Hope

I am convinced that Pete Egoscue, author of many chronic pain books, and by trade, a medical professional (physiologist) who deals with people who have chronic pain, is the one thing that may have helped to reduce my pain recently. It was suggested by a massage therapist for me to read his books if I could find them and I devoured his book titled Pain Free at Your PC. And afterwards I did twenty minutes of exercises directed to those PC users who are already in pain and I honestly thought I felt a difference laying in bed that night! My fingers in my right hand were tingling.

As I type this, I am by no mean NOT in pain, in fact I still hurt very much when I'm using my computer which makes it hard to try and commit myself to returning to work just yet. This frustrates me beyond belief but I realize I am doing what I can to change things and change may be slower than I like but at least for the first time in three months I feel like I have hope and that is better than nothing at all! When you lose hope while dealing with chronic pain you may as well say you've given up completely.

My health is my number one priority right now and it's going to have to remain that way for awhile and probably for the rest of my life really because when you think about it, what else can you focus on if you do NOT have your health to back you up in your daily life?

If I could sleep through the night just once and not wake up in pain, that would be a bonus. To me, the lack of sleep is affecting my life. I am not making appointments for nine a.m anymore. I overslept this morning and missed my counseling appointment. I woke up a half hour late and immediately called her and we chatted on the phone which helps just the same I would imagine. In fact I felt more natural talking to her on the phone today than I ever have in her office. Not sure if she is really helping in regards to the anxiety this whole ordeal is causing me, specifically the worry over my job situation about letting down my co-workers, missing out and losing the few skills I struggled to learn to begin with! I am almost afraid to return to work for fear that I can not do the job I was capable of doing before I started to hurt. Being a perfectionist, for me I find if I can't do things right, why do them at all? I need to get past this in order to get back to where I was and hopefully if I can get this pain under control I will get there and until then, my co-workers will just have to wait. I've been told not to focus so much on what other people might be thinking. How am I to really know what they are thinking? I guess for me, the fact that my work didn't bother to send me a 'get well' card makes me wonder if they really support me with this or perhaps they are thinking I'm faking the whole thing! If that's the case, then I guess I really don't want to work with people who would think such a thing anyway. I try and tell myself that I'd been there long enough for them to get to know me and my work ethic and the thought would never cross their minds but you never know and given the fact I have no answers as to when I can possibly return to work, I can understand the possible suspicion that could arise. I know what a hard working gal I've been throughout the years.

I could write all kinds of funny things about the things I've done at my past jobs, the comments other co-workers have said about me, so many people to vouch for my character over the years. I've often gone way above the call of duty just to get a task done for someone and it's nice to be recognized for it and so for me this whole taking three or more months off work is unheard of. I've never been on employment insurance other than maternity leave benefits and I hope I never have to go down this road again. Don't get me wrong. I am grateful that it exists and by the time my benefits expire and the end of May I will be wishing they lasted longer if I'm not pain free but to be honest, Pain and I are getting accustomed to our little relationship we've got going on. Better to accept it and move on with my life!

