How Do You Handle Pain?
For the last month or so, I've been dealing with some back pain. I started going to physiotherapy twice a week, and I really thought it was helping. Now I don't know what to think. I was doing multiple exercises a day, and we even started working on other issues, some I've had since high school. As a pole vaulter in both high school and college, I've had a number of injuries including a broken ankle, slipped disk, dislocated shoulder, torn ab muscle, and even a hairline fracture in a small pedicle bone in my lower back (had to wear a back brace for eight weeks because of that one).
This morning, I leaned out of bed to reach for something, and my back went haywire. A muscle tightened up fiercely, and I let out a loud "Ooooowwwwwww!"
It's been hurting all day. The Aleve I took in the morning didn't touch it. I spent most of the day in bed, but did get to watch a Mission Impossible flick I hadn't seen yet. By the afternoon (and a second Aleve), I tried walking a couple miles and a warm shower. I alternated between ice packs and a heating pad most of the day. It was starting to feel a bit better and since we have a trip coming up (and I'm long overdue), I reluctantly agreed to let @corinnestokes cut my hair as she normally does. It took two carefully positioned pillows and an ice pack to get through that sitting. It's still not doing well. Most of the day has been spent in bed watching anime (@brettflorio got me into Erased, and I'm on episode 8 now. No spoilers!)
Probably the one thing that helped me feel better today was the martini I had before dinner. Probably like most people, when I'm tired, hungry, or in pain, I have a much shorter fuse. I got really frustrated at my son today and raised my voice a couple times. It was a battle just to be... me.
Is this what people with chronic pain go through every day? Are they in a constant battle with their own negative emotions not to lash out at people around them?
How do they handle the pain?
I'll be calling the physiotherapist as soon as they open (it's a holiday tomorrow) to see what can be done. I may have to take some time off work and just rest. One thing I do know, I have to have more understanding for those around me. I can't possibly know what others are going through and what pain they might be feeling. It's so easy to quickly judge without having a half-a-clue what battles they are facing.
Today was a pretty crappy day, but it was also a reminder. I need to be more understanding. When I'm in a compromised state of mind (hungry, tired, hurting, etc), I need to take an extra calming breath before flying off the handle. I also need to remember others around me are struggling too, so give them some slack.
This isn't the post I planned to write next. I wanted to talk about expectations. This day didn't meet my expectations but just served as another reminder that I am not in control.
None of us are.
All we can do is make the best with what we're given.
Now, on a more practical level, let me ask you: What do you do for pain? How does it effect you and how do you cope with it?
Thanks for reading. I hope to be real in my writing in the good times and bad. They all shape who we'll be tomorrow.
P.S. My last journal entry can be found here.
Image: Wikimedia via Harrygouvas, Creative Commons 3.0
Medications delay or try and block nerve signals of pain from registering.
One of the best ways to deal with chronic back pain is to ignore it.
My apologies and I do not mean to minimize the anguish back pain suffers experience, but I am a trained health care profession, have been for decades...
So remember you have tons of muscles surrounding your back, so simply doing the tiniest exercise will stretch the injured damaged areas. Just tiny simple movements to do a few things.
You want to lengthen the injured muscles slightly, just a bit so they are less likely to cramp up and scream at your nerve endings.
By working your back slowly and ultra carefully you will build up surrounding muscles slowly over time, these additional muscles will support your body and reduce the strain on your chronically injured zones.
One of the best things for injured backs that occasionally cause massive pain is alcohol since it relaxes all the muscles and dims the mind to pain, obviously this is a rare use it. If you start needing alcohol more than once per week, remember bad painful backs last months or years; so avoid alcohol unless you want to become an alcoholic.
No you will not improve in days or maybe even weeks but slowly over time your lifestyle should allow you to move carefully without massive pain nor needing lots of medications.
Understand alcohol is bad long term, marijuana is bad long term and so are prescription medications. Understand your health professional is obligated to keep your pain under control. Essentially many medications are issued by licenced government drug dealers.
