Tag Archives for chronic illness

Pain Clinic #7: Trying Alternative Pain Treatments

I had my third appointment at the pain clinic since having surgery in August. Each appointment I have makes me aware of how fortunate I am to have access to such an incredible resource. My pain may not be gone, but I have specialists working to support me and trying to find the root cause – and hopefully the cure – of my pain. My primary doctor at the pain clinic is a wonderfully compassionate woman who is open to exploring as many alternative treatments as possible to treat my pain.

During this appointment, we reviewed my pain medications. I’m still taking a considerably higher dose of the opioid pain medications than I was before surgery, but I’ve been trying to decrease the doses over the past few months. I’m keeping a daily log detailing how much I take throughout each day. My pain specialist encouraged me to continue keeping this log because it’s helping to identify trends in my pain. I can pinpoint when I have a pain flare up and what activities may cause it, and whether I need to increase the doses of my pain medications. To support these trends she wrote me prescriptions for each of my pain medications with quantities large enough for me to increase or decrease my doses as my pain dictates.

Acupuncture was the next thing we discussed. My pain specialist is a trained acupuncturist. By all accounts, she’s highly skilled. Knowing that as a medical doctor – she’s an anesthesiologist – she has a holistic approach to treating pain makes me feel encouraged. One of my next appointments with her will be in the treatment centre of the pain clinic – where I had my nerve block  – for acupuncture. Her hope is that acupuncture treatments will help to reduce my pain and my need for such high doses of pain medications. My hope is that the treatments will deliver those results, and much more.

We also talked about the Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management (MBCPMTM) program offered at the same hospital as the pain clinic. The program teaches patients “how to manage their chronic pain and illness through Mindfulness and meditation practice, and better lifestyle skills.” It’s based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) originated by Jon Kabat-Zinn. My pain specialist is referring me to the program to give me another option for managing my pain. The idea for me to try this program originated with my therapist because our therapy sessions include mindfulness practices. My pain specialist believes this program will be a beneficial addition to the practices I’m already including in my life to cope with my pain. I believe, whatever the outcomes, I have an incredible support system that keeps working to find solutions to get me pain-free.

 

Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life

 

Gratitude and Creativity: Truth and Thought

It absolutely sucks when you think you’re having a good day and then out of nowhere you start to cry. Since becoming ill, that happens to me more often than I like to admit. Yesterday was one of those days. I was happily moving through my day when the tears started coming. I’m not sure what triggered them, but if I had to guess, I would say it was my pain. When I woke up yesterday I was feeling what I consider good from a pain perspective, but as the day continued, my pain got worse. Usually that wouldn’t make me cry, but yesterday it felt like there was no one I could tell about my feelings. That caused me to feel overwhelming sadness.

Even though my friends and family are always checking in with me to see how I’m doing, I don’t always feel I can tell them about the extent of my moods – or my pain. I tend to save most of the low feelings and troubling thoughts for my therapist, because I sometimes think that it’s easier not to have everyone worried about me all the time. As much as I appreciate it, I don’t find it comforting to have people constantly concerned about me. I don’t like answering the same questions repeatedly and feeling the need to reassure everyone that I’m doing just fine, especially when I’m not. The moment I tell someone about a bad day, whether my pain or my mood is the cause, they go into “what can I do to make it better” mode; when there is nothing they can do to make it better.

A prime example is me bursting into tears and not being able to explain why. If I told anyone about that, the worry would be immediate and I would feel bad about being the reason for that worry. The interesting thing is I know that if things were reversed, I would try to do whatever I could to make things better for someone I cared for.

Thankfully, I was able to express what I was feeling in poetry because of a timely silent share post, from my friend Bert, that I read yesterday morning.

 

Truth and Thought

 

Zentangle Tile #2: What To Do When The Power Goes Out

The power was out in my home yesterday for a few hours. I’m assuming there was some sort of issue at a nearby power station that knocked it out. Me being me, I didn’t notice that the power was out until I tried to go online to search for something. My laptop’s inability to connect to the interwebs led me to investigate my internet connection. All the lights on my router were off. I checked to see whether the power cord was still connected, it was, but the light on the power bar I plug it into was off. It took flipping the power bar switch on and off a few times before I realized there was no power at all.

No power meant I had to limit the use of my cell phone, so I sent a couple of text messages to let some family and friends know my situation, and then turned off my phone. It also meant I had to delay my plan to take a shower – my bathroom gets quite dark and I don’t need to increase my risk of falling in the shower again. Luckily, I had boiled the kettle a few minutes before the power went off. I made myself a large cup of tea and tried to figure out what I was going to do without power. I decided to work on some more Zentangle patterns and a new tile. I learned two new patterns – sea weed border and wire wrap, which are in the Zentangle 2, Expanded Workbook Edition from the series of books written by Suzanne McNeill. I’ve been working my way through this second book in the series at a snail’s pace. Nonetheless, I now have sixty-six patterns completed in my Zentangle sketchbook.

After practicing the two new tangle patterns, I went to work on my second tile. For this tile, I drew lines to guide my placement of patterns by tracing the lid of a small tea tin and drawing some random lines around it, and I used four tangle patterns. Three of the tangles I’ve learned from Suzanne McNeill’s books and the fourth one I taught myself from the Tangle Patterns site a while ago because I wanted to include it in one of my art/gratitude journal drawings. Here’s the second tile I’ve completed in two days.

Tile 2 Shaded

Tile #2 Shaded – String: Tea Tin Lid & Random Lines – Tangles: Hollibaugh, Huggins, Twilight Zone, Wiggle Waves

I guess power outages are good for something. In my case, I was able to use the lack of electronic distractions to focus on doing something meditative. I had a quiet, calm day. Concentrating on drawing lines on a white 3.5in x 3.5in card, helped put my initial concern about the food, especially the ice cream, in my refrigerator going bad to rest; and made what could have been a stressful day very enjoyable.

 

U2 – Electrical Storm