Venting about Chronic Pain on Pain Awareness Month
Chronic pain can feel so hopeless and yet people expect you to sugarcoat it. Talking about the reality can be bleak and depressing so if someone is fortunate enough to not have to think about pain every day, they'll often do whatever they can to avoid the subject entirely. Some people want to hear you're better because they care and others want to hear it because the possibility that you're not is terrifying to them. It is terrifying because deep down, they know that they could be in chronic pain one day, and they want to believe that it isn't as bad as we make it sound. Unfortunately, it's usually even worse than we make it sound.
Talking about it is also hard because I don't want pity or to make it sound like I'm unhappy and miserable 24/7, like I have a depressing life that isn't worth living. This isn't true about me or any disabled person. We can still find beauty and joy and happiness and meaning. We still live fulfilling lives regardless of our circumstances. Eugenicists want everyone to believe disabled lives are worthless. Eugenicists have lied to everyone at the expense of disabled people's lives.
But if I had to accurately describe my pain right now, I'd say my insides feel like fire. I google "how to make pain stop" over and over but none of the results are anything I haven't already tried. The unpredictability of it all weighs on me each morning. I brace myself for the pain but I never know how much to expect. Low pain or no pain are great reliefs but I wish they could last forever.
The unsettling sensations of nerve pain, the unwelcome but familiar soreness of an arthritic neck, the aches of fibromyalgia joints that will make me feel too useless and weak to do anything today besides occupy the couch. A shower might help but that takes energy that this pain won't allow.
On certain pain days I wish I could become one with a heating pad. When the pain no longer calls for heat, I switch to the soothing shock of ice, the calm that can only be created by replacing a bad sensation with something else entirely. The aching skin, bones, muscles, joints - they understand heat, they understand ice. They welcome them both as much as they welcome rest or an ibuprofen.
Sometimes my Lyrica helps and sometimes it doesn't. I have yet to find anything that makes the pain go away entirely. Most people with chronic illness will tell you the same about whatever medication they're prescribed. They haven't found anything that stops it entirely either and they may have given up searching. Our ancestors wanted something to stop pain, before pharmaceuticals they tried different herbal concoctions. Read an old newspaper and there are ads written about herbal remedies that will "cure any ailment" - they are not entirely unlike pharmaceutical companies today. Still, most of us rely on pills the way our ancestors relied on those concoctions. What other choice do we have?
Rest is good. I love rest. It doesn't help the pain immediately but it's what I need and at the very least, it doesn't make things worse. There are people in our society who will tell you that you can't rest for even a minute. These people have been brainwashed by capitalism, or in some cases they are the capitalists. I am glad I could never relate to them. In some ways I never had a choice. I learned at a young age that pain can often only be soothed by rest, and ignoring this need makes the pain worse. I love beds and couches and pillows and comfort.
Ibuprofen is for when nothing else helps. I know too much can be bad but if I take it occasionally it might help. Ibuprofen is like a bandaid or a mask. It doesn't solve the problem of pain but it can cover it up for a little while, whenever it needs to. It's good to keep an emergency stash on the nightstand or in the medicine cabinet. It's usually somewhere in an army of disorganized pills on my nightstand. When I can't find it my muscles tense up as I search for the last resort for this pain, but when I finally find it, I am hit with a wave of relief. I always make a promise to myself to never misplace it again, but I break the promise every time. If it were up to me this joint pain would never come back, and I'd never take ibuprofen again.