So many possiblities to describe my pain

I call it hidden pain because on the outside I think I look pretty normal. On the inside I live with neuropathic pain. I feel jolts of pain, spasms, it sometimes feels like a throbbing itch that no amount of scratching that can ever relieve it. It feels like something is grabbing onto my tendons and twisting them around in my arm and my neck. I ache, I burn, I try to occupy my mind with something else but it always draws me back to the fact that I just plain hurt. I find myself talking to myself saying 'oh man I hurt today'. Will there ever be a day that I wake up and don't say that to myself? My symptoms could be chalked up to a number of illnesses that I read about online. I could have fibromyalgia, my hypermobility syndrome could be a form of Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Myofacial pain, I read is a result of connective tissue pain which is basically what Ehlers Danlos Syndrome deals with, the connective tissues of the body. Did I do this to myself because I swam too much in January? Did I lose too much weight too quickly which resulted in muscle loss and weakness which contributed to poor posture which my desk job aggrivated even further? If so, then why after not working for three months and not swimming for three months am I still in as much pain as I was weeks ago? Why did my Cymbalta seem to help more at a lower dosage than it does at this higher dosage? Should I ask for another drug? When do I finally give up on recovery? I know there are people out there dealing with so much more pain than myself. My pain is mine alone, only I can feel it and react to it. I want to remain calm but I want to to shout to the world about how much I hurt and how I can't live like this any longer. I want to be a productive member of society and to teach my children to do the same as they continue to grow. I want to be a positive role model for them and how can I do that when I stress over the things that I can not seem to change or control. How do I completely surrender to God, the control over my life and my pain and my worry, especially my worry so that I can not worry about where the next bill payment is coming from due to me being unemployed. They say money doesn't buy happiness but it seems to subdue my worry. I only want the basics for my family, that is all we need but when I can't earn an income, even the basics are going to be hard to obtain and in this materialistic city that I reside in, the importance of money only resounds even louder in my head. If I had to choose between ridding myself of the worry or the pain, I think I'd choose the worry.

So tired, so fed up, I need a miracle

I am so down in the dumps today, the pain caused by typing pretty much made me give up on this new blog before it even began. After living in pain since mid January, here I am three months later with no apparently change in symptoms and I'm no further ahead with really knowing what is wrong with me. I've been told I have hypermobility syndrome by a physiatrist. In his report it also mentioned thoracic outlet syndrome. I've tried his exercises for weeks with no success. I've been given a new exercise program from a massage therapist who specializes in postural restoration. She thinks improving my posture will help. I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me Cymbalta which i thought might be helping a bit with the pain management but even after increasing the dose from 30 mg to 60 mg this week, I feel really wierd in the head and the pain has not changed. I am constantly in pain. My shoulder aches, my neck feels unstable, my wrists burn. I just want to curl up in bed and cry. I have an appointment for an echocardiogram in May and I know the doctor will say why are you here? Well honestly I don't know. I get told I have HMS, I read that HMS is a type of EDS and if that is what I do have it is wise to rule out heart issues and vascular EDS. My gums are receding, I've found that this runs in my family, I see my dentist today for a cleaning and I'm not sure who I go about asking him if he has ever heard of EDS and if any extra precautions can be taken to slow down this receding that they've been harping about for years. I believe I have a connective tissue disorder after reading Dr. Tinkle's book on Hypermobility Syndrome but how do I convince the doctors that this is true? In February my optometrist told me my retinas were detaching which lo and behold is another symptom of a connective tissue disorder. I've obviously damaged my tendons and ligaments in my shoulder/arm/wrist since I am constantly in pain. My whole life has changed since this happened. I am unemployed, I feel like the world's biggest freaking loser, sitting at home, hurting, but getting through the exercises that are supposed to help, not knowing what to tell my employer, not knowing what the future holds for me. Will I be an unemployed loser forever? I pray this is not the case but how am I supposed to work when I am in pain and crying throughout the day? God's supposed to not give us more than we can handle but He's given me too much. I hate my family seeing me like this. I lay on the floor with my ice packs, I have pretty much stopped doing everything I used to enjoy. I feel like I'm abandoning my friends but I have no energy to do the things I used to do with my friends. I worry about our future financially and the stress that this puts on my husband because I can't seem to make my body heal properly! We can't survive on his income alone and yet the idea of going through the process of applying for a disability benefit seems daunting and final plus I would think I'd have to have a doctor on board to back me up with a proper diagnosis. I pray that someone will eventually send me to a neurologist, what I am going through is not normal and so far I've had the psychiatrist tell me that this is chronic neuropathy and I will have to deal with this for the rest of my life. I don't see how I can go on living like this. My joints constantly hurt and click and the medication doesn't seem to help matters any. I don't want to die but I don't want to live either, this is not a quality of life for anyone.

April Fools Day

My pain is gone!! It's actually disappeared! No longer do my wrists ache, my shoulder blades hurt and my joints feel stiff and sore! It's a freaking miracle! Two months of living in HELL is finally over!