Living With Chronic Pain, Myofascial Pain Syndrome MPS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue
Anyone who has ever been sick with the flu knows how your whole body aches. That’s how (MPS)
Myofascial Pain Syndrome/Fibromyalgia feels like day in and day out. Today is a really bad pain day for me. From the moment I woke till now, which is 7 p.m. I am in pain. Its grating pain. It just grates on your brain. I live with Chronic pain. I live with severe pain.
Chronic pain is not defined as severe pain. Chronic pain is often defined as any pain lasting more than 12 weeks. Whereas acute pain is a normal sensation that alerts us to possible injury, chronic pain is very different. Chronic pain persists—often for months or even longer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myofascial_pain_syndrome
Living pain is so confusing for everyone, including my doctor. Especially my doctor. Unless you are living in the body of someone with Chronic pain, MPS or Fibromyalgia you cannot understand what we live with. We look normal. We feel like hell. There is the battle inside us that we fight on a daily basis. Some days are better than other. Today is a bad day for me. I just tried opening a jar of Nutella, which I could barely open. I don’t know if others have the same problems I do with MPS. I don’t go to a support group, but I did join a Fibromyalgia Group on Face Book. It was tough to listen to people talk about the same problems as me with no cure or solution.
2 years ago I spent 6 weeks at the Chronic Pain Centre. 2 weeks before I started I began a drug called Lyrica. That drug was a drug from hell. It worked like a charm for the myofascial pain but I gain close to 100 pounds on the drug. It did something to the carbohydrates I ate. Thats not the worst of the side affects from the drug, so much so, I called the pharmaceutical company. I had a number of doctors asking me stop the drug, but because it worked so well on the pain relief I just didn’t want to. I tried about 5 times to stop Lyrica and every time I restarted it I gained 20 pounds.Eventually when I couldn’t bend over to cut my toe nails because I had gained so much weight I thought the weight is more unhealthy to me then the pain and I stopped the drug.
Now I have to lose the the bloody fat off the body and that’s difficult when you don’t work out because it hurts too much. A damn catch 22. People just love to tell you that you need to work out if you have fibromyalgia because it will help you, telling that to a person who use be a gym rat is horrible. Never in my life did I think I would be fat, I have photos to prove that. Never would I have thought that I would be in the physical condition I am in today. Except for the chiropractor who told me 10 years ago it was good that I went to the gym because if I didn’t work out I would be disabled. That was foreshadowing! I use to love working out. My brain wants to workout but body, not so much.
The crazy thing about pain relief is that there isn’t any. The pharmaceutical companies have narcotics if you enjoy being stoned, which I don’t and doctors hesitantly don’t want to prescribe to you now. Everyone is concerned that you will become addicted, which most likely you will, because the pain is never going away. So you would think someone would come up with something that would help the millions of people who live with chronic pain. Then there is marijuana, which I don’t partake, not because this is a public blog, but because I don’t like being stoned. Don’t kid yourself, I take a narcotic when the pain gets so bad I can’t handle it, but I take half because I hate “That Stoned Feeling”. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get addicted to the half of a Tylenol 3 I take because I think most of the time the addiction gets to be psychological and with pain there is a huge psychological component.
I’m not sure if others are affected by depression along with their pain symptoms, but I know that depression has been a huge factor along with pain symptoms. To me the two go hand in hand. The days where I suffer from chronic fatigue and can’t get out of bed weighs hugely on my psyche. I don’t think you can live with chronic pain and not have depression. So now you have to deal with depression along with the other physical symptoms MPS, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Sometimes just getting out of bed is a feat.
On my good days I do everything I can, which then causes a huge problem for me because now I have over done it, but if I don’t use those days to do what I can then nothing gets done. People say pace yourself. Well I can’t pace myself. I don’t have that luxury. Yes I need to self love, but I live alone. I live on a small disability and no one is going to do the work around here so I have to cut my grass, do my laundry, clean my house, shovel the snow.
Lets talk about being unproductive, about feeling guilty, yes those are bad words, but I guarantee those are words that lots of people who are like me feel. My ex boyfriend, business partner, sociopathic liar, called me lazy. OK this why I say we look normal. Back when everything was starting to falling apart I was just beginning my disability. I was working out of my home, I would wake up, roll out of bed, not even dress walk to the computer and start.
Stress is probably one of the worst things for MPS and Fibro and boy was I stressed. Back in my mid 20’s I had injured myself at the gym went to see a sports doctor, whom I’d never seen before, and he said to me “if you don’t slow down you will have a heart attack by the time you are 30”. I lived high stress. In my early 30’s I worked for a Government Agency where a woman handed me a book on stress and said I needed to slow down or I would die of heart attack. I’m a Type A personality. I should have had a heart attack when I was involved with this man Leonard, the sociopath, but I think my body just shut down with pain.
Lucky for me I see a therapist. Lucky for me I cry. I cry a lot. When I was losing my home, I wasn’t only crying I was on my floor of my home in a fetal position, this is stress to the max. Let me tell you, I have had many break downs. I’ve come so close to the edge and looked over. This is not good for the body. The stress hasn’t stopped, now I’m a disability that pays so little that I worry about money every month. Paying my bills is so stressful for me that I cry. When they say stress kills it does. So does depression, Robin Williams just proved that.
I was doing meditation a year ago and I liked meditation, but then I stopped. You have to work on everything. Its like exercise. When you fall into a depression on top of everything else god its like being in the pit of hell. I started to use a calendar to record myself. Wrote down when I did laundry, cut the grass, had a shower, etc. I guess I should add meditation in there. Well I need to start meditating before I can put it on the calendar. I’m not a to do list person it stresses me out, I am a write down what I’ve done person. LOL does that make sense. To do lists have always stressed me out. I have great memory or I use to. Stress kills brain cells thank god we have a lot.
So today was a bad pain day.
I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in close to 4 years and the only reason for that is because I want to be able to take pain medication when I need it. When you take Lyrica you can’t drink. I would love to have a drink every once in a while, I’m not a huge drinker and a glass of wine would put me out but I would like to have that choice to have a drink. My thinking is you just can’t mix the two without have a seriously bad consequence just takes once to accidently stop breathing because the two just don’t mix.
Just sitting spending time writing this post hurts. When I get up, I can barely walk. Just want you to know that what an average person takes for granted I can’t do.
