I’ve been thinking at how to describe the different pain sensations that I have felt throughout my body to help people to understand a little bit. So here are some things; imagine a big painful, nagging nervy toothache feeling but throughout your body, a pounding throbbing headache type pain that gets stronger and stronger throughout the day in your right leg along with like an electric current that feels like a lightning bolt sensation randomly striking it. Your low back/pelvic region feels like a crow bar is trying to pry and rip it open, your ribs start to feel like they are jamming into each other and get so tight it’s hard to get a full breath in and so you feel like you are slowly being choked, your neck and shoulders get so stiff that they start to burn and it’s hard to move because you're restricted. Your glute muscles feel like solid, achey painful rocks that are non stop painful and you get random sharp, shooting pain that hits your joints right near your butt crack. The sides of your hips ache and throb and you’ll get random shooting lightning bolt pain that hits them. You have knotted up muscles all throughout your body which are painful and tender to touch. Then your feet feel like you’ve been walking on a river bed of rocks all day, bare foot, so it hurts to stand or walk around. You feel unstable and feel like one wrong move and you are going to trip and fall and hurt yourself even more. You get constant tension headaches. Your muscles burn, ache and in some areas it feels like chards of glass broken on your insides, gliding against each other and sometimes it can feel like sandpaper on the inside. Every time you turn your upper body or do a slight rotation, your back goes into a full spasm which travels all the way into the front part of your ribs and chest. Your arms feel heavy and you get random throbbing in your forearms all the way into your elbows and down into your thumbs. Your stomach tightens and is tender to touch close to your belly button and you get this scraping, crampy, menstrual type pain. Your thighs and groin ache, burn and the muscles feel so tight that they feel like tightened guitar strings which makes your knee throb non stop. Your calves are so tight that you can barely think straight and feel like either someone has a tight, killer grip on them or they are drying in concrete. The high pain signals that are constantly pulsing through your body cause lots of nausea, which makes it very difficult to pinpoint if the nausea is from high pain or you are coming down with a flu. Then you can’t sleep and are desperately doing moves to help bring down your pain in the midst of complete and utter exhaustion but you have no such luck, and this goes on for days/weeks and so you are so foggy and tired that you can barely do anything or get out of bed. You go to take medications to help but they take weeks to build up in your system until they work and then the side effects hit. You are now running to the toilet ever half hour/hour or sometimes less, because of the horrible diarrhea it has now given you, not to mention nausea that whenever you open your mouth to speak you feel like you are going to vomit. Flipping and flopping, tossing and turning all night long when you try to will yourself to be able to sleep through the pain, only to find that you feel worse and you want to cry from exhaustion and then to accidentally keep your partner up through your restless night too. You are now trying to be a parent and spouse, have some sort of social life, all the while needing to go to a minimum of three appointments a week and do all of the homework and your pain getting stirred up even more from the drive ( which you are unable to drive and have to rely on your spouse to graciously take time off of work to get you from point “a“to point “b”) You are now trying to muster up some sort of inner strength to get some sort of meal on the table and feel like if you hear any sort of noise or question asked to you, you feel like you are on the brink of a mental breakdown and want to scream. So you have all of this noise and pain and stuff going on but now you get told by your doctor that there is nothing left to do to help and you gotta somehow live like this for eternity. You aren’t willing to let yourself suffer and are doing every and anything you can to get even a pinch of relief and find some magical unicorn of a practitioner or doctor or treatment to give you some answers and sweet relief but it’s been years and a butt load of time and money and you are growing more tired, frustrated and hopeless, and are now progressively getting worse. (Exhale) and if that’s not enough to deal with, you are also dealing with non stop bullying tactics from a car insurance company that threatens you and lies, telling you that they won’t pay for things that they agreed upon or tell you to make another appointment or need another assessment or form or note required to continue forward IF they decide to let you catch your breath and back off a little. Things like, “You should be better by now.” “You shouldnt need to see a practitioner anymore to help you, you should be able to do it all in your own.” Questioning after questioning, proving over and over again, threats after threats and no matter how much you want to get better or wish you could will your body to be where you want it to be, you have no such luck and are told that “this is how it is.” And now you live on edge, in the unknown, never knowing if the financial help for treatments that you desperately need will get cut off, so you and your family have to prepare for that. There are a bunch of supplements and things that aren’t covered financially and only a certain percentage of coverage of treatments that are paid for by the insurance company and then the rest has to be covered by you, so finances are tight. Then comes all of the mental and emotional side to all of this and you now need to regularly work on that part of your life too. And you are now struggling with depression, fear, anxiety flares, ptsd, and feel completely emotionally drained. This is on repeat day after day, month after month and now years.
This wasn’t supposed to feel like a rant or complaint and hopefully it didn’t, but this has been my/our life for many years. So essentially, you look completely normal, able bodied on the outside, all the while others don’t fully get to hear or see or fully grasp the fullness of what it’s been truly like to live in your body.
Thankfully, I’ve found my magical unicorn of a physiotherapist that has been my golden ticket and I’m slowly chipping away at these issues. There has been a lot of atrophied muscles throughout my body that are just taking time to build up and work on and nerve pain levels ( and a bunch more things on the list) brought down but I’m seeing improvements! All of the above symptoms don’t and aren’t going to be my end all, which I was told over and over again, they would be. Am I still in pain? Yes, I am. Do I still have flares and struggle? Yes, I do. But they don’t last as long and aren’t as intense ( it still friggen hurts though). Life is still full of appointments and there are still some rough, sleepless nights but I’ve got someone in my corner that can help me with my pain and knows what to do. My family and some of my friends have noticed the changes in my body and are surprised at my progress! This has been what I’ve been fighting for and hoping for and I’m getting there!
One of my naturopaths had told me she wanted me to make a sign to look at in my bedroom that reads, “I Can Do This.” This saying has been my drive, push and daily reminder to keep pressing on and fighting. So last year I got “you can,” ( my sister originally thought of this idea and I had her permission to steal it) tattooed on my inner arm and it goes with me wherever I go. This two word encouragement applies to so many things in my life and has been such a boost for me. You can still have a great life, you can get better, you can do this, you can keep fighting, you can say no, and the “you can’s” just keep going and giving.
コメント