Adventures in unmanaged pain

This adventure is a sucky one. I wouldn’t recommend it. At all. I got pain, man, and it is multiplying.

So I am without my painkiller. Just the way it is. So pain is unmanaged with medication. So what to do, eh?

Resulting in:

• Every day high pain migraines. Aside from the two triptan days, which I take immediately and can work very well for most or all of the day.
• Fibromyalgia flaring in ways I had forgotten and now remember very well. The fibro chest pains, for example, feel like a bloody heart attack.
• Extreme nerve pain from my peripheral neuropathy in my right, dominant hand. I am talking in the hand itself a sharp piercing pain, more numbness and the ‘prickles’ are back. Some swelling. Severe gnawing wrist pain. Skin pain up the arm. Severe gnawing elbow pain.

And I have to tell you the pain won today. It kicked my ass back and forth. I accomplished nothing. I had a hard time doing things. I emptied the dishwasher for example and the noise of the plates touching made my head scream. And my whole arm with the nerve damage pain just couldn’t handle that. Or much else. Tried using my left hand for just some basic facebook scrolling. Then I would lift my teacup and my arm would scream.

This is uncalled for pain. Unreasonable pain. Epic pain. I really am not liking the consistency of it as well.

I tried:

• Ice for my head
• My usual supplements, of course, as they are daily.
• Ginger and Zofran for the nausea
• CBD cream for everything. I mean, I am covered in it
• Hiding in the dark from the migraine
• Lidocaine gel for my arm. That stuff isn’t cheap so I usually use it on the fibromyalgia allodynia. But this was so bad, so aggravating, I slathered that on.

I didn’t have an Epsom salt bath like I usually do because I just couldn’t work up the energy to even go there.

The lidocaine and CBD have knocked the arm pain down to a 7. Migraine down to a 7 from a high effing 9. So relatively speaking this is the best I am getting today. And relative to the 9 level pain, 7 is at least some relief. Not so frantic. Not so raw. Not so screaming.

And that was the best I could do with what I have. I am not sure if you can ice or heat nerve pain, given the sensitivity to temperature it has. I could have used my Oska Pulse… but it broke, so that is out, unfortunately. And I cannot afford another one, also very unfortunate.

I’m at a loss on these days, which are now my ‘new year, new me’ level of pain. And today, well, it made me very, very angry that I have to endure this. Very angry. When pain is that high distraction techniques are impossible. I am not even sure I will be able to sleep. Last night I had a really rough go of it and slept poorly. I couldn’t nap today because the pain was too extreme. So I hope I have managed to dull it enough to get to sleep or tomorrow is going to be another really rough day.

And if this were a Bad Day that would suck in and of itself. But this is a bad indeterminate amount of time that is persisting every day. I do not like that. That sort of pain messes with you, man. High pain when I was depressed would cause the Plummet of Doom… the slippery slope into raw, desperation, and hopelessness. But being laid out by pain day by day by day is exhausting no matter your mood maintenance.

I will not tolerate it for much longer. There are medications for nerve damage. Migraines I can do nothing about at the moment. But this nerve pain… that needs to be handled.

But you just have to get through. Just have to endure.

And that is the thing about bad pain days like this:

• Distraction is difficult to impossible
• Manage it with any self-care regiment you usually use. Like I hit this pain with all I got, man, everything I could do, I did.
• You have to rest. This isn’t the sort of pain you can get through without rest. A lot of rest. Just get through to the other side. Day by day. Inch by inch.
• We survive, one way or another.

Other pain posts:

Chronic pain and emotions

Chronic pain: treatment alternatives

Chronic pain and self-compassion