Some of you may have heard of someone having 'chronic pain'. Myself, I now have chronic back pain and I am slowly learning about it, struggling (at times) with it and am learning to live with it. However, before you can learn to live with it, you first need to understand it.
Pain is usually classed as 'chronic' after having pain that persists after three months. This is because after three months, your bodily tissues will have healed and the injury itself should not be the source of the pain. What is now taking place is a 'haywiring' of your nervous system which is now unusually oversensitive. So your injury is healed... the pain is still there. Not really fair, is it?
So to the outside world, there is no cast on your arm, no traction in the hospital, no bandage or really any outward sign that you could be in pain. People don't see any sign that you're in pain because they are used to dealing with 'acute pain', that happens, heals and then all is better. But chronic pain now affects you silently.
Once those around you understand that you're now dealing with chronic pain, they will usually be very understanding. However just because the doctor or specialist tells you that you now have chronic pain that you will probably deal with for many years (if not for life), doesn't mean you can automatically just accept it and say 'okay, let's get on with life then'. Well, I sure as heck didn't feel, think or say anything like that at all. LONG TERM PAIN... ummmm.... don't you have a machine, or an operation for that? Maybe a prescription or a specialist that can fix it? Unfortunately alot of the time there is nothing available that will cure your pain one hundred percent. So then what?
For a long time, I was in denial (it's not just a river in Egypt). I thought that maybe the specialist could be wrong. I asked for a CT scan, and all that did was confirm that I had sacroiliac joint dysfunction, facet joint inflammation (L4 and L5), piriformis syndrome... oh and a surprise of mild osteoarthritis in the SI joint. Then I tried ignoring it and hoping it would just go away on it's own... nope. When you are unable to walk (I was also pregnant at the time I was diagnosed which just added to the problem), closing my eyes and sticking my head in the sand did absolutely nothing.
In the end of 2009 I asked to be put into Rehabilitation to get strong enough to walk again (I'd spent most of 2009 in and out of hospital, and bedridden basically all year, even after the birth of my beautiful son). The pain persisted still and I had to continue to take strong opiod pain relief constantly (I still have to at this time). Luckily for me, the local hospital that I was treated in has a Multi-disciplinary Pain Clinic. This consists of Medical Chronic Pain Specialists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and chronic pain psychologists that work as a team to give you information and treatment tailored to your situation. They also run a chronic pain course that teaches you how to take control of your pain and your life so that you can move forward and still achieve things in your life. They teach you the physical/nervous reasons for the chronic pain, as well as the mental and emotional aspects ~ and techniques to cope by using the nature of your own body to help combat it. I haven't even finished the course, but the things I've learnt have been invaluable to me, and has helped my depression and anxiety to abate some. It seems there is light at the end of the tunnel... and it's not an oncoming train :-)
I've only just begun this challenging journey, and have met some beautiful people that have travelled further down this road than I. They are inspiring, and give me hope that this chronic pain doesn't have to define who I am, only God and I can do that. There's more to me as a woman than chronic pain... there's more purpose to my life than just surviving pain, and I'm determined to find every purpose and joy in life that I can!
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