I am not trying to be nasty here but sometimes people think the best solution is just more intense drugs. I have posted a basic 300 second exercise program, it is aimed to build up muscle but some people with bad backs can benefit from movement and exercise instead of sitting around popping pills to provide pharmaceutical companies with profit for shareholder dividends...
Please always consider if advice might be correct for your circumstances : )
/ hugz ; )
Thanks so much, @crok. I'm really not a fan of taking pain meds at all, and I do think you're right, we often think pain is an important signal to help us prevent further injury, but I'm learning it's very often not that and something which can be worked past. It's amazing how much our brain is involved in this whole process too. If I can get myself to just "ignore it," I wonder if that would subconsciously fire off messages via the nervous system to those straining muscles to chill the hell out as well.
Either way, this quote I support and will now poor myself a nice little shot of whiskey in celebration thereof:
Thanks for the hugs. :)
Go for herbal medication. I used to have a pain at the back too but I just drink a lot of herbal tea.
First, I'd like to say that I can empathize with your pain. I have a spinal cord injury in my neck (c7) that causes spasticity and pain through approx. 80% of my body, 24/7. Most of the muscles in my back and core have been contracted for over 3 years now and the pain is a constant and agonizing. However, I have found that swimming, or at least floating on my belly with a noodle, gives me the best relief via exercise. The CVAC Pod that I wrote of here https://steemit.com/health/@areynolds/this-thing-gave-me-my-life-back gave me far better pain relief than any drug, even the heaviest opioids!
If you have no structural issues such as pinched nerves, bulging discs, etc, then your best bet is to strengthen the core as a whole and stretch, stretch, stretch!!
Good luck to you and I hope you are soon feeling good as new!
Peace.
Wow, that's intense. I just replied to your post (note: the comma in the paragraph above makes the link not work). I just finished a run/jog and a shower and things are feeling pretty good, though I just tried the sanding desk and the pain came back pretty quickly. I'll get it figured out though. I'm thinking a consistent core workout is the long term solution I need.
Thanks again for sharing your story with us all. You can turn your curse of pain into a gift for everyone else to have a better perspective on their own pain-free lives.
Thank you for telling me about the link! Yes, barring no structural issues, back pain is almost always caused by an imbalance in your core strength. Listen to your body, watch your posture (think of carrying a banana on your head) and pull in your belly button. When you have pain, reflect on the posture you were holding while you were doing whatever caused the pain then be aware and correct it the next time. Many smiles to you, and be well. :)
Yeah, the ab muscle injury I got in college has jacked my core stability for quite some time. I just need to get those muscles to chill out and realize they aren't protecting the surrounding area against an injury anymore. :) Thanks for your words of encouragement.
Hi all, firstly Yoga is a fabulous exercise; and has proven itself excellent until the last 50 years. Yoga has worked for 5,000 years, but today 99% of people are to unfit to try yoga.
I have posts elsewhere about yoga but most people are to much out of shape to stretch and hold yoga positions. Telling people to listen to their body is silly in the modern age, people are in to much of a hurry to move slowly and yoga and Pilates are intense forms of exercise.
They are fabulous once you get strong and flexible enough otherwise you will end up in rehab, sorry but check the statistics.
People must slowly build up health and adjust to the new lifestyle demands : )
/ hugz ; )
Very well said! Doing a "30 days of yoga" via YouTube channel was not a good idea for me as a programmer who codes all day long and doesn't live a very active lifestyle (though I am in pretty good shape, which is surprising). If (when?) I get back into yoga, it will be with a professional who can help me learn to listen to my body correctly. Thanks for chiming in again!
Yoga is an awesome exercise routine for normal average people, I love Yoga I have about six yoga books physically here. Plus more ebooks online.
