxation.

4.)   Bath or shower: Grab your favorite essential oil or bubble bath and sink in. If sinking in is not an option you can still drop some essential oils into the shower and just luxuriate in the hot water and soothe muscles and psyche while inhaling the fragrant scent.

5.)   Pamper yourself: Pick that one favorite thing you never indulge in and do it. It doesn’t mean you have to go out anywhere either. Love getting your nails done? Grab your favorite color and set up a comfy spot and paint your nails. Never have time to read? Here’s your chance! Make a nest on your bed and curl up with that book you’ve been meaning to get to. Sky is the limit and remember, you don’t need to wait for a flare to do these things either. Self-care can be any day of the week.

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