Category Archives for Pain Management

After InkTober Is Over

Now that InkTober is over, I feel a bit out of sorts. I don’t have a daily prompt to look forward to, like I did for the entire month of October, nudging me down a particular path, whether with my thoughts or the topic to draw. I liked having that daily structure. Modifying the challenge for myself to focus on my mindfulness practice – as I set out to do on Day 1  – increased my enjoyment, even though some days it was harder to get into the flow of writing without my thoughts constantly wandering off topic. I suppose it did help me to practice mindfulness because I needed to bring my thoughts back to what I had chosen to write about and stay with it to finish a coherent piece.

I also realized during the InkTober challenge that I’m not sure what my preferred drawing style or techniques are and that showed in what I produced. Although I managed to surprise myself on some days with my drawings, I had to stretch my artistic abilities. After some thought, what I’ve decided to do now to maintain a daily creative practice, instead of doodling or drawing or writing poetry when the mood hits me, is select one of the many creative books I’ve been stockpiling and work through it as if taking a course. I may not post my progress every day because I learned how tiring it could be, mentally and physically, to push myself to complete a daily challenge. However, even if I don’t post about it I will be occupying myself with something to improve my creative skills and to ward off boredom.

I also need to get back to where I left off writing about all my medical treatments and misadventures. I obviously haven’t written about that part of my world for a while, but there are still things happening that I hope might be helpful to others living with issues like mine. I’ve had a new medication added to my pain management cocktail and I have two important additions to my treatment plan coming up, which I’m counting on to deliver some changes to my health, but if they don’t maybe someone reading about them will benefit from them. The first addition is a six-week mindfulness and yoga-based chronic pain management course called iRest. The course starts next week and my therapist referred me to it. The second is a more invasive procedure that will happen under my pain specialist’s supervision at the hospital in the day/ambulatory surgery clinic.

I no longer have daily prompts, but I will have lots to keep me busy. With all the upcoming activity, I have to remind myself of the most important take-away I learned from InkTober: that even though some of it might be fun, I don’t have to finish everything at once.

Bright Cone Flower Sketch - October 2016

 

Am I Losing My Resilience?

I used to be tough. I had to be. I grew up in a family where being needy was a sign of weakness, and feelings and emotions were things you kept to yourself. My parents separated when I was quite young, which meant I had to learn to depend on myself because neither of them was ever reliably available for me. Repeated disappoints from my parents made me resilient because I had to recover and bounce back from so many situations that need not be a part of a person’s childhood. That learned resilience helped me cope with every obstacle life put in my path and all the crappy things people believe it’s okay to do to each other.

The thing is, the longer I’m sick the less resilient I feel I’m becoming. The unshakeable pain I feel every minute of every day is starting to chip away at my psychological and emotional strength and my ability to bounce back, relatively quickly, from difficult issues that crop up, regardless of the size. That concerns me because I think to survive this illness for an unpredictable amount of time I need the spark of combined toughness and grit I’ve always carried within me. That spark has lit my way and guided me through countless hard and painful situations in my life; and I feel like it might start to fade under the unyielding pressure from my pain. To be truthful, I’m more than concerned, I’m a bit afraid. What if, I can’t hold on to the intangible thing that has kept me grounded and moving forward in life until now; until now, when I need it more than ever.

The strange thing is, the more I question myself about this, the more my mind turns to a TED Talk about grit and resilience – primarily in children – I watched a few years ago. I felt immediately connected, to the theories the speaker, Psychologist, Angela Lee Duckworth raised as she spoke. I understood her ideas about how or, more accurately, what is necessary, beyond intelligence and socioeconomic background for a person to succeed. However, that was three years ago, when I was healthy. Now, I can see that there is so much we don’t see or are unable to measure with tests or studies to chart ‘success’ because my perspective of success is no longer measured in the same ways. Now, my success is rooted in what I can do from day to day, within the limits set by my pain; and I can feel my pain chipping away at my toughness and working to dim my spark every day.

As I thought more about this TED Talk, I wondered if anyone had done any studies on resilience and chronic pain. I found some published psychological studies that I’ll be reading in more detail later. The gist of them all is that resilience does matter and chronic pain patients with greater levels of resilience have a higher survival rate. Now that I know this, the question for me is, how do I keep myself from losing my resilience? I truly hope I’m able to find something in one of these studies that helps me to keep my spark lit.

 

 

Can Pain Kill You?

Can pain kill you? According to the responses from my Google search, yes, it can.

Can Pain Kill You

Some days, like today, I feel like my pain might kill me. I know that might sound over-the-top, but if you’ve never experienced debilitating pain, there’s no other way for me to describe it. When I used to get frequent blinding migraines or my monthly menstrual cramps made it impossible for me to get out of bed, I always took comfort in knowing that those pains would eventually end. Now, with this pain, there is never any relief. There is no day on the calendar or time frame after taking medication that I can look forward to because they mean there will be an end to the pain threatening to split my skull open or implode my reproductive organs. The pain radiating from deep in the right side of my pelvis, out towards both hips, down both legs, and up my back has no schedule or half-life to which I can look forward in anticipation of relief.

Some days, like today, the pain is so unbearable; walking, standing, or even sitting still, hurt so badly I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know what to do with this anxious energy racing through me that probably adds to the frenetic activity within my nervous system and amps up the pain. I don’t know how to make myself comfortable when I sit because no surface can ever be soft enough against my aching tender skin. While just the thought of trying to rub and massage the hurting parts of myself makes me cringe and nauseated to the point of wanting to vomit.

If the pain, like the type of pain I feel, can kill a person by pushing them to suicide, I can understand why. I’m not, by any means, contemplating ending my life, but I’m uncertain about how long – it’s been three years already – I can live like this not knowing when or if I will get any pain relief. How long can I continue to accept being characterized as a “mystery patient” by my doctors who can’t pinpoint why my body is still reacting, to a growth that is no longer in my pelvis, before it becomes too much to bear? A psychological episode most likely will not be what brings my life to its end. It could very well be the stress of constant pain on my body that makes my blood pressure boil over, causing a stroke, or my blood could become poisoned by the copious amount of opioid pain medications I take, leading my organs to start to fail. Que sera sera…

I know none of this is helpful or optimistic, but this is where my pain sends my mind on days like today when I hurt so badly I don’t know what to do with myself.