I suffer fibromyalgia which I wanted to use Yoga for. But please remember people reading this are seriously unfit and unhealthy, plus they probably take a lot of toxic over the counter vitamins and minerals and have been eating semi-poisonous foods for years.
Yoga requires you adopt a position and hold that position as you breathe and adjust your balance and coordination for a few seconds to a few minutes.
Trouble is people have spent 5 years or 20 years getting lazy and unfit. Until I invented my 300 second a day exercise program since I injured myself overdoing my new years resolution about getting fit. The closest I came to exercise was towel drying myself after a shower.
Nothing in this new age is your fault, you are not responsible for any of your actions or inaction's. If you fell out the car window by riding along the car door, its not your fault being a fool; the police should have been there to stop you before you fell.
I must towel dry myself and risk injury from overstretching the wrong way because my life partner refuses to dry me. Thus if I get hurt it is her fault, not my own. If you take up exercise like Yoga or Pilates and get injured it is someones fault.
If you get heart disease, diabetes or metabolic syndrome that is not your fault either; after all in today's new age you need to be cared for, informed and protected : )
/ hugz ; )
Well screw that. Hehe. I prefer personal responsibility in every area of life. :)
(And yes, I know there's no sarcasm font.)
I almost understand I am the master of my own destiny, but in today's brave new world of information and political correctness, only 214 people feel that way anymore.
People today decide to take actions or inactions and then use 20-20 hind sight to work backwards to find someone else to distract others from seeing them as a fool.
Example this professional burglar uses his method to rob houses. He is hard at work breaking the law and the skylight he uses cases out as his weak point of property defense is found.
As he is entering the skylight moves and he falls and he injures himself, he sues the property owner for an incorrectly fitted and defective skylight.
Actually the real story of criminal behaviors is different and appears here it seems : http://www.overlawyered.com/2006/09/the-burglar-and-the-skylight-another-debunking-that-isnt/
But is a case of someone breaking the law and profiting. I must take responsibility for my own life since almost every day I am almost beside myself with rage to stop choking the living **it out of some AH who needs it.
So unless I wanted to spend much time every month talking with police officers I must control my own actions and not blame others : )
/ hugz ; )
But truly; it is very tempting to deal with these fools in the way mother nature intended, by making them extinct and thus permanently removing them from the breeding gene pool of humanity . .
An important thing about pain . . .
Your pain nerve ending are like sleeping babies; if your pain pathways are asleep then it is best to use minimal medications or rest or whatever to keep those nerve pathways relaxed and asleep.
If you wake the sleeping baby it is almost impossible to get an upset baby to relax and dose off to sleep again. If you let your pain nerve pathways activate then those signals are no going to relax and stop sending pain messages without a lot of medications, which you should be trying to avoid; long term.
Thus chronic pain is an individual thing, gender, race, type of pain etc etc all affect it. But over time it just wears people down. So people either under-medicate and suffer and this leads to depression or relationship issues. Or people over medicate and then have issues of increased resistance to the medication effects.
Slowly building up some sort of personal attack plan can help people keep focused at what works slightly better or worse. Keep a diary and write down how your pain is actually impacting your lifestyle. This is helpful to your mental health, to your doctor and maybe even to government welfare etc.
Good luck; but some sort of slight exercise is often your best friend, who knows over time you might get strong and fit enough for yoga or Pilates . . .
/ hugz ; )
I just want to make sure you're exposed to Dr. John Sarno and his book Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. It was meaningful for me.
Thanks for the tip!
A couple of things. If you don't get enough sun. Some vitamin D might help. I take it because my legs cramped up like my tendon was going tight and wouldn't stop a few times. Vitamin D helped with that.
If you are in a state where Cannabis related products are legal CBD oil is amazingly wonderful for pain. It has none of the mind altering side effects of marijuana but my wife's 86 year old father was on all kinds of pain medication for his feet and arthritis. On a whim we finally tried CBD oil on his feet and he said it is the best they have felt in 10 years. He doesn't smoke or eat any of the "whacky tabaccy" but he does use the CBD oil on his feet and it works better than any prescribed pain meds hes been on for a decade.
