Living with chronic pain, nothing to be sad about it

 

Dear Bloggers,

 

As a seemingly healthy person in my mid-50s, most people don’t suspect that I am living with chronic pain. When I tell people about my condition, it feels like many still doubt that I’m serious or assume I’m exaggerating. But truthfully, like many with invisible conditions, I’m probably more likely to downplay the severity of my discomfort on the rare occasion that I do mention it. It’s the kind of thing that seems to make people uneasy: pain that’s frequent or constant, with no means to alleviate, even though I always wish the Paracetamol in my medicine cabinet would magically do the trick. 

How things came into my life?

My chronic pain started in my late teens and has been worsening for years. It’s localized most intensely in my joints hands, knees, feet and neck. Along with it are daily pain on some of my ribs and monthly inflammations of bursae. The cause of it all is the weight of my body, working on it, but the progress is not very fast if you cannot work out fully anymore as I ripped a couple of muscles through the years of existence and this is worsening my pain. 

Am I the only one?

No, There are many people that are dealing with chronic pain and many of them know how to hide it from the outside world and some of them are living right through the pain. Others like me need some treatment in pain relief and go to a specialist for advice and treatment. In other words, many millions of people around the world are dealing with invisible and ongoing pain. I’m far from alone in my experience. 

Diagnosis

Arthritis and inflammation is an important cause of joints pain. I wake up off and on throughout the night with shooting pain in legs knees and hands, my finger lives a life of their own. Every morning, my joints and fingers are stiff and painful, sending shockwaves of pain through from my whole body. In the beginning, I believed that it was all in my head. Doing dishes or walking for a long distance but also sitting in the same position can kill my day and make life completely miserable. Some days, I know as soon as I get out of bed that the combination of feeling sour and pain means I just won’t be able to sit at my computer and write a blog story on this day.

A good healthcare provider can help you find the root cause of the pain while treating it. This is particularly critical for younger people. Because it’s less common for chronic pain to appear at a young age, a medical issue can usually be uncovered and providers don’t want lifelong chronic pain to be the diagnosis if it doesn’t have to be. Although you have to request for it when you explain that this might save them a lot of money, it might help. In my case, the healthcare providers were giving up pretty quickly and diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia and gave me medication (Diclofenac it stops inflammation and I had it for more than 15 years) to ease the pain. Nowadays, they tend to be “even more aggressive in looking for the causes of pain,” prioritizing things like MRIs, CAT scans, and blood work. Well the source of my pain was visually apparent and was diagnosable by a Rheumatologist and a physical therapist, the learned me to accept my pain and live with it without any other medication then Paracetamol. Every case is different, so go and see your physician and talk things through, as more elusive causes require tests like those mentioned above. 

With older patients, these diagnostic tests are also fairly routine options, particularly if pain is persistent despite treatment or does not have a clear cause. However, there is often some pain to be expected during the normal aging process, so it’s more typical to see older patients with chronic pain issues or for the cause to be clear, such as mine Arthritis.

 

Causes

"Oftentimes there was physical trauma, emotional trauma, or chemical trauma that initiated the [pain] process” for patients.

 Other common causes of chronic pain can be: Inflammation, for example caused by arthritis or an Infection, such as an ear infection and also an illness, such as cancer, muscular dysfunction like spasm. Chronic repetitive motion like a frozen shoulder or autoimmune diseases, such as fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis.

However, this list does not cover every possible origin. There are a massive variety of causes, locations, and intensities of chronic pain conditions. This can make the nebulous condition hard to categorize or track. 

Treating it

The options for treating or reducing chronic pain are nearly as vast as the potential causes. This can often delay relief if the first treatment is ineffective. In my case, I was sent to physical therapy first and went for many months, but found no relief from this route other than a confirmation of cause, so I’m now exploring alternatives. Many physicians hesitate to prescribe opioid painkillers for chronic pain because of their addictive potential. However, non-opioid solutions can be effective.

Treatment options for chronic pain

Medication is far from the only possible solution. Other treatment options for chronic pain are Physical therapy, Acupuncture, Local electrical stimulation, Brain stimulation, Surgery, Chiropractic treatment in all of these cases you are the one that decides in the end.

The best cure for my personal situation is treatment with medication in the long run according to the Rheumatologist we should wait with it as long as we possibly can. As Meds can do more damage in some cases. I’ve tried some other pain-alleviating routes in the meantime (including physical therapy and some Zen course to get my life in balance.) and have been slowly investigating more options recently (like chiropractic treatment and acupuncture) but this is for the years to come. 

Ultimately, what works for each person may be one of these things, a combination of several, or something else altogether. Some people may get some relief from treatments like these, but need surgery or deeper medical intervention to fix the root condition causing the pain. 

For a lot of people, myself included, just being aware of the range of options for treatment, and the fact that so many other people are in a similar boat (be it one we can’t see), provides the first bit of relief.

Smile everyday it might give less negative feelings

 

The Old Sailor,