I am attending a pain management program. It’s once a week for six weeks. I’m hoping to learn some pain management tips, and shift some of the frustration, anger, and grief I have developed from living with multiple chronic conditions. The first class was on Wednesday, and we talked about how pain is a sensation felt in the brain, and how folks can become extra sensitive to pain, and that it’s actually possible to become less sensitive to it using techniques such as distraction, meditation, visualization, breath control, and mindfulness. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a video on Central Sensitization Syndrome (CSS), and wondered if I may have become extra sensitized to pain. There is also a small e-book I read ages ago, and should revisit, that talks about how our pain threshold can decrease when a part of our body has been hurt, about how the pain sensation is a mental process. We need to have the ability to feel pain as a protective mechanism but, when things hurt all the time, it is easy to become over sensitized. I have some reading to do for our class next week, and hope to learn more about this topic. It makes sense to me. It was weird - once my pain started to decrease as the methotrexate started working, I had a hard time moving my body as I had become so accustomed to moving it in a way to protect myself. It’s been a few months, and I move a bit freer now; I can usually put pants on and not worry about falling over most days!
All this said, I’m still dealing with huge pain spikes but not quite as bad as they were last week when I went to the hospital. My own doctors office thinks I may be passing a small kidney stone that is too small to show on an ultrasound; the emerg doctor thinks its a muscle knot and blamed it on me being fat then, when I told him that the knots started when I was fit and lifting weights, he said they can be caused by too much activity too **rolls eyes at the emerg doctor** I'm on lots of meds, ball rolling multiple times a day, and using a new breath control technique that the physio personal trainer taught me yesterday. It’s an interesting technique that involves consciously breathing with the diaphragm, then moving the breath to the back of the ribs and engaging the different muscles in the back.
The pain management program also has us setting a mini goal that we have to accomplish by next Wednesday. I chose to journal about my anger, frustration, and grief that I experience from living with chronic conditions. Thinking of it, I may just start up my old blog I used years ago when I was processing some other stuff. At the time, I found it healing to write to an unknown audience. A few folks mentioned to me, at the time, that they read my blog and how it elicited different responses in folks. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think I will return to that space.
Anyhow, I just wrote way more than I meant to - maybe this can be journal entry number one! Thanks for sticking through to the end. I won’t be struggling like this forever. I’m actually already doing better now than I was three weeks ago. I’m active again, and things are starting to shift, which is good. Thank you for your patience with me as I move through this and work on getting back to living a decent life once more. It won’t last forever, and sunshine always follows rain. Xxo
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