I live in Colorado.
EDIT: To be clear...you do not injest the CBD oil. You simply rub it where the pain is at.
And here's yet another reason why government regulations are so ridiculously stupid! We should all have access to cannabis and hemp because those products are amazing!
Good idea about the vitamin D. I do try to get out for some exercise when I'm feeling better, but it's also not uncommon for me to stay inside for days as a computer programmer.
I don't know how to answer your question, but I do commend you for allowing it to make you more empathetic and understanding. Few things have the power to strengthen character quite like pain.
Edit: Actually, what about massage? That's probably what the physio does, but that's always helped my lower back pain.
Heh. Ain't that the truth. Pain has some formative power, that's for sure.
Edit Reply: Yeah, Corinne has helped with that some based on what I've been learning from the PT.
Luke -- this may be something I write about in the future, but on my way out of the door from the Army, my back started hurting with a little bit of numbness in my left leg. The only job I could find was packing boxes in a warehouse. It got worse. After a week, I went to the VA (which is a nightmare itself) and eventually got some pain meds just to make it through work. I was eventually up to ~12 vicodins per day due to abusing them and just being miserable.
The VA would have continued throwing pills at me or telling me to do physical therapy, which was terrible.
I eventually fought hard enough to get an MRI after dealing with this pain and addiction for seven months to find out I had a moderate-to-severe herniation in my L5-S1. This was causing the numbness in my left leg, and obviously the back pain.
I tried chiropractors. Did nothing, other than spend more money. In speaking with a nurse at a civilian (read: non-VA clinic) to get a steroid shot (which helped for a day or so), she told me about a spinal surgeon in Illinois that developed a special surgery called a microdiscectomy. Basically, they shaved the portion of the disc that was pushing into my nerve bundle to relieve pressure.
Went to sleep in pain... 30m later, woke up and walked out of the hospital with no pain in a few hours.
Microdiscectomies don't work for everyone and require a specific type of herniation, but could be worth a look if the pain continues. I wouldn't wish back pain on anyone. Hell on earth, especially when you mix vicodin and copious amounts of Icehouse beer.
Wow. That's intense. Sorry you had to go through that, Blake. I have a lot of confidence in the PT I'm working with now, but I think we may have been trying to address to many issues at once and my body's just kind of freaking out about it. I was also starting to get pain down my leg which was the original reason I started doing the PT (all the back issues I've had prior to that never involved the sciatica). I don't think there's a herniation, or if there was, the PT would have picked up on it. Much of what we've been doing has seemed to help quite a bit. Microdiscectomies sounds interesting. If it comes to surgery, it'll definitely be something I keep in mind. Thanks!
If you want to go the natural route look into large doses of the spice Tumeric. It is a naturally anti-inflammatory and most pain is inflammation - there is a lot of info on google searches for this and you can even find medical journal articles. Scientists are increasing research into this natural and cheap option for many aliments. It is a bit difficult to get down but put heaping tablespoons into warm water and chug it down.
Another natural way to get rid of pain is deep methodical breathing while telling yourself that the pain is going away. Fresh oxygen into the blood cells can do wonders and pain is 50% in the mind IMO. Good luck and I hope your pain goes away.
Thanks for the tips! And yes, when it comes to pain, it literally is "all in our heads" since that's where the nerve signals go. :) The trick is ignoring those signals or to get the nerves unpinched so they stop sending them (which then locks up the muscles that are often pinching the nerves in the first place).
I second the recommendation for turmeric. I'd forgotten about that one. It works wonders for pain related to inflammation.
I asked my wife to pick some up today. Thanks. :)
Try yoga
It really helps the body
Unfortunately, doing yoga is what started these back issues a month or two ago. I think Yoga re-awakened issues my body has been ignoring for a long time.