Chronic Pain is Exhausting - and It's No Joke
It's a given that chronic pain is, um, painful, but until you live with it, you don't realize one huge side effect.
Chronic pain is exhausting.
The effort it takes to do everyday tasks when you are hurting is immense. Nothing and nowhere is comfortable, even bed. Even if the pain lessens or goes away in one area, often it then pops up in another.
Indulge me for a minute to let me tell you about a few hours of my life with chronic pain.
Yesterday I did too much. I had several activities I needed to attend and, though there's technically always a choice about going or not going to anything, I felt in each case it was important to go.
Something I forgot to mention is that dealing with chronic pain is also a mind-game. Your body never gives you a heads-up on when you will have good days, bad days, or oh...my...gosh days.
The day before yesterday was a pretty good day. Some activities were painful but overall, I made it through the day being able to do everything I planned (always a really good thing for someone in this boat).
This definitely helped cause the doing-too-much yesterday.
When I woke up, I assumed it would be like the day before. I planned my agenda for the day based on the day before. And, at first, I felt like I did the day before.
Until I didn't.
It really didn't start until later in the afternoon. The pain was more of a standard day's level than a really bad day. So, I went into my last activity of the day, the most important to actually attend, with pretty high hopes that it wouldn't end as an oh-my-gosh day.
I was wrong.
It gradually got worse through the evening. I began to make accommodations - sitting whenever I could, stretching out the sore places when appropriate, walking around for relief a couple of times.
When the event went longer than planned, I finally had to ask if I could go ahead and leave. I hurt so badly and it was almost over anyway. My request was granted and I left.
I hoped that hitting the bed would help. For a minute, it did. I felt blessed relief from hurting.
Until I didn't.
I fell asleep almost immediately and woke up about an hour later. But when I woke up - OH-MY-GOSH. It was so bad! It also triggered my RLS (restless leg syndrome), which just added to the fun.
My husband slathered pain relief cream where it hurt. He massaged the areas, using his fist not just his hands. I took RLS meds and more ibuprofen. A last ditch effort included adding our extra large heating pad turned up almost to the max.
All that still didn't work.
I finally gave up and decided to take a hot bath, complete with lots of Epsom salt. You would think that would be a first line of defense - but the problem is that my bedroom is at the top of a long flight of stairs and the bathroom is at the bottom. Needless to say, when I am in that much pain, stairs are another joy.
Getting up them to go to bed is hard enough. But even knowing the trip down could mean sweet relief, it means a necessary trip up to go back to bed, a real nightmare if said relief was elusive.
Thankfully, this worked. The hot bath, the Epsom salt, and the meds I had taken combined to make me feel a little bit normal (until I started up the stairs, that is). Though still in some pain when I crawled back under the covers, I was able to get back to sleep fairly quickly.
The next morning, though, the relief was gone... the pain was back in full force. Plus, even though I knew I slept most of the rest of the night, it wasn't good sleep. I kept nodding off throughout the day.
I joked with my husband that everything hurt. Then I amended it and joked that everything hurt except this pinkie finger, gesturing to my left hand.
The joke was on me when I touched it to prove my point and it, too, hurt. The top of my pinkie finger actually hurt when I pressed lightly on it!
Things that many would find to be relief could be the opposite for those with chronic pain. For instance - showers. A shower for a neurotypical could be the most relaxing and invigorating part of the day.
For a chronic pain survivor, a shower can be very painful. This is one reason showers might be avoided. It's not that the person is unhygenic or lazy. It's physically and emotionally a huge issue to take a simple shower.
I won't go into the same detail as before, but the emotional toll is almost as bad as the physical. Like I mentioned before, there's an element of not knowing that adds to the intensity of the issue.
For example, it's possible to feel relatively pain-free (there's never a moment without any pain) for a week. So, your brain says, "This is going well. Let's plan a few things for this next week that have been put off over and over because of being in pain."
Then your body says, "Nope! Fooled ya!" Though it's always possible to go that entire next week at the same level as the week before, it's also possible that you are in the worst pain of your life at times during that week.
You never know.
It makes planning for the future extra difficult. I'm a photographer and writer. If only I had a crystal ball that could tell me what days I was going to be in pain, then I could plan when I'm going to do a shoot or when I need to have plenty of time to rest.
But life's not that way. I never know.
In addition, what another person might think would be a way to get away from the pain isn't always. I have back issues, which radiate down. This means sitting can hurt as much or more than standing. So working on editing photos or writing an article at my desk could be worse than being up taking photos at an event.
But I never know before which will be worse. I can't change the shoot to a different day just because I'm hurting. I can sometimes put off writing but if I'm on a deadline I can't.
It's just something I have to deal with.
The point of this post wasn't to whine and to make you feel sorry for me and my fellow chronic pain survivors. The point was to make you aware that sometimes a person can look fine on the outside but they are fighting back tears. Sometimes a person might need to stand up during a group activity because sitting one... more... second in that chair was excruciating. There are times when a person sincerely planned to go to a party but had to cancel at the last minute and if you looked at them, they looked fine - but they really weren't.
So pain-free citizens, please don't look down on those who deal with chronic pain. Don't think they are faking it or are trying to get out of doing something. These individuals are some of the strongest, bravest, hardest working people I've ever seen. Recognize that - and know that who they are is much more than what they do.
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